Book Discussion Group
Wednesdays starting May 20th,
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.
This Sweet Earth
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
Tentative Reading Schedule:
May 20 // Intro-Ch 2
May 27 // Ch 3-5
Jun 3 // Ch. 6-8
Jun 10 // Ch. 9-11
Jun 17 // Ch 12-14, Conclusion & Epilogue
Meeting ID: 886 2715 7442 Passcode: 845069
What does it mean to be a parent in the age of climate change?
We are living in an era of climate collapse. We feel it in small ways: when the snow falls less or the cherry blossoms bloom too early. And in large ways: when our streets flood and entire towns burn to the ground. Climate anxiety touches nearly everything we do, but perhaps nothing so intimately as our parenting. It leaves an impossible task for those of us raising children. What do we tell our kids when the air quality is too bad to go ride bikes? What skills will they need if systems collapse? And what do we do with the fear, grief, and anger we feel as parents?
Parent, activist, and writer Lydia Wylie-Kellermann wrestles with these questions and dares to argue that while the future remains unknown, there is still awe and wonder, love and struggle, gratitude and overwhelming joy to be found. As we raise our children toward this uncertain future, Wylie-Kellermann helps us see that those same children shift our posture, slow us down, and invite us to fall in love with the ground on which we stand. At this turning point in humanity, we can choose to shift our lives away from death-dealing profit systems toward life-giving, generous systems. Here is the moment when we must choose to fight like hell for climate justice. And we can do it by nurturing a deeper relationship with this sweet earth in all its beauty, wonder, and wisdom, walking alongside our children.
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
Cole Arthur Riley’s This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
Richard Rohr's The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage.