Vol XVI. No. 18
Archive - Dec 2009 - Oct 2019 http://colleagueslist.blogspot/.ca http://colleagueslistii.blogspot.com
GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL IN SCOPE CANADIAN IN PERSPECTIVE
Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: waholst@telus.net
This email is sent only to a voluntary subscriber list.
If you no longer wish to receive these weekly columns,
write to me personally - waholst@telus.net
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Dear Friends:
My Special Item this week is a new book entitled "Annie Ruth's Truths" which follows the tradition of elder wisdom from the Black community of the American South. I hope you will enjoy it.
I also share a response to last weeks' introduction to learning from "the beasts" from long-time friend and now more recent colleague David Saude. Thanks for sharing with us, Dave.
Please benefit from what you can from the material shared below.
Wayne
PLEASE NOTE- If a link, below seems to be dead, cut and paste it into the address bar at the top of your web page and it should work.
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SPECIAL ITEM
Book Notice:
ANNIE RUTH'S TRUTHS Wisdom, Warnings and Wake-up Calls Collected and Written by David Preston Sharp
Wood Lake Publishing. Kelowna, BC. November, 2020. $10.36 CAD. Kindle $6.50 CAD. 111 Notations . ISBN #978-177343-283-0
Publisher's Promo: Anication style she heard around her – a style that was humorous and instructive, pointed and playful, serious and serendipitous. She then married it to her own precocious personality.
Rarely do we see in print the wisdom and wit of Christian African-American female elders. These expressions are a creative response to the soul challenges of rural country life lived in the American Deep South.
Annie Ruth, now in her mid 80s, still amuses and guides anyone within earshot with her quick-witted takes on daily living. But her words are not meant just for entertainment. They are meant to inspire, and to wake people up to themselves so that they can be better people.
No one is above her guidance. As the wife of a Presbyterian pastor nnie Ruth’s Truths is a collection of the “wisdom, warnings, and wake-up calls” of Annie Ruth Sharp, collected and written by her son, David Preston Sharp.
Annie Ruth, having been raised by parents who sharecropped and lived on the same land in Mississippi where earlier relatives were slaves, took in the culture and commuin Atlanta, Georgia, Annie Ruth found herself in settings ranging from high-powered politics and the wealthy to the marginalized and homeless. She speaks her truth to her family and friends, to those lacking ambition and to those with perhaps too much.
Even today, no matter where she goes, Annie Ruth’s “truths” are always at the ready – even if the targets of her zingers are not.
--
Authors' Bios:
David Sharp, Author
Dr. David Preston Sharp, DMin., is a life teacher. He is a speaker, writer, performer, composer, author and spiritual educator.
Over the last 30 years, Sharp has given countless presentations for major corporations, civic organizations, universities and churches, as a keynote speaker, motivational speaker, and inspirational performer. He has an extensive background as a creative artist and has won awards for his songwriting and poetry. He has performed in major theatres, including on Broadway; in films and on television; and has directed and choreographed for the theatre.
Sharp is an ordained minister (Presbyterian Church, USA) who incorporates the arts as a powerful tool of communication that complements the scholarship and intellect he brings to bear in his lectures and presentations. He has recorded CDs of inspiring music and poetry, has hosted a contemporary lifestyle television show in the San Francisco Bay Area – The Art and Soul of Urban Living – and was editor-in-chief of Soul Mag, a nationally distributed magazine bridging entertainment, culture, and spirituality. As a freelance writer, he has been published in numerous books, journals, periodicals, magazines, and other media formats.
As an educator, Sharp is on a life-long mission to expand his understanding of spirituality and share the wisdom of the world’s great truths and spiritual texts. He has worked with people of all ages, and has a passion for teaching and sharing the resources that allow people to live life to the fullest, whatever the challenges.
Sharp has served on the faculty of the University of Southern California, San Jose State University, the University of Creation Spirituality (now Wisdom University), and Naropa University. He holds a BFA in drama from the University of Southern California, a Masters of Divinity from San Francisco Theological Seminary, a Masters in Special Education from Santa Clara University, and a Doctorate of Ministry from the University of Creation Spirituality. He resides in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Jeannine Goode-Allen.
Annie Ruth Sharp, Author
Annie Ruth Sharp is the mother of David, Vanessa, and Celanese. She is a grandmother to nine and great-grandmother to seven. In addition to being a homemaker, she has also worked as a healthcare and teacher’s assistant, retail clerk, and housemother at a Christian private boarding school. She is a beloved member of Westhills Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where her late husband, Rev. John Sharp, was the pastor. She continues to enjoy family, friends, and strangers alike, and to receive deep fulfillment from helping people live a better life.
My Thoughts:
Elder wisdoo is a valuable gift to those who recognize, appreciate and seek to adapt it to their lives today. We are growingly familiar with this wisdom from our Indigenous fellow-Canadians, but it is important to be exposed to its appearance elsewhere as well.
