MAY 2023
BIG MAGIC: CREATIVE LIVING BEYOND FEAR by Elizabeth Gilbert
Gilbert offers insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.
Join us via Zoom: Thursday May 11 and 25 at 2pm: https://tinyurl.com/UFPBookClub
APRIL 2023
LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS by PAUL KIVEL
LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS by PAUL KIVEL
This book exposes how Christian hegemony punishes the poor, criminalizes sexuality, rationalizes destruction of the environment, and contributes to our seemingly endless “war on terror.” It emphasizes the power of people to build strong movements of resistance.
Join us via Zoom: Thursday April 13 and 27 at 2pm: https://tinyurl.com/UFPBookClub
MARCH 2023
THE UNIVERSAL CHRIST
The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr
Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet.
Join us via Zoom: Thursday March 9 and 23 at 2pm: https://tinyurl.com/UFPBookClub
FEBRUARY 2023
LOVE: A HISTORY BY SIMON MAY
Love – unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally accepting – is worshipped today as the West’s only universal religion. To challenge it is one of our few remaining taboos. In this pathbreaking and superbly written book, philosopher Simon May does just that, dissecting our resilient ruling ideas of love and showing how they are the product of a long and powerful cultural heritage.
Join us via Zoom: Thursday Feb 9 and 23 at 2pm: https://tinyurl.com/UFPBookClub
NOVEMBER 2022: WARMTH: COMING OF AGE AT THE END OF THE WORLD BY DANIEL SHERRELL
Sherrell lays bare how the climate crisis is transforming our relationships to time, to hope, and to each other. At once a memoir, a love letter, and an electric work of criticism, Warmth goes to the heart of the defining question of our time: how do we go on in a world that may not?