Spiritual Reflections

Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah provide Muslims and Jews an opportunity to reflect on their spiritual lives and renew their commitment to their faith. Christians do not have a similar holiday period of reflection, but perhaps Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah can serve that purpose, at least for me. It is good for me to reflect that God is Spirit, and He created all minds as part of His own Mind. His Mind is perfect, and all of His creations are perfect, remaining within His Mind and part of His Mind. His creations can never change, remaining forever a perfect part of His perfect Mind. Our only function while we are in this world is "forgiveness", a coming to perceive the Mind of God as it acts through our fellow man, overlooking the mistakes made by our fellow man, focusing our attention completely on the Spirit within him. This task is not easy for us to accomplish, but it is our only "salvation" from the "sins" of our fellow man. We are "saved" from his "sins" as we overlook them and focus on the perfect Spirit within him. "I am determined to see." A Course in Miracles.

An Enemy of the People

Although Henrik Ibsen wrote An Enemy of the People in 1882, it remains almost eerily current. The play was very well done and reminded us once again of its powerful message. The play was about a doctor in a small town in Norway, who discovered that the local healing baths were contaminated with bacteria and people were getting sick. He brought his finding to the town authorities, but they wanted to silence him because the local baths generated income for the town from tourists who came to the baths. He was horrified and tried to make his findings public; however, he was thwarted in his efforts, and the more he tried, the stronger the townspeople acted against him and his family. Finally, he was completely ruined.

The play reminds us that even today, "morality" must decide between public health and welfare on the one hand and public wealth on the other. Politicians depend for their very lives on money, so it seems that often they choose the financial well-being of their donors over the greater public good. Just last year, the arthritis drug Vioxx was found to increase the risk of heart attacks and stroke and it was withdrawn from the market. However, scientists at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) testified before the Congress that the health threat of Vioxx had been known for more than two years, but they had been prevented from speaking about it. Even when action was finally taken to remove the drug from the market, the action was taken by the company making the drug, rather than the FDA. Just as when Ibsen wrote this play, the public must decide on the morality of their elected officials versus the morality of those who try to protect them from dangers to their health and their wealth. Inspectors General constantly face this same obstacle in trying to do their jobs. Ibsen remains current today, and one can only hope that eventually he will not be.

The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks

I have a brother. When we were growing up, we were very close, but then life led us to different coasts, three thousand miles apart. Our lives became quite different, and we gradually became less close. When I saw the Nicholas Sparks book, Three Weeks With My Brother, I thought it would be interesting and bought it. I did find it interesting, but even more interesting to me was Sparks' description of the start of his writing career, which was included in the book. He said that he was in a job that he did not like, and was complaining about it one day to his mother, and she said, "Stop complaining and write a book." Over the next several years, he wrote a book that became The Notebook. He told the story of how he struggled with the book, and how he struggled in finding an agent and then in selling the book to a publisher. I found that story very interesting.

I had never read a book by Nicholas Sparks, although he has written 11 novels. I had heard that he wrote romance novels, but I didn't really know much about him. Then this summer, I was given a copy of The Notebook, but still I was not interested enough to read it until now. It is a book that was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year, and a successful movie was made of the book.

So what did I think of the book? It is a very short book. It is the story of the beginning of a love, and the end. As I began to read the book, I found that the writing style was elementary, and I was quite put off by it. Feelings were badly expressed, sentences curt, words elementary. I found it difficult to read the book because of the elementary nature of the writing. However, it is a short book, and I continued to read it, and I found the second part of the book about the end of life very moving. I understand the popularity of the book, not because of the first part, but the second. It is not a great book, but it is a moving brief description of a couple dealing with Alzheimer's disease.

Life of Pi

To me the Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a children's book. It is a fantasy adventure story of a teen age boy. Reading the book was like returning to childhood. I found nothing adult about the book. Although some reviewers called the book a "fable", I do not agree; a fable has a moral, and I did not find a moral in this story. Other reviewers saw religious or spiritual symbolism in the book, but I did not. The first part of the book was about a teen age boy in India, and his interests in animals (his father was a zookeeper) and religion (he was interested in all religions). The main part of the book was a story of being lost at sea in a lifeboat with a 450 pound Bengal tiger. I found this part of the book somewhat boring, like his endless days at sea. I also found this part of the book to be perfect for a child, but really too much of an unrealistic fantasy for me. It was not adult. This book won the Man Booker Prize in 2002. I'm not sure if it won as a children's book or not, but if not, then I am not sure why it won. I would recommend the book to a child, but not to an adult.