BOOK GROUP
Through June, our book group will meet via Zoom on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month at 6pm. Here's the way in:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82052537158?pwd=d3JCdUh6UVMyRlBEb3ZleStEZkI5dz09 Meeting ID:820 5253 7158 Passcode: Books Just phoning in?
If you'd like to receive notices regarding our meetings as well as our reading choices, please sign up below for our Flocknote group.
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Our current book
In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden This novel follows the vocations of several women at the fictional Benedictine Abbey of Brede, which is based on the author’s real-life experience of living beside an abbey for several years. Each of the main characters comes from a very different background and struggles with different obstacles to religious life, from family opposition to missing their pets.
Meanwhile, the Abbey itself goes through the difficulties and changes a real monastery must, including the death of its abbess and interpersonal difficulties between nuns who are sincere but far from perfect. Some of the darker scenes in this story may make Brede unsuitable for too-young audiences, for sin and death must be portrayed in order for redemption to have any significance, but nothing is graphic or gratuitous. The novel ultimately portrays the surrender to God’s Will in a way that the modern reader can understand and yet find challenging: it suggests that we must be willing to give up everything for God, and yet, sometimes God may call us to keep something of ourselves we’d rather relinquish. He transforms, rather than annihilates, our personalities. The many personalities of Brede convince the reader of the difficulty of this transformation but also of its real possibility with God’s grace. |
