Recent Reading

 In the past two weeks I've read the following: 

I hadn't planned on reading two books back to back about Priests (one Catholic, one Anglican) and their respective parishes but it happened. I'll be honest though, I don't think I would have continued with Diary of a Country Priest if I had not been reading and listening along with the Close Reads Podcast. The hosts were able to open the book up in a way I could not have done on my own. Being written as a diary there wasn't a traditional plot, the passages were scattered and difficult to follow, much like a diary will read, and I had to constantly reorient myself whenever I returned to it. That being said, I knew I was reading something profound and beautiful, even if I could not explain or understand it fully. I'd like to think I'd reread it again in the years to come. It was sad but moving and gave me a deeper appreciation of the vocation of the Priesthood and the hidden suffering that comes from being the spiritual father and confessor to a parish. 

I Heard the Owl Call My Name is an unexpected highlight of my reading year. The writing and story were humble and quiet, much like the characters themselves. At less than 160 pages I could easily have read it one or two sittings but the writing and the story worked on me in such a way that I had to pause, slow down and savour what I was reading. I can't quite explain why, it is "so simple, it is difficult," as one character in the story remarks. I will definitely reread this book again soon. 

Some favourite passages from Diary of a Country Priest:

"That was when it occurred to me that the world is consumed with boredom. Of course, you have to think about it a little to realize this, it can't be grasped immediately. It's a kind of dust. You come and go without seeing it, you breathe it in, you eat it, you drink it, and it's so fine, so thin, that it doesn't even crunch between your teeth. You only need stop for a second and it covers your face, your hands. You have to move constantly to shake off this rain of ashes. And the world moves alot." p4.

"A true priest is never loved, remember that." p11.

"The desire to pray is already a prayer..." p85.

"That expression, 'losing faith' - as one might lose one's purse or a bunch of keys - has always struck me as rather foolish... One doesn't lose faith, it stops informing one's life, that's all." p99.

"Hell means no longer to love. As long as we are alive, we can delude ourselves, think that we love through our own strength, that we love outside God. But we are like the madmen reaching their arms out to the reflection of the moon in the water." p139.

Some favourite passages from I Heard The Owl Call My Name:

"...And his eyes were bright with eagerness, like the eyes of the three younger boys, and none knew that when the canoe left the shallows and the current took it, he was leaving his boyhood behind and would not find it again." p103.

"...It seemed to him that something strange had happened to time. When he had first come to the village, it was the future that loomed huge. So much to plan. So much to learn. Then it was the present that had consumed him - each day with all its chores and never enough hours to do them. Now time had lost its contours." p145.

"'Stay with us. [Keetah said,] Marta has told us. We have written the Bishop and asked that he let you remain here to the end, because this is your village and we are your family. You are the swimmer who came to us from the great sea,' and he put his arms around her and held her close, finding no words to say thank you for the sudden, unexpected gift of peace which they had offered him in their quiet, perceptive way." p149-150. 

"The women were alone with the young, the old, the sick, as women have been left to wait through all the ages everywhere." p152. 

"In the night the only light in the village was that from the lantern which Jim had placed in the little church of Saint George. The village was quiet and at peace. In her house old Marta lay awake in the dark and she said softly, 'Walk straight on, my son. Do not look back. Do not turn your head. You are going to the land of our Lord.' In the last house of the village, Peter, the carver, lay awake also, and he remembered that in the old days when a great chief died, his soul came straight back to the village in the sleek black body of a raven, and the soul of a lesser man returned in his own body no higher than an inch, or as a ha-moo-moo, a butterfly. Peter did not believe this literally. Yet it seemed likely to him that the soul of the young vicar would return to the village he had loved, as would his own, and surely it would be most inhospitable if no one was awake and waiting. Thus he dressed and sat on the top step of his house in the dark night, and hearing the rustle of some small night creature he, too, spoke softly, 'It is only old Peter, the carver, who waits here, friend.'" p157.