Sunday, October 28, 2012

Faith

Yesterday, cleaning house, I went to tuck a photo into a book.

The picture is one of my dad, receiving from the rest of us a massive box of books - the set by Will an Ariel Durant, on the history of the world.  Even today, it's a good set, and dad had this odd idea, oh, must've been twelve years ago now - he wanted to read these books.  When you're diagnosed with a terminal disease, back-of-the-mind books you've wanted, and BMW Z3 convertibles, have a way of moving forward.
The photo shows him, box on lap, one book in hand, glasses on, a wide smile of surprised pleasure welling up from him.  He'd never imagined his little girl would go on a website her college creative writing professor had told her about, Bibliofind, and find a set in good condition, and that the family would order them for him.

He made it about to the Renaissance, if I recall.  Not a poor showing given something less than two years' reading and a stack of books so thick a standard Hammermill paper box scarcely contained the whole.


When I opened the book to tuck the photo back in (it was the blessed only disarrangement suffered in a bit of a bashing by the puppy), inside the cover were some sheets of yellow tablet paper.  Paging through them, they turned out to be blank.

But the post-it note behind them wasn't.

"If I believe in God, I have difficulty.  If I believe in no God, I have more difficulties."  --Judah Nodiah.

Count on dad to include the credit.

Today I haven't gone to Church, but this was the top post on my Blogger dashboard.  It made me think - I'm so selfish.  I worry less about my seeing G-d than about G-d's seeing me.

Wikimedia curves


For more about the world-blind habit of curvatus en se human thinking - ponder the question, "Does a bear poop in the woods?" or its selfish corollary, the one about trees falling when no person is around to hear them ...

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