Books selected are positive and contemporary representations of their respective traditions, contem-porary versions of time-honored classic texts, or historical overviews of various world faiths or interfaith spirituality; recommendations are welcomed that meet this criteria.
All are welcome. For more information, contact Dale Pauls at DalePauls@att.net.
Fall 2011 through spring 2012:
Dec. 1s Rabbi Michael J. Cook Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment.
A scholarly but readable introduc-tion to Jesus and Paul, the Gospels and Revelation clarifying why Jews often draw back from the sacred writings of Christianity.Offers a forum for discussing how Jews and Christians might relate more wisely to one another.
January 26th William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Truly a classic (the Gifford Lectures 1901-1902). Offers penetrating and still readable insight into the psy-chology of religion; we’ll recognize much that we’ve read before, but this time you’ll understand it differently and with more empathy.
Feb. 23rd Arthur Waley, trans.
The Analects of Confucius.
Another of the great classics from the Axial Age, foundational for understanding Chinese thought andculture, and one of the most influential books in world history. Check also the chapter on “Confucianism” in Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions.
March 22nd André Comte-Sponville The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality.
With this, we cover the spectrum of spiritual thought, but we go with Comte-Sponville for his generosity of spirit and the way he evades the priggish self-righteousness of some more celebrated atheists.
April 26th AN EVENING WITH THOMAS MERTON:
Your choice of readings from the world’s most celebrated Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.For an excellent sample of his contem-plative writings, New Seeds of Contemplation. For his fascination with Eastern thought, Zen and the Birds of Appetite and Thoughts on the East. For his autobiographical account of how he found his way from a life thoroughly immersed and enmeshed in secular life to faith and to astonishing freedom in that faith, The Seven Story Mountain.
May 31st Gita Mehta.
A River Sutra.
An enchanting novel of happenings at and around a Government rest house situated on the banks of the holy Narmada River, and a window thereby into the mosaic of Indian spirituality in all her kaleidoscopic wonder.
Runners-Up (perhaps in line for Fall 2012 – Spring 2013)
Paul F. Knitter.
Without Buddha I could not be Christian.
Brad Hirschfield,
You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Celebrating Silence.
Charlotte Joko Beck,
Everyday Zen: Love & Work.
John Woolman, The
Journal of John Woolman.
Vastupal Parikh. Jainism and the New Spirituality.
James K. Kugel.
In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief.
Thomas Cleary, trans.
The Wisdom of the Prophet: Sayings of Muhammad.
(Selections from the Hadith)
Stephen Prothero.
God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World— and Why Their Differences Matter.
Reza Aslan.
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.
Among the books we’ve looked at in the past are Awakening the Buddha Within, The Tao Te Ching, The Bhagavad Gita, The Qur’an, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, The Tibetan Book of the Dead and The Healing Wisdom of Africa. The Sikhs; The Snow Leopard