Adult Spiritual Growth Opportunities

Open Minds Book Group

St. Mark’s Open Minds Book Group will resume monthly meetings in September via Zoom, on the 3rd or 4th Friday of the month from 9:00 – 10:30 AM. New members are welcome!

Co-leaders Celeste Pardee and Ann Reaban are excited to present our Fall lineup on the theme of stewardship, that is, the responsible management and care of resources, organizations, or the people entrusted to us.

Books may be borrowed from the Pima County Public Library or purchased (new or used) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.org, which supports local booksellers.

Zoom link will be emailed.

Readers are taken through a year in the life of a shepherd and his family, who have a deep connection to the land that most of us have lost. Rebanks is concerned about survival of the natural landscape, the life it has fostered, and a sense of belonging in an age that now promotes mobility and self-invention.

In a city ravaged by war, a defiant musician plays his cello at the site of a mortar attack for 22 days, in memory of his fallen neighbors. Galloway’s story follows the lives of three strangers, exploring how war can change one’s definition of humanity, how music strengthens our endurance, and how our daily rituals can be a form of resistance.

In 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter take an ambitious rafting expedition on the churning waters of the Colorado to survey the Canyon’s vegetation. Based on their letters and diaries, Sevigny traces the 43-day journey, during which they risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical map of a remote landscape.

A record-breaking Civil War-era thoroughbred is the basis for this story, along with the people who cared for him, artists who painted him, and scientists who studied his bones. Brooks takes us from the racing world of the 1850s, to the art scene in the 1950s, and to labs of the present-day Smithsonian in this story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across decades.

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed O’Kane’s home, she was inspired by the birds around her to pursue an environmental studies PhD. She soon became a devoted birdwatcher, filling notebooks with bird activities, teaching classes in ornithology, and organizing a murmuration of nature lovers to save the birds’ homes in their neighborhood park. This memoir shows how birds can renew our joy in nature and perhaps transform our lives.