Today we’re releasing the list of recommendations from the Book & Poetry Recommendations Session that took place during our Annual Meeting in November 2020. Recommended should be books, texts or poems that were meaningful to us, Quaker or not. We hope to provide you with ideas for nice reading hours in the dark season or a gift idea. Use the comments and let us know your recommendations or how you find the suggestions mentioned.
Heute teilen wir mit euch eine Liste voller Empfehlungen, die wir bei einer Session am Annual Meeting im November 2020 gesammelt haben. Wir haben die Teilnehmer gefragt Bücher, Gedichte oder Texte mitzubringen, die für Sie bedeutungsvoll sind; egal ob quäkerisch oder nicht. Wir hoffen, dass diese Liste euch Ideen bringt für schöne Lesestunden in der dunklen Jahreszeit oder vielleicht ist auch eine Geschenkidee dabei. Gerne könnt ihr in den Kommentaren eure Empfehlungen teilen.
1. Of Love and other wars by Sophie Hardach, novel: London, 1937. The profoundly moving story of a Quaker family and a Jewish family in love and at war during WWII.
2. The Lake of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats, poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree
3. The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi, poem: in Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004) or https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/guest-house/
4. Pierre Ceresole, person: literature of and by him https://nb-helveticat.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,%22Pierre%20C%C3%A9r%C3%A9sole%22&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=MyInstitution&vid=41SNL_51_INST:helveticat&offset=0
5. Unfollow – A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by Megan Phelps-Roper, autobiographie: Unfollow is a story about the rarest thing of all: a person changing their mind. It is a fascinating insight into a closed world of extreme belief, a biography of a complex family, and a hope-inspiring memoir of a young woman finding the courage to find compassion for others, as well as herself.
– Youtube „State of Grace“
– Podcast „Straight white american Jesus“
– Youtube „God is grey“
6. Befreiung (Liberation) by Heinz Röhr, poem: translated by Melanie H.; original German Version S. 126 Was kannst du sagen?
– Die Gedanken sind frei with english translation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h6ZZ28QtX4
7. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, novel: a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it — from garden seeds to Scripture — is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
8. Sum – Forty Tales from the Afterlife by David Eagleman, short stories: shows us forty wonderfully imagined possibilities of life beyond death.
*Recommendations with dashes came up during the exchange.