Here are some candidates for books we may want to read. We’ll have a selection party April 22 at 7pm at the church house to decide on our top 6 books, and choose a meeting time. If you would like to join the book group, we meet in-person with a zoom link for a hybrid discussion. We’d like to know what times and dates are good for you! Go here to let us know your preferences. (when you get there, “log in” by typing your name – the password isn’t necessary. Once you’re in, click on days and times that are best for you!

Current suggestions:

• Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
• Ghosted by Nancy French
• Frozen River by Ariel Lawhorn
• Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kreuger
• Stride Towards Freedom: The Montgomery Story by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

• Breakfast at Sally’s
• Confessions of Saint Augustine – Translated by Sarah Ruden
• A gentleman in Moscow
• Revelation for the Rest of Us
• Gilead – Marilynne Robinson
• The Lemon Tree

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Fast Times in Palestine by Pamela J. Olson
Killers of the Autumn Moon by David Grann
Amish Grace by Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
The Stranger In the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom

• We meet in the church library on the third Wednesday of each month at 7pm
• Generally we will read 120-150 pages in a session
• Highlight passages that inspire you – or amuse you – or infuriate you.
• We get together with cheese, crackers, and wine in person
• You may also attend virtually through the magic of Zoom
• We normally spend two months per book.
• We are grateful to the pastor who designed this style of book group!
  The history of how this got started is here.

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott (August and September)
Love Wins – Rob Bell (October/November)
In Love With The World – Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (Jan/Feb)
Regarding the Pain of Others – Susan Sontag (March/April)
A Gentle Plea for Chaos – Mirabel Osler (May/June)

January 2021

In Love With The World – Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

“Joy is not the absence of suffering, the absence of challenges, or the absence of anything else. Living with joy means that we develop a sense of inner well-being that allows us to embrace whatever the present moment offers. Meditation instills in us a genuine sense of curiosity and wonder, even toward the mundane and challenging details of our existence. ” ~ Tergar.org

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is the head lama of a Tibetan Buddhist monestary. When he was in his mid-thirties he decided to follow an old Buddhist tradition called a wandering retreat. He left everything he had known with nothing but the clothes on his back. He returned almost four years later.  

October 2020

Love Wins – Rob Bell

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spend forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.
~ Rob Bell on Love Wins
This book is about heaven and hell with tons of Biblical references in favor of love, mercy, and transcending our sinful natures.
If you want to find out what Rob is like as a speaker, there’s some wonderful videos on his website. We reccomend An Introduction To Joy which is somewhere between a sermon and standup comedy.

August 2020

Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott

(Grace) is the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.
~ Ann Lamott

Anne Lamott balances the pain of life with its blessings, and we enjoy her honesty about her feelings and her sense of humor.

Mary Oliver has been one of the most popular American poets of our time. She died two years ago at the age of 83, after a lifetime of great achievement: a Pulitzer prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Book Award, among others. 

The essays in Upstream read like poetry. Dreamlike, yet connected to the current moment. For example:

Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.

 You can get acquainted with some of her poetry here, or read more about her at her website here. 

From the forward:

So far in my life, I’ve been a lawyer. I’ve been a vice president at a hospital and the director of a nonprofit that helps young people build meaningful careers. I’ve been a working class black student at a fancy mostly white college. I’ve been the only woman, the only African American, in all sorts of rooms. I’ve been a bride, a stressed-out new mother, a daughter torn up by grief.  And until recently, I was the First Lady of the United States of America — a job that’s not officially a job…

You may be asking, “Why would a Christian book club select a book by a First Lady? A book club in a church affiliated with a denomination that is historically famous for promoting the ‘freedom of religion’ clause in the US constitution? ARE YOU NOT HYPOCRITES??!?”

When we gathered to select the book list for this year, this book was a universal favorite. I’m not completely sure why, but in my case I wanted to read it because Michelle reminds me of the kind of women and men who make churches run smoothly simply by showing up at odd hours, keying themselves into the church, and organizing stuff. The ones who come in early on Sunday morning to make the coffee, and who also know some secrets about getting the dishwasher to actually sanitize the dishes. In some denominations these would be called deacons. In others they might be members of the building committee, or the altar guild. Whatever they are called, they tend to stay in the background and solve problems before anybody even notices that they are there. We believe that this book is ultimately going to be about the personal sacrifice required to nurture a warm and integrated community.

It has uncanny resemblances to what we are experiencing today: the fear and uncertainty, social distancing, quack medicines, government closures of public gatherings, and overworked doctors, nurses, and gravediggers.

The plague doctor is a notoriously frightening sight. The red rod is important – it is to be three feet in length, and it indicates that the person holding it has permission to get close to a plague victim, while others should stay away from him. The mask was filled with herbs in the beak part – to keep the smells at bay.

In this book, the author gets courage from Psalm 91:

2 I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress:
my God; in Him will I trust.
3 Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,
and from the noisome pestilence.

It’s not because he thinks he will be unscathed, but rather, “my times were in His hands, He was able to keep me in a time of the infection as in a time of health; and if He did not think fit to deliver me, still I was in His Hands, and it was meet He should do with me as should seem good to Him.” In short, although he could have left town, instead he felt called to stay in London and write down his observations, hoping somehow that the fractured and chaotic events would begin to fit together and make sense.

Tara Westover

We really enjoyed this book. Tara was raised in an isolated fundamentalist Mormon household, and yet she was destined to be her own person, unlike anybody else.

“We used to think that education was to teach you how to read, think and plan what you wanted to do. If that were still the definition of education, then Val and LaRee Westover’s homeschooling was successful,” – Westover family’s lawyer 

Educated is about Tara’s childhood and education. She never went to school at all as a child. Instead she started her first job sorting scrap metal with her dad when she was 10. Tara’s mother makes herbal remedies for very severe burns and a lot of other medical conditions. They live in rural Idaho in the shadow of Buck’s Peak.

Tara goes to Brigham Young University when she is seventeen. It’s the first time she has ever been in any classroom. From there she goes to Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. It’s a completely different world for her.

July 9:

Loving Your Enemies

A Knock at Midnight

The Man Who Was a Fool

The Death of Evil on the Seashore

Shattered Dreams

August 13

How Should a Christian View Communism?

Our God Is Able

Antidotes for Fear

The Answer to a Perplexing Question

Paul’s Letter to American Christians

Pilgrimage to Nonviolence

More resources:

Stanford MLK Encyclopedia – This page has links to early revisions of the sermons included in “Strength To Love”

King Center Bookstore