Every second Tuesday, we meet to discuss a short story and explore its meaning and implications for our faith life. No stuffy literary club, this group uses these stories as a way to share their own life experiences, insights, and explore faith and theology in surprisingly profound ways. Engaging in literature and fiction as a spiritual practice has, of late, been in the news as a result of a letter from the late Pope Francis in July 2024 in which he argues for the spiritual virtue of fiction. This group is open to any and all people, regardless of educational level. These are the stories we’ll be discussing during this academic year and a list of stories we’ve previously discussed.

This is a definition of literature that I like very much: listening to another person’s voice. We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of other people when they challenge us! We immediately fall into self-isolation; we enter into a kind of “spiritual deafness”, which has a negative effect on our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with God, no matter how much theology or psychology we may have studied.

—Pope Francis

August 12: “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (click here)
September 9: “Shtetl Days” by Harry Turtledove (click here)
October 14: “The Fifth Story” by Clarice Lispector (click here) and Bread by Margaret Atwood (click here)
November 11: “The Subliminal Man” by J.G. Ballard (click here) 
December 9: A Very Merry Kafka (Three Very Short Stories/Parables from Franz Kafka)
      “The Silence of the Sirens” (click here)
       “Before the Law” (click here)
       “An Imperial Message” (click here)
January 13: “D-Day” by Rachel Khong (click here) 
March 10: Guy de Maupassant’s ‘The Necklace’ (click here)
April 14: “The Immortal Bard” by Isaac Asimov (click here)
“Everything and Nothing” by Luis de Borges (click here)
May 12: “We Can Remember it Wholesale for You” by Philip K. Dick(click here)
June or July: Worm in the Apple John Cheever and The Storyteller by Saki

Previous Stories:
“State Change” by Ken Liu
“Beautiful Suit” by H.G. Wells
“Barn Burning” by William Faulkner
“The Man” by Ray Bradbury
“Bari and the Resurrection Flower” by Hana Lee
“The Three Hermits” by Leo Tolstoy
The Country of the Blind” by H.G. Wells
“A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets” by Kevin Brockmeier
“Revelation” by Flannery O’Conner
“Miracle” by Tope Folarin
“Cuisine des Mémoires” by NK Jemisin
“Drones to Ploughshares” by Sarah Gailey
“Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex” by Tobias Buckell
“A Small Good Thing” by Raymond Carver
“Dalet the Thief” by Johnathon Keats
“A Jonquil for Mary Penn” by Wendell Berry
“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker
“Cathedral” by Raymond Carver
“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Garcia Marquez.
“Thank you, Mr. Nixon” by Gish Jen
“A Villiage After Dark” by Kazuo Ishiguro
“Cloud Lake Unicorn” by Karen Russell
“Meeting Sarah”, “The Egg”, “Antihypoxiant” by Andy Weir
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin paired with “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” by NK Jemisin
“Under the Lion’s Paw” by Hamlin Garland
“The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck
“When the Yogurt Took Over” by John Scalzi
“Barn Burning” by William Faulkner
“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen
“Life in the Iron Mills” by Rebecca Harding Davis