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 the Sunday service. Here is their list for the upcoming service on “Flower Communion”, featuring Rev. Shawn Gauthier and Laureen Stokes on Sunday, May 3, 2026 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. Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia by Douglas Todd, 2008, 204 TOD
From LibraryThing: “… explores the unique spirituality and culture of Cascadia, which includes British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. … Cascadia is home to the least institutionally religious people on the continent. Despite this, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia argues that most of the region’s 14 million residents feel deeply “spiritual.” Many gain their sense of the sacred from the spectacular and imposing land.”.
2. Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature by Sharon Butala, 1995, 921 BUT
From LibraryThing: “At once a meditation on the world of nature and a personal and spiritual exploration of the roots of creativity, The Perfection of the Morning is Sharon Butala’s search for a connection with the prairie that encompassed and often overwhelmed her. …”.
3. Norbert Fabian Capek: A Spiritual Journey by Richard Henry, 1999, 921 CAP
Gift of Harold Brown; published by Skinner House Books. Note that Norbert Čapek initiated the flower communion in Prague on June 4, 1923. From LibraryThing: “… during one of the most turbulent periods in modern history, built a religious movement in his native Czechoslovakia that numbered close to 10,000 people. … Richard Henry draws on Čapek’s diaries, unfinished autobiography and personal items such as sheet music, scrapbooks and photographs. …”.
4. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2024, 581 KIM
From LibraryThing: “Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth, its abundance of sweet, juicy berries, to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival.”.
5. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature by David Suzuki, 2007, 304.2 SUZ
From LibraryThing: “… The world is changing at a relentless pace. How can we slow down and act from a place of respect for all living things? … David Suzuki reflects on the increasingly radical changes in science and nature-from the climate crisis to peak oil and the rise in clean energy – and examines what they mean for humankind. He also reflects on what we have learned by listening to Indigenous leaders, whose knowledge of the natural world is profound, and whose peoples are on the frontlines of protecting land and water around the world. … combines science, philosophy, spirituality, and Indigenous knowledge to offer concrete suggestions for creating an ecologically sustainable future by rediscovering and addressing humanity’s basic needs.”.
6. Emerson’s Angle of Vision; Man and Nature in American Experience by Sherman Paul, 1952, 921 EM
Gift of Christine Peirce Douglas in memory of her son Lionel Peirce Douglas.
7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1997, 818.3 THO
From LibraryThing: “In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, one of the principal New England Transcendentalists, left the town for the country. Beside the lake of Walden, he built himself a log cabin and returned to nature, to observe and reflect while surviving on eight dollars a year. From this experience emerged …, a deeply personal reaction against the commercialism and materialism that he saw as the main impulses of mid-19th century America.”.
8. From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives, by Robert Fulghum, 1995, 128 FUL
From the author in the paperback edition, as stated on LibraryThing: “… Rituals do not always involve words, occasions, officials, or an audience. Rituals are often silent, solitary, and self-contained. The most powerful rites of passage are reflective – when you look back on your life again and again, paying attention to the rivers you have crossed and the gates you have opened and walked on through, the thresholds you have passed over. I see ritual when people sit together silently by an open fire. Remembering. As human beings have remembered for thousands and thousands of years.”.