I love books. I have hundreds upstairs and can't seem to stop collecting them. No matter how many I get though have some that I keep coming back to and re-reading. Here is my top ten list of books I would keep if I had to get rid of all the rest.
CRYPTONOMICON by Neal Stephenson
The Nature of personal Reality by Jane Roberts
ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach
Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts unknown by Alan Watts
TAO, The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts
Zen in the martial arts by Joe Hyams
The Art of Peace by Morihei Ueshiba
Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher
House by Tracy Kidder
Dispatches by Michael Herr
That is my list. I would be interested to see what you would pick for inclusion on your list!
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Weddings and Company and Dinners, Oh My!
Blogging from me will be sparse for a few days, since we have our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter in town for a family wedding and attendant festivities, side trips, extended large meals and smorgasbords, all lubricated by a lot of coffee and tasty beer and wine. ExRanger and Stanford Gabriel will keep things going in the meantime, so be sure and leave some comments for 'em!
~~~
~~~
Who is this "ExRanger" guy?
Who is this ExRanger guy? Good question. Deb Yost the owner of this Blog asked me if I would like to be a guest writer on The Rosemary Tree and I agreed.
I was raised in the Catholic church in Royal Oak Michigan at the Shrine of the little flower. When I was 12 my family moved to a very rural farm in central Michigan. We were five miles from the nearest village and an half hour from the nearest town of any size. The best thing about it was a fifteen thousand acre state game area that was only a mile down the road. My new best friend and I spent every waking hour when not in school roaming the woods year around. Our parents rarely new where we were at any given time and it made us very independent and self sufficient.
Soon came the end of High School and the need to get a full time job. My friend and I both drove the hour to the GM plant where we were hired and spent the next three decades working. During that time I went on military leave and joined the 1/75th Airborne Ranger Battalion for four years. After my tour I went on a sort of spiritual quest that is still going on to some extent. In the end I chose to follow the Tao.
My experiences in the Rangers changed the way I look at life and made me a very different person. I started writing as a way to share the things that I had learned at great expense with people who might need that experience. If there is one thing I know well it is how to live very rough and travel light. Good things to know when our economy is crumbling and the safety nets are not holding.
So now I have retired from GM and I do other things. I work in the garden, Bicycle many miles, read and study a lot, write some and think about how to avoid the worst effects of the hard times to come.
I was raised in the Catholic church in Royal Oak Michigan at the Shrine of the little flower. When I was 12 my family moved to a very rural farm in central Michigan. We were five miles from the nearest village and an half hour from the nearest town of any size. The best thing about it was a fifteen thousand acre state game area that was only a mile down the road. My new best friend and I spent every waking hour when not in school roaming the woods year around. Our parents rarely new where we were at any given time and it made us very independent and self sufficient.
Soon came the end of High School and the need to get a full time job. My friend and I both drove the hour to the GM plant where we were hired and spent the next three decades working. During that time I went on military leave and joined the 1/75th Airborne Ranger Battalion for four years. After my tour I went on a sort of spiritual quest that is still going on to some extent. In the end I chose to follow the Tao.
My experiences in the Rangers changed the way I look at life and made me a very different person. I started writing as a way to share the things that I had learned at great expense with people who might need that experience. If there is one thing I know well it is how to live very rough and travel light. Good things to know when our economy is crumbling and the safety nets are not holding.
So now I have retired from GM and I do other things. I work in the garden, Bicycle many miles, read and study a lot, write some and think about how to avoid the worst effects of the hard times to come.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Be Still And Know That I Am God
From the philosophical East comes a succinct exposition of the injunction from the Bible to "be still and know that I am God". We Christians have a set of "training wheels" to wobble into this state, the Jesus Prayer, or the Kyrie.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Love Lift Us Up
The beloved Cree songwriter sings her perhaps best-known song. A prayer for our times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
