The Kay Falk Literary Project is centered at the Cathedral as part of its teaching mission. The nucleus of the project is the Book Group, in which parish and community members have the opportunity to talk about literature together. The Project also regularly brings writers to the Cathedral out of its ongoing commitment to nourishing the life of faith with the life of the mind. For more information, email Emilie White.  Newcomers are always welcome!

East of Eden meetings:

• Monday, June 28, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss first half of the novel
• Monday, July 12, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss all of the novel

Reading Jesus meetings:

• Monday, July 26, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss Part I of Reading Jesus
• Monday, August 9, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss Parts II and III of Reading Jesus

A word about Reading Jesus for those of you who don't know the book:  I have read Reading Jesus and think it excellent.  Gordon is a fiction writer who was raised as a Roman Catholic, and who, as a Roman Catholic, was "discouraged" from reading Scripture.  Writes Gordon in the introduction to Reading Jesus: 

“Brought up as a Roman Catholic in the 1950s, I did not grow up reading the Bible.  We weren’t forbidden Scriptural reading, but it was certainly discouraged: that was something Protestants did.  Protestants, who didn’t realize the danger of individual interpretation, the rich safety of ex cathedra pronouncements, worked out by a body of ordained men over centuries of inspired time.

And so I didn't read the Gospels.  Rather, I heard the portions of them that were read out from the pulpit each Sunday.  This was a singular way of knowing a text: fragmented, chopped up, interpreted before I had a chance really to digest what the words had said.  And yet I have always been able to say with certainty that the figure of Jesus and the words of Jesus have been at the center of my ethical and religious imagination.  This struck me, suddenly, as very strange indeed."

And so Gordon sets about to reading the Gospels.  The result is a 200 page book organized into eight-to-fifteen page sections, some sections treating individual episodes from Jesus’ life, and/ or his parables, others looking at a collection of Jesus’s teachings which Gordon sees as pursuing the same question/ challenge/ offering.  Each section begins with the gospel text (s) under consideration—-which is great, in that you don’t have to be shuttling between Gordon’s book and the Bible—-then opens out to Gordon’s reflections on those texts.  The brevity and discreteness of the sections let you meditate on the given gospel text for however long you want.  Perhaps you too would like to write out your own questions, as has Gordon, and so you keep a journal with Gordon’s book, engaging in a conversation both with the gospel story and with Gordon’s response to the story.  Gordon’s book lets you experience the Gospels freshly again, and with a friend—-a clear-eyed, brave, articulate, patient, strong-minded but unobtrusive, friend.  Some of you may remember Mark Jarman, the wonderful poet who read at All Souls as part of the Kay Falk Literary Project two years ago.  Well, he has a blurb on the back of Gordon’s book, which says:

"A fresh and humane take on the Gospels.  Gordon's approach is aware of, but not burdened by, doctrine.  Her many insightful questions give expression to thoughts which have, for many readers and for many years, been waiting to be asked aloud." -- Mark Jarman

And here’s Publishers Weekly on the book:

“Gordon tackles the power and puzzle of the Christian gospels with measure and imagination, providing welcome relief for those left cold by scholarly or fundamentalist parsing. . . Her savoring of particular lines is poetic and amplifies the beauty and sometimes ambiguous challenge of the language, stories, and injunctions of the gospels.”

Both East of Eden and Reading Jesus may be purchased at Accent on Books, at reduced cost, thanks to parishioner Lewis Sorrells.

• click here for Emilie's Notes and Questions

• click here to go to the Centers for Christian Studies website for more of Emilie's Study Questions