Friends,

 I hope you all are well and staying safe!  A great way to stay cool during the hot spell this week is to keep reading This Tender Land, by Kent Krueger!  We will be gathering in about a month, on September 12, for small group discussions; then we will welcome speakers on the following three Sundays.  I am especially looking forward to hearing from the author, Kent Krueger, on Sunday the 26th!

 I have an older brother with many disabilities of varying severity.  Because he is hard-of-hearing, he often misses what people say and thus feels left out of conversations.  For my family to easily communicate with him, we all would have had to learn sign language; had we all done so, our conversations with him would have been so much deeper. 

 Given my family's perspective, I have been thinking about the author's use of sign language in This Tender Land.  Now, no one in the story is deaf; rather, Mose has had his ability to speak taken from him through violence in his early childhood.  The characters' fluency in sign language is an interesting aspect to the story that allows the four orphans to communicate out in the open, but secretly among themselves.  How hard it must have been on Mose to have such a small circle of people with whom he could communicate and be himself!  

 A new movie,  “CODA”  [“Child of Deaf Adults,”] invites viewers into a world many have never seen, with a silence they have never experienced.  It depicts the life of a mostly deaf family whose love, friction, drama, and laughter is the same as any other family -- except they are communicated through sign language.  The hearing daughter often serves as the family interpreter, but she dreams of college and studying music.  Click here for movie link.

 I am including a link to an NPR interview with Troy Kostur, the deaf actor who plays the father in the movie.  It is interesting to learn about the challenges for a deaf actor, but I love how there is an audience for deaf theatre.  We all benefit when we make things accessible and inclusive for people of different physical, mental, and emotional abilities.  Click here for interview link.

 As God’s church, we are called to love one another and to draw close to those who have been pushed aside, ignored, or oppressed.  In order to draw close, we must welcome, accept, include, and indeed see everyone as a child of God.

 Gratefully,

 Janice Mack

One Book, One Church Committee Chair