Quotable

I was reading a book by Yann Martel: The Life of Pi, when this quote jumped out at me:

If we do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the alter of crude reality, and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

What do you think of that assessment?

I recently critiqued a book for not being true to reality. My complaint was justified in my mind because the beginning and ending of this book were based in reality, but then the middle was suspended in a surrealism that I thought not fitting.

How awful I was to judge a book by such standards, when it is in fact the goal of certain literature to pull us out of this sticky and messy reality, and place us gently into the realms of imagination - dreams.

Ironically, the book I'm reading - "Life of Pi" does that very same thing. I hope you might find time to read it.

IN-and-OUT

We were home for 36 hours. That is the time it took us to unpack, look for plane tickets, repack, and fly to Michigan. The good news: more time with the Cooke families; the bad news: it was for a funeral. Liz's grandmother passed away on Monday, so we celebrated her life, mourned her death, and celebrated again for her new life without pain - with our Lord.

We had accepted the fact that we would miss three days of work for this trip, but Nebraska had different plans:



All three days of work we had planned on missing were cancelled due to snow and weather, so we are grateful for that. What a blessing! We will be flying home on Saturday, and hopefully by Monday we are back in business.

We're home!

Well, after a crazy break, we return to our beautiful apartment in the basement of the Davy's home, and we are happy. The weather was threatening our travels every step of the way, but it never amounted to anything when we needed to drive. The times with family were spectacular, and we are so blessed by being around them.

Heather's blog mentioned a dislike for setting resolutions for the new year, and I couldn't agree more, BUT (there's always a but) I need to set a goal for this year. I will read these books. All of them.



The best books in the bunch are going to be "Travels with Charlie" by Steinbeck, "The Far Pavilions" by M. M. Kaye, and "The Reason for God" by Tim Keller.

The books I'm afraid of are "Armageddon" by Leon Uris, and "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. (Side note AND plug for Google: Both the names "Aleksandr" & "Solzhenitsyn" were already part of the dictionary because it didn't put little "squiggle-lines" under them.)

Consumerism

That word is my nemesis. Actually, the word has done nothing wrong, but its meaning unveils my greatest downfall. Allow me to expound on the subject, and feel free to judge.

For Christmas I have been given many glorious gifts. Examples:










Allow me to hit this point home... the problem is NOT in the wonderful gifts I have received. (They are all great, and I have only listed a small portion of them here!) The problem is that after all of these spectacular gifts, I am still looking up prices for flat screen HDTV's, Blue-ray players, Nike irons, furniture, houses, clothes, books, and this list could go on for a while. (I think you get the point.) Enough is never enough. More is even worse.

I won't even get into supporting Compassion Intl, the local church, etc... because giving gifts isn't the problem AT ALL! I give money to these organizations and I urge you to as well, but regardless, do I need to always be looking for new things to buy? I submit that I do NOT.