Highly inspiring for anyone seeking solace in our modern world.
The founding pastor of St. Lydia’s dinner church in Brooklyn reflects on her eight years ministering to a progressive, diverse, and LGBTQ–affirming congregation.
In this intimate and openly heartfelt debut memoir, Scott explores the power of faith and community as strength-building resources for navigating difficult times. The author recalls her efforts in forming a unique church setting that aspired to welcome a diverse community and offer unconventional means of worship: sharing meals around a dinner table. At first, Scott tested her vision at temporary venues throughout the city, with small groups of worshippers, before landing a permanent location in the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn. Throughout the book, the author shares stories of the assorted individuals who were drawn to St. Lydia’s and their unified quest to meaningfully connect with the needs of their neighborhood, including the nearby public housing units. Pivotal experiences—e.g., Hurricane Sandy and the police shootings of unarmed black youths—motivated them toward direct social action within their community, serving to further bolster their ties as a congregation. Scott’s intimately transparent voice and reflections on faith are what drive her compelling narrative. Throughout, she references scriptural texts and offers enlightened interpretation of the individual stories. She’s equally relatable and forthright in exposing her own vulnerabilities and loneliness as a single woman living in the city along with her responsibilities and insecurities ministering to the needs of her congregants. “This is a story about how bread, broken and passed from hand to hand, rescued me from my aloneness,” she writes. “Perhaps you’ve been alone as well, and need to be reminded that, despite all evidence to the contrary, your aloneness will not last forever. When I think of what our church made together, I think of those small beacons of light reminding you that even if you haven’t found it yet, there is a shore somewhere, and you won’t drown in these depths.” Scott delivers a moving personal memoir and an accessibly reverent meditation on finding faith through unconventional acts of worship.
Highly inspiring for anyone seeking solace in our modern world.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13557-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Convergent
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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