The Truth Quest Book Group
Meets the first Sunday of each month from 9:30 – 10:30 pm, in the KUUF Library (Elmore room). Newcomers always are welcome. For more information please contact Jerry Butler, 360-981-8826
Readers:
Check the library copies long before you need to read the book so you can place a hold if needed. Make sure you are looking at the correct book version, i.e. Audiobook versus Standard book, etc. before you put a hold or check it out.
Take notes if you read the book early so you can discuss it fully.
Truth Quest Reading Event
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, November 3, 8:15 to 9:05 am
We are meeting next on Sunday, November 3 from 8:15 to 9:05 am via Zoom. We will discuss books addressing people’s differing religious experiences. We are suggesting people choose one of the following two books (the 2nd has an audible version whereas the first doesn’t):
Evolving God-Images: Essays on Religion, Individuation, and Postmodern Spirituality, edited by Patrick Mahaffey
World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored and Explained by John Bowker.
In addition, we suggest people select 1-2 chapters from the William James classic (written in 1904),Varieties of Religious Experience. We will then compare notes about what these books have to say about peoples' different faith experiences.
How to Know a Person
David Brooks
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, October 1, 8:15 to 9:15 am
The Truth Quest Book Group is meeting on Sunday, October 6th, 8:15AM-9:15AM via zoom when we will be sharing about "How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen” by David Brooks.
A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain
As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”
The Gnostic Gospels
Elaine Pagels
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, September 1, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group meets again on Sunday, September 1 from 8:30 to 9:30 am via Zoom when we will be sharing about the The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels.
In 1945 an Egyptian peasant unearthed what proved to be the Gnostic Gospels, thirteen papyrus volumes that expounded a radically different view of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ from that of the New Testament. In this spellbinding book, renowned religious scholar Elaine Pagels elucidates the mysteries and meanings of these sacred texts both in the world of the first Christians and in the context of Christianity today.
The Book of Forgiving
Rev. Desmond Tutu
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, August 4, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group is meeting again via Zoom on Sunday, August 4 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. We have chosen the book by Rev. Desmond Tutu, The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chair of The Elders, and Chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with his daughter, the Reverend Mpho Tutu, offer a manual on the art of forgiveness—helping us to realize that we are all capable of healing and transformation.
Tutu's role as the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission taught him much about forgiveness. If you asked anyone what they thought was going to happen to South Africa after apartheid, almost universally it was predicted that the country would be devastated by a comprehensive bloodbath. Yet, instead of revenge and retribution, this new nation chose to tread the difficult path of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Care for our Common Home
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
We will again be meeting via zoom on Sunday July 7th 8:30-9:30am. We will be discussing the 2015 Encyclical by Pope Francis, "Care for our Common Home," addressing with urgency the need to value and care for our Earth, given the environmental crisis we are facing. A free PDF version of this encyclical can be obtained by putting "Francis care for our common home" in the Google search engine.
On Care for Our Common Home (Laudato Si') is the new appeal from Pope Francis addressed to "every person living on this planet" for an inclusive dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. Pope Francis calls the Church and the world to acknowledge the urgency of our environmental challenges and to join him in embarking on a new path. This encyclical is written with both hope and resolve, looking to our common future with candor and humility.
Pope Francis (Latin: Franciscus; Italian: Francesco; Spanish: Francisco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the 266th and current Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, a title he holds ex officio as Bishop of Rome, and Sovereign of the Vatican City. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope since the Syrian Gregory III, who died in 741.
Autobiography of a Yogi
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, May 5, 8:30 to 9:30 am and Sunday June 2, 8:30am to 9:30am
The Truth Quest Book Group meets again via Zoom on Sunday May 5 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. We will be sharing about Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda.
Paramhansa Yogananda is a major spiritual teacher of the 20th Century who made Hindu teachings accessible to the West and sought to show unity among all faith traditions. Since this book is longer than usual for our group, we decided to extend our discussion of it to both the May and June meetings.
This acclaimed autobiography presents a fascinating portrait of one of the great spiritual figures of our time. With engaging candor, eloquence, and wit, Paramahansa Yogananda narrates the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounters with many saints and sages during his youthful search throughout India for an illumined teacher, ten years of training in the hermitage of a revered yoga master, and the thirty years that he lived and taught in America. Also recorded here are his meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, the Catholic stigmatist Therese Neumann, and other celebrated spiritual personalities of East and West.
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, April 7, 8:30 to 9:30 am
Please join us for our book group discussion of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain. We I'll be meeting next via Zoom on Sunday, April 7 from 8:30 to 9:30 am.
