A few of my favorite books...
I decided to reread one of my current favorite series (the Meredith Gentry novels by Laurell K. Hamilton). Book six is still in hardcover, so I had to take it out of the library. It is the best book yet. Not every author can make six more wonderful than book one. Orson Scott Card, for example, is an amazing writer but his series always start to decline rapidly and usually the first book is the best. Right now the seventh book is being written. I crave to read it like a drug running through my veins.
For me a good book is like a drug, but without the potential side affects. Actually, a good book is one hundred times better than any drug that I've tried (granted that isn't much besides alcohol and caffeine). There is something about being dragged into another world and losing yourself in it. It forces you to remember that wonders that are and that could be. It is so easy to live without magic and mystery.
Sometimes I fear that I am losing myself in the most mundane of the mundane. When I was a teenager everything was questions, everything was potential, everything was intense. I'm not sure if it is the intensity that I miss as much as the way I saw the world. A walk in the rain was a religious experience and the sight of the ocean made me want to fall to my knees. I did metaphysics while doing the laundry and ethics while mowing the lawn.
In some ways I think I've grown more balanced. Then I would the rationalist one moment and a mystic the next. Oh, and let's not forget the emotional repression.... There was definitely a lot of that. I think I'm a lot for comfortable with myself now. I don't waste so much energy thinking I'm sinful or weak just because I'm human. I've let go of the gnostic side of myself--it never really meshed with the rest of me anyway. I've accepted that I don't always have to be in complete control. Just because you strive to be reasonable doesn't mean you have to deny your emotions, even when they aren't completely rational. It is ok to be vulnerable if you've found people you trust enough.
There is a lot of pain and doubt that I've left behind. I just wonder sometimes if I can be happy and still desperately seek the answer to life's questions? Can I be fulfilled and still see a god in the wind?
Then I find a book that somehow connects in some way with me and I long again. I long for something that I can't put my name on. C.S. Lewis called it joy. It's that moment when you glimpse something that transcends the ordinary. Joy.
For me a good book is like a drug, but without the potential side affects. Actually, a good book is one hundred times better than any drug that I've tried (granted that isn't much besides alcohol and caffeine). There is something about being dragged into another world and losing yourself in it. It forces you to remember that wonders that are and that could be. It is so easy to live without magic and mystery.
Sometimes I fear that I am losing myself in the most mundane of the mundane. When I was a teenager everything was questions, everything was potential, everything was intense. I'm not sure if it is the intensity that I miss as much as the way I saw the world. A walk in the rain was a religious experience and the sight of the ocean made me want to fall to my knees. I did metaphysics while doing the laundry and ethics while mowing the lawn.
In some ways I think I've grown more balanced. Then I would the rationalist one moment and a mystic the next. Oh, and let's not forget the emotional repression.... There was definitely a lot of that. I think I'm a lot for comfortable with myself now. I don't waste so much energy thinking I'm sinful or weak just because I'm human. I've let go of the gnostic side of myself--it never really meshed with the rest of me anyway. I've accepted that I don't always have to be in complete control. Just because you strive to be reasonable doesn't mean you have to deny your emotions, even when they aren't completely rational. It is ok to be vulnerable if you've found people you trust enough.
There is a lot of pain and doubt that I've left behind. I just wonder sometimes if I can be happy and still desperately seek the answer to life's questions? Can I be fulfilled and still see a god in the wind?
Then I find a book that somehow connects in some way with me and I long again. I long for something that I can't put my name on. C.S. Lewis called it joy. It's that moment when you glimpse something that transcends the ordinary. Joy.