the Empathy List #124: Back-to-School + Book News

OMG, A BOOK COVER REVEAL!

Hello friend, Liz here.

I really did HAGS, thanks for asking.

I noticed the rest of you had more of a mix of good/bad, if the headlines are anything to go by: shots fired at a Trump rally... by a Republican? Joe stepping down, and Kamala stepping up (THANK THE LORD).¹ Olympic drama and so much gold for the red-white-and-blue! (I only ever feel patriotic during the Olympics.)

…And there was hilarity, too! See: Raygun, the Internet’s new mascot. (Thanks for the reenactment, Rachel Dratch.)

There was weird Christian news, too—the SBC convention is always a sh-t show. And, of course, my former tribe was determined to be offended by the Olympic ceremonies. And the Olympic athletes. And by everything else…

My summer, on the other hand, was hardly notable by these standards. I worked on a book project that did not come together, no matter how hard I strained to unite the different threads. (It’s only sleeping, not dead. This happens in the creative life.)

I planted a vegetable garden that first was attacked by hail as big as softballs (I AM NOT KIDDING), and then plagued by grasshoppers who shredded my plants , and then battled record-breaking heat and wildfire smoke. (We’re saving up for a new A/C unit…) And then my chickens rebelled and took the pecking order far too literally—in the scuffles, we lost a bird.

Basically, it felt like a book of Exodus kind of summer on my small plot of land in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado.

Even so, I enjoyed every bit of plant life I could find. I enjoyed swimming and strolling around the Nature and Science museum with my children, even despite all the arguing and yelling that seems to define their interactions with each other lately. I held my husband’s hand as we walked around the neighborhood school during our lunch hour. I puzzled. (Granny transformation unlocked.) And I ate peak produce from my garden and from our local farmer’s harvest (even though his crops were destroyed by mid-summer hail, too!!!?!).

I was outside as much as I could stand, and I tried to relish the time together and the time apart, praising God for camp at the YMCA when it arrived. For my family, space is also healthy and good.

Now it’s back-to-school season!

As of this Wednesday, my kids are back to the grind. The new school has begun again. My eldest has transitioned into her middle terror years (by which I mean, she’s lovely, and I’m the terrified parent): 6th grade. GULP. And my youngest will graduate from elementary school at the end of this year. Still, as my friend

cara meredith

joked on Instagram, the first day of class is parents’ independence day.

And I’m delighted to drop my kids off and to drive away into several hours of quiet which, on Wednesday, I filled with grocery shopping and podcasts and thinking and writing and walks and newsletter-reading and Threads (shrug).

The start of their year begins my new work year, too, and I’ve always been a back-to-school fanatic.

I am Hermoine, friends. I looked forward to new notebooks and pens and shoes and planners. I remember laying out my outfit on a chair a week before the first day, ready to slip into at 6:30am Monday morning when the academic year finally began.²

To this day, the first day of school gives me happy-anxious nerves. And school supply shopping is unambiguous delight—I even enjoy checking off items for the list for my kids…which by every measure should feel like a nightmare. Because of the crowds, and my. kids’ demands, and the persnickety instructions of teachers about which brand of erasers to buy (Teacher friends, you know it’s true and that parents like me ignore your requests and buy the generic brands instead. Sorry/not sorry, and I love you.) Still, to me, piling school supplies into a grocery cart remains as shiny and fresh as ”new car smell.”

Actual footage of me sniffing my kids’ school supplies.

Anyway, to the great surprise and delight of my inner school child, I discovered that this week is a serendipitous one: the very week my kids begin their new year, I have a brand-new something to announce to you, too.

WE HAVE A COVER.

Yes, somehow both Barbara Brown Taylor AND Sarah Bessey involved themselves in this project. So did Pete Enns. Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are!

Many of you have followed along as I made my good news announcements and finished drafts and copy edits and THEN KEPT EDITING even past the moment when the Eerdmans team wanted me to STOP, ALREADY. (Sorry, team! And thank you!)

Now we have finally reached the blissful stage of cover reveals and release dates. The book will hit shelves on JANUARY 7, 2025.

For those forgetful or new to The Empathy List, here’s a brief summary of my forthcoming book:

Knock at the Sky is an interdisciplinary, highly personal, braided-essay style commentary on the book of Genesis from the perspective of a creative writer.³

Over the course of eleven chapters, I travel through the origin stories of the Bible—from the creation poems in Genesis 1 through Jacob’s wrestling match with the divine in Genesis 32—and I join those who came before me in making midrash of these ancient stories. Alongside, I weave in origin stories found within other disciplines, especially the fine arts, sciences, and the historical Jewish midrashic texts.

I also examine the origin story of the Bible itself. How did this multi-vocal collection of writings come together across the centuries? Who wrote it and why? What should the Bible mean to us today?

I ask these questions with an eye toward exploring other modes of reading/interpreting the Bible, moving beyond the literalism of evangelicals’ “biblical inerrancy” (i.e. the way I learned to read the Bible).

