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, Kiersten Moore and Laureen Stokes, on Sunday, May 4, 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. Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia, by Douglas Todd, 2008, 204 TOD [From LibraryThing: “This collection 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 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. Drawing on his own experiences and those of others who have put their beliefs into action, The Sacred Balance 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.”].
5. 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].
6. 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 one of the great classics of American literature, a deeply personal reaction against the commercialism and materialism that he saw as the main impulses of mid-19th century America.”].
7. 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.”].