Sunday Salon

The St. Louis Jewish Light's local eat of the week is the Circle@Crown Café's Mediterranean Panini.  I think it's delicious!  Click here to read the review.

The President's Devotional: The Daily Readings That Inspired President Obama ~ by Joshua DuBois, 2013, devotions, 530 pages

You can start your day with words that inspired President Barack Obama, prepared by Joshua DuBois, Obama's spiritual advisor who served as executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.  This book contains the best of these daily devotionals, offering peace, comfort, and inspiration for an entire year.

I found this devotional book among the boxes of books from my friend Donna's shelves.  I may decide to read TWO devotionals each day, one from this book and one from the Guideposts book I mentioned two weeks ago.

And by the way, I bought If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk: Finding a Faith That Makes Us Better Humans by John Pavlovitz (2021, social issues, 233 pages) for my Kindle because I'm reading the library copy and want to have my own (it's that good).  Imagine for a moment what the world might look like if we as people of faith, morality, and conscience actually aspired to the mantra "Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible."  What if we were fully burdened to create a world that was more loving and equitable than when we arrived?  What if we invited one another to share in wide-open, fearless, spiritual communities truly marked by compassion and interdependence?  What if we daily challenged ourselves to live a faith that simply made us better humans?

John Pavlovitz explores how we can embody this kinder kind of spirituality where we humbly examine our belief system to understand how it might compel us to act in less-than-loving ways toward others.  This simple phrase, "Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible," could help us practice what we preach by creating a world where spiritual community provides a sense of belonging where all people are received as we are.  The most important question we ask of a religious belief is not "Is it true?" but rather "Is it helpful?"  The way we treat others is the most tangible and meaningful expression of our belief system.

Here's a puzzle for you, so your brain won't get lazy.  How many fingers are in this picture?

And down here at the bottom, I'll close this post with a Zoom jack-o'-lantern.  I think it's funny, maybe because it so perfectly fits my last year-and-a-half.  Surely, I'm not the only one who has done a lot of "zooming" this year.

P.S.  I forgot to add that I got my booster shot of Moderna Saturday afternoon.

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz hosts the Sunday Salon, where we talk

about our lives, our books, and what we have been reading.