In this current phase of my discernment journey, people have been recommending many different books for me to read; Parker Palmer, Barbara Brown Taylor, Rachel Held Evans, Wendy Farley, Brother Lawrence, various Christian mystics, and so on. I read through many and picked up bits and pieces here and there, but something seems missing.

I think back to earlier days at Grace Episcopal Church in Manhattan when we read Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot, and Flannery O’Connor as part of our Sunday morning adult education. I think even further back, to my first semester of college. I had headed off to college planning on majoring in religion, then heading to seminary, and becoming a minister. My first semester, I took a philosophy class with a professor who had taught religion for many years and switched over to teaching philosophy.

He was a great professor and I decided I would major in philosophy instead. One piece of advice he gave me was to spend time reading great literature. I didn’t take that advice at first and it wasn’t until my senior year, when my college experience was unraveling, that I started taking literature courses. Besides that introduction to philosophy course, some of the other best courses I ended up taking were that senior year, including a course on Virginia Woolf. I still go back to Virginia Woolf as touchstone decades later.

I’ve also always been very interested in writing, and one piece of advice that I remember, probably from a course on writing short stories was, “show, don’t tell”. What stories will help show me what I need to see in this part of my journey? What stories do you recommend and why?

I should note that while I’m thinking particularly about books, I’d also include in this suggestions for movies. Tarkovsky and Wenders come to mind as great directors. What movies do you recommend, and why?