Susan Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own sorrows and longings, she says, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other. And we can learn to transform our own pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection.
At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.
Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times
by Rev Otis Moss III
Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting next on Sunday, March 3, 8:30 to 9:30 am via Zoom.
We will be sharing about the book Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times by Rev Otis Moss III, who is the pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.
Dancing in the Darkness is a “life-affirming” (Dr. Teresa L. Fry Brown) guide to the practical, political, and spiritual challenges of our day. Drawing on the teachings of Dr. King, Howard Thurman, sacred scripture, southern wisdom, global spiritual traditions, Black culture, and his own personal experiences, Dr. Moss instructs you on how to practice spiritual resistance by combining justice and love. This collection helps us tap into the spiritual reserves we all possess but too often overlook, so we can slay our personal demons, confront our civic challenges, and reach our highest goals.
On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, February 4, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting, via zoom, on Sunday Feb 4th, 8:30-9:30am. We will be sharing our experience of reading "On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World” by Danya Ruttenberg (this book is the UUA 2023-24 common read)
A crucial new lens on repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and repair from harm--from personal transgressions to our culture's most painful and unresolved issues
American culture focuses on letting go of grudges and redemption narratives instead of the perpetrator's obligations or recompense for harmed parties. As survivor communities have pointed out, these emphases have too often only caused more harm. But Danya Ruttenberg knew there was a better model, rooted in the work of the medieval philosopher Maimonides.
When God Talks Back
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, December 3, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group meets next via Zoom on Sunday, December 3 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. We will be sharing about the book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God by T. M. Luhrmann. This book presents an anthropological study of an evangelical church and movement.
How does God become and remain real for modern evangelicals? How are rational, sensible people of faith able to experience the presence of a powerful yet invisible being and sustain that belief in an environment of overwhelming skepticism? T. M. Luhrmann, an anthropologist trained in psychology and the acclaimed author of Of Two Minds, explores the extraordinary process that leads some believers to a place where God is profoundly real and his voice can be heard amid the clutter of everyday thoughts.
While attending services and various small group meetings at her local branch of the Vineyard, an evangelical church with hundreds of congregations across the country, Luhrmann sought to understand how some members were able to communicate with God, not just through one-sided prayers but with discernable feedback. Some saw visions, while others claimed to hear the voice of God himself. For these congregants and many other Christians, God was intensely alive. After holding a series of honest, personal interviews with Vineyard members who claimed to have had isolated or ongoing supernatural experiences with God, Luhrmann hypothesized that the practice of prayer could train a person to hear God’s voice—to use one’s mind differently and focus on God’s voice until it became clear. A subsequent experiment conducted between people who were and weren’t practiced in prayer further illuminated her conclusion. For those who have trained themselves to concentrate on their inner experiences, God is experienced in the brain as an actual social his voice was identified, and that identification was trusted and regarded as real and interactive.
Astute, deeply intelligent, and sensitive, When God Talks Back is a remarkable approach to the intersection of religion, psychology, and science, and the effect it has on the daily practices of the faithful.
This Is Happiness
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The Truth Quest Book Group will be gathering via Zoom on Sunday, Nov 5th 8:30-9:30am when we will be sharing about the novel, "This Is Happiness" by Niall Williams, an endearing story steeped in rural Irish culture of the 1950's, described in in goodreads.com as "Luminous and lyrical, yet anchored by roots running deep into the earthy and everyday, it is about the power of stories: their invisible currents that run through all we do, writing and rewriting us, and the transforming light that they throw onto our world."
About This Is Happiness
The most enchanting novel you'll read this year, from the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain
Change is coming to Faha, a small Irish parish that hasn't changed in a thousand years.
For one thing, the rain is stopping. Nobody remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard is a condition of living. But now – just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of the electricity – the rain clouds are lifting. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.
As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy's past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.
From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older
by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Ronald S. Miller
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We will be meeting again via Zoom on Sunday, October 1st, 8:30am-9:30am when we will be discussing “From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older,” by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S Miller. You are welcome even if you haven't been able to read the entire book. Contact Jerry Butler at truthquest@kuuf.org
Over two decades ago, beloved and respected rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi felt an uneasiness. He was growing older, and fears about death and infirmity were haunting him. So he decided to embark on mission to get to the bottom of his fears. Through a series of events that included a vision quest in a secluded cabin and studying with Sufi masters, Buddhist teachers and Native-American shamans, Reb Zalman found a way to turn aging into the most meangful and joyous time in his life.
