No Cloistered Airport

I have been reading "An Infinity of Little Hours" which is about five young men who seek to become Carthusian monks. The order is one of the most demanding, with the monks living lives of solitude and silence, in a setting that is much as it might have been when the order was founded just after the first millennium. I had this book in my bag on Wednesday when I was traveling. It was a morning of snow and ice, and the airport was shut down for about five hours. There were crowds of people trying to get to warm places, or places for business, or just places other than where they were. And the planes were not flying and the children were fussy and so were the grownups. I tried to read a bit in the book, but it seemed such a contrast that I gave up. And I have been wondering about the struggle of the monks to sense the presence of God, to immerse themselves in prayer, to live faithful lives in a place where the the distraction is themselves. It was a struggle for them, as the book recounts, and not all of them succeeded. And how much more for those of us in places like that airport on Wednesday morning, with noise and crowds and frustration, with short tempers and long waits, with too much coffee and too little sleep and nothing even to remind us of thinking about the presence of God. But there we were, and God was there, too, I suppose, even if it was hard to know that. No one I know lives the kind of life that the Carthusians do, but I do know people who live faithful lives of prayer. It is just a lot harder to do outside the cloister.

Keepsake

Writing about my current reading list reminded me of one of my most valuable keepsakes: this photograph. It is of me when I was about two years old. What makes it precious is the notation on the back, written by my Grandy in her beautiful printing. It reads: "Books, books, books -- how she likes them." She saw this in me when I was not even able to read, and it was both a blessing and a prediction for my life.

Books!

Alex is keeping track of all the books she reads this year and challenges others to do the same. I don't know if I will keep track of all of them but here is my early January list: To Darkness and to Death by Julia Spencer-Fleming (starring an Episcopalian priest and former Air Force pilot, now serving in a small upstate New York town, who falls in love with the police chief and solves murders.... pure escapism); Rebecca Wells' Ya-Yas in Bloom, which I did as an audio book with a wonderful reader who did all the Southern voices just as they would have sounded; Fannie Flagg's Standing in the Rainbow, also an audio book (I think I am on a Southern bender here); Anne Perry's A Christmas Secret, and, in progress, Anne Perry's Dark Assassin. None of this is high-brow but then, I don't really need that at the end of my day. I need something that occupies me but does not require too much thought. But I've also gone back to The Public Reading of Scripture, and James Berkley's Leadership Handbook of Management and Administration for my class in pastoral leadership and church administration. If I have to own up to my reading list, I wonder if I will want to read "better" stuff. Who knows? Any of you want to offer suggestions for me to better myself ... or engage in nice, comforting fluff? Let me hear from you!