I've been reading Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, which is part memoir, part environmentalist book about her childhood in Baxley, Georgia, which is near some of the towns I lived in growing up (Tifton, Ga., Statesboro, Savannah). She includes a lovely quote from Albert Camus, of all people, that I really like. Pardon the male exclusive language, but that is Camus's language not Ray's or mine.
"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
I"m not sure what all this meant to Camus, but to me it evokes a powerful recall of the central images that come together in my own life that open my heart towards God, my family, friends, and strangers. Those great and simple images for me: fishing, fiction, faith, and family. Somewhere, right in those few things, is where so much of meaning and passion lies for me. I think they are the keys to who I am now, who I have been in the past, and who God is continuing to shape me to become in the future.
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