You are cordially invited on Thursday October 5, 2023, to attend Trinitarian Steve Shanley’s presentation about his book Forgotten Stories: In the Shadows of the Son of Man as part of the OLLI Authors program at UNCA. This is a quarterly reading program begun in 2017, providing a forum for talented OLLI writers to showcase their creative efforts. Each reading features two poets or prose authors.This presentation will include Steve Shanley, and fellow author, John Bullock.
Steve is a 73-year old resident of both Asheville and Buffalo, NY. He got his BA from Yale and his PhD in Clinical Psychology from SUNY-Buffalo and practiced in a variety of settings, including Forensic Mental Health, Buffalo Schools, and out-patient clinics. He’s a lifelong Episcopalian, a singer and songwriter. This is his first novel.
Synopsis of Forgotten Stories: In the Shadows of the Son of Man by Steve Shanley
Joseph Campbell and many others have written extensively about the panhuman tendency to imagine how gods create and order their lives and culture. Just as history is written by the victors, so too were Bible gospels written to suit the purposes and beliefs of those who survived, organized, and have since maintained the strength of the Christian religion. Buried beneath these doctrinal narratives, however, one can glimpse a humanistic ethic—compassion for the poor and marginal, primacy of love over hate and power, and equal worth of the sexes. The fundamentalist, evangelical movements in society today claim to speak for a remote, unseen God, while ignoring Jesus’ humanism. My novel hopes to counteract this movement by imagining how a fully human, non-divine Jesus developed his beliefs; and how so-called miracles may have happened. The novel consists of 16 ‘forgotten stories’ told by eye witnesses to his birth and faith journey, stories that did not make the ‘final’ into the Bible. The eye witnesses include members of his extended birth family, Mary and her friend Susanna, Joseph of Arimathea and his steward, four apostles, a roman soldier, and the gardener at Golgotha who was the first to see the ‘resurrected’ Jesus. Jesus emerges as a flesh-and-blood human who is more approachable and understandable than the stained-glass Bible version.
When: Thursday, October 5, 2023, 4:30-5:30pm
Where: 300 Campus View Rd, Asheville, NC 28804 Room 102
How: The program is both in-person and on Zoom
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