Currently Reading By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept By Paulo Coelho see related

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

What can I add to Paulo Coelho's list of praises? This man understands human nature and the devine will of satire and melancholy. Not as well scripted as "Eleven Minutes" but I must say on the similar spectrum of "The Alchemist". More personal and focused are each lesson in this book than searching for one's calling.

By the River Piedra speaks of two childhood lovers who finally meet after a decade of spiritual searching. First of passion for companionship but translated into spiritual guidance and into the devine will. This quote can sum up the entire book from page 104:

"There are many ways to serve our Lord. If you feel that's your destiny, go in search of it. Only a man who is happy can create happiness in others."

Happy reading.

Currently Reading A Test of Will: One Man's Extraordinary Story of Survival By Warren MacDonald see related

Test of Will sat with the rest

Warren MacDonald doesn't separate himself from the rest of the chasing pack, who sits far behind the leader of adventure survival stories Aron Ralston and behind the almost mythical survivor of the Holocaust - Primo Levi.

Individual survival stories are very personal and emotional but the situation Warren was put into wasn't hopeless because he had a companion. Losing both legs from the knee up from blood deprivation is catastrophic. The incident, like all accidents, occur when hikers decide to take a new route through mountains and caves where through time, boulders and slabs of stone can slide down with minor tremors and human contact. Off the beaten track is often how hikers/climbers encounter dangerous situations, where the risks escalate by not informing anyone of the new route. It's often alright to stray off track without previous notice however, once in a while, climbers can get themselves into lot of hell due to that one mistake.

Anywho, this book is still recommended because of the responsibility and reliability placed on Warren's sole companion as his only hope to escape from a fallen one-ton slab. When an experience climber leads an intermediate hiker in search of new routes, who also happens to get trapped, the mental stress and burden can be overwhelming for the partner whose name escapes me.

Currently Reading Night (Oprah's Book Club) By Elie Wiesel see related

Oprah's Book Club

Night.. was a disappointment. Maybe after Primo Levi, I maybe biased but I would suggested it if anyone has read the books recommended in this blog.

Maybe it's too early to say but Oprah's Book Club may target too board an audience.

Currently Reading Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening: Two Memoirs (Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening) By Primo Levi see related

Reawakening - Tribute to Primo Levi

If I were to re-read any book, I would read Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening. A truly glamourous book by the Italian Jewish chemist depicts his life after the Soviet Red Army freed him and hundreds of other Italians. A desire for home shared amongst 1400 Italians accompanied them through the Russia before heading back East. Their endless search lasted a year, fighting hunger, "inertia", fevers, disease and boredom. Boredom keeps a man's inertia and they waste away without the ambition for life.

It seems as though being in the concentration camps/prison kills a man's passion for life. Everyday for many years, their lives were destined by schedules and commands. Going through tireless motions of life before daily selections for the gas chamber. The residence of these camps, espcially the sick and the weak, were selected. Those who survived selections retained a sense of joy, with certain sympathy and sometimes envy for those who were to be a memory of the past. By daily reconditioning of the primordial instinct to survive, all luxuries, passions and ambitions have been replaced by meaningless acts of boredom. The author was only one of three survivers from his concentration camp of a dozen within Auchswitz.

What are my primordial instincts at the moment? Have they been replaced by luxuries I wonder?

Currently Reading The Fifth Mountain By Paulo Coelho see related

Mountain Sinai?

In The Fifth Mountain, Coelho adds his own flavour of fictional artistry with a bit of non-fiction depending who you talk to. Coelho mentions that near the end of the book that Elijah went back to Isreal to the other side of the Fifth Mountain to talk to God after being on Mount Carmel. The only reference in the Bible about this "other side of the" mountain was Mount Sinai where God passed by Moses.

Every Christian has their own testimony and their own purpose to which they must search for. How we live today and the reasons we do so can only appear logical in retrospect therefore, reasons are to be understood after the fact. Elijah 'escapes' his death when Princess Jezebel wanted to kill all the Isreal prophets. He trusts the Lord to guide him via the Crow, his guardian Angel, and the Angels of God. Everything in the Old Testament occured in The Fifth Mountain and was 'cited' when each situation occured - the miracle of raising the widow's son, Crow sustaining Elijah in the desert, and God's call for him to goto Mount Carmel. That was the only 'factual' part of the story.

Coelho describes Elijah's eternal struggle with God and in keepinng his faith in a foreign land, where Princess Jezebel was from. Their god Baal was worshipped in their land, yet Elijah struggled to find God. He continuously spoke with his guardian Angel and God's Angel, as if he could request their assistance or companionship when required, and asked them for God's will for him. Elijah was described by Coelho to lead the city and revive it after it was conquered by the Assyrians.

"Every man hath the right to doubt his task, and to forsake it from time to time; but what he must not do is forget it. Whoever doubteth not himself is unworthy - for in his unquestioning belief in his ability, he commiteth the sin of pride. Blessed are they who go through moments of indecision." ~ pg. 53

As did Jacob struggle with God, Elijah did also for years. Elijah fell in love with the widow, lost her, was left with her son to care for, was betrayed by the city, rebuilt the city, and led it to liberation. Through Elijah's struggle, faith and his own understanding was he able to see his purpose. Only after the restoration of the city did God call Elijah to bring Isreal back into the hands of God on Mount Carmel.

"Tragedies do happen. We can discover the reason, blame others, imagine how different our lives would be had they not occured. But none of that is important: they did occur, and so be it. From there onward we must put aside the fear that they awoke in us and begin to rebuild." ~ pg. 212.

The old, weak and young were left in the destroyed village of Akbar, Biblical city of Zarephath. Only tragedy was able to lift them out of their sleep and to revive their youth and energy when all the strong and young men had left or had been killed by the Assyrians. The main idea of the book: tragedy is meant to revive us from our slumber and present to us a challenge.