MY PILES

I don’t spend enough time upstairs to do anything but sleep so there’s nothing by the bed, probably just as well, since I have enough books piled everywhere else.

The little half table by the couch has Rae Beth’s Hedge Witch sandwiched between the late Thomas Merton’s (Cistercian monk) Love and Living and a book on Celtic Christianity by an Anglican canon. The Celtic Devotional by Caitlin Matthews (her husband James is a Druid) is keeping company with Original Blessing and The Reinvention of Work by Matthew Fox. Fox started out as a Dominican, was ordained again as an Anglican and describes himself as post denominational.

Perched on the magazine rack by my chairs there are two books with haikus and zen koans. There’s Cloister Walk and Dakota by Kathleen Norris, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, and a book on Native American healing herbs and rituals. The stack is rounded off with The Rhythm of Life by another retired Anglican vicar and Yearning for the Wind by Tom Cowan, a Celtic Shaman. Oh, and there’s Hope’s Edge by Frances Lappe.

There’s a basket filled with cookbooks in front of the TV. They got displaced from the buffet by Christmas decorations. The gardening books that were in the basket are hiding out in the computer desk. Now, all I have to do is read the blessed things.