In this inspiring and informative guide, Reb Zalman shares his wisdom and experience with readers. He shows readers how to create an aging process for themselves that is full of adventure, passion, mystery, and fulfillment, rather than anxiety. Using scientific research--both neurological and psychological-- Reb Zalman offers techniques that will expand horizons beyond the narrow view of "the present" into a grand and enduring eternity. By harnessing the power of the spirit, as well as explaining exactly how to become a sage in their own community, he gives readers a helpful and moving way to use their own experiences to nurture, heal, and perhaps even save a younger generation from the prison of how we typically regard aging.
The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened
Our KUUF Truth Quest Book Group will meet via zoom on Sunday, Sept 3rd, 8:30-9:30am when we will be discussing "The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened,” by Bill McKibben. Please contact Jerry Butler with any questions at truthquest@kuuf.org
One of the New Yorker 's Best Books of 2022 , Bill McKibben—award-winning author, activist, educator—is fiercely curious. “I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.” Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth. But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril.
And he is What the hell happened?
In this revelatory cri de coeur , McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. He finds that he is not without hope. And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth— The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon —could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.
The 1619 Project
Created by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, August 6, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting next via Zoom on Sunday, August 6 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. We will be concluding our discussion of “The 1619 Project,” created by Nikole Hannah-Jones.
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.
The Places that Scare You
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Our KUUF Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting on Sunday, June 4th 8:30am-9:30am via Zoom when we will be sharing about the Pema Chodron book, “ The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.”
We always have a choice, Pema Chodron teaches: We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us and make us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder. Here Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. This book teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.
Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, May 7, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group gather again via Zoom on Sunday, May 7 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. We will be exploring remarkable similarities between the teachings of Jesus and Buddha via the book, "Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings", edited by Marcus Borg. All are welcome! This remarkable collection reveals how Jesus and Buddha—whether talking about love, wisdom, or materialism—were guiding along the same path. Jesus & Buddha also delves into the mystery surrounding their strikingly similar teachings and presents over one hundred examples from each.
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Douglas Abrams
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, April 2, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group gathers again via Zoom on Sunday, April 2 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. We will be discussing the delightful book about a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu: "The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World” by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Douglas Abrams.
The occasion was a big birthday. And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet.
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
You are invited to join the Truth Quest Book Group in its next gathering on Sunday, March 5th, 8:30-9:30am via zoom when we will be sharing about the book, "The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)” by Don Miguel Ruiz.
In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, February 5, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group meets again via Zoom on Sunday, February 5 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. Our book for this gathering is “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants" by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Dr. Kimmerer is "an American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF)" (Wikipedia); she also is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.
For questions, contact Jerry Butler
Everyday Spiritual Practice: Simple Pathways for Enriching Your Life
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, January 1, 8:30 to 9:30 am
Our KUUF Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting next via Zoom this Sunday, January 1 from 8:30 to 9:30 am, when we will be sharing thoughts and feelings about the book “Everyday Spiritual Practice: Simple Pathways for Enriching Your Life,” edited by Scott Alexander. In each chapter, a different UU minister or practitioner will share their own, personal spiritual practice. Attending the book group will also help you prepare for the January 8th Adult Education class, where Karen Scott will facilitate a discussion based on this book.
Have you wondered, "How do I integrate my heartfelt beliefs into my daily life?" Nearly 40 contributors address this creative dilemma and share their discoveries. Creating a home altar, practicing martial arts, fasting, quilting -- these are just some of the ways they've found to make every day more meaningful and satisfying.
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
by Thich Nhat Hanh
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, December 4, 8:30 to 9:30 am
You are invited to join us on Sunday, December 4 from 8:30 to 9:30 am via Zoom when we will be sharing our thoughts and ideas about the book "Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet," based on the teachings and writings of the Vietnamese Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hanh.
In these troubling times we all yearn for a better world. But many of us feel powerless and uncertain what we can do. Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) is blazingly clear: there’s one thing that we have the power to change—and which can make all the difference: our mind. How we see and think about things determines all the choices we make, the everyday actions we take (or avoid), how we relate to those we love (or oppose), and how we react in a crisis or when things don’t go our way.
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, November 6, 8:30 to 9:30 am
Our KUUF Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting via Zoom this Sunday, November 6 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. We will be exploring the classic “The World’s Religions” by Huston Smith. Even if you haven't been able to read the entire book, it should engender a very meaningful and stimulating discussion of the different human attempts to find meaning and hope in their lives through our World's diverse faith traditions.
Originally titled The Religions of Man, this completely revised and updated edition of Smith′s masterpiece, now with an engaging new foreword, explores the essential elements and teachings of the world′s predominant faiths, including:
Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and the native traditions of the Americas, Australia, Africa, and Oceania.
Emphasising the inner -- rather than institutional -- dimensions of these religions, Smith devotes special attention to Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, and the teachings of Jesus. He convincingly conveys the unique appeal and gifts of each of the traditions and reveals their hold on the human heart and imagination.
The Trail to Kanjiroba Lib/E: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting via Zoom on Sunday, Oct 2nd, 8:30-9:30am; our book is “The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss,” by William deBuys,,,The University of Oregon website says this about the book “... reflects upon the emotional decompression of [the author’s] educational journey studying Earth’s changing climate to his physical and spiritual journey offering medical services to residents in Upper Dolpo, a remote, ethnically Tibetan region of northwestern Nepal”
A revitalizing new perspective on Earthcare from Pulitzer Prize finalist William deBuys. In 2016 and 2018 acclaimed author and conservationist William deBuys joined extended medical expeditions into Upper Dolpo, a remote, ethnically Tibetan region of northwestern Nepal, to provide basic medical services to the residents of the region. Having written about climate change and species extinction, deBuys went on those journeys seeking solace. He needed to find a constructive way of living with the discouraging implications of what he had learned about the diminishing chances of reversing the damage humans have done to Earth; he sought a way of holding onto hope in the face of devastating loss. As deBuys describes these journeys through one of Earth's remotest regions, his writing celebrates the land's staggering natural beauty, and treats his listeners to deep dives into two scientific discoveries--the theories of natural selection and plate tectonics--that forever changed human understanding of our planet. Written in a vivid and nuanced style evocative of John McPhee or Peter Matthiessen, The Trail to Kanjiroba offers a surprising and revitalizing new way to think about Earthcare, one that may enable us to continue the difficult work that lies ahead.
A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Our KUUF Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting again on Sunday, September 4 from 8:30 to 9:30 am, via Zoom. We will be exploring our thoughts and feelings about Parker Palmer's Book, "A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life". Dr. Palmer offers an antidote to our culture of divisiveness and offers hope for creating communities of true listening and mutual respect even when we have sharply differing opinions and perspectives.
In A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer reveals the same compassionate intelligence and informed heart that shaped his best-selling books Let Your Life Speak and The Courage to Teach. Here he speaks to our yearning to live undivided lives--lives that are congruent with our inner truth--in a world filled with the forces of fragmentation. Mapping an inner journey that we take in solitude and in the company of others, Palmer describes a form of community that fits the limits of our active lives. Defining a "circle of trust" as "a space between us that honors the soul," he shows how people in settings ranging from friendship to organizational life can support each other on the journey toward living "divided no more."
The Muslim Next Door
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, August 7, 8:30 to 9:30 am
The Truth Quest Book group will meet again this Sunday, August 7 from 8:30 - 9:30 am via Zoom. We will be discussing the very readable and informative book on the experience of being a Muslim in the United States, by Sumbul Ali-Karamali: "The Muslim Next Door: The Qur'an, the Media, and That Veil Thing.”
Since 9/11, stories about Muslims and the Islamic world have flooded headlines, politics, and water-cooler conversations all across the country. And, although Americans hear about Islam on a daily basis, there remains no clear explanation of Islam or its people. The Muslim Next Door offers easy-to-understand yet academically sound answers to these questions while also dispelling commonly held misconceptions. Written from the point of view of an American Muslim, the book addresses what readers in the Western world are most curious about, beginning with the basics of Islam and how Muslims practice their religion before easing into more complicated issues like jihad, Islamic fundamentalism, and the status of women in Islam. Author Sumbul Ali-Karamali’s vivid anecdotes about growing up Muslim and female in the West, along with her sensitive, scholarly overview of Islam, combine for a uniquely insightful look at the world’s fastest growing religion.
The Sufi Book of Life
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, July 3, 8:30 to 9:30 am
You are invited to join the Truth Quest Book Group next Sunday, July 3 from 8:30 to 9:30 am via Zoom. We are starting a series on world religions and, to begin, we will be discussing “The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish," by Neil Douglas-Klotz.
Part meditation book, part oracle, and part collection of Sufi lore, poetry, and stories, The Sufi Book of Life offers a fresh interpretation of the fundamental spiritual practice found in all ancient and modern Sufi schools—the meditations on the 99 Qualities of Unity. Unlike most books on Sufism, which are primarily collections of translated Sufi texts, this accessible guide is a handbook that explains how to apply Sufi principles to modern life. With inspirational commentary that connects each quality with contemporary concerns such as love, work, and success, as well as timeless wisdom from Sufi masters, both ancient and modern, such as Rumi, Hafiz, Shabistari, Rabia, Inayat Khan, Indries Shah, Irina Tweedie, Bawa Muhaiyadden, and more, The Sufi Book of Life is a dervish guide to life and love for the twenty-first century.On the web: http://sufibookoflife.com
The Unshuttered Heart
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Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, June 5th at 8:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will meet on Sunday, June 5th 8:30am-9:30am when we will be discussing "The Unshuttered Heart," by the Jungian analyst, Dr. Ann Belford Ulanov. We will meet via Zoom where the link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84969000840?pwd=MTVRc1pWajVqNDRLZHdSNE9qK3pGQT09 Jerry Butler
Aliveness and Deadness are processes that cannot be captured, only symbolized within the precincts of psychology and religion. Opening under the shadow of 9/11, our new century must reassess the preciousness of life and what we are living for, what we love, and what we find worth dying for. In the face of loss and absence, we must again ask what makes us feel connected to the source of aliveness. Yet, we must also understand that feeling fully alive means that we must come to fresh insight about the contrary of aliveness, which is deadness. Both aliveness and deadness are part of the same fabric of being. But how do we talk about them? Or do we leave these unnamed? For Ann Belford Ulanov, aliveness is to make something of what we hear, and to hear what we hear makes of us. Working on oneself enlarges; thus, society as psychological work and spiritual practice form a kind of social action. Our heart becomes unshuttered making new depths possible for the self and others.
Lost & Found
Goodreads | Kitsap Regional Library
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, May 1 at 8:30 am
Our KUUF Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting next via Zoom on Sunday, May 1 at 8:30 am, when we will be sharing our thoughts and feelings about Lost and Found - a memoir by the New Yorker writer, Kathryn Schulz. All are invited to participate or listen. For questions, please contact Jerry Butler at truthquest@kuuf.org
Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz's father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the story of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of the role that loss and discovery play in all of our lives. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that is simultaneously full of wonder and joy and wretchedness and suffering--a world that always demands both our gratitude and our grief. A staff writer at The New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Schulz writes with curiosity, tenderness, erudition, and wit about our finite yet infinitely complicated lives. Lost & Found is an enduring account of love in all its many forms from one of the great writers of our time.
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, April 3 at 8:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting next via Zoom on Sunday, April 3 at 8:30 am. We will be continuing our exploration of David Whyte’s “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.” (We are meeting at 8:30 so those who wish to attend the KUUF service in-person will be able to do so).
With the imagery of a poet and the reflection of a philosopher, David Whyte turns his attention to 52 ordinary words, each its own particular doorway into the underlying currents of human life.
Beginning with ALONE and closing with WORK, each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness the appropriate confusion and helplessness that accompanies the first stage of revelation.
CONSOLATIONS invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, March 6 at 8:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will meet via Zoom on Sunday, March 6 at 8:30 am. We will be gathering to discuss a recent book by the celebrated Northwest poet David Whyte: “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words." For questions, contact Jerry Butler at 360-981-8826.
With the imagery of a poet and the reflection of a philosopher, David Whyte turns his attention to 52 ordinary words, each its own particular doorway into the underlying currents of human life.
Beginning with ALONE and closing with WORK, each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness the appropriate confusion and helplessness that accompanies the first stage of revelation.
CONSOLATIONS invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, February 6 at 8:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting via Zoom on Sunday, February 6 from 8:30 to 9:30 am. Our chosen book for our February gathering is "Gift of Life" by Henri Landwirth. You are welcome whether or not you have been able to read the entire book.
This is a memoir of a philanthropist and Holocaust survivor who started two charitable oranizations: Give Kids the World foundation and Dignity U Wear charity. Landwirth is Jewish and lived in a ghetto in Krakow, Poland, during the Nazi Regime. Between the ages of 13 and 18, he was shuttled between Nazi death camps and labor camps. His father was killed and buried in a mass grave near Radom. At the end of World War II, Henri was marched into the woods to be shot, but a Nazi soldier spared his life and told him to run. "I never knew what my life would be like," he says. "Frankly, I didn't know if I would live." Landwirth, originally a native of Belgium, left Europe after the war, arriving in the United States with only US$ 20 in his pocket. Soon after settling into New York, he received what he thought was a welcome letter from the president. It was a draft notice. He served in the U.S. Army, learning English along the way, and used his GI Bill benefits to take a course in hotel management. He went on to earn a job at a New York hotel, working in every capacity available. In 1954, he moved to Florida and managed the 100-room Starlite Motel in Cocoa Beach near Cape Canaveral. During these early days of U.S. space exploration, the original Mercury Seven astronauts lived at the Starlite Motel, giving Landwirth the opportunity to build friendships with the astronauts, as well as with network news anchor Walter Cronkite. During the 1970s, Landwirth founded the Fanny Landwirth Foundation in honor of his mother. The foundation's work resulted in the construction of a senior citizens center and a school in Orlando. He also created a scholarship program for underprivileged children in Israel. The foundation's work continues today.
