Books Find Me

I've said that for years, and perhaps since this blog habit began in 2009, I may have even written about it at some earlier moment. I am convinced that books do find me, and these last few weeks certainly attest to that personal belief!

I'm sitting here alone this morning, the pound pup snoring while nestled on the throw rug in front of the refrigerator. LaDonna is running errands, while I am trying to adjust to the concept of retirement now being discussed as an approaching reality. Reading books is how I am currently managing the stress of my transition.

I always have a couple books going at the same time, only recently finishing Trevor Noah's, "Born A Crime." His story confronts the challenges of being born bi-racial during apartheid. His mom was Black, his dad Caucasian, himself more light skinned than black. Colored as he was deemed, and difficult to fit in with any particular racial moniker, his parent's union technically against the law.

Though his language was at times a little salty for my taste, I could identify in many ways. My identity with his thoughts, rather than racially oriented, were more the misfit part, as felt throughout my religious journey. And as well, my alignment with his strong entrepreneurial bent. I will say that my empathy for those still struggling with the ongoing racial bias was deepened.

Then came the book written by a former neighbor, actually back then perhaps a fifth grader, though now in her mid-forties, with her book recently acclaimed as an Amazon Editors Best Books of 2024. I speak of Leigh Ann Henion's, "Night Magic."

Oddly enough, it was recommended during a conversation with a local naturalist author. He offered the title only, as he had just gotten into the book and it was not with him while we we chatting. I had no clue as to the author, until I googled the title! What a surprise.

Reading her "Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens And Other Marvels Of The Dark" the book's subtitle, I was transported back to my love for nature and early training as a biologist.

"Christ was first manifest in Creation," another phrase that l often use; secondly as per Richard Rohr, manifest in the scriptures and thirdly, though of late questionable at least among some church folk given the politics in America.

Henion's stories, all captured so poignantly, especially those that accent the dilemma of light pollution, now interfering with critical insects and creatures so necessary to our ecological systems, but as well the fascination potentially lost by those who, like myself and even more my grandkids, we all somewhat addicted to blue screens and cell phones. How's that for a run on sentence...we science folk are good at that, the exception being my young friend and amazing wordsmith, Leigh Ann Henion!

One of the sections in her book focused upon an intentionally dark journey, through the woods that is. The darkness maintained intentionally so as to reveal the bioluminescence we know as Foxfire (fake light).

That then caused me to recall a series of books by that same name, myself referenced in Voulme 7, a study of mountain religious heritage. On page 276, in the chapter on Pentecostals, the writer references a young man singing at a sawdust floored camp meeting in Cullasaja, North Carolina. That was me, in 1976!

Why these books "found me" just as I am finishing a manuscript entitled, "Come Let Us Reason Together" seems somewhat mysterious. As well, just last week, a followup discussion with a young mentee who has suggested a very transparent conversation captured by professionals on video regarding what some would call our spiritual "deconstruction"?

You tell me! Maybe the Lord soon will!