News & Announcements
Book Club
The newly formed Book Club of Trinity Lutheran Church of Tenafly, which meets from 7 to 8 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month has selected “Mighty Be Our Powers” by Leymah Gbowee for discussion on December 7, “Blue Nights” by Joan Didion on January 4, and “Voyage of Purpose” by David Bennett on February 1. Three very different books from distinctly different writers with distinctly different lives, yet strangely similar in that they all tell of surviving traumatic, life-changing events and emerging with a new outlook on life and a desire to share what they have learned in an effort to help others.
Wednesday, December 7 — “Mighty Be Our Powers”, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner relates the memories of the African peacekeeper and women’s activist, Leymah Gbowee, who, realizing that it is women who suffer most during conflict and envisioning the powerful force for change of women working together, formed the Liberian Mass Action for Peace. This group of Christian and Muslim women sat in public protest, confronting the most powerful men in Liberia, the country’s President and rebel warlords, even resorting to a sex strike. They refused to relent until they’d moved the country toward peace. “Mighty Be Our Powers” tells of the journey from hopelessness to empowerment and the difference one woman made by moving an idea into action. This is a book to inspire us all.
Wednesday, January 4 — “Blue Nights,” by Joan Didion, the award winning author of “The Year of Magical Thinking,” examines her feelings after the death of her adopted daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, 18 months after the death of Didion’s husband, John Dunne. However, Miss Didion had already written about her personal feelings of loss in the book “The Year of Magical Thinking,” following John’s death. Wanting to do more than repeat herself in expressing her misery, Ms. Didion changed course, choosing to look outside her sorrow, to include other, larger universal feelings, our denial of mortality, our avoidance of authentically confronting aging, illness, death. The title refers to the summer twilight, when the world turns a shade of blue that tempts us to believe that just this once, we can stave off the inevitable, that just this once, night won’t fall, that just this once, we can hold onto something wonderful forever, knowing all the while that deep night will come despite our wishes. Blue nights are the metaphorical warning signs of that inevitability: we get sick, we get old, we die. Our days do end. Joan Didion, in her eloquent writing helps us to face the reality of life and come to terms with it.
Wednesday, February 1 — “Voyage of Purpose” by David Bennett is a beautifully written account of one man’s courageous journey through a life of multiple disasters, multiple “near-death” episodes, multiple miraculous survivals. As a young commercial diver, he was caught in a violent storm off the California coast and drowned before he was brought ashore. While technically “dead” he met beings of light, relived his life and peered into his future. Recovering, his life was dramatically changed by the experience. Later, it was discovered he had stage IV lung and bone cancer—so advanced that his spine collapsed. His recovery was no less miraculous and he began to feel there must be a reason, a purpose to all he had been through. Slowly, he began to feel a need to share his experiences, the sensation of dying, being surrounded by the light and meeting what he calls “The Soul Family.” This book is part memoir and part guide for achieving spiritual growth, about using the traumatic events in one’s life to enhance individual spiritual growth in an effort to live a more meaningful life.
There will be copies of the book available in the Trinity Library on a limited share basis. For more information, call the church office, 201 568-8821 or visit the website http://www.trinitytenafly.org.
Trinity Lutheran Church is located at the corner of Knickerbocker and RiverEdge Roads.
News & Announcements
Book Club
The Book Club of Trinity will meet on Thursday, March 1, at 7:00 p.m. and will be discussing the Pulitzer Prize winning book “Tinkers” by Paul Harding. Although the main character is George Washington Crosby, an old man on his deathbed, the book is not about death but an eloquent tribute to life as his thoughts go back to his impoverished youth in New England early in the century. His mind wanders randomly and his memories are joined with the memories of his father, an epileptic, and his grandfather as they relive their hard, bitter lives. The book has been praised for both its language and its insight.