If God is Love, Don’t be a Jerk: Finding a Faith that makes us better humans
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, January 2 at 8:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will gather again via Zoom on Sunday, January 2nd 8:30am-9:15 to 9:30am. The book we chose to discuss for this gathering is “If God is Love, Don’t be a Jerk: Finding a Faith that makes us better humans" by John Pavlovitz.” As usual, you are welcome to come and participate or just listen, whether or not you've been able to read the entire book.
Imagine for a moment what the world might look like if we as people of faith, morality, and conscience actually aspired to this mantra. This simple phrase, Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible, could help us practice what we preach by creating a world where:
• spiritual community provides a sense of belonging where all people are received as we are;
• the most important question we ask of a religious belief is not Is it true? but rather, is it helpful?
• it is morally impossible to pledge complete allegiance to both Jesus and America simultaneously;
• the way we treat others is the most tangible and meaningful expression of our belief system.
In If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk, John Pavlovitz examines the bedrock ideas of our religion: the existence of hell, the utility of prayer, the way we treat LGBTQ people, the value of anger, and other doctrines to help all of us take a good, honest look at how the beliefs we hold can shape our relationships with God and our fellow humans--and to make sure that love has the last, loudest word.
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, December 5 at 8:30 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting next on Sunday, December 5 from 8:30 to 9:15 am. We are meeting earlier than usual to give those who want to attend the in-person KUUF service time to get there.
We will be discussing "The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief” by Francis Weller.
“Where there is sorrow,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “there is holy ground.” These gatherings are an invitation to enter the sacred ground of grief and encounter the ways it enables us to walk in this world with its attendant harsh realities of loss and death. We discover how sorrow shakes us and breaks us open to depths of soul we could not imagine. Grief offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground. We are made real and tangible by the experience of sorrow, adding substance and weight to our world. We are stripped of excess and revealed as human in our times of grief. In a very real way grief ripens us, pulls up from the depths of our souls what is most authentic in our beings. In truth, without some familiarity with sorrow, we do not mature as men and women. It is the broken heart, the heart that knows sorrow that is also capable of genuine love.
Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, November 7 at 9:15 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting via Zoom on Sunday, November 7th from 9:15 to 10:15 am. We will be discussing Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing by Rosemary Radford Ruether. As usual, you are welcome even if you haven't been able to read the entire book.
The most significant work of an internationally acclaimed author and teacher. Sifting through the legacy of Christian and Western history, Ruether traces the development of beliefs and ethics that define our relationship with each other and the earth. At once provocative and inspiring, the author's insights assert an ecofeminist vision of a healed world.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Truth Quest Book Group: Sunday, October 3 at 9:15 am
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting next on Sunday, October 3 from 9:15 to 10:15 am via Zoom.
The book we have chosen for discuss is All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K Wilkinson (eds). From a New York Times review: "All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States—scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race—and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis."
Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.
There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
Truth Quest Book Group: Next Sunday, September 5
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting again on Sunday, September 5 from 9:15 am -10:15 am via Zoom. We will be discussing Octavia Butler's novel, The Parable of the Sower, "an apocalypse science fiction novel that provides commentary on climate change and social inequality" (Wikipedia).
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.
The Truth Quest Book Club: 08/01/201 Today at 9:15 am
Truth Quest Book Group meets today 08/01/2021 from 9:15 am - 10:15 am via Zoom. Our book for discussion will be "Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey” by Jane Goodall.
“From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the new National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a poignant memoir about her spiritual epiphany and an appeal for why everyone can find a reason for hope."
Her revolutionary studies of Tanzania's chimpanzees forever altered our definition of "humanity." Now, intriguing as always, Jane Goodall explores her deepest convictions in a heartfelt memoir that takes her from the London Blitz to Louis Leaky's famous excavations in Africa and then into the forests of Gombe. From the unforgettable moment when a wild chimpanzee gently grasps her hand to the terror of a hostage-taking and the sorrow of her husband's death. Here, thoughtfully exploring the challenges of both science and the soul, she offers an inspiring, optimistic message as profound as the knowledge she brought back from the forests, and that gives us all...reason for hope
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting via Zoom on Sunday Juy 4th 9:15am-10:30am when we will be discussing "Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal” by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD. Dr Remen, a professor at the Osher Center of Integrative Medicine at the University of
California, is a nationally known author and teacher who incorporates spiritual healing approaches in her practice. This discussion should be of general interest even for those who haven’t had a chance to read the book.
