One
of the great delights
David and I have experienced this last year is being invited to be part
of a “Read and Intercede “ book group. Our friends Judy and Bruce
Duncan live nearby in West Chicago and each second Sunday of the month,
they open their home to a group of us who are committed to increasing
our ethnic awareness, who want to become educated in global thinking,
and who feel passionate about connecting with the foreign-born who live
as neighbors among us. (Recent statistics indicate that some 32 million
foreign-born live within the boundaries of the United States.)
Judy,
who has a God-given passion to connect with internationals, is
finishing her graduate degree at Wheaton College in cross-cultural
studies. She dreams of starting a coffee center that will provide a
locale where internationals can connect and interact with one another
as well as with hospitable and interested Americans. Consequently, our
“Read and Intercede” book group enjoys sampling the lattes,
cappuccinos, espressos and great cups of fair-trade coffees Judy
provides from her professional coffee-bar set up in the family room.
Apart
from sampling coffees, we have also ventured around the world in our
reading and in our prayers. Let me summarize: A “Read and Intercede”
book club focuses on works (both fiction and nonfiction) written
primarily by internationals that help us discover cultural insights, so
we might connect culturally with our new neighbors.
Without
a doubt, this has been one of the most enjoyable small groups I have
experienced (in a lifetime of excellent small groups). We attempt to
read titles written by international authors out of the culture in
which they live. These voices, coming from a variety of religious,
ethnic and economic persuasions, inform, challenge and invite us to
enter into a dialogue with each other and with the work. Every once in
a while, we include works written by specialists who lend analyses
about varying cultures, but all the books must open up a world to
us we may or may not have visited, but can certainly enter by crossing
the borders of our open pages.
Some of titles we encountered last year were:
• Three
Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
• Left
to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza
• We
Are All the Same by Jim Wooten
• Heavenly Man by
Brother Yun
• Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
• Across
a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande
• The Other Path by
Hernando Soto
• Interpreter
of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The
Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade by Victor Malarek
• The
City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre
• One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
• Welcoming
the Stranger by Matthew Sorens and Jenny Hwang
• The
Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag
Last month we started a new reading cycle, beginning with Eternity in Their Hearts
by Don Richardson, a book many of us had read years ago but that we
delighted to visit again.
What
is wonderful about this journey is not only the learning curve but the
praying curve. We actually do spend a good 30 to 45 minutes traveling
around the world with our prayers. Judy constantly reminds us of the
internationals who are our neighbors, and with that in mind, we are
looking at the following titles for the rest of this year (considering
the internationals we come in contact with here where we live, outside
of West Chicago, Illinois in DuPage County).
• Blood
Brothers by Elias Chacour (Israel-Palestine)
• Cracking
India by Bapsi Sidhwa (India)
• The
Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Childhood, 1975-1980 by Molyda
Szymusiak and Linda Coverdale (Cambodia)
• Paradise
of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong (Vietnam)
• Simon
Bolivar, the Liberator: Father of Five Nations by
Guillermo A. Sherwell (South America)
• Inca
Trails: Journey Through the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes by
Martin Li (Bolivia/Peru)
• Weep
Not, Child by James Ngugi (The Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya)
• Grain
of Wheat by James Ngugi (Kenya)
• Allah
Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma (North Africa)
I
would like to invite you to be part of our book group. (And actually,
if you are in the near western suburbs and this kind of journey punches
some buttons, we do have room for several more couples and some more
singles. This month we are reading Revolution
in World Missions
by K.P. Yohannan, and David has extra copies.)
For
those of you who are not local or can’t fit this kind of commitment
into your schedule, I would encourage you at least to begin reading
books that open the world up to you. Read with at least another friend
(or two), discuss what you have read and take time to pray for the
world you have just discovered. “For
God so loved the world…” That, of course, is the message
of this Easter week we are celebrating … forgiveness,
redemption and resurrection for the whole world.
Globalization brings that world nearer to us every year.
What have you been reading lately?
Karen Mains
NOTICES
"Read and Intercede" Book Group
If you are eager to be part of
the lively intellectual and spiritual exchange this kind of book group
affords (and you live in the nearby western Chicago suburbs) please
contact Judy Duncan at
. She will be happy to give you
details and directions.
