Beauty and Resistance: Spiritual Rhythms for Formation and Repair

How can you pursue justice, work toward a renewed world, and sustain your faith without burning out?

Beauty and Resistance is a call to rest for weary activists, justice advocates, and believers who long for a life of consistent peace and abundant purpose. Grounded in the conviction that God doesn't intend for you to live in chronic exhaustion and burnout, Jonathan Walton outlines a path that relies on the structure and support of a rule of life, first forged by the desert fathers and mothers of the faith but adapted for sustaining a collective and communal spirituality in today's world. Beauty and Resistance invites you into that rule of life.

Through stories, prompts, and spiritual formation, Walton calls you to see the pain of the world and respond--not out of outrage, reactivity, or performance but as a rested person. It's an invitation to a life immersed in true rest in all its forms--from active rest to delight to community building--so that beauty and resistance naturally flow from your deeply rested life. Part personal narrative, part practical guide, Beauty and Resistance outlines ingredients essential to spiritual formation--rest, restore, resist, repeat--and invites you to join God's renewal of all things.

In this book, you'll learn:

• How to reflect God's kingdom in every area of your life.
• How to live out a rule of life grounded in Christ and his kingdom that leads to communal flourishing.
• How both beauty and resistance are necessary to fully engage with delight and grief, lament and rejoicing, and appreciation and disappointment.
• How to live within your limits to contribute to radical flourishing in the world, recognizing that God is God and you are not.

You can trade anxious, reactive spirituality for a grounded and freeing connection with God, yourself, and your neighbors. Whether you're a justice seeker teetering on the edge of burnout or someone desiring a deeper, sustainable connection with God while pursuing hard, necessary work, this book offers the spiritual scaffolding you need to tend to your interior life with God while sustaining the outward flow of love and engagement with the world. This book is your invitation to an integrative way of life that restores, renews, and fuels your pursuit of justice.