Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church
401 Grizzly Peak Blvd, Berkeley, California 94708
Summer Reading Series
This summer, we have a few selections we'll be reading together.
Home by Another Way by Barbara Brown Taylor
Priscilla Circle is reading Home by Another Way by Barbara Brown Taylor
In these sermons, Barbara Brown Taylor walks us through the church year from the expectancy of Advent to the fires of Pentecost and beyond. Her themes arise not only from a particular feast or fast, but out of the perennial questions of faith: doubt, grace, anger, and jubilation. These sermons are simply great stories well told.
Priscilla’s Circle meets monthly for fellowship and study. Our meetings are usually on the third Tuesday of the month from 10 am through about 1 pm and include a bring-your-own bag lunch as well as hostess provided treats.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.
Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity is a theological book by C. S. Lewis, adapted from a series of BBC radio talks made between 1942 and 1944, while Lewis was at Oxford during World War II.[2]
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Zealot, by Reza Aslan
SOTH Book Club
Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion.