With the Summer Solstice, the library has been gathering our summer reading selections. Whether the beach or the mountains or some me-time at home is in your plans, we believe we have a lot of good fiction (and some non-fiction} to help you pass the time. Some highlighted titles include:
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
Gum Moon: A Novel of San Francisco Chinatown by Dr. Jeffrey Staley
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
and more!
Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better
And because I knew you I have been changed For good
(“For Good”, from the musical Wicked)
If you stuck around for Youth Karaoke last week or passed through the 100 building after the Fireside Chat, you might have heard our youth and choir (gracefully) belting every showtune and karaoke classic imaginable. From Journey to The Greatest Showman, I have never heard the chapel roaring with such delight!
I met Sister Helen Prejean when I was an impressionable college freshman. The books she had written at the time, Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents, had sparked national attention to the morality of the death penalty.
“Where is the dignity in the death of a human being that we render completely defenseless and then deliberately kill?”
Navigating the first-flights-of-the-day security lines at PDX (the only time of day that TSA pre-check takes more than two minutes), seven sleepy but excited First Church program staff and lay leaders - plus a chaperone! - boarded a direct flight to Kansas City. Unprepared for the humidity, we prepared instead to ask questions like:
Where are we curious? Where do we, as the American Church, draw the line for what is moral? Where are we in our organizational lifecycle? How do we leave behind the tyranny of either/or and step into the genius of the both/and? What is the future of United Methodism? How do we find practical clarity for leading change? How do we create a culture of belonging in an age of isolation?
On Sunday afternoon I will transform from “Rev. Karyn Richards-Kuan, Senior Pastor” into “Ms. White, murder suspect.” Live Action Clue is back!
This annual laugh is put on by area UMC youth groups. Each year the characters have a different backstory, and the youth must figure out the mystery by traveling room to room to interrogate each character. In 2024 I was cast as exotic animal obsessed Ms. Peacock (Zoo business partner with Mr. Body until everything went south). This year, an avid outdoors loving Ms. White.
Separately, the other Rev. Richards-Kuan was also wrangled into playing one of the live characters by his youth director. To get into the spirit, we put on the 1985 classic, Clue: The Movie. A thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half all told, perhaps the most delightful part is the final reveal.