Our library in Hewett Centre is open every Sunday after service during Coffee Hour in Hewett Centre, and our Library Team offers related reading lists based on the topic of Sunday service. Here is their list for the upcoming service featuring Rev. Shawn Gauthier on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025 at 11 a.m. All are welcome in Hewett Centre after the Sunday service to check out some books and to have coffee and conversation.
VanU library books related to this Sunday’s sermon:
1. The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm and Ruth Nanda Ashen, 1989, 157 FRO [Gift of the Unitarian Family Life Centre. From LibraryThing: “The international bestseller that launched a movement with its powerful insight: “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” The Art of Loving is a rich and detailed guide to love – an achievement reached through maturity, practice, concentration, and courage. … Erich Fromm, a celebrated psychoanalyst and social psychologist, clearly and sincerely encourages the development of our capacity for and understanding of love in all of its facets. He discusses the familiar yet misunderstood romantic love, the all-encompassing brotherly love, spiritual love, and many more. A challenge to traditional Western notions of love, The Art of Loving is a modern classic about taking care of ourselves through relationships with others. …”].
2. How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, edited and translated by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D., 2006, 294.3 BST [From LibraryThing: “In our quest for true happiness and fulfillment during the course of our lives, nothing is more essential than giving and receiving love. But how well do we understand love’s extraordinarily transformative powers? Can we really cultivate and appreciate its priceless gifts? In How to Expand Love, … offers a simple yet illuminating program for transforming self-centered energy into outwardly directed compassion. Drawing on exercises and techniques established in Tibetan monasteries more than a thousand years ago, the Dalai Lama guides us through seven key stages. First, we learn ways to move beyond our self-defeating tendency to put others into rigid categories. We discover how to create and maintain a positive attitude toward those around us, in ever-widening circles. By reflecting on the kindnesses that close friends have shown us, particularly in childhood, we learn to reciprocate and help other people achieve their own long-term goals. And in seeking the well-being of others, we foster compassion, the all-encompassing face of love. …”].
3. All About Love: New Visions, by bell hooks, 2018, 306 HOO [From LibraryThing: “”The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks …. offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness – not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. … Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. …”].
4. Love and Friendship, by Allan Bloom, 1993, 809.9 BLO [From the library of Harold Brown. From LibraryThing: “… is a searching examination of the basic human connections at the center of the greatest works of literature and philosophy throughout the ages. In a spirited polemic directed at our contemporary culture, Allan Bloom argues that we live in a world where love and friendship are withering away. Science and moralism have reduced eros to sex. Individualism and egalitarianism have turned romantic relationships into contractual matters to be litigated. Survey research has made every variety of sexual behavior seem normal, and thus boring. In sex education classes, children learn how to use condoms, but not how to deal with the hopes and risks of intimacy. We no longer know how to talk and think about the peril and promise of attraction and fidelity. What has been lost is what separates human beings from beasts–the power of the imagination, which can transform sex into eros. Our impoverished feelings are rooted in our impoverished language of love. To recover the danger, the strength, and the beauty of eros, we must study the great literature of love, in the hope of rekindling the imagination of beauty and virtue that fuels eros. We must love to learn, in order to learn to love again. …”].
5. Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch, 1995, J+ MUN [Gift of Nancy Lagey. From LibraryThing: “… A young woman holds her newborn son and looks at him lovingly. Softly she sings to him:
“I’ll love you forever
I’ll like you for always
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.” So begins the story …”].
6. Mama, Do You Love Me?, by Barbara M. Joosse and illustrated by Barbara Lavallee, 1992, J+ JOO [From LibraryThing: “A child living in the Arctic learns that a mother’s love is unconditional.”].
7. Love: A Celebration of Humanity (M.I.L.K.), by Milk Project, 2001, 779.93 PHU [From LibraryThing: “The 100 breathtaking photographs in this book have been chosen from many thousands entered by both professional and amateur photographers from 164 countries in the most ambitious photographic competition ever staged.”].
8. Love and Salt Water, by Ethel Wilson, 1990, FIC WIL [From LibraryThing: “… Saddened by a painful childhood, Ellen has adopted a skeptical independence and learned too well to hold her heart in reserve. But, as the novel unfolds, Ellen undergoes something of a sea-change learning to accept love along with the sorrow that is rarely far from love. … Love and Salt Water is a mature and, at times, disturbing synthesis of Ethel Wilson’s major themes: the independence of human lives, the strange alchemy of chance, and the healing illumination of love.”].
