Geeky Read

I have been reading  Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, for the past couple of days.  Though I fell upon the audiobook a couple months ago at a thrift store, knowing the premise of the novel involved a boy and a lion (being an animal lover) I really hesitated on reading it because stories with animal characters usually crush my heart and a big messy cry happens at some point during the reading.  Fearing the shedding of tears I waited until I had a day of low energy and I needed something to distract my mind while I rested in bed.  Having zero energy to read I put the first cd on my cd player and quickly was transported to the Pondicherry Zoo in India where I met teenage Pi (a Hindu-Christian-Muslim) who at his young age has such a concrete understanding of God that surpasses many theologians:

   

  

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless.  These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story.  Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words.  The degree of their indignation is astonishing.  Their resolve is frightening.
     These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.  They should direct their anger at themselves.  For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out.  The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.  Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush."  

BEAUTIFUL!

When I come across words that are placed together so precisely and intentional goose bumps literally cover my flesh.  While I still haven’t gotten to the crying part in the novel, I absolutely recommend this book there are so many mind blowing sentences that read like poetic prose and the meaning so deep that it makes the ocean seem shallow. This book might just ruin me for sometime to come where picking up another novel won’t be easy, but perhaps the viewing of the film will be just as significant. 

"I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."