{ DAY 405 }

“Do you understand photosynthesis?  Especially the whole making-trees-and-leaves-and-fruit-out-of-thin-air part?  Go blow on that bush.  You can’t see it, but the bush will turn your breath into raspberry juice.” ~N.D. Wilson

It’s been a while since I did a book review.  This has not been from a lack of reading material I find in my hands.  Recently I read a book whose words swirled in my mind and gripped me to my core.  There has been a hesitation in me to write about a book that has and will continue to have such a profound effect on my life.  Let me state the cliche before I begin.  This book changed my life.  Notes from the Tilt-A- Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World by N.D. Wilson is raw and beautiful.  There is no way for me to really describe it.  He puts into words so eloquently and yet bluntly what I’ve always been awed by but unable to communicate.  When I try I tend to end up sputtering and gasping for air with my mouth wide open like a small child thrown in the deep end who doesn’t know how to swim.  This book addresses hard questions.  You’ll need to roll the words around on your tongue like an ice cream lick and really taste them.  Some may go down like vinegar for you but to me they were sweetness with a touch of salt.  All I can say is that this author writes in a way I want to learn to process life.  This world is held together by words.  How is that not amazing!? It makes my brain go off like a million fireworks let off at once.  Here is an excerpt and no it isn’t my favorite.  You need to go read the book to know my favorite parts.  All of it.  Because it explains and points to the Speaker.  The Word himself.  I’ll be honest.  I cried through the last few chapters.  Tears are salty.

“I wish these things could talk to me, logs, streams, and all their parts.  But they are all talking to me.  It takes all five of my senses and mental extrapolation, imagination, just to hear the things around me in the moment. They don’t speak my shorthand, they don’t know my compressed and lifeless, two-dimensional language.  My tongue can make an L sound, but it can’t quite make a log.  Write me a history of every existing thing flattened onto pages.  Crowd it into English.  One novel, one volume per thing, one page per year.  that should be enough abridgement.  I’ll check them all out from the library and pore over every page- I swear I will.  The story of a driveway rock in six thousand pages.  A different six-thousand-page story for every driveway rock– volcanoes, floods, crushers, asphalt crews.  You don’t buy into such a young earth?  Fine.  Add the extra pages.  I’ll read them too.

The infinite Creator has an infinite attention span, an infinite love of detail.  In His story, every prop must have a complete history.”

Today I’m writing this post from a beautiful house in the woods and everything around me is singing so loudly that it’s a triumphant chorus when I step outside.  Snapshots above doesn’t do the song justice but I hope it gives you a peek at a few of the notes.  (I had brought my nice camera and two lenses and was all excited to practice shooting but of course I quite forgot to charge the battery so my trusty iphone camera came in handy.) 🙂

If you haven’t seen this would you please consider watching it?  It really only is a minute!