WHOOPS! We Miscounted Heads for
the April 3-Day Retreat of Silence!
Due to my heavy
travel schedule the past months, I thought we had six gals signed up
plus two retreat leaders, making a total of eight. So I announced the
retreat was full because there were four spaces being reserved for
women not on the Hungry Souls list.
Off the road and with a much closer look, I discovered we only had
three firm sign-ups plus two retreat leaders and that we had room for
seven more gals! If you want a quiet spring break for the soul—after
Easter—that gives
you enough time to do the work of entering into Resurrection season,
this is an ideal opportunity.
The dates are Sunday, April 18 to Wednesday, April 21. We arrive on
Sunday before dinner and leave for home on Wednesday after the noon
meal. This is a guided retreat of silence so you will not be on your
own. There will be debriefing sessions for the group as well as
opportunities to meet with a spiritual director. We also love the
tradition of attending morning, noontime and evening prayers with the
worshipping community.
Because of all the work Hungry
Souls has been doing with Listening Groups, because of the
“Listen to My Life” mapping and the Inner-Child Recovery workgroup,
I’ve become aware of how many of us have “mother holes” that need
healing. St. Mary’s Monastery, where we meet for our 3-Day Retreats of
Silence, is a working Benedictine community filled with the life of
loving, hospitable, praying (and happy) sisters. The grounds are
lovely, each room has its own bath, and the environment is holy. This
is a good place to receive healing for some of those mother losses or
to do the work of post-Easter observance (which sometimes we can’t get
to as women because we are in charge of so many holiday preparations).
St. Mary’s is in Rock Island, IL, about a two-hour drive from the
western suburbs.
If at the last minute, you look at your calendar and think, You know, I could fit that in.
What’s more, it really sounds great!, let me know. Contact
me at
.
The price is $225 per person
per single room. This includes meals,
retreat materials, etc. Karen Franzen, campus pastor for Willow
McHenry, and Brenna Jones, spiritual director, are scheduled to co-lead
the retreat.
We do need
to have your sign-up and some monies down by April 8. Just
so you know: I am maturing and not panicking about this. I think there
are some of you who didn’t think you could make this retreat earlier,
but now are free to do so. I’m guessing this “glitch” in my
administrative abilities was provided by God so you could consider
going at this time.
Reminder!
The Soulish Food e-mails are
being
posted biweekly on the Hungry Souls Web
site. Newcomers can look that over and decide if they want to
register on the Web site to receive the biweekly newsletter. You might
want to recommend this to friends also. They can go to www.HungrySouls.org.
Karen
Mains
"What
is wonderful
about this journey is not only the learning curve but the praying
curve. We actually do spend a good 30 to 45 minutes traveling around
the world with our prayers."
BOOK CORNER
Eternity in Their Hearts By
Don Richardson
Back-cover
copy:
Don
Richardson, author of the best-selling
book Peace Child, has studied
cultures throughout the world and found within hundreds of them
startling
evidence of belief in the one true God. In Eternity
in Their Hearts, Richardson gives fascinating, real-life
examples of ways
people have exhibited in their histories terms and concepts that have
prepared
them for the gospel. Read how Pachacuti, the Inca king who founded
Machu
Picchu, the majestic fortress in Peru, accomplished something far more
significant than merely building fortresses, temples or monuments. He
sought,
reached out and found a God far greater than any popular “god” of his
own
culture. And there have been others throughout the world, like him, who
lived
to receive the blessing of the gospel. Get ready to be amazed at these
intriguing examples of how God uses redemptive analogies to bring all
men to
Himself, bearing out the truth from Ecclesiastes that God “has also set
eternity in the hearts of men.”
Karen
says:
This
book transformed my thinking about finding
God’s redemptive analogies in popular American culture. I never viewed
a film,
watched a video, looked at a piece of art or read a work of fiction
again
without seeing if there were symbols and deep meanings that went beyond
what
even their human creators (filmmakers, videographers, artists and
writers)
understood. Even if you don’t belong to a "Read and Intercede" group,
this is a
book you will want to read (or re-read again).
