Читать книгу Oikos: God’s Big Word for a Small Planet - Andrew Francis - Страница 4

This book owes its genesis to my life’s journey through so many countries and communities, and with good compañeros—I have been blessed by God in every one of them.

Without our family’s ophthalmologist, Peter Rocket, and my gifted cataract surgeon, Thamir Yasen, I would have lost so much of my sight while this book was being written, and would have given my library away, and you would have had only a tiny bibliography. But without my high school wrestling with E. F. Schumacher and Peter Kropotkin, and the biblical prophets and the Gospels about Jesus of Nazareth, I would not have begun to see the world as I have come to understand it.

Without my mother’s and father’s encouragement, I would not have traveled or learned to make multidisciplinary connections about life, the universe, and everything that impacts the communities in which we live.

But my “brothers in alms” and their wives keep me challenging my own lifestyle and learning, asking the big and detailed questions which develop the “currency of ideas.” It is also the hope and conversation of my close family’s next generation, now wrestling with their university studies and first jobs, that inspire me to dedicate this book to them, too.

So it is thanks to both James Stock and Robin Parry, at Wipf and Stock, who recognized the potential for and supported the publication of this book. Thanks to Rodney Clapp, my wise and patient editor there, all the backroom team, Mike Surber for the great cover, and their publicity crew for ensuring you hold this book in your hands. Thank you to you for (buying and) reading it.

Without the support and critique of many friends, this book would not have made it this far. My thanks go to Allan Armstrong, Ollie Henshall, Sarah Lane Cawte, Poppy Leeder, Annie J. Peters, Paul Sunners, and Jeremy Thomson, who all read extracts or discussed the trajectories of the text as it was being brought together. I owe many thanks to Trisha Dale for pulling the text into Chicago style shape. Thank you also to Alastair McIntosh and Stuart Masters for the back cover commendations.

Finally, I can never give nor show enough gratitude to my loving partner, Janice Hodby. She shares my “take” on the world, our home, and mutual joy in hospitality, as we welcome friend and stranger. Whether in that welcoming, or cultivating our garden, or just watching the sunset, Janice patiently inspires me to write day after day.