Welcome to Tangible.
Encountering the glorious and divine in the tangible elements of everyday life.
Current Offerings
My name is Jeannie Rose Barksdale. I have a big imagination, and am never short of grand ideas. I also have a job that takes as much of my creative and intellectual energy as I’ll let it and three children still too young to occupy free time curled up with a novel. My day to day life is full of things that can seem like the very opposite of grandeur and glory: Zoom meetings and email, wiping food off the floor and washing dishes. I can feel envy at other lives, mystics and artists, movers and shakers, adventurers and nomads. I can pine for some other path that would lead to the good life.
But deep down, I know the good life isn’t found in the superficially grand and glorious. Or rather, the most ordinary things can be suffused with grandeur and glory, when we pay attention. That takes practice. This is a place where I practice finding wonder and beauty in everyday life, to try, in the words of the poet, “to praise the mutilated world.” And where I welcome you to join me.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
“Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” by Adam Zagajewski.
This line of poetry above came to me not originally through the poem itself, but a song that quotes it (All My Favorite People, Over the Rhine. Do yourself a favor and go listen.):
All my favorite people are broken
Believe me
My heart should know
Orphaned believers, skeptical dreamers
Step forward
You can stay right here
You don’t have to go
Is each wound you’ve received
Just a burdensome gift?
It gets so hard to lift
Yourself up off the ground
But the poet says, We must praise the mutilated world
We’re all workin’ the graveyard shift
You might as well sing along.
The offerings I share here are me singing along, and inviting you to sing too. I hope to create spaces where orphaned believers and skeptical dreamers can be at home, where weary souls can be nourished and breathe a sigh of relief. I want to cultivate deep roots, wide branches, and a long table with a joyful feast.
If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, you might as well sing along:
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Photo credits:
– The gorgeous forest image on the landing page/as a post default is by Marita Kavelashvili, and is used with permission under the Unsplash license.
– Others are mine (unless otherwise stated).