The Riotous Readers meet monthly discussing books that stretch your soul as well as your mind.

Last month we discussed To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. The discussion turned on the issue of how we actually look at history. Is history only “one damn thing after another,” as the British historian A.J.P.Taylor once quipped or is it what we make it? What is our role in creating “history,” the events that others will examine long after we are gone? These were just some of the thought-provoking issues that arose.

This month we are looking at another issue through the realm of fiction in The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. An autistic man is given the opportunity to participate in an experimental clinical trial to “cure” his condition. He must choose between the security of his disability and the possibility of change. Moon challenges us to think about how we look at disabilities and what we call “normalcy.” Join us on March 9 at 7:30 PM in Fellowship Hall at the Church for our usual riotous discussion and refreshment fitting to the book. Copies of the book are available at the Middletown Library. For more information about how to join us, call the Church office at (732) 671-1905.

The Fabulous Friday Morning Walkers have suspended walks for the winter. We may morph into the Say Yes to Yoga Workout. Call the church office if you are interested in joining us. .

Join us Sunday, March 6 for “Fat Sunday” before the beginning of Lent. Pancakes and crepes galore!

Sunday, March 20: Sunday Afternoon at the Movies will feature the thoughtful film, “The Sword of Constantine,” about the intersection of religion and violence. This film is based on the book by James Carroll, a former priest.

MARCH: WOMEN AND RELGIOUS LIFE

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)

Born the tenth child of a well-off family in central Germany near Mainz, Hildegard began to experience visions at the age of eight. She was offered as a tithe to the Church and sent to live with Jutta of Sponheim, a well known Benedictine abbess of her day. She took holy orders ten years later and was elected as the “magistra” of the abbey after Jutta’s death in 1136. She petitioned the local Abbot to move her nuns to Rupertsberg who refused her but undaunted, she went to the Archbishop of Mainz and received permission. She also later built a second convent for her nuns in Erbingen. She was well-known as a preacher and made at least four major preaching tours during her life. Several times she was questioned about her theology but was cleared of any taint of “heresy” by her combination of tact and wit.

Her sermons deeply moved the hearers, and she was asked to provide written copies. In the last year of her life, she was briefly in trouble because she provided Christian burial for a young man who had been excommunicated. Her defense was that he had repented on his deathbed, and received the sacraments. Her convent was subjected to an interdict, but she protested eloquently, and the interdict was revoked. She died on 17 September 1179. Her surviving works include more than a hundred letters to emperors and popes, bishops, nuns, and nobility. She wrote 72 songs including a play set to music. Musical notation had only shortly before developed to the point where her music was recorded in a way that we can read today.

She left us about seventy poems and nine books. Two are books of medical and pharmaceutical advice, dealing with the workings of the human body and the properties of various herbs based on her experience as an herbalist with her teacher Jutta. Her major works are three books on theology: Scivias (Know the paths), Liber Vitae Meritorum (on ethics), and De Operatione Dei (The Workings of God). The first and third books concern the material of her visions. The visions, as she describes them, are often enigmatic but deeply moving, and many who have studied them believe that they have learned something from the visions that is not easily put into words.

She wrote and spoke extensively about social justice, about freeing the downtrodden, about the duty of seeing to it that every human being, made in the image of God, has the opportunity to develop and use the talents that God has provided.

She also wrote explicitly about the natural world as God's creation, charged through and through with God’s beauty and energy; entrusted to our care, to be used by us for our benefit, but not to be mangled or destroyed.

The AAUW Book Store is open Saturdays from 9 AM to 2 PM. Not only are you able to buy gently used books for a great price but your purchase at the Book Store provides financial assistance to college students from Monmouth County.

MISSION IS TO THE CHURCH AS A FIRE IS TO BURNING

As a people of faith, we are called to care for others. This is our passion. Share your passion to care for others by joining us in Mobile Meals, meals to the elderly at Middletown’s Senior Citizen Housing. We deliver meals and company on the fourth Tuesday of the month. Call the church office at (732) 671-1905 to learn more.

The Calico Cat Thrift Shop is a thrift store operated by the Community Outreach Group that sells gently used items to persons who cannot afford even discount prices. The COG also has a food pantry and an emergency assistance program. If you have a few hours during the week, the Calico Cat could use your help. Call (732) 671-0550 if you would like to help in this important ministry.

LOOKING FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF WORSHIP EXPERIENCE?

Join us at 8:30 AM for a short contemporary worship or at 10:30 for our traditional worship with fellowship and stimulating discussion to follow.