Enthusiastically praised by everyone from Deepak Chopra to Daniel Goleman to Larry Dossey, Rachel Remen has a unique perspective on healing rooted in her background as a prominent physician, a professor of medicine, a therapist, and a long-term survivor of chronic illness. In the form of a deeply moving and down-to-earth collection of true stories, this prominent physician shows us life in all its power and mystery and reminds us that the things we cannot measure may be the things that ultimately sustain and enrich our lives. Kitchen Table Wisdom addresses spiritual issues: suffering, meaning, love, faith, courage and miracles in the language and absolute authority of our own life experience.
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting via Zoom on Sunday June 6th 9:15-10:30am when are book up for discussion is “The Great Work of Your Life” by Stephen Cope.
In this fast-paced age, the often overwhelming realities of daily life may leave you feeling uncertain about how to realize your life’s true purpose—what spiritual teachers call dharma. But yoga master Stephen Cope says that in order to have a fulfilling life you must, in fact, discover the deep purpose hidden at the very core of your self. In The Great Work of Your Life, Cope describes the process of unlocking the unique possibility harbored within every human soul. The secret, he asserts, can be found in the pages of a two-thousand-year-old spiritual classic called the Bhagavad Gita—an ancient allegory about the path to dharma, told through a timeless dialogue between the fabled archer, Arjuna, and his divine mentor, Krishna.
Like a Tree: How Trees, Women, and Tree People Can Save the Planet
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting on Sunday, May 2nd, 9:15am-10:30am via Zoom when we will be sharing our thoughts and feelings about the book "Like a Tree: How Trees, Women, and Tree People Can Save the Planet,” by Jean Shinoda Bolen: "A Powerful and Poetic Call to Ecological & Feminist Activism. This masterful work by internationally known author and speaker Jean Shinoda Bolen provides an insightful look into the fusion of ecological issues and global gender politics” (Goodreads.com)
truthquest@kuuf.org
Of trees and women. This book on the importance of trees grew out of Bolen's experience mourning the loss of a Monterey pine that was cut down in her neighborhood. That, combined with her practice of walking among tall trees, led to her deep connection with trees and an understanding of their many complexities. From their anatomy and physiology, to trees as archetypal and sacred symbols, Bolen expertly explores the dynamics of ecological activism spiritual activism and sacred feminism. And, she invites us to join the movement to save trees.
In Like a Tree learn more about:
The dynamic nature of trees―from their anatomy to their role as an archetypal symbol
Pressing social issues such as deforestation, global warming, and overpopulation
What it means to be a "tree person"
A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of Faith
Indiebound | Kitsap Regional Library
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting on Sunday, April 4th, 9:15am-10:30am via Zoom when our book up for discussion is A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith by Tomothy Egan. This engaging book is part travel log but also shares some of the more dramatic, and sometimes violent, episodes in the history of Christianity, as the author recounts his physical journey form Canterbury to Rome. Jerry Butler truthquest@kuuf.org
Moved by his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity to explore the religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and travels overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy, accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith--Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium.
A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its search for God.
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting via Zoom on Sunday, March 7th, 9:15am-10:30am. The book we chose for this gathering is “Gilead: A Novel,” by Marilynne Robinson; from the website us.macmillan.com: " an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." Gilead tells the story of America and will break your heart.” As usual, you are welcome to commend listen or join the discussion.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by Marilynne Robinson, one of our finest writers--a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.
This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting this Sunday Feb 7th, 9:15am-10:30am. The book is "Letters to a Young Poet” by the late 19th/early 20th century Austrian-Bohemian poet and novelist, Rainer Maria Rilke.
In 1902, a nineteen-year-old aspiring poet named Franz Kappus wrote to Rilke, then twenty-six, seeking advice on his poetry. Kappus, a student at a military academy in Vienna similar to the one Rilke had attended, was about to embark on a career as an officer, for which he had little inclination. Touched by the innocence and forthrightness of the student, Rilke responded to Kappus' letter and began an intermittent correspondence that would last until 1908.
On “poetryfoundation.org” it is stated he is "Widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets” and some reviewers see a mystical dimension in his writings. The letters give advice and guidance to an aspiring young poet, Franz Xaver Kappus, who was 19 at the time. Please come to just listen or share - Jerry Butler, truthquest@kuuf.org
The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting again on Sunday, Jan 3rd 2021, 9:15am-10:30am. via Zoom when we will be discussing an important work on honoring grief and sorrow in our lives: "The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief,” by Francis Weller. You are welcome to attend and participate or simply listen. Jerry Butler, truthquest@kuuf.org please email for a link.
The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them.
Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it.
The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow.
Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully.
The Second Mountain
Indiebound | Kitsap Regional Library
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting, via Zoom, on Sunday, Dec 6th, 9:15am-10:30am when we will be discussing “The Second Mountain,” by the very popular New York Times columnist and social commentator, David Brooks. The Guardian states of this book, “The New York Times columnist’s best book yet argues that we won’t find midlife satisfaction until we commit to a cause or community.” As usual, join us to listen or offer your thoughts on this topic - Jerry Butler, truthquest@kuuf.org
Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain.
And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment.
In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.
In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.
Small is Beautiful
Indiebound | Kitsap Regional Library
The Truth Quest Book Group will be meeting on Sunday Nov 1st via Zoom from 9:15am to 10:30am. Our book for discussion will be “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered” by the humanistic economist E. F. Schumacher - while written almost 50 years ago, I find this book very relevant to our time. Jerry Butler, truthquest@kuuf.org
Small Is Beautiful is Oxford-trained economist E. F. Schumacher’s classic call for the end of excessive consumption. Schumacher inspired such movements as “Buy Locally” and “Fair Trade,” while voicing strong opposition to “casino capitalism” and wasteful corporate behemoths. Named one of the Times Literary Supplement’s 100 Most Influential Books Since World War II, Small Is Beautiful presents eminently logical arguments for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations.
A Force for Good
Indiebound | Kitsap Regional Library
For more than half a century, in such books as The Art of Happiness and The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Inner Peace, the Dalai Lama has guided us along the path to compassion and taught us how to improve our inner lives. In A Force for Good, with the help of his longtime friend Daniel Goleman, the New York Timesbestselling author of Emotional Intelligence, the Dalai Lama explains how to turn our compassionate energy outward. This revelatory and inspiring work provides a singular vision for transforming the world in practical and positive ways.
Much more than just the most prominent exponent of Tibetan Buddhism, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama is also a futurist who possesses a profound understanding of current events and a remarkable canniness for modern social issues. When he takes the stage worldwide, people listen. A Force for Good combines the central concepts of the Dalai Lama, empirical evidence that supports them, and true stories of people who are putting his ideas into action—showing how harnessing positive energies and directing them outward has lasting and meaningful effects.
Say Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything
Indiebound | Kitsap Regional Library
Find hope even in these dark times with this rediscovered masterpiece, a companion to his international bestseller Man’s Search for Meaning. Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity.
The book will be Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything, by the acclaimed existential psychologist, Victor Frankl. Ref Jessica based her 08/06/2020 homily on this book and she wrote "this book grew from Dr. Frankl’s experience of 11 months in a German concentration camp in World War II and is a powerful sharing of his strong conviction that (in Rev Jessica’s words) within every crisis, there is an opportunity. Instead of, What can I expect from life? … we should ask ourselves, What can life expect from me?”
The Education of an Idealist A Memoir
Indybound | Kitsap Regional Library
In her memoir, Power offers an urgent response to the question "What can one person do?" and a call for a clearer eye, a kinder heart, and a more open and civil hand in our politics and daily lives.
Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy. Humorous and deeply honest, The Education of an Idealist lays bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life and shows how she juggled the demands of a 24/7 national security job with the challenge of raising two young children. Along the way, she illuminates the intricacies of politics and geopolitics, reminding us how the United States can lead in the world, and why we each have the opportunity to advance the cause of human dignity. Power’s memoir is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism and of one person’s fierce determination to make a difference.
March 1, 2020 - 1 copy KRL
God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives & Culture
By Darrel Ray
Indybound | Kitsap Regional Library
Dr. Darrel Ray, psychologist and lifelong student of religion, discusses religious infection from the inside out. How does guilt play into religious infection? Why is sexual control so important to so many religions? What causes the anxiety and neuroticism around death and dying? How does religion inject itself into so many areas of life, culture, and politics? The author explores this and much more in his book The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. This second-generation book takes the reader several steps beyond previous offerings and into the realm of the personal and emotional mechanisms that affect anyone who lives in a culture steeped in religion. Examples are used that anyone can relate to and the author gives real-world guidance in how to deal with and respond to people who are religious in our families, and among our friends and coworkers.
JANUARY 5, 2020 - 1 copy KRL
The Swerve How the World Became Modern
Indybound | Kitsap Regional Library
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius--a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.
The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.
NOVEMBER 3, 2019 – 5 copies KRL