Book Ravings

When I started this blog, it began as a way for me to measure and chronicle my life in simple things: in coffee stains.  In the idea that I could track what I was thinking about, wondering, and noticing in the world.  Coffee spills became the opportunity for me to reflect on grace-- for myself and for others, in the way in which I could mark time and milestones.  To stop and think about how this small incident, small mistake, can be about something in the greater whole of my life.  It became a place for mindfulness, to slow down and think and make connections: how does this small moment matter to my greater being and becoming.


Every once in a while, you find the very right book; or rather, it finds you.  There is magic in hearing someone else's voice, thoughts, dreams and wonderings echo into yours.  For me, right now, that book is Barbara Brown Taylor's Altars in the World: A Geography of Faith.

And this is a small taste of a greater feast:

"To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger-- these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology.

All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir.

Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy.  

And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone.In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life."

See.  I told you.