July 2008 - Summer Reading List

Summer Reading List

From the Executive Director, The Rev. Anne S. Howard

The cool basement of the Carnegie-Lawther Library in Red Wing, Minnesota was my childhood idea of the best place to be on a hot summer day. Miss Dunn’s Children’s Library was a place of color, delight and adventure, and the Summer Reading List promised weeks and weeks of exploration that would take me far beyond our little river town.

I no longer have Miss Dunn’s great list, but I do have a fine stack of books to explore this summer. And since I always wanted to grow up to be Miss Dunn, I can’t resist making a couple of suggestions:

Top of the list is a book that’s not brand new, but it’s ever more timely this summer, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace, One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. This is not just another hero story or a semi-boring documentary about good deeds. It’s an extraordinary adventure about change, about one man’s relentless press against all odds and every barrier to realize the dream of education for the forgotten children of Pakistan. Mortenson gives us a recipe for peace, a simple, straight-forward antidote to terrorism. This book gave me hope. I only wish Greg Mortenson had a say in our foreign policy!

And speaking of change, my other recommendation for summer reading are the words of our students, words of hope and change and challenge for us all.

Check out Beatitudes Blog, where our Summer Fellows bring daily stories about their work for social change at their agencies: The Regeneration Project, Jubilee USA, Sojourners, Faith in Public Life, and all the others ? we have 20 students working for change this summer. Catch up on their good news: Don’t be Fuelish, Helping the Helpless, My Introduction to the Religious-Environmental Movement, Sikhs Teach a Christian Girl from LA and so many more!

Our Blog also features the reflections of two groups of students who participated in our Annual Service Trip to the Gulf Coast for post-Katrina work, and those who traveled to Princeton for the conference Envision: The Gospel, Politics and the Future.

Enjoy these stories from our students, and THANK YOU for making these stories possible. Your support is giving these students the tools they need to change our world. Next summer, we hope to expand our effort to equip these students; help us!

In Christ's peace,

Anne

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