Every year, for the last 30 plus years, there has been an FCC Pomona backpacking trip – except for LAST year due to the pandemic and the year BEFORE that due to smoke from fires. With great hope, 11 of us plan to backpack in the Eastern Sierra Nevada the week of July 17th. In addition to hiking, fishing, swimming, and napping, we engage in study together. This year we are reading Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman.

For those of you who are not going to be joining us on the trail, I encourage you to get a copy of this seminal book and read it the week of July 17th. It is only 110 pages in length. Howard Thurman is still considered one of the most important theological and spiritual voices of the 20th century. His books are still read in seminaries today, but this book is intended for all Christians. Rev. Thurman still has much to offer to our own time as Christians, both challenge and comfort.

Howard Thurman is described by those who knew him as the kind of person in whose presence one felt the love and peace of God. Reading his words is like having him as a spiritual mentor or director. I encourage you to let yourself sit in his presence through his words that echo and resound with the presence of divine love and guidance.

Considered by many to be the theological and spiritual father of The Non-Violent Movement (called this by those who began it – we now call the Civil Rights Movement), Howard Thurman’s words still illuminate the way forward through the love that Jesus taught and lived. Join us backpackers in the journey of inward discovery and shared Christian value.