I have little need of books when the heart of the world is written everywhere else. Entranced by the acumen of others, enamored with the idea of knowledge, lost in a world of literal words, I failed to see it for too long: a tableau of texts right there in the raven sky as numerous as the stars, a love letter in the autumn leaves cast in crimson, beige, and saffron hues, another kind of book free for the senses in the morning light and in the mourning dove’s song, an intimate invitation to a new word etched in every stone, and with no need for a Rosetta Stone, only clear eyes, a soft heart, and a willingness to slow down. My belonging is the world; I am nature, not merely in it, but part and parcel of it, as much as the seas, trees, and sky, and thus I am capable of being read, too, as are you, the toll of time evidenced in our bodies, the story of our lives evinced in our eyes, history lined in our hands, hope and heartache revealed in the face. Medieval scholastics referred to this way of reading the universe as the liber mundi or “book of the world,” the cosmos itself regarded as a source of revelation, signs and symbols, numbers and letters everywhere and in every thing, read one way by science, another by religion, and known to all who take time and make time to simply be. One of the key differences between an ordinary book and the book of the world is that the former is static while the latter dynamic, living and breathing, enabling not only reading and understanding but a deep, abiding conversation. As much as we apply a hermeneutics of the heart to our reading of the world, the world in turn reads and reveals us, through our relationships, through love and loss, through the elements, a cool breeze coaxing us away from wayward thoughts, the aroma of a rose restoring within us a right spirit, the turning of the tide naturally turning the page of our lives.