"like so many soft rootlets"

Albany, GA

We walked away from Koinonia farm yesterday, fallen pecans crunching underfoot. Our visit there worked out very well. Ann, who had visited Reba Place in January, offered us her house since she was away, so we had a little place of our own for the week. And we were able to be inside during an unexpectedly early appearance of some cold nights. All the folks there welcomed us as family, too.

For some reason, I'm reminded of this quote by William James. I'm not sure if it was read at a devotion time at Koinonia, or if it just came to mind in connection with my recent thoughts on Clarence Jordan. I very much agree with it:

I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man’s pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.

The walk yesterday was quiet, through woods on a red dirt road, no traffic. We scared a deer off the road at one point. And Heather discovered some small, ripe persimmons.

We stopped in the first town and found a church with an evening service, and ended up at the pastor's house soon after. Then followed the youth group out to play flag football. Pizza followed. And we found out that, Tina, the pastor's wife, was driving to Albany this morning for work (a two day walk for us). We're almost getting used to being carried along.