Have you ever read Alice Walker’s book of poetry, The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers? I remember when I found that book (or maybe the book found me). It was a handful of years ago when the new Cedar Rapids Public Library had just opened. I found my way to the upstairs back corner by all the windows and there was the poetry section, like a love-at-first-sight new friend where all the best secrets are told.
How do we turn madness into flowers? I might spend a year pondering that notion. Pondering that was sparked just by reading the title of a poetry book.
I’ve been looking at the books who live with me in my own home library. I live and work with books around me. I sleep with books beside me, floor to ceiling. Books live on table tops. Books in a short stack hold a door wide open. There are books I read ten years ago whose lines lit tiny fires that are still alive in me. Alice Walker’s books live here: The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens and Living by the Word and The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers. How do we turn madness into flowers?
I am taking a night class this semester, as lifelong seekers and learners are apt to do. It’s an EcoTheologies class and I am being lit with more tiny fires as new books are introduced to me. Right now I am reading EcoWomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths by Melanie L. Harris. The author writes extensively about Alice Walker. And I am circling back to Walker’s books and wisdom and sparks that have never left me. I am circling back to this inquiry and invitation of turning madness into flowers. I am following the joy of this.
How do we turn madness into flowers? Shall we pray on this and ponder this and talk about this together? Shall we live by this and act on this?
—Angie Pierce Jennings, Prairiewoods hosted groups and hospitality coordinator