read the books

http://www.isisscrolls.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1371&Itemid=17

Hi Mags,

I found the article and poem for you.  I hope you like it as much as I did.  It was very provocative for me.

Stirring the pot might just have been a round of, "Let's be brave...I'll go first."  I don't know if I would have felt led to out myself as an animist.  I guess I'm not interested in the drama.  It feels a little different to me, obviously...

My day was work, scrub the dining room floor, mow half the front lawn, catch up on email, write minutes for a meeting I attended this weekend, answer the phone a lot...and now it's bedtime.  Another day in the life...

I'm looking back at my jotted notes from my trip, trying to catch up.

Before I left I went to my son's for dinner.  I took ice cream and a gift, a book, for my granddaughter, who does not like cake.  Seems we have a lot of those anti-cake individuals in this family!  My granddaughter loves to read, and she ran into her room and brought me her absolutely favorite book.  She gave it to me to read on the bus.

I was honored that she wanted to share with me.

The novel is titled Wonder, and is about a boy born with a genetic defect that left him with a deformed face. The story shared his first year in public school.  My granddaughter loved it because the story was told with four different voices. The whole point of the book was about overcoming differences and creating community.

I got to read three books on the way out. The second day I read Laughing Boy.  It is a novel written in the 1920s.  I know I have mentioned my friend who died last December.  He wanted me to read this book, and gave it to me several years ago.  When he was a young adult, my friend was interested in Native American life and so he went to live on a nearby reservation for several years, and became fluent in their language.

The book was about Native American life at the time of the European invasion.  It was about the clash of cultures.  One character was raised traditionally.  Another was taken by the Catholics and forced into Catholic boarding school. She believed in that way of life for awhile, but then began to understand she needed to live her own culture.  But getting it back proved impossible.  What struck me and stayed with me, though, is that the main character, the traditionally raised man, knew how to live The Beauty Way.  Everything in his life flowed, or he felt it was off.  He knew how to live in beauty.

I have been pulling that apart in my mind. How do we even recognize beauty, much less conform to its way? I seem to bump my way through life.  Nothing feels especially beautiful...

Well, except my children, except where I live...

I think maybe I have a problem with focus and perception...more to think about...

The last book I read on the way out was The Way East by Hermann Hesse.  That dealt with levels of reality and where we choose to dwell.

Thnking about it now, these three random books really were a philosophical trilogy!

How cool is that?

Love and hugs from Clare