An old trail leads from our house up to a waterfall in the woods on Wolfpen Mountain. Twinned basswood trees — also known as lime, linden or linn trees — stand near the trail, perhaps a century old. The basswood is a soft wood prized by woodcarvers. Two weeks ago one of them fell after a long slow decline. Its final years evoked many themes from our own lives and our bonds with the earthly life around and within us.
Last night the basswood fell
clean across the trail to the waterfall …..
This collection of my essays from 1971 to 2003 traces the main contours of the development of my thought. At the core of this development has been the rich concept of covenant, with its many expressions in theories of federalism, the dynamics of reconciliation, and ways of knitting together our “oikos” of work, family, faith, and the land.
The essays begin with my struggle to re-imagine images of church and society as “bodies” through the lens of emerging cybernetic theories. They then turn to relations of ecclesiology to social organization and my early engagement with the thought of Hannah Arendt. Ecological themes begin to emerge with an essay on covenantal approaches to land ethics. The covenantal perspective gains further expression in articles about marriage and family in relation to work and the land. Covenantal perspectives on constitutionalism and the dynamics of reconciliation then emerged in the democratic transitions of the early 1990s. The dynamics of reconciliation and their contexts in wider cultural memory take us into the final essays.
A Covenantal Imagination is available in print and digital formats from Wipf and Stock Publishers, Amazon, and your independent bookseller.
For comments on A Covenantal Imagination, CLICK HERE.
In this book I lay out the main way of thinking that has emerged out of my personal experience and cultural environment over the course of my life. I call it an “expository memoir” because it focuses on a succinct description of my patterns of thinking as they have developed over time. Through it I have tried to become more self-conscious about the way my origins in Washington and at my family’s farm in Virginia, my education, my experiences in marriage and family, and my teaching and research here and abroad have shaped my concerns and thought.
Woven all through this long development were concepts of covenant and federalism, public and reconciliation, and the ensemble of the “oikos” connections of work, family, faith, and land. Themes of ecology steadily shaped my thought in the last thirty years, while a turn to working with wood and constructing worship furniture spoke to the connection of worship and ethics that has flowed through my work.
I hope this memoir not only offers a kind of summary overview of my thought but stimulates readers to reflect on their lives and they ways they have thought about the world around them. I am pleased that the publishers chose to use Sylvia’s stunning tapestry “Terrifying Joy” for the cover. It offers an opening into the light so brilliant we cannot see what it holds. Our journeys always contain elements of both feelings, even as our sometimes frantic hopes urge us on our way. You can find Making My Way in print and digital formats at Wipf and Stock publishers, Amazon, and through your local independent bookstore.
For comments about Making My Way, CLICK HERE.
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to writing that was more poetic and expressive. I also wanted a more viable balance between my work with words and my work with wood, especially furniture for worship settings. For more about my woodworking, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. READ MORE...
wood upon a lathe, these poems are word-turnings that reveal the inner grain of our human experience. They are bowls to catch our turnings of memory, conversion, falling in love, and passing through our seasons and the wrenching turns that mark our lives. Above all these turnings are a shout of praise, a murmur of wonder, a turning away from life as usual, a merciful re-turning to the songs, images and stories that move our lives.
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838.
You can get Red Clay, Blood River at:
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Bill;
I agree with your other friends comments about how you are so adept at ‘capturing’ the messages Nature has to offer. I have to wonder though, if you have captured Nature or has she captured you?
Happy Easter my friend.
Steve
Bill,
You desription of both tree and trail recalled a vivid memory of walking to the falls. Your capacity to retrieve images creates fondness for mother nature and her wonderful affect on our lives.
Thanks for sharing these moments.
Thanks, Tim. I guess young lovers could resonate with the embrace of these trees, but it’s the wisdom years that yield a poem like this, I think. I’ve cleared the trail to the waterfall now. Back to the waters and the branch lettuce that grows around it.
From the earth we come, grow, and return. Our mother, first and always. Thanks, Bill, for a delicious slice of nature for the soul.
Tim Bachmeyer
Hi, Bill, I’ve been there! At least on that secret trail and would not have known of it without your showing me.
The end of you poem is almost Ovidian, a transformation that reminded me strongly of some of the imagery in Ovid’s Metamorphoses!
Today is my birthday and this lovely poem arrived over my iPad desk to remind me of a happy time in the woods looking at that waterfall! Cheers! Pippa
Thanks, Bill, for “taking us along” in your poem, making us feel we are there on the side of the mountain with you.
Ken