February

I can't believe it's already a week into March! It felt like February was dragging on forever and would never end and here we are and April is already creeping up on us!

You are wondering if my late post means that I didn't finish my February book - well if you assumed I failed already in month two... you'd be wrong! I successfully completed my second book of the year: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

I've been working on this book for awhile and can honestly say that it wasn't what I expected. Firstly, I don't like the title. The entire time I was reading this book I kept waiting for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to have meaning buuuuuut it never really did - until the very last line of the book which I suppose was quite beautiful and symbolic... but I think I prefer the alternate title "Life Among the Lowly".

I found this classic to be truly incredible - both engaging to the imagination, intriguing to the mind and eye-opening to this historical time-period. Harriet Beecher Stowe used the novel to critique the people, practices, thoughts and culture of the United States and the depth with which she analyzed human nature was truly inspiring. She spoke about faith and heartache, about hope and human nature. She taught deep concepts about perseverance and salvation, sin and freedom.

A few of my favourite quotes:

But what needs tell the story, told too oft, - every day told,- of heart-strings rent and broken,- the weak broken and torn for the profit and convenience of the strong! It needs not to be told;- every day is telling it,- telling it, too, in the ear of the One who is not deaf, though he long be silent. (139)

All that they knew was, that they [the Revelation and prophecies] spoke of a glory to be revealed, - a wondrous something yet to come, wherein their soul rejoiced, yet knew not why; and though it be not so in the physical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not always profitless. For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between two dim eternities, - the eternal past, the eternal future. The light shines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn towards the unknown; and the voices and shadowy movings which come to her from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and answers in her own expecting nature. (276)

For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's feeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled. (323)

Calmly the rosy hue of dawn was stealing into the room. The morning star stood, with its solemn, holy eye of light, looking down on the man of sin, from the brightening sky. O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, "Behold! thou has one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!"(400)

This book sometimes seemed to reach right into my heart and speak words that I didn't even know how to voice and at other times caused me to deeply reflect and ponder. I can't give it a higher recommendation if you want to read a novel with meaning, purpose, and depth.

Moving forward, March, as I said, is already much begun and in no less than a week, I will be across the world, in Thailand. How odd that sounds. How impossible and unlikely. And yet, next Saturday I will be, Lord willing, stepping onto a plane and flying away.