Seeing as it’s one of the few pieces of actual furniture here in this cozy studio apartment (which has certain advantages in the Housekeeping Department), my futon occupies a pretty central role in my domestic environment. Also known as The Place Where I Sleep&Read&Eat&Watch TV, my futon possesses a certain gravitational pull that tends to draw lots of stuff—and by stuff I mostly mean books—toward it. Here are a few selections from the stacks of books presently in orbit around my futon:
The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. Drawing on her years of teaching the weekly Parsha (readings from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible) in Jerusalem, Zornberg offers an intriguing reflection on, as she puts it, “the book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, where the origins of all things are to be found.” She engages the sacred text in the company of others who have pondered and wrestled with it; as she listens deeply into the text, she turns her ear toward the voices of those who have lived with it across the centuries, who have studied it and prayed it and carried it in their bones. She acknowledges the wide range of tools that she uses in excavating the scriptures, from literature and anthropology to the Talmud and hasidic meditations. In her introduction to the book, Zornberg writes about reading the sacred text in such a way that we encounter our own lives within and between its words. She makes a distinction between introducing ourselves into the texts—an act that’s called eisegesis (literally to “lead in,” to read our own biases into a text)—and finding ourselves within them. “What is hidden,” she writes, “is, essentially, the reader’s most intimate life, the things and words of the night, fears and longings and questionings. It is these that I have tried to ‘hear’ from within the text of the Torah.”
The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life by Paula Huston. I’m an oblate (lay associate) of St. Brigid of Kildare Monastery, a community that draws from Methodist and Benedictine traditions. A significant piece of our life together as oblates, and a way that we stay connected in the midst of our geographic distance from one another, is our practice of talking together by conference call once a month. Much of our conversation revolves around something we’re reading together. We’ve recently started The Holy Way, written by a woman who is an oblate of New Camaldoli Hermitage at Big Sur, California. Huston shapes each chapter around a theme from the Christian monastic tradition; her chapter titles include “Silence: The Way of the Cenobite,” “Devotion: The Way of the Psalm Singer,” and “Generosity: The Way of the Servant.” In the opening chapter, “Solitude: The Way of the Hermit,” Huston describes the beginning of her search for solitude in the midst of a life that’s intimately intertwined with others. She writes,
Once solitude had a grip on me, once I experienced the clarity it brought, I couldn’t get enough of it. My longtime ache for Thoreau’s little cabin now had a name; my secret yearning for aloneness had an explanation. Perhaps I was not such an oddball after all; perhaps there were many others like me who craved solitude without knowing exactly what it was we were craving.
Ashworth Hall by Anne Perry. Mysteries are my brain candy. Just finished this one today. It’s from Perry’s series that features Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, an intrepid couple living in 19th-century England. It wasn’t among my favorite Anne Perry novels but provided a pleasant diversion.
Hong Kong Apothecary: A Visual History of Chinese Medicine Packaging. A gift from my sweetheart Gary. Oooohhh, all the cool pictures…
