1 Our Book Club Origins and Philosophy
In early 2019, we began to listen to the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. We loved the premise of this podcast: that if you treat a text as sacred, inspiration can come. The hosts of this podcast outlined three steps to treating a text as sacred: trust that the text can bring us blessings; read the text with rigor and focus; and read the text within a community. We decided that we wanted to embark on this journey and that we wanted to use Jane Austen’s novels as our sacred text.
Our Jane Austen Book Club is founded on three principles:
Respect the text. Read with the expectation of finding meaning.
Listen with charity. Give grace to your fellow club members, the characters within the novels, and yourself.
Act with integrity. When the text calls you to see yourself clearly or change something in your life, acknowledge and act on that calling.
