Adult Education presents Judith Searle reading religious poetry.

On Sunday, August 6 at noon I'll be doing a repeat performance of the RELIGIOUS POETRY: MANY TRADITIONS, MANY SPLENDORS that I originally presented to our Meeting in February 2015. If you missed that presentation, I hope you'll join me for this one. If you attended that one, you already know how magnificent these poems are, and I hope you'll consider a return visit.

This program is part of the Santa Monica Friends Meeting’s Adult Education Program, and the idea behind it is T.S. Eliot’s: that religious poetry doesn’t aim to convert you, it aims to show you what it feels like to believe.

My objective in putting together this presentation was to include as many religious approaches as possible, including male and female voices in about equal measure. I’ll be presenting the poems in chronological order, beginning with a hymn to the moon goddess that dates from 2300 B.C.E.

The traditions represented include Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Sufism, Hinduism, Quakerism, American Indian invocations, Humanism, and Pantheism. I’ll be including some brief introductory material for each selection, but most of the program will be devoted to my reading of the poems themselves.  

Judith Searle