Book Discussion Group
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.
For Maimonides, upon whose work Ruttenberg elaborates, forgiveness is much less important than the repair work to which the person who caused harm is obligated. The word traditionally translated as repentance really means something more like return, and in this book, returning is a restoration, as much as is possible, to the victim, and, for the perpetrator of harm, a coming back, in humility and intentionality, to behaving as the person we might like to believe we are.
Maimonides laid out 5 steps: naming and owning harm; starting to change/transformation; restitution and accepting consequences; apology; and making different choices. Applying this lens to both our personal relationships and some of the most significant and painful issues of our day, including systemic racism and the legacy of enslavement, sexual violence and harassment in the wake of #MeToo, and Native American land rights, On Repentance and Repair helps us envision a way forward.
Rooted in traditional Jewish concepts while doggedly accessible and available to people from any, or no, religious background, On Repentance and Repair is a book for anyone who cares about creating a country and culture that is more whole than the one in which we live, and for anyone who has been hurt or who is struggling to take responsibility for their mistakes.
Meeting ID: 886 2715 7442 Passcode: 845069
Tentative Reading Schedule:
May 22 // Intro.
May 29 // Chap 1
June 5 // Chap 2
June 12 // Chap 3
June 19 // Chap 4
June 26 // Chap 5
July 3 // Chap 6
July 10 // Chap 7-8
Our Most Recent (and Recommended) Books
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
Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Shameless: A Sexual Reformation
Matt Boswell’s The Way to Love: Reimagining Christian Spiritual Growth as the Hopeful Path of Virtue
Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Lisa Sharon Harper’s The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right