The Ground We Become

They told her she couldn't preach. This book is what God said instead.The Ground We Become gathers a full year of sermons from minister, artist, and ecowomanist storyteller LaSheena Jenkins - alongside the founding sermon she preached while unhoused, sleeping on an air mattress, on her late father's birthday, in the church where she'd been told women couldn't preach.What grew from that ground is a body of work unlike any other: sermons rooted in the Black preaching tradition and watered by womanist theology, where trees preach, rivers remember, and the earth herself is a witness to resurrection. From Advent to Easter, from Pentecost to the National Day of Prayer, these messages walk with the bent-over woman of Luke 13, the grieving disciples on the Emmaus road, and every reader who has survived something and wondered if their scars disqualified them from the call.The collection also includes The Monarch Projects - an original stage play with scholarly annotations, born in a seminary classroom, that explores police violence, community grief, and ecological healing through the story of a girl, her brother, and the monarch butterflies fighting extinction alongside them.Inside you'll find: - Fifteen sermons preached in real time to a real congregation, with preacher's reference notes and exegetical study sections- A preface drawn from the author's own journals during her season of homelessness- A full-length annotated play at the intersection of faith, justice, and ecology- A benediction, breath practice, and letter to the futureWritten for Bible-loving readers, preachers, seminarians, book clubs, and every daughter of the church who was told to sit down - The Ground We Become is an invitation to rise, to root, and to remember: the groaning is the prayer, and we are the ground we become.The second book of LaSheena Jenkins's fortieth year.