The library is sponsoring a series of readings and discussions with Denis Sweet, a former teacher at Bates College, in the library's Howard Room. Each module meets once a week for three months (thirteen sessions.) The module for this session is The Coming Community, and meetings will be held Tuesday mornings at 10AM in the library's Howard Room from September 8 to December 1. 

Kairos means time; but time in a special sense--time balanced as if on a knife's edge between catastrophe or an unfolding into a new form, a new resolution. Kairos--this very fraught time that we are currently living through--calls for insight and resolve, deep thinking and transformation. To this end, we study foundational and contemporary writings in philosophy, literature, social criticism, and ecology. 

What is the essential task for the Coming Community? It is to formulate, gestate, bring into the world a Spirituality of the Future. This is precisely what Nietzsche in the 1880s, Joan Halifax in the 1990s, and Stephen Buhner in the 2020s are attempting. They are building a path to the Coming Community.

We will be discussing the following readings. The library will have a number of copies of each book available for circulation. 

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra ([1883-85], Oxford World’s Classics, a new translation by Graham Parkes, 2005);
• Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness (1993);
• Stephen Harrod Buhner, Becoming Vegetalista (2023)

To facilitate discussion, the number of participants is limited to twelve. Registration can be done through the library's online calendar. For more information, please email Assistant Director Kayleigh Thomas at kayleigh.thomas[at]bhpl.net or call 374-5515.