I am glad that, in addition to sharing much from our First Nations People, we are helped here by Wood Lake Publishing to expand our wisdom horizons.
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Buy the book from Wood Lake Books:
https://tinyurl.com/y42fjqe8
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COLLEAGUE COMMUNICATION
November 14th, 2020
David Saude,
Calgary, AB
Wayne, thank you for your recent newsletter.
May I suggest a book similar to the one you featured here last week? https://tinyurl.com/y56b5m8v
tt is:
"Encountering Earth: Thinking Theologically with a More- Than-Human World" edited by Trevor Bechtel, Matthew Eaton, and Timothy Harvie.
It can be located at: https://tinyurl.com/y6pr5kkh
Harvie, you may recognize, is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at St. Mary's University (RC) in Calgary.
I came across this book in my research for the Synod of Alberta and the Territories Ministry Team for the Care of Creation. (ELCIC)
Blessings on your continuing, expansive reading and research.
Dave
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NET NOTES
ADAM TAYLOR REPLACES
JIM WALLIS AT SOJOURNERSWallis Going to Georgetown U.
Religion News Service,
November 19th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yxsxu2fd
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FIVE FAITH FACTS ABOUT
BARACK OBAMA'S NEW BOOK
'A Promised Land'
Religion News Service,
November 19th
https://tinyurl.com/y6qh7vr6
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THANKS, PRESIDENT TRUMP,
I LEARNED A LOT FROM YOU
Column by Joan Chittister
National Catholic Reporter,
November 19th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y2es3vfr
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TRUMP DIVIDED THE NATION BUT HIS
EVANGELICAL FANS HAVE FEW REGRETS
The "Ends" for Them Justified the "Means"
Religion News Service
November 12th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y5cgh6xw
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BETTER WITH BIDEN - CANADA HOPES
New President Much Welcomed Here
Angus Reid Institute,
November 18th, 2020
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MY MIND, AND WHAT SHE REMEMBERS
i Give the Big Meaning Problems to My Mind
The Christian Century,
November 12th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y2xxl39l
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HOW FAITH ISSUES MAY SHAPE
A FUTURE BIDEN PRESIDENCY
An American Evangelical Perspective
Christianity Today,
November 11th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yyduchjs
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MCCARICK SCANDAL SHOWS WHY POPES,
LIKE JPII SHOULD NOT BE CANONIZED
Process Can be More Politics than Sanctity
Religion News Service,
November 17th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yxrxp3yw
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WISDOM OF THE WEEK -
Provided by Sojourners and the Bruderhof online
God longs for and is working toward wholeness and healing,
toward justice and restoration for all created beings.
- Melody Zhang
--
I was raised to believe that my faith should never be
a sword to strike down another community. It should
always be a shield to protect.
- Stacey Abrams
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A covenant is like a marriage. It is a mutual pledge
of loyalty and trust between two or more persons,
each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other,
to work together to achieve together what neither
can achieve alone.
And there is one thing even God cannot achieve
alone, which is to live within the human heart.
That needs us.
- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
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Jesus redefined the bonds of kinship: “Who is my mother,
and who are my brothers?… Whoever does the will of my
Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
The biological family, evidently, matters greatly; but in the
order of our loves, it should come a distinct second. The
care we owe our relatives remains, but now we’re called
to extend it to a vast new throng of siblings – a family of
many ethnicities and cultures that includes the widowed,
the unmarried, the outsider, and the stranger
- Peter Mommsen
--
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the
catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does
anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we
so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe
a word of it? The churches are children playing on the
floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of
TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear
straw hats and velvet to church; we should all be
wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life
preservers and signal flares; they should lash us
to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake
someday and take offense, or the waking God
may draw us out to where we can never return.
-- Annie Dillard
--
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center
of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the
realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine
and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even
though we were total strangers.… I suddenly saw the secret
beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where
neithersin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core
of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If
only theycould all see themselves as they really are. If only
we couldsee each other that way all the time. There would be
no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.-
- Thomas Merton
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CLOSING THOUGHT - Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which we persist in doing becomes easier for
us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is
changed, but that our power to do is increased.
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Programs ending this week at St. David's United, Calgary:
ACTS MINISTRY STUDIES BEGAN IN SEPTEMBER!!
This Autumn, Our Groups Meet on Zoom
Monday Night Study 7:00PM to 8:30PM (90 minutes)
Online classes run from September 14th to November 23rd.
Our Book - "The Universal Christ" by Richard Rohr
You buy it from Amazon.ca or Indigo
It will be your only cost for the series.
Thursday Morning Bible Study 10:00AM to 11:00AM (60 min.)
We met September 17th to make our fall study Bible selection
Classes run until the end of November
"Women of the Bible (Hebrew and Christian)"
Invite new friends to join us via Zoom.
If you have questions, contact Wayne at waholst@telus.net
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