Back in September 2023 I started TREE Year 4 with a small fanfare announcing a series in which I would be riffing on Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God. The book grabbed my attention in my early 20s when I was a zealous Christian. I returned to often over the last three decades. I’ve been outside the Christian faith for a long time now and I still find the book compelling.
For years, I wanted to do a Brother Lawrence book. I started the series certain this was how I was going to write it, then two things didn’t happen:
connection
inspiration
FFOREST folk didn’t seem too interested in the series, and I ran out of things to say after a few posts. The series died, right out in the open where you could see it not living. I was a little disappointed but mostly I was like, Huh, I thought there was something there but it turns out there’s nothing.
My point is that if you are creating things for people other people, you have to put your work in front of them and sometimes that work will fail. That failure is wonderful because it gives you information you can’t get anywhere else. If I hadn’t started that series I’d still think I had a Brother Lawrence book in me. Now I know I don’t, and I’m free to move on to the next thing.
Heartworms’ debut album came out last week!
Print update: last week I introduced the elements of the print I’m creating. This week, I’ll show you how I brought them all together.
The first step was to print my foggy winter Selsley Common photos using my little thermal printer.
Grow slowly
Jeff