Join Our

CHURCH COMMUNITY’S SUMMER BOOK CLUB!

NewChurch Live will be hosting a book club for members of the church community. On Thursday evenings beginning July 6th at 8pm, EDT for 3 weeks we will be reading My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman. Composed in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, it is a moving meditation on what a viable contemporary faith―responsive not only to modern thought and science but also to religious tradition―might look like.

 A complimentary copy of the book will be mailed to participants before the club starts in July!

my bright abyssImage Source: Amazon

Are you looking to explore life's purpose? Do you long for community?  This book, and this group, are for you.

Through his own cancer diagnosis and treatment, including a bone marrow transplant Wiman wrote My Bright Abyss, first an essay, then a book exploring faith in the face of death. 

How do we answer this "burn of being"? Wiman asks. What might it mean for our lives―and for our deaths―if we acknowledge the "insistent, persistent ghost" that some of us call God?

Over 3 Zoom sessions, members of the NewChurch Live community, both far and wide, will come together to connect and discuss some of the experiences Wiman writes about in his book. Topics such as:

  • Life and Death, Doubt and Faith, Literature and Theology
  • How science and religion can beautifully and poetically work together
  • Life's purpose or meaning: where we find it, what it offers us, whether it can mitigate pain.

Join Our Book Club

If you’re ready to explore this book and our community, join us this spring as we read Christian Wiman's

My Bright Abyss

“Like the classic mystics, [Wiman] often resorts to a language of paradox to convey things that ordinary language can't … Wiman speaks carefully but powerfully . . . The best that can come from contemplation of mortality, perhaps, is a kind of wisdom that can give others strength--not by answering questions, like those best-sellers which claim to tell you what happens after you see the white light, but by asking questions honestly . . . My Bright Abyss is a book that will give light and strength, even to those who find themselves unable to follow its difficult path.” ―Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker