Breakfast at Sally's ... One

The Sunday evening Home Group is reading "Breakfast at Sally's" and discussing it when we gather. Our first conversation is this Sunday, December 6, 2009. We will be discussing the first two chapters. If you haven't gotten the book yet, you can pick one up at the parsonage.
This is a story that, in the words of author Richard LeMieux, is "98 Proof". 98% true. Some names have been changed, and chronologies adjusted "to make the story more accessible".
The first character we meet is "C". And the location for the opening scene is "Sally's" - a Salvation Army Soup Kitchen in Bremerton, Washington. C will serve as Richard's spiritual guide, mentor of the road, "angel".
"Sally's" is a place where "just about every age and nationality is represented ..." It is also a place where human need lands with a vengeance - people who are clinically depressed, mentally ill, physically damaged, emotionally scarred.
The second most important character we encounter is Willow - Richard's Bichon Frise "wonder dog". Willow will be the source of unconditional love that carries 59 year-old Richard through some of the darkest moments of his experience of homelessness. Some questions and ideas we will be discussing this Sunday include:

1. What if our church looked like Sally's in terms of the mix of race, culture, need, talent?
2. What is your individual unspoken judgment of poverty and people who are poor?
3. What is our corporate unspoken judgment of people who are poor?
4. C quotes Martin Luther King (Page 40): "We all have a task and let us do it with a sense of divine dissatisfaction. Let us be dissatisfied as long as we have a wealth of creeds and poverty of deeds." What is "divine dissatisfaction"? How does it manifest itself in our church?
5. What do you think of C's pondering regarding Christ's coming again (Page 41) - "Would he be white, black, Asian, look like Saddam Hussein instead of Keven Costner or Tom Cruise? What if he didn't fit our image of him? What if he was bald? or gay?" Which of these images do you find most disconcerting? Why?
6. C quotes Steinbeck saying an author's relationship to society is to be its watchdog. Writers should satirize its silliness, attack its injustices, stigmatize its faults." (Page 43.) Would you agree or disagree? Why?
7. We will explore in some depth the first three full paragraphs on Page 40.

I look forward to our conversation at Jen and Steve's this coming Sunday at 7.