Though my Christian faith looks different than it once did in my evangelical prime time moment (believe me, I have the white American evangelical credentials), I still revere the Scriptures as inspired… somehow. But I confess that my relationship to the sacred book has changed. I don’t know quite what to make of certain passages, even of God as portrayed in the Bible, and my wonderings begin in Genesis.

BONUS: I spend almost no time on the historicity questions of the Bible. Which means I also spend no time on apologetics for any view of the creation story. Because… that’s boring to me. (I’ll leave the arguing to the professional Christians.) Instead, I took the story as it came to me on the page, approaching it as I do any work of literature: I read the printed words and take them seriously, as if they meant something to the person who wrote it and so could mean something to me today.

I’ve come to believe that such an attitude of reading and interpreting the Bible is a good enough way for me to return to the book that Christians have revered for hundreds of years.

Something happens when we read it, and sometimes I’m unsure if that’s just an ordinary encounter with tremendous literature, or whether that’s the Spirit of God stirring within some unmappable organ within my body and soul, but either way, I believe the Bible is still important and worthy of my attention. (Perhaps yours, too.)

Like Barth, I tend to believe that the Bible becomes the Words of God when we encounter them as such. How? Why? Nobody knows. And yet, I believe it.

…All that to say, my book is gunna be a brief, light read. (BAHAHA, I’m such a chill person.)

There’s one other feature of the book that I must tell you about: it contains visual art.

A peek at some of the art created for the chapters by Jeremy Grant.

Knock at the Sky is not only a written midrash of Genesis, but a visual one, too. At the start of each chapter, my extremely talented, award-winning designer/artist husband has created collages to reflect back the themes within the chapter. (He also submitted the design concept that would become this cover to the Eerdmans art department, which they adapted to their print requirements.) Both the design, the collages, and the words are meant to converse with each other and with the sacred text. I will be fascinated to see how readers encounter both, and how the words and visuals play together in the real world.

I believe that this book is unique in the realm of Christian publishing. And I hope and pray that those who crack open its pages will be met not only by a curated, thoughtful experience, but also by Godself.

I’m anticipating that conservative Christians will hate it. That’s okay with me because I didn’t write it for them, I wrote it for you.

I wrote this book for the wanderers, for the Christians who believe in evolution, for the faithful who no longer buy into the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, for the deconstructors and for the rebuilders of institutional Christianity who are asking, what do we do with the Bible now? How did our sacred book come to be? Where does its authority come from? And how should this ancient story form my life?

Your curiosity and commitment to asking and answering the hard questions inspires me. So, this book is for you.

Will you join me as I journey toward a new way?

You can preorder today. Please and thank you and I am so deeply grateful for you.

Also, would you consider sharing this email or a preorder link with a friend? Books are best shared. ;-)

Thanks for reading, my friends!

Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant

---

PRE-ORDER HERE:

---

A Brief Programming Note:

I’m SO glad to be back to this newsletter. I missed writing it and hearing from you. From now on, you can expect to hear from me weekly (barring illness, inexplicable days when my kids have no school, and mental health breaks, of course). Usually I publish an “Empathy List” essay twice a month and a “Curious Reads” edition on the off weeks. And, boy, is there so much to talk about! I think it’ll be an… um… interesting autumn. To say the least.

When you feel down, stressed, harried, or existential, I suggest you take a cue from the cutest kids show on Netflix, Kid Cosmic:

Kid Cosmic is the cutest, btw.

And you can be sure I’ll be doing the same.

If you want to hear from me in between newsletters, I’m most active on threads lately. Occasionally I go viral and people yell at me, but mostly it’s a pretty delightful and supportive community. (I’m a fervent believer in the “bless and block protocol,” so that helps.)

---

1. By the way, I’m trying my best to call Presidential Nominee Harris by her last name and not her first as a way of rejecting the patriarchy, et. al. But it does feel strange to not call her Kamala, I gotta admit. Anybody else?

2. Unrelated story about the start of school in sixth grade: over the summer, we were supposed to collect and pin (let’s say) 20 bugs to a foam board for science class. But I did count up the bugs I’d caught until a few weeks before the first day... and I was short. So, the last weeks of summer, I spent freaking out, a bug net in my fist at all times. I knew I was going to disappoint the teacher and I did not want to start the year that way!!! I wanted to impress!!!

Anyway, I remember being so proud bringing in my box of bugs on the first day…only to realize I was one of the only students to complete it. And the teacher DID NOT EVEN GRADE IT. I’m pretty sure he threw it away after I turned it in. Sigh. I have always been the type to take the assigment WAY TOO SERIOUSLY, whether it was bug catching or evangelicalism, mmkay?

I AM NOT A THEOLOGIAN AND I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.

3. If you want an academic commentary on the book of Genesis, I recommend the works of Pete Enns and Walter Breuggeman and Delores S. Williams and Wilda Gafney. See: Pete Enns’s The Evolution of Adam and Genesis for Normal People (co-authored with Jared Byas); Walter Brueggemann’s Genesis: Interpretation; Delores Williams’s Sisters in the Wilderness; Wilda Gafney’s Womanist Midrash (Volume 1 and Volume 2 is forthcoming!!).