Wednesday: tonight it is raining so much that the streets are flooding in places

Hello again!
It's evening, it has been a super full day. 

My Husband did a lot of cleaning today

(it's a once-a-month or thereabouts thing) and the 

vacuum always makes me feel like everything is messy.

It's the loud sound it makes.

I got lucky and escaped to the bedroom to read for a bit.

But I also had to help move a table for next weekend

as my Husband is going to reorg his office space,

and I helped clean up some clutter in the livingroom.

And made lunch, dinner. Tonight I whipped around the 

kitchen area cleaning, putting dishes in dishwasher

(having unloaded it with clean dishes twice today),

clearing off the island that was making me crazy

with clutter and generally got ready for tomorrow,

which is another day in NYC for me.

Eye doctor appointment and I hope a quick time

at my library and the MET. 

I knew it would be way too much for me to come home

from being in NYC to a crazy messy kitchen area.

I need things clean and orderly.

***

So, about the book in the first picture.

It's really good.  Great writing.  I loved how she used 

unusual but yet fitting discriptions of things,

like reading a good book was like eating licorice.

The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall 

is a gem.  It's set in NYC, follows four people

who become two married couples,

with both men becoming ministers 

and the wives coming with. 

There's some facinating juxtaposition

where one wife refuses to have faith after experiencing

tragedy when still a teen; the other wife is shocked

when life suddenly has grief but regains her faith;

the men's faith is so different; often uncertain; the one

basically getting mad at God I think when he has 

unexpected tragedy. 

So I think you could say that one of the themes of the

novel is faith and what happens to people when loss,

grief, tragedy come suddenly, slicing their worlds in half

or reducing their previously stable life to shards broken

at the side of the road they never thought they would be on.

I think it was very real and I appreciated the deepening of

character as they grew through suffering. I loved how

each of them learned more humility,

whether they came to faith, retained faith or

continued to struggle with faith. 

I thought the discussion of history and especially the part about 

how people in the Middle Ages 

thought differently than many 

in the 1950s at school where in some schools at least,

 no longer belived in God yet in the Middle Ages

so many, the majority did. 

The question of which age is right was posed 

beautifully and with freedom.

The book's plot is a circle and once you begin reading it, 

you pretty much already know that.

Interesting how stories can be presented in a circle,

in the Middle Ages the circle being more the understanding 

of how history works (instead of linear). 

So if there was one thing I found not answered,

it was about faith being found after suffering that, in many ways,

does not stop in life.   And as I thought about it later, the one

Christian answer to suffering that made the most sense to me

was not really touched on.

That being that God is in the middle of our greatest suffering

there with us, helping us bear it, being with us,

not taking it away but just 

Immanual: God With Us.

This said, it was a worth while read.

At least if you are me.

The book is, in ways, full of questions and disquiet,

and sometimes it made me feel like life is very urgent.

But it was also such a great balance of characters

and about what one needs to do as and in a church,

to lead it.  There is a lot of wisdom in this novel,

when considering that question, with time and place at hand.

Also, with how things feel for so many, it was

exciting to see a novel about people with faith,

Christians in NYC.

So much more to say about it,

but that's enough for now.

***

It is raining a lot. I think there is flooding down the 

street from us.  I am sorry for that.

***

I pray that no matter what, that you

will know that no matter the suffering, 

you are not alone in it.

***

God bless and keep you...