The Sparrow

Maybe that's what it meant to find God: to see what you have been given, to know divine generosity, to appreciate the large things and the small...

Thoughts of the fictional Jesuit Emilio Sandoz, in The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

It's one aspect of discovering God, anyway, and maybe the one I'm best at just now.

It's one aspect of discovering human love, as well, I think: to realize all the things you are being given that maybe you hadn't paid attention to before, and to want to give back out of love, out of a desire to make someone happy, instead of feeling that you're so far in debt for their kindness that you can't ever get out.

The Sparrow is a fascinating meditation on the psychological and moral levels as well as the obviously religious level, and it's a plain good story, too. That's why I keep re-reading it from time to time, even though there are piles of other books waiting to be read for the first time, and piles of homework and grading and packing waiting to be done. I don't as often re-read the sequel, Children of God; it's nearly as good, except that ending is a complete cop-out on the part of the author.

Many of the characters in both books are Jesuit priests, but others are atheists or agnostics, and neither "side" is flattened or oversimplified. The stories both challenge and affirm the faith of the faithful, but they don't require either characters or reader to convert -- only to think. They have plenty of meaning and plenty of fun and an abundance of love.

And they make me appreciate the same things in my own life.