This is one of the books that was suggested for a course I have been taking this fall (and an excellent series of lectures it has been I might add).
It is an wonderful book. It appears it is based on the work Woodley did for his dissertation where he talked to people from a variety of North American Indigenous communities about what he terms the Harmony Way. Actually Woodley suggests that some version of the harmony way exists in indigenous communities around the globe. His suggestion is that it appears in the image of a community of true shalom as envisioned in Jewish and Christian Scriptures.
As I read my way through the book I found it truly compelling. The logic fits well. The linkages across cultures work. There are at least two sermons in the past month that have been, in part, informed by what I found in this book.
What would life look like in the Kingdom of God? What would it look like if we practiced the spirit of the jubilee year as prescribed in Leviticus? What would it look like if shalom, with all its multi-layered depth of meaning, was the guiding principle of our life together? This book helped me explore those questions from a new perspective. And it reminded me of the words of Dame Julian of Norwich (words I used in prayer this morning) "All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing be well".
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