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Member: peacemover

CollectionsYour library (1,228), Wishlist (60), Currently reading (18), To read (100), Read but unowned (59), Favorites (88), All collections (1228)

Reviews24 reviews — see reviews

Tagstheology (230), history (186), psychology (168), pastoral care (121), religious diversity (86), memoir (86), don't own (67), current events (66), wishlist (64), contemplation (63) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsAmateur Historians, American History, Ancient History, Biographies, Memoirs and Autobiographies, Book Care and Repair, Christian Worship and Liturgy, Church Libraries, INFJ, Labyrinths and the Walking Meditation Practice, LibraryThing Coffeehouseshow all groups

Favorite authorsKaren Armstrong, Wendell Berry, Anton T. Boisen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Marcus J. Borg, Taylor Branch, John Dominic Crossan, Roald Dahl, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Will Durant, Bart D. Ehrman, Mircea Eliade, Joseph J. Ellis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Halberstam, Stanley Hauerwas, Carl Jung, Søren Kierkegaard, Anne Lamott, C. S. Lewis, David McCullough, Salvador Minuchin, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Wayne E. Oates, Elaine Pagels, Eugene H. Peterson, Barbara Brown Taylor, Paul Tillich, Jim Wallis, Irvin D. Yalom, John Howard Yoder (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresBarnes & Noble Booksellers - Willow Grove, Harvest Book Company Outlet

Favorite librariesAbington Township Public Library

Other favoritesPhiladelphia Book Festival

About meI am a hospital chaplain in the Philadelphia, PA area. I love to read; I play jazz, blues and folk guitar; I love spending time with my family. I also enjoy spending time outdoors.

I am willing to loan books from my personal library to fellow book-lovers who will treat them with care and return them to me in original condition within a month or so.

**If you wish to borrow book(s) from me, please first go to my tags section and make sure the book in which you are interested is not already on my 'loaned out' or 'don't own' lists:

http://www.librarything.com/tags/peacemo...

Thanks much!

About my libraryI am an incurable bibliophile, and seek to read an eclectic variety of books and writings. Some of my favorite subject areas include: theology, psychology, philosophy, history, memoirs and classic novels. I have read at least parts of all the books on my list here, although I am primarily an armchair scholar on most occasions and read mainly for my own enjoyment and edification.

Please share your comments and books- I'd love to hear about great books you have read or are reading!

Homepagehttp://peacemover.blogspot.com

Also oneBay, MySpace

Membership LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway

Real nameJohn Olsen

LocationAbington, PA

Emailpeacemover

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/peacemover (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/peacemover (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (63), Awards (157), Characters (891), Places (240)

Member sinceMar 26, 2008

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Looking forward to hearing your reactions. Have fun - it's a wild ride.
Thanks for the kind words - I haven't checked this site for months so sorry for the long delay. The book I am working on now has a number of snippets from my posts in them - we'll see how it goes over.
Thanks for letting me know about the books. I was actually getting worried that they might have gotten lost in the mail or something, heh.
Sorry about your computer, but thanks for letting me know. I'll keep an eye out.
Hmm, no wonder I like Borg, I'm a Panentheist. Haven't gotten the books yet, but I'll let you know when they get here.
Hi Peacemover!

In order to understand the path my life has taken, I'd have to take you back sixteen years to when I was five. My mother, brother, and I went out to a Jack-in-the-Box for lunch, and I ended up with E-Coli. This was back in the early 90's when kids were ending up in the hospital and dying from the outbreak. I was extremely lucky. I ended up spending a month and a half in bed, sick as a dog, which, you can imagine for a preschooler was not a fun way to spend six weeks. Still, I dodged a major bullet, by all rights I should be dead.

When I was seven, my appendix burst, and was not caught for a week, during which I had a checkup which included probing my stomach. I finally ended up in the ER in the early morning when I woke up throwing up neon green. I spent two weeks of hell in Children's hospital being treated little better than a chunk of meat, never seeing an actual doctor, being woken up in the middle of the night to have blood drawn. The first time I had my feeding tube removed, it had to be put back a mere hour or two later. Still, I survived because my body had moved my appendix down away from my vital organs and walled it off from the rest of my body. I had dodged another bullet.

Because of my father's upbringing, which I won't get into here, my brother and I never attended church as kids. When I hit high school I became progressively disenchanted with society, pop-culture, the whole mememe egotistical drama, and decided two things. One: Someone (God) must want me here, because by all rights I should be dead twice over. Two: People who have more money than they know what to do with are miserable, and so is everybody else to one degree or another, so there's gotta be another reason we're here. There has to be something better, more fulfilling than this. I hit on religion, and it made sense to me. I felt like I finally had a mission in life: to do my best to understand why we're here through the investigation of religious and spiritual truth, and to be of service to others.

After finding my spiritual base in a sort of blend of Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, I found Unitarian Universalism, which emphasizes the personal search for truth and service to others, and I feel like I've finally found a home of sorts. I'm planning to go on to seminary or theology school after college and join the UU ministry as the result of the beginning of a life of questing and looking for truth. There's a bit more to the story than this, but this is essentially my path over the past 16 years. I'd be happy to elaborate or answer any questions you might have. I look forward to speaking with you more, and may well be borrowing a couple books from you in the future in my continuing quest for understanding.
Peace mover - we share some of the most interesting books across a range of subjects. I really appreciate the way you Review your books.

Question. In one Review, you write that "Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book 'The Cost of Discipleship' is a tremendously inspiring, insightful and penetrating look into Christian discipleship." Do you know any Disciples near you?

I grew up among Believers and as I get older, I suspect I will be more comfortable around them than with others whose engagement with life seems untethered or unusual. Not sure this will be possible, of course, since...well, how many Believers are left? I feel like they both "left the building" long ago,
I'm majoring in Religious Studies in college, and seriously considering going on to seminary. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do with it, but I'm seriously considering becoming a chaplain or minister. I'd love to talk to you sometime, feel free to send me a PM.
Hello Peacemover!

I see that we share some reading interests. There is nothing I enjoy more than a good autobiography/memoir or biography. I just finished a couple that I thought you might like. The first is "The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness" by Elyn R. Saks. Saks is an endowed professor of law at the University of Southern California. She tells the story of her life as a person with schizophrenia. The second, also a memoir, is "The Invisible Wall: a Love Story that Broke Barriers" by Harry Bernstein. Bernstein writes about his life in a small English town just before WWI, where he grew up on a street with Christians on one side and Jews on the other. He writes about how the tragedies and joys of their shared human experience helped them find their way through the invisible wall that separated them.

I would love to hear any recommendations you have -- memoirs, American history, spirituality.

Best Wishes,

InCahoots
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