Book selection for the current year:

 

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.