Happy New Year

My favorite book is usually the one I just read.  I am coming out of a book coma where I finished "The Island";  "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"; "The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer" "My Losing Season" and am still plugging away with "Reaching Deeper".  There is no need to ask what I did over winter vacation.

I would love to speak to them all but Guernesy.......will take top billing.  I would never have picked this book up because of the ridiculous title.  I thought it was some mad mystery caper set in a dank Scottish castle.  Again I will state for the record that two years of Texas history and no world history or geography does not help orient one if they have the audacity to move out of Texas.  Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands and now I know the Channel has islands.  Read the book, it is quite lovely and join a book club where you are forced to read books with ridiculous titles.

Bradford Washburn fell in my estimation after reading that he insisted his wife accompany him to Alaska, leaving their newborn babe at home with grandparents.  Pat Conroy (the losing season) rose.  As a center, I have a love/hate relationships with point guards but he captured something about the game, and leaving it.

This brings me to my new year's wish for the world.  We all need to read.  To have enough food and light and peace to lose ourselves in what was, what could be, and what will be.  We take it for granted, just like clean water and gortex.  May we never forget the abundance of wealth that is at our fingertips when we read and may we work together to have this be a right for all. 

Laurel Hallman, a UU minister put together a book of her sermons "Reaching Deeper".  This passage is from How to HelpYour Child have a Spiritual Life:

Our children should be taught poems and scripture so that they will have wisdom words within their hearts throughout their lives.  It is important that they be able to move comfortably among the world's great religions but it is even more important that they know themselves as religious people, as having 'thou' relationships with people they know, with nature and with the holy in life.

Happy New Year.  May the upcoming year be filled with books, wisdom words and thou relationships with all that is holy in life.

namaste