SECOND SATURDAYS: Wising Up Zoom Discussion Groups
NEW PUBLICATIONS
A LITTLE BOOK OF LIVING THROUGH THE DAY: Poems During a Pandemic by David Breeden
ADULT CHILDREN: Being One, Having One & What Goes In-Between, A Wising Up Anthology
TRUCKER RHAPSODY & OTHER PLAYS by Toni Press-Coffman
SOURCE NOTES: SEVENTH DECADE by Heather Tosteson
SOMETHING LIKE HOPE & OTHER STORIES by William Cass
PRESIDENT BIDEN AND PROPECTS FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM
by Charles Brockett--meant for the common citizen with 21 easily read graphs
FLIP SIDES:Truth, Fair Play & Other Myths We Live By & Spot Cleaning Our Dirty Laundry, A Wising Up Anthology
SHARING THE BURDEN OF REPAIR: Reentry After Mass Incarceration
A Wising Up Listening Project
OTHER RECENT PUBLICATIONS
NOT NATIVE: Short Stories of Immigrant Life in an In-Between World by Murali Kamma
Bronze medal winner, 2020 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) for Multicultural Fiction
A WELCOMING PHILOSOPHY
The aim of Universal Table is to promote tolerance and social trust along many dimensions of life - or those are the words we have been using in our official mission statement. But each time we use them, we realize we are trying to describe something far broader - something that encompasses welcome, difference, surprise and inclusion, truthfulness and authenticity, and an equal place for each of us and what we hold most dear. These are the true goals of Universal Table: Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.
Our major activities are the books we create and publish through Wising Up Press, and the Universal Table workshops and research projects that both develop and support them. Our areas of particular interest are social justice & inclusion, immigration & belonging, pluralism in families, illness & meaning, social and psychological resiliency, creative aging, listening across faiths - and the many other complex challenges and lasting rewards of living up close and personal with pluralism in social, family, religious, and civic life.
What distinguishes our approach is an equal emphasis on the why and the how of living well with difference. Through our research projects, we are developing new interpretations of chronic areas of social discord, interpretations that make it safer for us to interact from a position of respect and appreciation with people who have very different world views and value systems.
We are equally interested in specific techniques, especially the use of story and other art forms, to help us change our patterns of direct personal interaction, so that we can live out our best intentions. What ways of thinking, imagining, listening, speaking and being with one another truly expand our worlds? For real, sustainable change takes place at the day by day, person by person, word by word, gesture by gesture level - and it isn't easy and it isn't simple. But fascinating, rewarding, energizing, inspiring, and worth all the effort - without a doubt.
Come Join Us!
SECOND SATURDAYS WISING UP ZOOM DISCUSSION GROUPS 4:00-5:30 pm EST
Wisdom: The quality of having experience, knowledge, good judgment Wising Up: Easier Said Than Done, Easiest Done Together
NEW PUBLICATIONS
A LITTLE BOOK OF LIVING THROUGH THE DAY: Poems During a Pandemic
David Breeden
David Breeden's moving and accessible collection of poetry, A Little Book of Living Through the Day: Poems During a Pandemic, was written to get himself through the isolation of the pandemic—and to reach others, like those in his congregation, struggling with the same burden of the day-after-day.
ADULT CHILDREN: Being One, Having One & What Goes In-Between A Wising Up Anthology
In this Wising Up Anthology, fifty writers explore—with zest, angst, humor, humility, anger, and love—through stories, poems, memoirs and creative non-fiction, our constantly changing and, hopefully, maturing relationships with those we raised and those who raised us.
These five highly topical plays by Toni Press-Coffman remain relevant to current social divides. Written over the last forty years, they movingly explore the nature of idealism, its distinctively American forms—where it comes from, how it is tested, how we lose or temper it, what saving graces come to take its place.
FLIP SIDES Truth, FairPlay & Other Myths We Choose to Live By & Spot Cleaning Our Dirty Laundry A Wising Up Anthology
This anthology was originally, and rather playfully, conceived as two. Truth, Fair Play & Other Myths We Choose to Live By was a response to an increasingly cynical world view that disavowed our best intentions. The other, Spot Cleaning Our Dirty Laundry, responded to an increasingly righteous reactivity in all of us that refuses to take responsibility for the harm we ourselves can cause. Then we realized they were flip sides of the same coin. . . . Spot cleaning wouldn't be necessary if we didn't have beliefs and ideals—or if they didn't need to be continuously reconciled with the exigencies of raw life.
Both intimate and generalizable, the poems in Source Notes: Seventh Decade revolve around two core questions: "If everything we said to define ourselves/ was preceded by Just like everyone or/ Like most of us, what would shift/ in the life-long construction project/ we call our self?" and "Who says age can't be luxurious,/ astonishing, sui generis?" The poems move from public events to personal ones, explore creativity, age, marriage, early trauma, motherhood, family relationships, and travel, teaching us "we are never too old for rebirth, the hold of the miraculous."
What attaches you to the characters in William Cass's moving first collection of stories is that they are loving people, emotionally observant and internally responsive to the world around them. Even when isolated, and many of them are, Cass's men and women know what it is to be connected. . .
SHARING THE BURDEN OF REPAIR: REENTRY AFTER MASS INCARCERATION A Wising Up Listening Project
Heather Tosteson and Charles D. Brockett
This book describes a six-year listening project on reentry that took place at the crest of an unusual wave of bipartisan criminal justice reform in Georgia, one of our most punishing states. Its primary intended audience is common citizens, like us, concerned about the reality of mass incarceration but unsure how to engage. . .READ MORE
PRESIDENT BIDEN AND PROSPECTS FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM
Charles D. Brockett, PhD
This ebook meant for the common citizen portrays trends in public opinion about immigration in 21 easily read graphs. These trends are also related to their broader context: Will President Biden succeed where his last three predecessors failed? Certainly it will be a big challenge, but it can be done if we let the public show the way.
The forty-three writers included in this anthology responded to our invitation to think with us—broadly and intimately—about goodness in our lives: Where have you seen goodness in play? How has it changed your own life, the actual choices you make or how you evaluate your choices? We hope you will find personal inspiration and resonance in this thoughtful and moving collection . . READ MORE BUY
CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS
Stephanie Hart: Contributing author and discussion leader
