Lessons of a Bookworm

  Books teach lots of lessons, sometime it's something the author intended and sometimes it's something that only you can take away from the book, a combination of the authors words and your unique experiences. This isn't to be an exhaustive list, just a random bit of things I've learned reading books.
   From Siddhartha I learned that a book doesn't have to be big to pack a big impact and from Hermann Hesse that loving one book by an author doesn't mean you'll love the rest of his work; but even if you don't love the story (Demian) it can still resonate with you for years to come. Also from Siddhartha and from some of Salinger's work I learned that we often have to forget what we know in order to learn what we need to know.
  Speaking of Salinger, Salinger taught me that, "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "F you" signs in the world. It's impossible."While he probably didn't intend to Salinger also taught me that a certain amount of phoniness is not only normal but necessary for society to function, sorry Holden. Salinger, Vonnegut, and Hemingway also taught me that war is indeed hell; although Hemingway made it sound a bit like a romantic hell.
  Tolstoy taught me in Anna Karenina that really big books usually have lots of filler that has nothing to do with the stories being told. That sometimes regular romances seem much more desirable when compared with flashy, star struck ones and that the main story in a book isn't always the best one.
   Speaking of Russian's, Dostoevsky taught me many things and I've only read two of his books so far. He taught me that a man can reason anything, even murder can seem reasonable when dwelt on too long. He taught me that 'classics' could be interesting stories, and (with The Brothers Karamazov) that the parts of a book can be greater than it's sum. He taught me that people don't know what to do with freedom and would rather have laws and dogma, and that we are all responsible for the worst among us because we didn't reach them when we had a chance.
   Dai Sijie, Paulo Coelho and Laura Esquivel taught me that there are non-English writing authors out there definitely worth reading, Coelho gave me the only version of the story of Job I've ever really liked and also made me see how a writer can mess up his own story by inserting too much of himself into it. Sijie taught me about Chinese reeducation camps (in the 1960s) and how literature can free the mind. And Esquivel taught me that a book can be smoldering hot, fantastical, romantic and contain recipes all at the same time.
   Neil Gaiman showed me fairy tales are also for adults.
   Joyce Carol Oates showed me how a house can be a major character in a story.
   Christopher Moore and Tom Robbins showed me that a warped imagination can be a good thing, that profanity can be prose and that red heads can be real trouble. Moore also gave the world Pocket (a unique reworking of Shakespeare's fool from King Lear)and Abby Normal, which maybe isn't a lesson learned but a good thing all the same; remember when Abby was talking about Boo Radley?
   Which brings me to Harper Lee, who taught me it's not always easy to stand up for your principles but it's always worth it. Cyrano de Bergerac tempered that lesson by teaching me that standing up for those beliefs to the point of being obsessive about them can lead to loneliness and death. Cyrano also showed me you can love a character even if he's a dick and in a similar vain Lolita showed that you can sympathize with even a very base protagonist with the right writer at the helm.
   Stephen King showed me how important a good ending is, and Elizabeth Kostova showed me how a terrible ending can ruin an otherwise amazing book. The Notebook showed how you can love the ending of a book even though you're reading it through a torrent of tears.
   Speaking of endings brings me to the end of my blog, again not an exhaustive list by any means, but these are some of the lessons I've learned from my time spent between the pages of books. Some were about literature in general and some from more of a personal growth perspective. I hope I can be as good a man as Atticus without being quite a Cyrano, I hope to be as peaceful as Siddhartha but with a Fool-ish streak, to be as passionate as quail in rose petal sauce flavored by Tita's erotic thoughts and as devoted as Noah Calhoun.

