Circle of Friends Book Club meeting summary for November 2017
November 8, 2017
The theme for November’s meeting was Spiritual Principles. Members brought three selections for discussion. The first of these was Two Wings of a Bird by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States. The discussion focused on the need for the equality of men and women, and the ways women still need to access full equality. Inequality in the economic sphere, discrimination in social roles and vulnerability demonstrated in the #MeToo campaign, the role of education, control of sexuality issues such as birth control and pregnancy, and the role of education were all parts of the conversation.
The second selection was The Moral Compass: Stories for a Life’s Journey by William J. Bennett. The book contains a selection of stories from all over the world, organized by the stages of life. Each story has a moral at its beginning, and the story follows and illustrates the moral. Readers felt that this book is one to be read as selections, without necessarily needing to read the complete volume at once. Since the stories address needs and questions at various stages of life, reading could be long term and intermittent.
The last book discussed was The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This selection is a novel set in Africa beginning in the late 1950s, and focused mainly on the Congo during its transition from colonial rule to independence. It is told from the point of view of five different members of the same family who came to Africa as missionaries at that time. The book addresses spiritual values as each member of the family attempts to come to understand their own and others’ identities and cultures, and what the meaning of help, friendship, understanding and learning across cultures represents.