Traveling in Cardboard Boats

---

I never went to college. I was not a happy camper in high school and then at 16 years old I met my husband and we got married when I was 18 in February and our oldest son was born the following year in September. Then it was off to the races raising three boys and running multiple businesses. Now in my advancing years I have been drawn to self-directed learning. I have always written. Mostly to just keep sane but in 2018 I self-published a small book of poetry, more accurately described as free verse, and in 2024 I self-published a 30 day devotional. 

After those publications were completed, with that exposure, I began to grow more insecure about my expertise in both poetry and publishing so I have been studying and reading and I had an interesting thought yesterday when I was reading something and I decided to follow up that train of thought - which started with making the picture associated with this commentary. As I read I grew weary of what I read and opinions and what kind of foundation the opinions written were based on and I thought about what would happen if you traveled on water in a cardboard boat…I frequently compare what I consider things without true nourishment to eating cardboard…and I applied this same analogy here...a lack of substance.

Today I am following up with this writing.

Wendall Berry is an author that passed away recently. I have read quite a few of his books. Somehow in my reading of tributes to him I ran across an organization called The Dark Mountain Project. I had never heard of them before and I was intrigued and began to read their manifesto and as I read I began to have another conversation in my thoughts as I read and it went something like this…they are saying in paragraphs what is common to man and could be said in a few sentences and they are depressing and offer no hope in their assessment of the world. 

In a very small nutshell, The Dark Mountain Project believes that humans erect a stable process around themselves to feel secure but there is not any security in that and they deceive themselves. I say, what else is new? They write and write and in my opinion are doing the very same thing in their writing, erecting a process of thought which makes them feel stable in their wit and powers of observation. And as I read I began to wonder about it and how I could comment using my wit and powers of observation…yet I can’t do any better than scripture in my response.

“But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the pace of understanding? Man does not know its worth, and it is not found in the land of the living.”          Job 28:12-13

“God understands the way to it,

and he knows its place.

  For he looks to the ends of the earth

and sees everything under the heavens.

  When he gave to the wind its weight

and apportioned the waters by measure,

  when he made a decree for the rain

and a way for the lightning of the thunder,

  then he saw it and declared it;

he established it, and searched it out.

  And he said to man,

‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,

and to turn away from evil is understanding.’”      

Job 28:23-28