urakami cathedral

On page 1-2:
"The American knelt beside her mother-in-law during prayers at St. Mary's cathedral
in Urakami District.....
The world ended without warning....no sound, no shift in the earth...
all the souls they had sheltered were transmuted instantly into light."

On first reading this can only be a quandary.  It's resolved near the end of the book.
On page 299 Drum is looking for an assistant to replace Polly Coggins who "ran off with
Tadahito or Mura or whoever he was."

If you research Urakami you may realize it was in Nagasaki that the second atom bomb
incinerated Urakami's Cathedral and 10,000 Christians.

Jonas Healed

Jonas had been bitter and angry since the death of his wife and children, but when
he found that he loved Drum, the bitterness and anger fell away to be replaced by
page 35: "for he lived now not only for himself but for each soul who had been
joined to his".

Read on to page 48 "Lorraine (his dead wife) had come to visit and smiled down
at  him and laid her hand lightly on his chest" read on! Was this a dream or a
vision? Who can say?

Life and Death

Near the middle of the story, on page 133 I read:
"From behind her chair her father's voice [dead?] startled her...
'you should read those.  You really should...
glad though surprised somehow that he has stayed on with her
.. you seem to know a lot about things  for a dead man...
...wishing she might reach up and touch his hand as he fades
into the wallpaper."

Wow! Who is dead and who is alive!

As you read this book, you may recognize continuing incidents of that
sort.  They become more prominent until at the end you may realize
that many of the characters appeared 40 years early in 'Summer'

My first recognition of a ghost.

Rest

On page 156 of 'Between Times' the lovely song spoke emphatically to me.
It spoke to experiences of long ago, when I was a pastor of an unruly
congregation. The Smokies was some distance, but there were times
when I felt a strong compulsion to repair my soul in the highlands.

I drove some distance to Cherokee, the gateway from the eastern side.
Going up that highway was a healing act for me; as the elevation
increased one by one my church concerns dropped away.  When I
got to Newfound Gap, parked and got out of the car, the concerns
were all gone, to be replaced by a mind filled with gratitude and joy.
Oh what liberation!

"I need to go awhile away
-------------
And all my cares forsaken
and in the space they used to fill
I feel my soul awaken"

A lovely poem by a gifted poet!

Death and Birth

Jonas came to this isolated place after losing his wife
and daughters Emily and Lucy something he had never
got over.  On pages 34-5 his new friend mentions a dream
about two sisters of the same names. This provokes sadness,
but it also marked the moment when his grief was subsumed:

"The love he had known had not been erased....nor his
grieving, for he lived now not only for himself, but for each
soul who had been joined to his."

Many people have occasion to grieve but happy is the one
who takes that tremendous step from Death to Love.

Beginning

This blog will now focus primarily on 'Between Time'.
On page 15 Henry described a hike of Drum and Jonas.
Among other things I picked out this sentence:
"Now the resurrected trees bore their mute witness to
the transience of death and the abidance of renewing
life."
Amazing! Written by a poet, a naturalist and quite a
few other things.

Between Times

This post simply records Henry's gift of the book;
you  may expect more posts to come.