Bread for the Resistance

Reading Recommendations for the Apocalypse

First, let me thank you all so much for your kind and encouraging comments and for being here, helping me feel much less alone in the year of our Lord 2025. And welcome to all who are new! Every time I open the news, I feel a mounting sense of dread, but also, surely and certainly, a calmly lapping ocean of community; I know that across the miles and modems, so many of you are also alarmed and committed to resisting. It is more consoling than I can say.

Now, to clarify, I do not mean apocalypse as in “the end of the world,” but in the sense of “revelation,” the literal meaning of the Greek word ἀποκάλυψις, the same word used by John when he recorded his visions on the island of Patmos. Things are looking awfully…clearly revealed out there, aren’t they, as clearly revealed as they are monstrous.

Since last I wrote, many more injustices and indignities have been carried out by this administration; I encourage you to keep up with them here, and, of course, to keep writing and calling and emailing and protesting. On a personal note, I was horrified to find out that the official White House account’s depraved ASMR video of people being deported was filmed right here in Seattle, at Boeing Field, a place I’ve gazed out at dozens of times with my children, from the windows of our aviation museum. Kyrie eleison. I am heartened to report that protests continue here, including one at our local Tesla dealership, in which a twelve-year-old girl took hold of the megaphone and command of the crowd. Bless. Here for every act of resistance.

Reading is, fundamentally, how I make sense of the world around me, and lately I have been drawing strength from reading about resistance in other times and places. It’s one more assurance that we are not alone. If you could use some encouragement too, here is an incomplete list of recommendations for you.

1. Patriot by Alexei Navalny. You won’t find them braver than opposition leader and activist Alexei Navalny. His book begins as an account of his poisoning by the Kremlin, but becomes his prison diary, detailing his incarceration for three years on absurdly false charges until he was killed by the state in an Arctic prison camp in February 2024. I can’t tell you that it ends well. But I can tell you that Navalny is as inspiring in his humor and faith as he is in demanding a better future for Russia. The phrase “triumph of the human spirit” is a well-known cliche, but it ceases to be one when applied to Navalny; it is simply the truth.

   Before his poisoning and imprisonment, Navalny was the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and an outspoken critic of a Russia bled dry by the oligarchs who continue to direct all of the country’s considerable resources straight into their own pockets, leaving the average Russian mired in poverty. We are getting an extreme dose of that here in America, with billionaires brazenly slashing aid and public services, firing scores of people, and enriching themselves immensely in the process.

   From prison and in his many court appearances, Navalny also condemned the war against Ukraine. As Trump aligns himself with Putin and the US opposes a UN resolution that Russia withdraw from Ukraine, Navalny’s words feel ever more prophetic and urgent. In the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny, the director asks him, what is your message to the Russian people if you should be killed? Navalny answers, “Do not give up.”

   

2. God Is Not a Christian (And Other Provocations) by Desmond Tutu. The legendary Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner helped negotiate an end to apartheid alongside Nelson Mandela and then served as the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Need I say more? This book is a collection of his essays, speeches, and homilies, but it’s just a starting place for me. I want to read every word written by a person who was so entirely unafraid to look the truth in the eye and speak it aloud. Don’t we need his wisdom now?

   

3. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. This is a fictionalized account of the Mirabal sisters, also known as Las Mariposas (The Butterflies), who took part in clandestine revolutionary efforts against the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. They were assassinated in 1960 and are now celebrated and considered national martyrs.

   I love the way this novel draws from the historical record and gives voice to all four of the Mirabal sisters. Dedé Mirabal, the sister who was not assassinated, wrote a memoir of her sisters that was released in English only a few days ago. Visiting their museum in Salcedo is on my long list of dreams.

4. A Life Interrupted by Etty Hillesum. Few things have ever moved me more than the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Her resistance was spiritual, self-giving, and deeply mystical. I have thought of her so often as I write my own diaries, recording, as she did, mounting human rights violations. I cannot say that this one ends well, either. But I don’t think you’ll close the book without feeling that you have touched the light.

   

5. The Homilies of St. Oscar Romero. Everyone knows I’d never make it with a shred of hope intact without my favorite saint, also a wildly courageous person who risked his life to speak the truth about El Salvador’s military dictatorship and the Church’s complacency about it. Did you know that you can read all of his homilies from 1977 (when he stepped into the role of prophetic witness following the assassination of Fr. Rutilio Grande) until his own assassination in 1980? The Romero Trust has the texts of the homilies in both Spanish and English, and there are recordings of many of them. It is so powerful to hear his voice.

   We’re currently in cycle C of the lectionary, so you can hear his homilies on the readings we’ll hear this Lent both in 1977 and in 1980. I may never get over what a gift this is.

I’ve realized, little by little, that what I’m doing in this post and the post previous is assembling my own litany of intercessors for us in this terrible moment in history, adding to it day by day. Tell me whom else I should include? Tell me what’s inspiring you and giving you hope?

A final note: somehow Lent starts next week? Here are a few posts from last year that might feel even more fitting now than they did then.

Lent through the Side Door

Soft Lent

Resisting with You,
Cameron