"The sun rises over the marsh, and the sky turns pale pink and blue. The house is quiet. A white-tailed deer prances behind a clump of palmettos and disappears into semidarkness. Birdsong begins. I’ve been on a near-constant jag of reading and writing about Jimmy Carter for three weeks straight. I’m wiped. My writing table and the old pine floor around me are littered with his books: Living Faith; A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power; An Outdoor Journal; Always a Reckoning and Other Poems; Our Endangered Values; A Remarkable Mother; A Government as Good as Its People.
I could keep listing the titles; they just go on and on. The man wrote 32 books. Year after year, Jimmy Carter wrote and shared lessons learned during his impactful life. Reflections at Ninety testified to his prolificacy as a writer. The audio version won him his ninth Grammy nomination and third win for Best Spoken Word Album. If you haven’t had the pleasure of listening to Jimmy Carter read his books in his distinctive southwestern Georgia drawl, you should go to your local library or streaming service and download one right now and start listening. I’m overwhelmed by the sheer volume of his words. Leafing through his final book, Faith: A Journey for All, written when he was 95 and a particular favorite of mine, I find this passage that renews my hope and inspires me to do better:
What are the goals of a person or a denomination or a country? They are remarkably the same: a desire for peace; a need for humility, for examining one’s faults and turning away from them; a commitment to human rights in the broadest sense of the words, based on a moral society concerned with the alleviation of suffering because of deprivation or hatred or hunger or physical affliction; and a willingness, even an eagerness, to share one’s ideals, one’s faith, with others, to translate love in a person to justice.'◊'"
~ Jim Barger, Jr. &:Jimmy Carter
"Jimmy Carter: Unwavering"— THE BITTER SOUTHERNER
https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2024/jimmy-carter-unwavering-100
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