poisonwood easter

a friend of mine gave me the book "the poisonwood bible" to read. as we had been discussing alumni of my parents' and my brother's alma mater. and barbara kingsolver is one of those.

and i've avoided reading this book up to now, because i so hate oprah winfrey. if she likes something, it makes me not want to like it. i know that's silly and childish, but she's (Oprah) SO wrong on education issues that i can't stomach her. and if oprah stamps her stupid little circle on a book, i try like hell not to read it. and yes, i know, i've probably missed a lot of great great books because of that. still, childish, i am. and there are so many great books in the world, surely i can find a few that oprah and her staff have not ruined for me.

but my friend took the trouble to bring this book to my house for me. and since i have great respect for my friend, i figured, i should ditch my oprahhate, just this once. after all, it's timely even- what with the state of the congo and all.

so, i am not finished with with the book yet. i'm only about 3/4 through it and i don't know how it ends. but i just finished a particularly astonishing part of it.

it's also easter today. and on top of that, tomorrow is the anniversary of my father's death. and i went to church with some of my family today and my mother had easter flowers dedicated for us in memory of him. and there is an interim minister there. who wasn't much. his little bio, that he seemed to have provided the information for himself, smacked of him thinking he was a clever man. but you could tell he really wasn't.

but at least he wasn't like the minister/father in the book. he wasn't a self-righteous, arrogant, egotistical pig of a man. just a little vain and stupid is all.

so the book makes you think quite a lot about the whole concept of the christian god. and you think about it through the eyes of 5 very distinct and different mature and immature precocious storytellers. and i'm just at a part where one of the daughter/storytellers in the story has the whole god thing, that she's been taught all her life, thrown right up in her face.

another character tells her "i'm telling you what i'm telling you. don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. when you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky."

and her thoughts answer, "i could see what he thought; that my faith in justice was childish, no more useful here than tires on a horse. i felt the breath of god grow cold on my skin."

and i felt somewhat slapped in the face myself, as i read these words. remembering how i learned this same lesson in life, in less dire circumstances, of course. still it really stings.

because deep down, i'd always had some kind of faith in justice. and when things weren't what i considered just, i couldn't stand it. the whole feeling of that almost made me crazy for awhile. ok, it did make me crazy for awhile. and now i just feel stupid. just as this poor character feels stupid, as she has the rug of her whole life pulled out from under her.

i don't know how this book is going to end. what i really hope though is that it doesn't end up sappy. i pray that it does not end up sappy.

but so on the eve of the anniversary of my father's death, all these thoughts from this book and all those gibberishy words of the minister this morning are streaming through a big teabag in my head. and i think of my dad and i marvel that he had a faith and a belief in god. because i'm not sure how he really could have. but he did. but he certainly didn't have any of my childish thoughts about that things had to be just, like a fairytale because his life certrainly wasn't just. so i don't know how he could have believed. or why. except maybe it made as much sense to him as anything else did.

so even while i want to finish the book. i have to lay it down for the night. i can't be chopping through all this poisonwood. and instead of thinking about all this stuff, here's what i'm going to do. i'm going to think about my son and how proud i am of him. and i'm going to think about my daughter and how happy i am for her. and i'm going to think about my grandson and how much he amuses me. i'm going to think about my daughter in law and how sweet she was to me this weekend. i'm going to think about my family and how amazing they all really are. i'm going to think about my friends and how good they are to me. i'm going to think about all the good, strong, courageous people that i've come to know.

that's the kind of easter i'm going to have.