A Once Controversial Topic

  

   First of all let me begin with the obligatory I haven't blogged in awhile and had almost  forgotten I had a blog, and now on with the show. Once upon a time there was an issue that divided people, families, and communities; it even landed some people in jail. It was a hot topic issue that people held deeply seated opinions about and yet today it's pretty much a non-issue to most of us. The issue I'm discussing is, please don't be offended by this, baptism.
   To be honest it's never been much of an issue to me and still isn't one I'd get upset over but I find myself in a position of reevaluating my assumptions on the topic. I believe almost all Christian denominations practice baptism in one form or another, it and communion being the only sacraments recognized by most protestant denominations, but when and how you get wet has led to splits in churches and all the aforementioned hubbub. I was raised in the Baptist tradition and was indoctrinated in their belief of full-immersion, believers baptism (I'll explain this in a minute if your not sure what I mean) but I've almost certainly left the Baptist denomination and have been visiting other mainline Christian churches which will perform and accept the Baptist style of baptism but they also practice sprinkling or pouring of water and (the thing most foreign to the way I was taught) infant baptism.
    Now let's get into the mechanics of it all for a bit. There are some denominations that believe baptism is required to gain salvation and thereby getting your get into heaven card, others (including Baptist) believe that baptism is just an outward show of something you've already done internally (believers baptism), while others believe baptism is a rite, something that all Christians have been commanded to do and it symbolizes what Christ did for humanity, not anything that humans ourselves have done (hence the baptism of infants). Also the manner of ceremonial washing is a dividing point between Baptists and other mainline Christian groups, the sprinkling and pouring work fine for ceremonial purposes for most protestants but Baptist's (and others like them) believe you must get dunked; this belief comes both from the fact that Jesus was dunked in the Jordan River and it's representation of death and rebirth.
    Last Sunday in the liturgical calendar was the Sunday to celebrate Jesus' baptism and as we were visiting Central United Methodist Church (CUMC) in Uptown Shelby this issue was brought to mind, and (as is usually the case in my family) it brought about a humorous situation. At the end of the service the pastor poured water into a baptismal fount and invited the congregation to come forward dip their fingers in and touch it to their forehead to help them remember their baptism, their initiation into Christianity if you will. I started forward to do so, I was baptized around the age of 12 (the median age for Baptists I believe) at Ross Grove Baptist Church in Shelby, and my younger boys saw that there were kids their age going forward and they wanted to go participate as well. Now coming from a Baptist church neither of them has been baptized, but I didn't think it would hurt anything to let them come with me, I and my 7 yr. old son both dipped our fingers and touched them to our foreheads, then my 4 yr. old dipped his fingers in and proceeded to stick them in his mouth. He didn't understand. It was all I could do not to laugh during what was suppose to be a solemn time.
   As we contemplate joining the Methodist denomination we are faced with the decision of when or if to baptize our children. Our oldest has already been baptized, in the baptist tradition, and our other older children will have to decide for themselves but there remains the question of the younger ones. Now I'm looking across this bridge long before we're even close to crossing it, we've by no means committed ourselves anywhere as of yet and when we do I'm sure there will be pastors and others to help us make this type of decision. For me personally, baptism is a tradition and it doesn't bother me when it's done (I'm really more of a humanistic Unitarian with a Christian leaning than a hardline bible thumper) but I'm sure our (almost wholly Baptist) family would not be comfortable nor understand the baptizing of young children. My only other concern in the situation is that if a child doesn't choose for themselves to be, and is not old enough to remember being baptized will it mean anything to them? But then again, while I remember my baptism, I can't say that it holds much meaning for me.
    This so far has been the only big difference I've noticed between the Baptists (in general) and the Methodists. The more specific difference I've noticed (from the baptist church we were attending and CUMC), and the one that started this inquiry into other denominations, is the thankful lack of political posturing. Because I don't want politicians telling me what to believe and I don't want preachers telling me how to vote.
   So what use to be a big church splitting, family tearing issue has become more a matter of preference and inclination, an issue that we may have to come to terms with in the future, or not. I'm sure even within a non-Baptist mainline Church, we could wait and let the kids make that choice for themselves.