Late to the party!

I finally read one of the best selling and most iconic books in American history, albeit it was published in 1880, but what is a hundred years between friends?  I saw a really bad Canadian movie of 'Ben-Hur' last year and recently we listened to the Focus on the Family audio drama, but I had never read the book, along with all the other snippets and cultural references that were still present in my own girlhood: an episode call 'Ben-Hog' in the animated Garfield series of the late 1980s, Anne of Green Gables getting in trouble for reading it during geometry...  I think I have even seen the classic movie, but I have never read the book!

Overall I found it an excellent read, the author's attention to detail is exquisite and is the next best thing to a trip to the Holy Land.  It kept me interested, characters, plot, language, pacing, even though I vaguely knew the plot, were all very well done.  The only thing that really annoyed me was the author's insistence on placing Christ's birth on December 25th and making Jesus and His mother's physical appearance identical to all those romanticized, Caucasian Jesus pictures, where He looks like a well groomed hippy!  For a guy who did so much research and paid such attention to every other detail, it was a little irksome, if he hadn't bothered with such painstaking detail elsewhere, I would have let it pass, but it is obvious he's only trying to avoid angering his readers by enlightening them to the real facts of the matter that Jesus most likely did not have blue eyes and that we don't really know the exact day of His birth, though it is likely around lambing time.

Jesus wasn't physically pretty, Isaiah tells us that, 'He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him,' in the 53rd Chapter predicting the Messiah and His suffering for humanity's sin.  So boy band Jesus is a figment of our imaginings.  I understand why he wrote that way, but it clashes with the rest of the novel, which is otherwise so precise in every minute detail, which is ironic as a major theme of the book is people realizing that the Messiah did not come as a physical King or a military conqueror to overthrow the Romans, but rather to save the souls of men.  While the author wanted to open the eyes of his characters to the true nature of the Son of God, he was willing to allow his readers to persist in their cultural naiveté as to the birth date and physical appearance of their Savior, not that those are major issues, but it is amusingly ironic!

I also find it interesting the vast differences in the movies and audio dramas and other spin offs from the original.  Many of them miss the entire point of the book, and it is not the chariot race.  Just for that you should read the book, and even if you've seen all the movies, etc., you might be rather surprised by the plot!  Overall, it is a very good read, especially if you are curious about the subtitle, which most of the spin-offs seem to forget, 'A tale of the Christ.'  Enjoy!

The Great Bread Machine Revival?

People, we are seeing a movement like we haven't since the nineties!  It is full on revival!  It's another Great Awakening and no, I'm not talking 1890s...bread machines are back in demand!  That wasn't what you thought I was talking about, was it (though maybe the title gave it away).  Is this news, probably not, I'm only aware of it because my bread machine decided to have mental issues yesterday and my husband's answer was to go price shopping online, only to discover the things are sold out everywhere.  Happily my own unit came out of its stupor and seems to be working again, but I was still intrigued by the temporary shortage of something so obscure as a bread machine.

When all this started I noted that bread was completely sold out in our store for a week or two, but as I haven't bought bread in over a decade, it wasn't more than an idle curiosity, though I also noted that the flour was all gone and so was the yeast.  Apparently people were going to try making their own and this bread machine shortage shows how widespread that idea is.  I find it wonderful that this pandemic has produced such unexpected and wholesome fruits.  A couple months ago, bread making was a lost art, only practiced by foodies with an interest in that sort of thing or by necessity for those with dietary issues, but most people in general, had no clue about the process.  Necessity has forced us to look back to the wisdom of the past, to wonder how our forebears survived in a world without Google and Wonder Bread.  And what will be the result?  Has a whole new generation of bread makers come of age?  Long after this crisis passes, will they still have their sleeves rolled up and covered in flour, recapturing the joy of turning water and flour into a true culinary miracle?

What other 'ancient wisdom,' will we rediscover out of doubt, fear, necessity, or boredom?  What about the answers to the great questions of life?  Why are we here?  Where did we come from and where are we going?  Why is there evil, pain, and suffering in the world?  Perhaps it is time to rediscover the faith with answers to those tough questions, have you discovered the Bread of Life?  Even if you can't get your hands on a bread machine, the 'Bread that comes down from Heaven' is available anytime, anywhere, to everyone!

This is your life?

I keep reading L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle and thinking it is my own autobiography, save a few minor details.  Have you ever found a book like that?  One you read and wondered how it was your own life had been captured by a stranger, especially one who wrote a hundred years ago?  That's the power of story, my friend, no matter in what genre you are dabbling: film, books, video games, comics, music and art...all of it should tell a story, at least any of it worth bothering about!  Story is the language of the soul, no matter the medium!  Wondering what to do during these strange weeks at home or how to help others or change the world for the better?  Why not engage with story?  Read to your children, watch a good movie with your spouse, write that novel you've been incubating, take a virtual tour of an art museum or listen to the Requiem or the Messiah in their entirety or break out your own forgotten paints and add some color to the world!

Take this time to add beauty and meaning and wonder to the world, put something beautiful in!  Modern forms of art, music, literature, and poetry revel in destroying all the rules, all the meaning, the entire point of any of it.  Art and story must have meaning or they are meaningless, just like our lives!  So if you find yourself in a lonely, colorless existence at the moment, all this enforced time at home has revealed the utter bankruptcy of your soul, you aren't alone nor are you hopeless!  Begin today, add color and meaning and purpose to your drab little life!  Read great books and good poetry, watch wonderful movies, have real conversations about deep things, study great art and music, develop your own latent skills in whatever discipline and add to the vast human repertoire.

But remember it is all still meaningless if there is no Meaning behind everything.  If we are the result of some cosmic sneeze, with no eternal destiny or meaning, then go ahead and watch and listen to drivel as meaningless as our reality, until the coldness and loneliness and pointlessness freezes your heart and mind as cold as the regions between the stars, for that is our ultimate destiny: cold, dark oblivion, if Nothing is Everything.  Otherwise, take that thirst for Something and look under the metaphorical rocks and logs of reality until you find it, sell all that you have for this Pearl of Great Price, this Treasure buried in a Field.  That very thirst is a sign you are alive, that life has meaning, and that the point of life is to find that Meaning.  A mere chemical abstraction shouldn't feel empty, lonely, pointless, but a living, breathing, quivering, wondering soul certainly can!  Enjoy story in all its variations and remember the Great Author to whom they point!