Seeing without Seeing - Literature and Awe

I am 21 and have so much experience with Literature it's nearly choked me to death. But I still want to read it, still try and find a quiet place and time to read. It has to be quiet and I have to be able to get away for a bit because when I read I forget the practicalities of life, escape reality, and indulge for a while. It has never been easy for me to come out of a reading coma, emerging is kind of like making my real world a fantasy as much as the fantasy world I've just come from.

This can happen with any text, a biology book can take you into a reverie of the body just as easily as a novel will let you laugh and cry. 

I... I just... well... an example, one example? 

How about “Believing Christ” by Stephen E. Robinson.

Why? because it's the first book I saw on my bookshelf across the room, I have a blog post I need to write, and all those books meant something to me. We'll talk about this one.

Do I dare discuss a text I hold so dear to my heart.

I picked this book up from the local DI on a whim, a friend across the room told me to get it, one of his favorites. For $3 dollars that was the most wisdom I have ever gained. 

"We hope you will enjoy this book as much as we have. Read it often and "Believe in Christ."

All Our Love 

Mom + Dad

was written on the front cover. A message from a couple I didn't know, but now appreciate their gift to someone else.

From the opening I learned:

We live behind a wall of expectations in life.

"Documenting oneself or one's experiences, reflections, and views is very hard. Thus readers will either agree with my opinions or disagree, as they choose. Because the material here is personal, I have tried to use the same style I would in the classroom or in conversation, including the colloquial and elliptical, the ironic and the sarcastic. For this I apologize to Miss Wood, my seventh grade English teacher, who taught me to know better. I claim no outside authority as proof of any of these private opinions, though I have dutifully inserted as many notes as I could manage in a book of this nature, which though ostensibly theological is also unabashedly devotional. And I would like the reader to know that I believe what is said here."

This was the most honest a book has ever been for me. So easy to understand. And so self-aware. Self conscious almost.

Please forgive me but this I must say

Take this book at it's word,

they are my words.

I share them with you.

This is the power of Literature, the purpose we often forget and the reason we search for books like this. Literature is meant to inspire an awe of relationships and how, over years, or decades, or centuries we still get to communicate about what's in our hearts. 

"We make the most progress by working at the limits of our abilities..."

"Our very real goal is perfection..."

"Our salvation is not hanging in the balance, for that issue is already settled if we are keeping our covenants."

"Our best efforts will be accepted as payment in full- at least for now."

I spoke to Brother Robinson 

I picked up his book and we chatted

and talked about divinity and acceptance

and never looked at him once.

That is the awe of literature.