Books Are A Keyhole...

Thursday morning I called my friend Barbara and we went out for breakfast at Dave’s. She hardly needs her walker at all now although she still needs help at curbs and stairs.

Barbara had just been interviewed for some radio program but she couldn’t remember the name of the station or the time her interview will be broadcast. That was a great laugh because the topic of the program was “The Nursing Home As a Mission Field”!

We talked about books comparing conflict between good and evil in the writings of favorite authors Stephen King, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. Barbara pointed out that some of my confusion lies in viewing things as allegory instead of symbol.

She says the authors do not give a point by point analysis of their world view revealing everything, but rather each book is a key hole we peek through to glimpse a bright room where wonderful things are happening.

I think most readers want things spelled out more concisely, hence the popularity of books such as 827 Easy Steps To A Tolerable Life.

Speaking of books, last week the library at Barbara’s nursing home culled their collection to make more space. Barbara brought me some books they were throwing in the trash including a beautiful edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy with the Gustave Dore engravings!

A real treasure!

I’m delighted.

Back home I anxiously checked for progress on the Glog manuscript.

No word.

So I decided to clean the swimming pools (ours and our neighbor’s).

Midway, I came back in the house for something and as I dripped past the phone, Donald called telling me to check my e-mail for more drafts of the book cover… It is shaping up terrific!

But that deserves a posting all by itself.

After supper Ginny & I snuggled on the sofa to watch the President’s speech from New Orleans. I felt it contained several disturbing elements.

For one thing he said the federal government would reimburse cash to churches for their work in relieving disaster victims. Why in the world should churches be paid for doing do what churches are supposed to do? Worship and work are what churches exist for. No government money should be involved. I hope the churches have the integrity to say, “No, thank you” to Caesar.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone in government or media has ever looked up the words disaster or catastrophe in a dictionary. It doesn’t look like it from the way they toss those words around when it comes to relief efforts.

I also wonder if any of them has ever read a history book.

This disaster follows the classic pattern of all disasters since Pompeii. In fact, I imagine that if you took Pliny The Younger’s account and substituted the word helicopter for the word trireme, and hurricane for volcano, and if you changed the place names, why it could be printed in today’s newspaper as an account of New Orleans and few people would notice any difference. The pattern is classic and we are just following it without knowing.

But enough of that…

Lord, help me to do what I can, where I am, with what I have.