Wednesday

Circumstances

Circumstance (a clogged toilet) led us to spend the evening at the local mall (no clogged toilets). One of our favorite stores there is Barnes and Noble and we all disbursed to find the books we enjoy and settled down to browse and read. Tonight I chose a short story compilation edited by Brett Lott "Eyes to See" and a novel by Rumer Godden "In this House of Brede".

I knew I had a chance of finishing one of the short stories..so I started there and read GK Chesterton's "The Blue Cross". I am not much of a detective story fan, and yet I loved the writing of this little story with several little phrases making me stop and just roll them around on my tongue :)

  • " Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea"
  • " full of an accidental stillness."
  • "there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss."
  • "wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen."

What a way he has with words. Sitting in the big comfy chair with Jasper doing his homework in the chair next to me, the piped -in music suddenly stopped and there were no people walking by......"an accidental stillness".

I looked through the next few short story's and stopped at Shusako Endo's "The Final Martyrs". I first heard of Shusako Endo when I lived in Japan...and yet I had never read anything by him. This short story is graphic in some ways...torture of believers is graphic. The entire time I was wishing I could read it in his native Japanese.......I knew so much was lost in the translation.

On our way out of the store my eye was caught by a display in the religion section. The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning....another book I had heard of years ago and never read. I bought it :)

In looking at the first chapter a sentence stuck out to me "The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded" I bought it for my dear husband, Anonimo, who I knew would find much to like in this book.

This same dear husband is working away at that stubborn clogged toilet. He has just gone by carrying a large bucket......we are hopeful that he will be successful.

A victim of circumstance ;)


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