A Great Book

I just finished reading a great book. Great in the lessons it offers and in the literary style bound up in its pages. I highly recommend it. "Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me" by Dr. Karen Swallow Prior. Two lessons will stay with me that I gleaned from it. I'd like to share those with you here. The first is the difference between "self-esteem" and "self-possession." The former is all the rage these days. Virtually all bad behavior is now attributed to the lack of self-esteem. Psychologists turn perpetrators from what they are to helpless victims, deprived of love by their peers or their parents, unable to tolerate the lack of that love and approval any longer. When a child is struggling in school we focus on "building up" their self esteem so they think more highly of themselves. We've seen the effects of this philosophy for the past couple of decades but so few of us are able or willing to link the cause with the effect. It's a strange thing because before our grandparents' generation, elevated self-esteem was thought to be the main problem. Focus was placed on lowering people down to have a more accurate view of themselves and their rights in society. Anyway, this is all beside the point. The lesson the book was trying to get across was that, where self-esteem is an attempt to make oneself like oneself, self-possession involves looking at oneself simply to see where one fits in this world. "Know thyself," says the ancient proverb. So few people these days truly know themselves. The story of Jane Eyre figures prominently in the chapter's message. The story follows the formation of the titular character's "self", keeping it unpolluted from other's expectations and desires; fighting the temptation of trying to find itself in something that is not integral to the character; maintaining the integrity of "Jane". In short, keeping Jane as her own person rather than making her subservient to anyone else. The temptation to find ourselves in the stories of others is something we all face and we all give into some time or another. It was while reading this chapter that I saw that "finding oneself" is so integral to the spiritual journey we have been called on. So much sin is traceable to trying to find our identity in things that were never intended to provide it. What's more, I saw that part of the sanctificative process is becoming the individual that God created. God revels in individuality. He created each person unique and each person's walk with Him to be unique. It is in trying to emulate other people's walks with God that we fall into discouragement and frustration or disintrestedness in God. The more like yourself you become, the greater joy you will experience and the more pleasure you bring to God. The more like Christ we become the more fully "ourselves" we become. And only when we are conformed to the image of Christ will our individuality be shown; each of us created just exactly as we were created to be. Some will connect with God in books, some in movies, some through music or puzzles or drinking coffee or rock climbing or swimming in the ocean. The reason so few of us know ourselves is that this journey is so much harder than finding our stories in the lives of others. Isn't it easy just to emulate someone else? You don't have to think or be creative or figure out where you do or do not fit. It's lazy, though. And, ultimately, we'll never have quite as much fun as those who take the time and walk the path of figuring out what God created them to be like. We'll always be frustrated that we're not enjoying life as much as we want to and that our souls are chafing so much for some reason that we can't figure out. So my first "resolution" for 2013 is to start this path and figure out what Wes Rosselet looks like as his own man and where he fits in God's plan. The second lesson is that life, most of the time, is not sensational or melodramatic but that doesn't mean that enjoyment is impossible. In this chapter, the story of Madame Bovary figures prominently. Her life is a story of waiting for life to pick up its pace; for adventure and romance and tragedy to sweep in and blow away all this mundane, ordinary, day-to-day stuff. In her youth, she absorbed book after book of this sort, longing for her life to become more exciting and filled with passion. Her husband arranges her marriage to a man who has learned the joys of normal, down-to-earth things; walking home, eating dinner, freshly pressed clothing, etc. Essentially, he is a bore. He's awkward and dull but he's happier with his life than his wife is. Learning to enjoy plain, old, ordinary people is one of the keys to a happier life. Not spending time pining after sensationalism or excitement is necessary. "The world of the mundane is here and now and is not to be rejected but to be loved. Just as people are to be loved for who they are, imperfections and all, not the versions of them we make in our own image" (Prior 164). I have spent a great deal of my life engorging myself on movies. It's a different medium but the same concept. What I decided was lacking in "real life" I decided to get from movies. I inherited that tendency from my parents. Daring rescues. Exciting adventures. Heroic, determined, uncompromising men and women in situations where the stakes were high and the risks were bold. That's what my young soul has thrived on for most of my life. And those things were always lacking in my life. So I sought them vicariously through movies. I fed my idealism with those pictures. My walk with God has suffered accordingly. Everything was always so melodramatic in my walk with God! I always had to be doubting and fearing or standing boldly and powerfully. I get thrown from one extreme to the other so often. The day in day out salvations were constantly missed because they were too subtle for my idealistic heart to see. "Of what use [is] eternal salvation without a salvation for each day?" (198). That's what my next resolution is. To seek the salvation of the day. To learn to enjoy the mundane in my walk with God. To learn how to walk day to day with him without fearing that because I'm not burning with excessive heat for Christ in my heart that I've somehow received God's displeasure or that He's up and left me or given up on me in any way. Learning how to become more rooted in less extravagant expressions of His love for me. To get used to life on the mountain rather than on the peaks or down in the valleys. Because today is where eternity touches time and this is the place where most of my real, actual salvation is going to happen.