Monday, March 13, 2006

Questions, questions, and more questions

Have been on a reading jag... some books I read because I liked the author's other works, some because they are required for a course, some because the picture on the cover looks interesting. I have no discipline in place for my reading. Usually there are five or so books on my bedside table and I'll drift through them all every night, a few pages here, a chapter there.The goal is to finish the book, that much I know, but some books never make it to the finish line. They wear out their welcome and I put them back on the shelf. I may read them years later when the cosmic need arises, or not.

I've read most everything that Daniel Quinn has written. The Story of B was my first, then Ishmael. After that I was hooked. So I've just finished The Holy, by far the darkest of his novels I've read so far. One sister started it before me and handed it off because it was too scary. I'm not much for scary anymore, myself, but hey, it was Daniel Quinn. So I began reading. Yes, it was scary to begin with and got worse as I went along. This is Daniel Quinn? I asked myself. I kept reading. Ah... concepts I've heard before... familiar territory with a twist. I loved it. But, as most of his books do, it raised questions. Why do we see the world as we do? Who told us it had to be this way? What authority did they have to say it had to be the only way to think?

I know I am a liberal who treads the razor's edge between truth and blasphemy. I've been cut more than once. But I also know in my heart of hearts that our God wants more from us than a blind "yes sir, no sir, anything you say sir..." If it were not so, why give us brains? Brains that can reason and question and realize on a deep level that there are some things we just don't (and maybe never will) understand.

3 comments:

HeyJules said...

So this is where this morning's post over at CCC came from! Or did this post come from that one? Either way...I like the way you do things, CJ.

Anonymous said...

You have affirmed what I've always known and love about you.

Anonymous said...

My sentiments exactly! Why would God give us brains unless He/She intended that we use them?? I have never been able to believe that the brain was created but was not to be used. That would make no sense at all. .....and I often read the same way too, several books at once.