Our library in Hewett Centre is open every Sunday after service during Coffee Hour, and now the Library Team will be offering related reading lists based on the topic of Sunday service. Here is their list for the upcoming service.
VanU library books related to this Sunday’s sermon:
1. In Search of Progress in a Time of Fear and Disillusionment: Questions from a Life in Community Work, by Michael Clague, 2024 [Written by a VanU member. He writes, “In this time of multiple global crises, notably the coming climate collapse, the burden falls directly on communities. Community work is uniquely suited to mobilizing citizens for informed plans and actions in a democratic society. It offers a life raft of hope by calling on the best of the human spirit to solve these problems or at least survive them”].
2. Community Organizing: Canadian Experiences, edited by Brian Wharf and Michael Clague, 1997, 361.250971 [Written by a VanU member. From LibraryThing: “… tells the story of community development in Canada, with the objective of determining lasting legacies and extracting lessons from the varied experiences. This edited volume has a number of objectives. First, it traces the beginnings of community organizing in Quebec and Anglophone Canada. Second, the book tells the stories of some of the significant initiatives from both community and state during the ‘heydey’ years – initiatives such as The Company of Young Canadians, Opportunities for Youth, and the Local Initiatives Program. Third, it describes some current initiatives like feminist organizing and the environmental movement, in an era of diminished and ever-decreasing resources. Fourth, the book attempts the ambitious task of identifying who participates in community organizing activities and analyses the early ‘heyday’ and current experiences in community organizing in order to extract lessons and identify legacies”].
3. So, How Have I Been Doing At Being Who I Am?, by Michael Clague, 2023, 921 CLA [Written by a VanU member, and is a gift of the author. Reviews from Amazon.ca: “I do not remember a book that moved me so much as this one.” – Ray Spaxman. Former Director of Planning, City of Vancouver.
“Should be in the library of every school of social work, social planning and planning.” – Gordon Gram. Development industry and environmental and land use public sector planner.
“I liked this book very much. In my career in publishing and philanthropy I’ve read about many inspiring people, and I’m really impressed with his story telling skills. Like a friend sharing some of his life story over a coffee or a beer.” – Karen Theroux. Former writer/editor for the Carnegie Corporation, New York].
4. Social Action Heroes: Unitarian Universalists Who Are Changing the World, by Michelle Bates Deakin, 2012, 261 DEA [Published by Skinner House Books. From GoodReads: “Unitarian Universalists are committed to acting on important issues of social justice throughout the world. Award-winning journalist Michelle Bates Deakin explores the actions of eleven individuals and the impact their actions have had on their communities and their souls. Compelling and inspiring, Social Action Heroes illuminates the potential for deep change inherent in each of us, and in Unitarian Universalism as a whole”].
5. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, by Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams, 2016, 294 LAM [From LibraryThing: “… The occasion was a big birthday. And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet.
From the beginning the book was envisioned as a three-layer birthday cake: their own stories and teachings about joy, the most recent findings in the science of deep happiness, and the daily practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives. Both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu have been tested by great personal and national adversity, and here they share their personal stories of struggle and renewal. Now that they are both in their eighties, they especially want to spread the core message that to have joy yourself, you must bring joy to others.
Most of all, during that landmark week in Dharamsala, they demonstrated by their own exuberance, compassion, and humor how joy can be transformed from a fleeting emotion into an enduring way of life”].
6. The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis, by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, 2021, 363 FIG [Donated by John Boyle. From LibraryThing: “In this cautionary but optimistic book, Figueres and Rivett-Carnac–the architects of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement–tackle arguably the most urgent and consequential challenge humankind has ever faced: the world’s changing climate and the fate of humanity. In The Future We Choose, the authors outline two possible scenarios for the planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris targets for carbon dioxide emission reduction. In the other, they describe what it will take to create and live in a carbon neutral, regenerative world. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head on, with determination and optimism. How we all of us address the climate crisis in the next thirty years will determine not only the world we will live in but also the world we will bequeath to our children and theirs. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us, in no uncertain terms, what governments, corporations, and each of us can and must do to fend off disaster”].
7. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, 2021, 363.7 [Gift of Mary Bennett. From LibraryThing: “There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it’s clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it’s a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States’ scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race, and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
This book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save”].
8. For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future, by Herman E. Daly, John B. Cobb and Clifford W. Cobb, 1989, 330.1 DA [From LibraryThing: “Winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order 1992, Named New Options Best Political Book Economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb, Jr., demonstrate how conventional economics and a growth-oriented industrial economy have led us to the brink of environmental disaster, and show the possibility of a different future. Named as one of the Top 50 Sustainability Books by University of Cambridges Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Greenleaf Publishing”]
9. Turning the World Right Side Up: Science, Community and Democracy, by Patrick Kerans and John Kearney, 2006, 350.12 KEA [Gift of Barbara Taylor. Signed by Patrick Kerans, one of the co-authors. From AbeBooks: “Framed within an analysis of contemporary neoliberalism, this study explores new directions leading to a broad, grass roots–based democracy and argues that the decline of democracy is entrenched in the rule of experts and the domination of scientific reductionism. This essay focuses on the unsustainability of the system that current economists have created in the name of science and discusses a new cultural diversity for communities, outlining an alternative vision for society with democratic participation in decision-making and policy formation”].