9. The Republic of Love, by Carol Shields, 1994, FIC SHI [Gift of Kim Bothen. From LibraryThing: “A romantic comedy about the barriers facing lovers in the 21st century.”].
10. Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself, by Candace Plattor, 2009, 362.29 PLA [Gift of the author. From LibraryThing: “Are you feeling exasperated and helpless about your family member’s addiction? Are you at your wit’s end, having tried everything you can think of to make them stop? If someone you love is engaging in addictive behaviors such as alcohol and drug misuse, eating disorders, smoking, gambling, Internet addiction, sex addiction, compulsive overspending, or relationship addiction, you are undoubtedly experiencing unpredictability in your relationship. Some of the most common emotions you will experience include: Guilt and shame; Anger and anxiety; Confusion and powerlessness. Whether the addict in your life is your spouse, partner, parent, child, friend, or colleague, the key to changing this reality for yourself lies in shifting your focus from your loved one’s addiction to you own self-care. This book presents a dramatically fresh approach to help you get off the roller-coaster chaos of addiction, maintain your own sanity and serenity, and live your best life.”].
11. The Welcoming Congregation, edited by the Rev. Scott W. Alexander, 1990, 289.1 ALE [Unitarian Universalist Association. From LibraryThing: “This manual, prepared by the UUA’s Office of Lesbian and Gay Concerns, is designed to help interested congregations become more welcoming places for the gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in their midst and in the wider community”].
12. Life Preservers: Staying Afloat in Love and Life, by Harriet Goldhor Lerner, 1996, 155.6 LER [From LibraryThing: “… Dr. Harriet Lerner gives readers the tools to solve problems and create joy, meaning and integrity in their relationships. Women will find Life Preservers … to be an invaluable motivational guide that covers the landscape of work and creativity, anger and intimacy, friendship and marriage, children and parents, loss and betrayal, sexuality and health and much more. With new insights and a results-oriented approach, Dr. Lerner answers women’s most frequently asked questions and offers the best advice for problems women face today: I always pick the wrong guys. Should I move in with him? I can’t stand my boss. Should I leave my marriage? How can I recover from his affair? Is my fantasy abnormal? Is my therapy working? I miss my mother. I can’t believe I was fired.”].
13. The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love, by Thomas Moore, 1998, 306.7 MOO [From LibraryThing: “In our age of science and psychology, it’s tempting to think of human sexuality in terms of biology and interpersonal relationships. But in The Soul of Sex, Thomas Moore regards sex as an experience of the soul and emphasizes the more human themes of fantasy, desire, meaning, and morality. Moore turns especially to the religious traditions of the world, to rites, stories, and visual imagery that see in sex some of the most profound mysteries of life. He finds spirituality inherent in sex, and at the same time explores the many ways in which spiritual values can sometimes wound our sexuality. He recommends chastity and celibacy for everyone, as aspects of sexuality, and presents them as a means of developing a sensuous spirituality. …”].
14. If Sarah Will Take Me: Poem, by Dave Bouchard, paintings by Robb Terrence Dunfield, 1997, J+ BOU [Gift of Robb Dunfield. Autographed by Robb Dunfield. From LibraryThing: “Illustrated with paintings by a physically disabled artist. The poem was inspired by the artist’s successful courtship of a nurse.”].
15. Away from Her, by Alice Munro, 2007, FIC MUN [From LibraryThing: “… As she follows Grant, a retired professor whose wife Fiona begins gradually to lose her memory and drift away from him, we slowly see how a lifetime of intimate details can create a marriage, and how mysterious the bonds of love really are.”].
16. Inland Passage, by Jane Rule, 2002, FIC RU [From LibraryThing: “The stories in this remarkable collection by Jane Rule explore the relationships among men and women, women and women, and families–both conventional and unconventional From traditional families to relationships that break new ground, this anthology runs the gamut of human emotions. The eponymous heroine “Dulce” is a self-proclaimed muse, witch, whore, “preying lesbian,” and “devouring mother” who has a profound effect on the lives of the women and men around her. “His Nor Hers” tracks the unraveling of a marriage–with unexpected results. “The Real World” explores the moral universe of a female mechanic who creates an unconventional family. In “A Matter of Numbers,” a divorced math professor falls in love with her twenty-year-old student. And the title story introduces two women–one widowed, one divorced–who rediscover romance aboard a cruise ship. …”].