Peace

You will find a Peace Sign on The Book Club Game, its editions and The Reading Companion Journal Guides because all are Peace catalysts in many ways:

• They encourage reading; reading in itself is a peaceful activity bringing one into the present while unleashing stress about the past or future. Reading choices are personal, that is why there are eclectic booklists with spaces for contributions; there are now booklists online dedicated to peace, but peace can be found in any book and the journal and game questions lead you to it. New genres and ideas open understanding bringing peace.
• They all build strong reading skills, motivation and confidence in reading. Strong readers will hopefully educate themselves enabling them to use their talents to make the world a better place. Strong readers are apt to read about situations and people in understanding those that are different; understanding breeds compassion and empathy eliminating fear. Reading facilitates problem solving bringing peace to others. Problem solving is peaceful.
• They stimulate Grand Conversations where all learn to gather facts and share perspectives, ideas and experiences, critically think and apply the story’s messages shared. The guided discussion invloves all participants all the time as they build on to each other’s answers and give new ones. This setting increases understanding of differences within a story shared and within the groups sharing the story.
• They all stimulate new learning, new reading in a lifelong pursuit; Learning brings peace.
• In a consistent manner these tools carry a person into many reading worlds to learn outside their comfort zones. The more we journey outside our worlds, the more understanding, empathy and compassion we gain, all elements of peace.
• The Inspiration Questions guide players and journalers to glean inspirations from each story to turn into actions to make their life better, someone else’s life better, their work place and community better and the world better. All these actions bring PEACE into the world.

One goal each Book Club might have is to pledge a group action to help others inspired by each book read. If every book club did this it would be an enormous step for PEACE.