A little poem

Showered: A True Story

Clothes washed in a bucket
brown hands, dunked in suds

Again by the afternoon rain
while stretched out on the line

Later drenched with sun
the brightness, the birdsong

Tomorrow awash in clean
holding in warp and weft
smell of rain, warmth of sun
hint of song

2011 Top Ten Reads

I just thought I would review my year of reading... a varied list of books ranging from ecology to theology, poetry to prose, discussions about Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Authors were scholars (both Old Testament and New), Western and some African (from South Africa and Kenya), men and women, mothers, journalists, academics, activists and farmers. I covered some great territory.

A quick glance and I could easily point to the top ten that have stayed with me in one way or another:

Speaking Christian by Marcus Borg

Fatal Embrace by Mark Braverman

Testimony to the Otherwise by Walter Brueggemann

Begging to be Black by Anjte Krog

God is not Christian by Desmond Tutu

The Bible Makes Sense by Walter Brueggemann

Getting Involved with God by Ellen Davis

Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof

A Spirituality for the Road by David Bosch

Mark: The Whole Story by Richard Horsely

(three of the top ten are written on South African soil... something about that place and the people shaped by it speaks to me deeply.)

So more for my own record than anything else, there are the 2011 reads that stick.