Spirited Book Club ~ Neighbor Love through Fearful Days

Author Jason Mahn joins the Spirited Book Club to discuss his book, ‘Neighbor Love through Fearful Days: Finding Purpose and Meaning in a Time of Crisis’

Neighbor Love through Fearful Days is a reflection on the Covid-19 pandemic, the accompanying economic collapse, a summer of climate chaos, and the pandemic of white supremacy, as well as on the calling to “serve thy neighbor” and work toward the common good.

BOOK OVERVIEW

Jason A. Mahn’s reflections take on the reality of life during these pandemics alongside perennial questions about purpose, faith, and vocation.

Mahn’s real-time reflections begin with an entry dated March 17, 2020, after the college where he teaches moved online and his family began sheltering in place; they end with an entry dated August 31, 2020, when the college reopened for an unprecedented fall term. Through the intervening entries, he reflects on perennial questions about purpose, faith, and vocation as they take on a newfound urgency as cities lock down, economies reopen and close again, and our fractured country teeters on the edge of civil war. Each entry grapples with the anxieties and opportunities, the suffering and sense of being summoned, that characterize that same period.

Jason A. Mahn’s evocative narrative is a story about living through a time when the world as we know it is being leveled by pandemics–and it is also a deeply philosophical exploration of what it means to live well. In the pages of this book, Mahn invites readers to muse on the difficult balance between self-care and other-care; the role of love in social justice, and how white privilege might be atoned for; and how, amid intense suffering, to practice a faith that is not escapist, but embraces a hope more durable than optimism and a public, strategic love more fierce and enduring than previously imagined.

Ultimately, these reflections acknowledge the immense challenge of living a purposeful life in the middle of crisis but invite readers to the shared hope that from the ashen stillness, we may just hear new callings to imagine healing, cultivate hope, and love neighbors in creative ways.

Reviews

“This book is such a compelling read because two things happen as we read. We find our own vexed thinking echoed; at the same time, we find ourselves led in generative ways beyond our own thinking. This book is a deep gift for any reader who wants to engage our present circumstance as chance for fresh faithful, generous, emancipated obedience.” —Walter Brueggeman, Columbia Theological Seminary

“A relevant and meaningful book written not only for our moment–but from within that very moment. Read it and heed its clarion call to love, lament, and listen…and to remember, reflect, and resist the triple pandemics of our time: racism, COVID-19, and environmental disasters.” —Jacqueline Bussie, award-winning author of Outlaw Christian and Love Without Limits

“Anyone interested to profoundly consider the scriptural injunction to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ will find a treasure in Mahn’s reflections written in real-time during the 2020 pandemic.” —Rev. Mark Wilhelm, Executive Director, Network of Colleges and Universities, ELCA

“In Mahn’s words I found insight and challenge, wisdom and confession… this book will stir you to reflection and to action in a profoundly good way.­” —Drew Tucker, University Pastor and Director of the Center for Faith and Learning at Capital University

About the author

Jason A. Mahn is the Conrad Bergendoff Chair in the Humanities and the director of the Presidential Center for Faith and Learning at Augustana College (Illinois). After completing his PhD at Emory University, Mahn taught writing and religion at Duke University before coming to Augustana, where he teaches courses in theology and contemporary religious belief. He is the author of Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin (2011) and Becoming a Christian in Christendom (2016).

Note from Sheri Brown

Are you ready to read a book about 2020 or would you rather avoid re-visiting that time? Count me in the Avoiding camp. Until I started to read Neighbor Love.

I started reading the book with the kind of aversion usually reserved for steamed spinach: Figured it was gonna be icky but good for me.

Book flash: Not as icky as I feared. And very, very good (healing) for me.

With tender care, Mahn writes of that time while in that time. His reflections stir thoughts and questions that many of us experienced but were not able to voice:

• Who is neighbor and what kind of neighbor am I?
• What meaning is there in this suffering?
• How do we tell our story and what difference does it make?

By the way, what kind of person are you? Are you a Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, or Easter person? I’d never thought about my faith persona that way until reading Mahn’s poignant April 11, 2020 reflection.

CLUB DISCUSSION dates

BOOK CLUB meets Thursday, April 13 @ 2:00 – 3:30 pm AZ (PST)

++Book discussion facilitated by Sheri Brown