Tuesday, January 12, 2010

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.

4 comments:

marigolds2 said...

Thank you so much, Jackie, for Playing Along with this meme. I think it's a great way to get to know people, and as the New Girl in the class, it's what I had hoped to do with this. You have some of my favorite spiritual writers in there, Thomas Merton, Matthew Fox, Kathleen Norris. I wonder what Hedge Witch might be, and am going to go find out right now. I always get interesting suggestions from this game.

JACKIE said...

Rae Beth is a fun gal, very gentle seeming. I've been reading Merton off and on for years. And reading Merton taught me how much I don't know.

Anonymous said...

This is a great thread, I'm getting some great ideas for reading material. It's looking like a trip to the bookstore for me!

Aine
http://theevolingspirit.blogspot.com

Lisa :-] said...

I have to laugh, here, ladies...

I have one book on the dresser next to my bed. It is one of the "Hornblower" novels (C.S.Forrester) that I actually finished reading before Christmas and hasn't made its way back into the bookcase yet. It is one of the three or four books I actually read cover-to-cover in 2009, I'm proud to say!

Unfortunately, the "piles" around my house these days are much more likely to be cat hair (or other substances associated with cats), dust, laundry or dishes...