Walking to Listen

7 July 2020: "And then there was Addie, my Mississippi mother, and Allen, the doomsday alligator rancher. Of course, all these people were far more than the titles I've just given them, but that's taxonomy finding some kind of order in the chaos and classifying it. Why bother, in this case? Because then an amalgam of indistinguishable faces splinters off into hundreds of millions of fragments--individual human beings. The closer you look, the more varieties you find, and any goat-and-sheep dichotomy starts to look completely absurd. Americans become Mississippians, who become alligator ranchers, who become Allen, who likes hunting in the swamp on his airboat at dusk and watching Deadly Women Tuesday Marathon; who believes in goats and sheep, and probably thinks you're a goat; and who feeds you a huge breakfast in the morning anyway." --Andrew Forsthoefel, Walking to Listen

The fifty or so pages I read of Walking to Listen today really sold me on what the book is doing and it power and beauty. That passage above ("goats" and "sheep" are a reference to end-times theology) especially moved me. I've got about 150 pages left and am eager to see what's in store for Andrew.