Meeting Notes

Some notes from 2/17 Meeting, Topic:  Reading

Handout

Currently reading:

* Indicates book being re-read as a benchmark for changes in thinking or new discoveries,

** indicates books on tape read over and over for pure delight

To examine the nature of humankind, the good the bad and the complex.

• Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, by David Oshinsky, Doubleday, 2016. " ...a chronicle of Bellevue's rise from a wretched almshouse infirmary ... to a revered public hospital and trauma center for visiting world leaders. ...interweaves the evolution of American medicine ... with New York's growth as the nation's preeminent city. ... In the dramatic story of Bellevue, David Oshinsky finds all the social calamity, human suffering, and scientific ingenuity that have fueled American medicine for three hundred years."
• Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, by Langdon Gilkey, Harper & Row, 1966. Written from the author's journal which he kept during his internment, this book describes life in an civilian internment camp in North China during the war against Japan. " ... One of those rare glimpses of the nature of men and of their communal life..."
• The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality, by Hervey Cleckley, M.D. Third Edition (1955), Echo Point Books and Media, LLC. "... many psychopathic personalities go undiagnosed because they maintain a social mask that conceals their disorder and enables them to blend in with society. Furthermore, many of these affected individuals appear to function normally in accordance with standard psychiatric criteria."
• *People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, by M. Scott Peck, M.D. (Touchstone, 1983)
• Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert, Crossroad Publishing Company, 2016 (original copyright in the German, 1989.) Examination of " ... an ancient personality-type system" takes the reader through " ... the process of identifying and analyzing each of the Enneagram types and traits."
• *The Essential Enneagram (Daniels and Price); The Complete Enneagram (Beatrice Chestnut, PhD)

To examine the dialogue between modern scientific theories and theology from the starting point of scientific method, and the intersection of physics with metaphysics.

• Theology and Science (a quarterly journal) from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) Graduate Theological Union, Berkley published by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, UK.
• The Physics of Christianity, by Frank Tipler (Doubleday 2007)
• *Belief in God in an Age of Science, by John Polkinghorne (Yale University Press, 1998)
• Introduction to Metaphysics, by Martin Heidegger trans. Gregory Fried & Richard Polt (Yale University Press, 2000)

To examine current events from the perspectives of theology and philosophy:

• Theological Studies (a quarterly journal) a Jesuit publication, Sage Publishing Co., UK
• Commonweal: A Review of Religion, Politics and Culture (bi-monthly magazine) includes editorials, letters, articles, book reviews, art reviews, poetry, etc.

**Books on tape - mystery/human interest genre feel good about humankind

Alexander McCall Smith (retired professor of medical law and bioethics, Edinburgh) citizen of UK, born in Rhodesia. Series: No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency; 44 Scotland Street; Isabel Dalhousie series and more. Explores the problems, joys and moral questions in everyday life.

Along the same lines, M.C. Beaton (UK) series: Hamish McBeth (highland policeman); Agatha Raisen (idiosyncratic lady detective). Lillian Jackson Braun (US) "The Cat Who ..." series takes place in quaint area "400 miles north of everywhere."

Books on Tape Crime stories: by various authors including John Sanford, Jo Nesbø and many others,to amuse myself when I clean the house.

Magazines for tea drinking: HGTV Magazine, Southern Living, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, Eating Well, Consumer Reports .... For fun color, food, etc.

Grapes of Wrath -- by Steinbeck; Science Fiction - Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Philip K. Dick; Reading on Birds

Harlem Globetrotters, Bill Walton/John Wooden, Frank Luntz

NPR, WWW, Teilhard deChardin, Richard Rohr, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen, Laos to ...,

The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

by Michael Puett, Christine Gross-Loh,
Thomas Merton, Parker Palmer, Rolf Dobelli