Book Discussion Group

Resuming on September 3rd.

Wednesdays, 7:00-8:15pm, Zoom

These gatherings are a connective time to engage books and one another on various spiritual topics. Our goal is to support one another as we each discover and express God’s Love.

Common Ground

How the Crisis of the Earth is Saving Us from Our Illusion of Separation by Eileen Flanagan

Current Discussion:

In Common Ground, veteran organizer Eileen Flanagan weaves together a series of stories of hard won successes in the climate change movement, including against a multinational bank in one case, and a heavily polluting fossil fuel company in another, based on grassroots organizing.

As heat waves, wildfires, storms, and floods become ever more deadly, the book describes a groundswell of action in which citizens of all ages, races and political stripes struggle to understand each other and the enormous challenges we face fighting companies and governments wilfully blind to the climate change dangers we face as a society.

Meeting ID: 886 2715 7442 Passcode: 845069

Tentative Reading Schedule:

Sept 3 // Foreword & Introduction

Sept 10 // Ch. 1: A Clash of Worldviews

Sept 17 // Ch. 2: Power Without Love

Sept 24 // Ch. 3: What’s Race Got to Do With It?

Oct 1 // Ch. 4: Dividing the Spectrum of Allies

Oct 8 // Ch. 5: Navigating the Currents of Race

Oct 15 // Ch. 6: All Our Relations

Oct 22 // Ch. 7: Just Transition

Oct 29 // Ch. 8: Oneness and Difference Globally

Nov 5 // Ch. 9-10: Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic & Applying the Lessons in the Vanguard Campaign

Our Most Recent (and Recommended) Books

  • Randy & Edith Woodley, Journey to Eloheh: How Indigenous Values Lead Us to Harmony and Well-Being

  • Matthew Fox’s Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century

  • Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World 

  • Mark Russ’s Quaker Shaped Christianity: How the Jesus Story and the Quaker Way Fit Together

  • Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K. Wilkinson’s All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

  • Amy Kenny’s My Body is Not a Prayer Request

  • Cherice Bock’s A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends

  • Brian McLaren’s Should I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

  • Kristen Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

  • Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe

  • Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited

  • Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ

  • Melissa Florer-Bixler’s How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger & the Work of Peace

  • Joan Chittister’s The Time is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage

  • Phuc Luu’s Jesus of the East: Reclaiming the Gospel for the Wounded

  • Walter Brueggemann’s Materiality as Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World

  • Kaitlin Curtice’s Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God

  • Marcelle Martin’s Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey

  • Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

  • Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

  • Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

  • Barbara Brown Taylor’s Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others