In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it’s easy for families to forget the true meaning of the season. In this new book of faith practices for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, parents, grandparents, Sunday School teachers, pastors, and anyone who cares about kids will find 100 easy, fun, and meaningful ideas for bringing the sacred back into the season. Divided into three sections of prayers, practices, and lessons, with pages decorated with whimsical Christmas doodles from the c...

The Purpose of Getting Lost isn't a story about travel-and it isn't a story with a neat ending. There is no final version of the woman at the center of this book, no moment where everything clicks and stays that way.As Tracy Smith approached fifty and her children grew up, she realized she'd spent years taking care of everyone. Everyone but herself. So she booked a trip. Then another. And another. Over time, thirty countries and five continents became less about di...

How do you share the deep mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Resurrection with children? Parents, guardians, teachers, and ministers will find dozens of fun and easy practices for celebrating the Easter season with our kids. The practices and seasonal prayers are grouped into chapters titled Ash Wednesday, Symbols, Lenten Prayers, Lenten Refraining, Lenten Acts of Service, Holy Week, Easter Vigil and Easter Day, and the Season of Resurrection. Smith also offers theological notes guiding parent...

A new and expanded version of Seamless Faith*, now with more than a dozen new spiritual practices and additional resources for parents, kids, grandparents, and communities that care about families!*Add family faith moments to your daily routine with little or no prep, and share meaningful spiritual experiences with your children! Traci Smith, a pastor and mother of three, offers ways to discover and develop new spiritual practices as a family, whether you're a new seeker o...

Many ministry leaders today watch as their congregations separate into age based groups and miss the profound beauty of worshipping as one body. You want a community where the youngest children and the oldest adults grow together in faith, but the path from age segregation to intentional connection often feels overwhelming. Church Together provides the essential roadmap you need to transform your faith community into a vibrant home for every generation. Authors Traci Smith and David M. Csi...

If you think you’ve heard this old “simple robbery gone wrong” trope before, think again.This time it is a billionaire who would do anything, including the unspeakable, to protect his heir and fortune.In Heir to a Fortune, Tipp has many enemies that would like to see him dead. Vesa is the weekend thrill-seeking lawyer who stumbles upon information that may change her life forever. Let them take you on a ride in this exciting and thrilling page-turner.About the author:...

It's never too early to start to pray with your little one.Childhood is full of all sorts of ordinary and extraordinary moments that pass us by, sometimes much too quickly. Little Prayers for Everyday Life turns these moments into opportunities for brief prayer together. The prayers are simple, but take the spirituality of young children seriously. These prayers are solid and sincere, worthy of memorization and adoption into any child's prayer life. Li...

Prayers for Faithful Families equips busy parents with simple prayers, written in ordinary language, for a wide variety of occasions. From everyday moments like mealtime and bedtime to milestones such as the first day of school, the death of a pet, or welcoming a new baby, this unique prayer book is an invaluable resource for creating meaningful faith connections at home throughout the highs and lows of family life. Straightforward and flexible, Prayers for Faithful Families

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize* Poet Laureate of the United States ** A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice ** A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year *New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, whose "lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter" (Publishers Weekly, starred review...

In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America's contemporary moment both to our nation's fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice?inquisitive, lyrical, and wry?turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a cu...

**NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • This dazzling memoir from the former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Life on Mars is the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America."Engrossing in its spare, simple understatement.... Evocative ... luminous." —The Washington Post**In Ordinary Light, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith tells her...

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot PrizeFinalist for the Forward Prize for Best CollectionThe extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United StatesEven the men in black armor, the onesJangling handcuffs and keys, what elseAre they so buffered against, if not love’s bladeSizing up the heart’s familiar meat?We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.