Sophia Library
The Sophia Library is a specialist collection of fiction and non-fiction books, periodicals, DVDs, audio and video tapes for loan and for reference.
Subject areas include psychology, feminist theology, women’s studies, spiritual life, meditation and ritual in the lives of women.
There are also books on feminist, social, health and ecological concerns and social justice issues in addition to small history, fiction and poetry sections.
The Sophia Library is an important resource in the life of Sophia. People who attend courses value the opportunity to browse and borrow relevant items and specific books, recommended by course facilitators, are purchased for the Library.
The Sophia Library is available to the general public for browsing. Library members and financial members of Sophia are able to borrow items and procedures for borrowing are posted in the Library.
Library membership is $20, $15 concession.
Opening hours: Tuesday - Fridays 9.30am to 5.00pm (Sophia office hours) and on weekends and evenings when activities are being held at Sophia.
Donations to Sophia Library are always welcome.
"On the Bookshelf" review from the latest newsletter:
An Inconvenient Text
by Norman Habel [216.88 HAB]
I have just finished reading a new addition to the Sophia Library: ‘An Inconvenient Text’, written by Norm Habel, one of our local Scripture scholars. The title, as you have already no doubt observed, echoes Al Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Habel’s passionate concern is both the Bible as a revered and sacred text and our twenty-first century understanding of a finite and totally interdependent planet Earth, threatened by global warming.
Habel identifies some of the foundational texts in the Bible as mandating and often graphically enacting a way of being on the planet that dominates and subdues the Earth and her natural ecosystems, including her peoples. Such text Habel calls ‘grey texts’. He strives to balance these destructive texts with texts he names as ‘green texts’. For example: green text—Gen 2:15: ‘serve’ (abad) and ‘preserve’ (shamar) balancing grey text—Gen 1:26-28: ‘rule’ (rada) and ‘subdue’ (kabash).
Affirming the contribution of feminist Scripture scholars in giving us new ways to read the Bible, the author demonstrates the importance of reading ‘grey texts’ with suspicion. He invites the reader to empathise with the Earth and allow her to have a voice. A voice that protests against man’s and his Warrior God’s injustice in their cruel devastation of peoples who live harmoniously with their land (the Canaanites), domestic animals and even the wilderness. Habel often speaks of the ‘collateral damage’ effected by a ‘domination’ way of being, grimly echoing the slick jargon of modern warfare.
‘Green texts’ such as Psalm 104 speak of a Divine Spirit with and within the whole Earth, so honouring the intrinsic value of our world in its own right, with its beauty, dignity and generosity. This attitude requires humans to live the way of serving and preserving seas, rivers, mountains and forests and all of their inhabitants. Habel seeks texts that fit harmoniously with our twenty-first century understanding. We now know that humanity is an interdependent part of an Earth organism that is magnificently interwoven and requires a wonderful balance of ecosystems for its good health.
Writing especially for Christians, Habel is calling for a conversion of consciousness within the churches, a greening of our churches, an honesty in interpreting biblical texts that gives the oppressed Earth a voice that calls for her to be treated with justice. I can’t help being mindful of the earlier call from feminist scholars to find the invisible or oppressed women in the biblical texts and to give them their voices as they too, call for respect and justice.
This short review does not seek to do justice to the careful and passionate study this book presents. However, I do believe that for all who stand within the Christian Story it is a rewarding and hopeful read, opening new ways of understanding how we are invited to be ‘green’ in our way of life within this fragile Earth organism.
Angela Moloney op