Sacred Text Reading Group (Saturday)
Date(s) - 07/10/2021
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
A twice-weekly online sacred text reading group. We meet on Saturdays, 4-5, and on Wednesdays, 12-1. All are wide open and you are welcome!
Using a spiritual-practice approach, in each session we will explore a different brief scriptural text in depth. The aims of the sessions are educational (learning something about the texts and traditions), spiritual/moral (discovering what the texts ask of us), and community-building (getting to know each other better). Our practice usually follows this version of Lectio Divina.
The facilitator will have a version of the text available to share; “bring” your own if you like. All are welcome, as are your suggestions of future texts. Group members also take turns facilitating, if they want to try that role.
To have check-in time, or if you are new and would like a brief orientation, arrive ten minutes early. And all are welcome to stay ten minutes after as well, for more getting-acquainted time.
How to join:
- Join this class from your Web browser: https://zoom.us/j/578882781
- Join this class using the Zoom app: Meeting ID: 578 882 781
- Join this class by phone: 669 900 9128 US (San Jose), Meeting ID: 578 882 781
- Join this class by on-tap on mobile phones: +16699009128,,578882781# US (San Jose)
- Phoning in, but not in the bay area? Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abL8clvIYT
Sacred Text Reading Group
Date(s) - 07/10/2021
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
A weekly online sacred text reading group with Amy
Using a spiritual-practice approach, in each session we will explore a different brief scriptural text in depth. The aims of the sessions are educational (learning something about the texts and traditions), spiritual/moral (discovering what the texts ask of us), and community-building (getting to know each other better). Amy will have a version of the text available to share; “bring” your own if you like. All are welcome, as are your suggestions of future texts. About half our readings so far have been those suggested by group members.
Our reading for Saturday, July 10, 2021, is longer than usual, from Anton Chekhov’s short story “In the Ravine. The context, as given by the member who suggested it: “It’s 1900. Lipa is a peasant girl who’s married into a wealthy family. Her husband has been sent to a prison camp Siberia for counterfeiting, a crime he is guilty of. Her infant son has been murdered by her sister in law because he was going to inherit his grandfather’s wealth. She’s carrying the baby home from the hospital in the night when she meets two travelers, an old man and a young man, getting up from a campfire and getting into their wagon.”
“I have been at the hospital,” said Lipa after a pause. “My little son died there. Here I am carrying him home.”
[The old man] went with the light to Lipa and looked at her, and his look expressed compassion and tenderness.
“You are a mother,” he said; “every mother grieves for her child.”
And he sighed and shook his head as he said it. [The young man] Vavila threw something on the fire, stamped on it — and at once it was very dark; the vision vanished, and as before there were only the fields, the sky with the stars, and the noise of the birds hindering each other from sleep. And the landrail called, it seemed, in the very place where the fire had been.
[…]
“Get in, we will give you a lift as far as Kuzmenki, then you go straight on and we turn off to the left.”
[…]
They drove on for half an hour in silence.The old man says “Life is long, there will be good and bad to come, there will be everything. Great is mother Russia,” he said, and looked round on each side of him. “I have been all over Russia, and I have seen everything in her, and you may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad. I went as a delegate from my village to Siberia, and I have been to the Amur River and the Altai Mountains and I settled in Siberia; I worked the land there, then I was homesick for mother Russia and I came back to my native village. We came back to Russia on foot; and I remember we went on a steamer, and I was thin as thin, all in rags, barefoot, freezing with cold, and gnawing a crust, and a gentleman who was on the steamer — the kingdom of heaven be his if he is dead — looked at me pitifully, and the tears came into his eyes. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘your bread is black, your days are black. . . .’ And when I got home, as the saying is, there was neither stick nor stall; I had a wife, but I left her behind in Siberia, she was buried there. So I am living as a day labourer. And yet I tell you: since then I have had good as well as bad. Here I do not want to die, my dear, I would be glad to live another twenty years; so there has been more of the good. And great is our mother Russia!” and again he gazed to each side and looked round.
How to join:
- Join this class from your Web browser: https://zoom.us/j/578882781, passcode: words
- Join this class using the Zoom app: Meeting ID: 578 882 781
- Join this class by phone: 669 900 9128 US (San Jose), Meeting ID: 578 882 781, passcode: 171919
- Join this class by one-tap on mobile phones: +16699009128,,578882781# US (San Jose)
- Phoning in, but not in the bay area? Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abL8clvIYT