You Have Something That IT Has Not

I love Bikram Yoga.  I love the feeling of being part of a group, moving and breathing and resting and moving again, as a group.  I also find that somewhat disturbing.

See, the other day, in my class, there was one person who just couldn’t find the rhythm in the final breathing.  Everyone else was together, but just as we breathed out, this person breathed in.  And so on.  And since there’s a sound to this breathing, we all knew.

But then I flashed to my favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, and the first time Meg meets IT.

At Indiana University Bloomington: the world’s largest anatomically correct sculpture of a human brain.

For everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned, was the rhythm, and as it continued to control the systole and diastole of her heart, the intake and outlet of her breath, the red miasma began to creep before her eyes again, and she was afraid that she was going to lose consciousness, and if she did that she would be completely in the power of IT.

And I started to wonder, what’s better?  To move with and be part of the group or to fight the rhythm?  It’s obvious to say “it depends”, but on what?  In today’s class, again, there was one person fighting the movement of the class, working at their own pace, not moving with the rest of us.  And of course this person had set up right next to me.

And I flashed back to a later part of my favorite book, when Meg defeats IT and rescues Charles Wallace, and is returned to her family.  And how she does that is, to me, how you know when it’s time be part of the team and time to strike out on your own.

Mrs. Which leaves Meg on Camazotz to confront IT with a final gift:

Yyou hhave ssomethinngg thatt ITT hhass nnott.  Thiss ssomethinngg iss yyour onlly wweapponn.  Bbutt yyou mmusstt ffinndd itt fforr yyourrssellff.

The first time I read this book, I could not imagine what this meant.  I read on, as fast as I could (and that’s pretty fast) to find out.  What kind of weapon could this tween girl with whom I identified so closely have to fight the force of evil that had stolen her brother?

Love.  Simply love.  And the ability to remember love and still love the one who was, at that moment, not himself and standing against her.

And choosing love allows us to know when we should be part of the group, and when it is time to move ahead alone, and fight.

That’s all.

Go Set A Watchman

Before you stop reading – this is NOT a formal book review, nor will it contain spoilers.  I am just so frustrated and annoyed with a lot of talk going around about this book that I had to share my thoughts.  It’s taken a while, because, frankly, I had to deal with the feelings I had when reading the book.  And then, I saw this article, which really ticked me off.

• No, we can’t be sure how Harper Lee feels about the publication of this book.  But it’s happened.  Get over it.  Hopefully, she’ll make a mint and the money will ease her life.
• Yes, this is not the same Atticus we met in To Kill A Mockingbird.  Nor is it the same Scout.  Nor is it the same Calpurnia.  But it’s also not the same South.  Scout is now an adult, and this is the story of her as an adult, not a story of slice of her childhood, in a different time, though the same place.
• I freely admit that TKAM is a wonderful book, and I loved it.  But I also loved GSAW, for different reasons.  It’s okay, and in fact, even exciting, to have an entirely different experience when reading about characters we know and love.

That’s all for now.  I hope you’ll give the book a chance, and share your thoughts.  Maybe you’ll hate it.  Maybe you’ll feel betrayed by the changes in the beloved characters.  But maybe you’ll stop and think about how that’s actually kind of like life, isn’t it?  Change happens.  Some we like.  Some we hate.

But change happens.