concrete

in my room there are no bookselves. in fact there are no bookshelves in my entire house. it is not my house. but I live in it. and so there is a stack. a large stack of books that have accumulated on the small floor in my room.

There are books on gardening, and urban farming, books on nutrition and natural healing, a book on grant writing and a book on building ones own cabin. there is a book on fertility and midwifery, there is a book on sewing, two cookbooks and two large books on indigenous people. for good measure one large bible.

All of these have been acquired since november. ( excluding the bible)


Had you seen my bookshelves a year ago there would have been books on psychology, sociology, theology, some poetry books, lots of christian living books, a spattering of world religion, there would also have been some travel books, languages, philosophy and some of what I consider to be really good literature.

It is not that these things are unimportant to me now. and It would be wrong to say that
"a transformation has occured"
I have become consumed with the present, the close, the concrete. The immediate, the seen and sensed. Products of my hands rather then intellect.

And it is not believe that they are divided, and perhaps that is why the switch in focus is was so easy. I did not forsake one thing for another. I have accepted them as one. The work of my hands can be as glorifying to God as if I spent time in a worship service. I have just begun to see "God" in the soils, in our biology, in created things. I see His prints all over. I do not look to the heavens anymore when I pray, I look into the eyes of those I am praying for, I stare at the city, the trees and everything growing and changing near me. I see him in my own humanness I feel closest to him when I am most fully human, most connected to my surroundings, most present.