Thursday, January 8, 2015

Nah, Back to Skimming and Scanning


The respite in the heaviness of detail and didacticism in the book am reading with the young spiritual friend, has ended.  The author returns to chains of cognition, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter.

Now, the book is well written and marvelous!  The author is fairly famous or was.  The content is filled with researched facts and details that are outstanding.  It is just that have read enough from the two saints in question and other biographies of them, and books on the spiritual life written by masters of the spiritual life, that other than some few tidbits of encouragement of personal nature to this nothing hermit,  am returning to the skimming and scanning modes of reading.

Great book, however, as a compendium of details and overviews for those who are chosen or prone or asked to read it.  And it is read by many people.

Compared to John Climacus, though...there is no comparison.  Consider fresh, pure, desert air.  Then consider a huge grocery store and having to go down every aisle, having to carefully pick through items on each side of each aisle, and having to load up not one but several carts of wonderful food, yes.  And then unloading it all onto a conveyor belt, being grateful for the cashier who handles each item and adds up the total.  Pay, then bag each item and carry it all out, take it home, and eventually eat and digest the stuff.

This nothing Catholic hermit is reduced to just needing some fresh, clear, desert air to breathe.

But awhile back, in another mode and life, it seems, the grocery shopping was a necessary process and venture.  Just not now.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another, for God Is Love!  And, let us love all those who teach us in their writings in all styles and modalities, how to know and love God and thus one another, better.


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