I started a thing this week. I am calling it “Books Falling.” What that means is that I am focusing my posts on the books that have been on my book shelves for years. I am taking this opportunity, when the world is upside down, to look to the wisdom of others for guidance and perspective – letting the books fall and the words flow. I am deliberately seeking the wisdom of authors of different ages, races, genders, sexual orientations, and religions. As a frustrated bibliophile (with too many books and not enough focus), who loves the feel of a book in her hands, this experiment is already proving challenging and rewarding, both. One week in, I have a publication calendar mapped out through the end of August. So far, I am sticking to non-fiction, with a little poetry occasionally included (but fiction may be in my future.)

A poem by Ruth Forman, Prayers Like Shoes, fell off the shelf. The Webster’s Dictionary, which pointed me to the definition of deciduous, fell off the shelf, too. In falling, Robert Lawrence Smith’s The Quaker Book of Wisdom reminded me about the virtue of silence. James Baldwin’s essay Note of A Native Son fell at the exact right time when I need to be awake to the pain of black people in my country. Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, fell to remind me about intimacy with fear. I fell awake to love with bell hooks, as I wrote a piece for the wedding of a sister by choice.

In the midst of all that is, the books that fell this week soothed the pain of my world just a little. It has felt a little like a conversation during continued social isolation. My hope is that by conducting this experiment, I am channeling the wisdom of the authors and soothing the pain of others just a bit, too. I am sending “Books Falling” out into the world as a prayer, as shoes to walk our road.

Read Weekly Wide-Awake here.