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Good and evil

 I’ve had an excellent companion these past few nights when sleep eluded me.  Lousie Penny’s latest novel, The World of Curiosities.  I am so grateful I am still able to read, as books have been my companion since first learning to read.  When I am down,  a feel-good book can help me rediscover the beauty in life.  When I am confused,  books often help me find answers, however incomplete.  When I am sad, books provide comfort.  When I am lonely, I can get lost in a good read.  Books educate, inspire, nudge, provide escape….  

I am always amazed at the way some authors are able to come up with complex plots, fascinating characters, flowing dialogue, and amazing descriptions. Many books are silly and merely scratch the surface, but the truly “good” book digs deep into the human psyche and unveils our hidden questions and traumas. This is not the kind of writing I do.  Mine tends to be prosaic and to the point.  There are educational and theological books, meditational books, and gratitude journals that help us struggle with ourselves and issues difficult to understand.  But there are those exceptional books that address the most complex issues of human experience by telling a riveting story that forces us to dig deep inside, to confront the best and worst of human experience, giving us much-needed insights into ourselves and others.

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I revel in such books.  Louise Penny has yet to disappoint me, given she deals with such dark issues, diabolic characters, in stories where the presence of evil is revealed in everyday settings among everyday people.  Yet she manages to do so in a way that not only makes us confront the worst in humanity, but also the best.  In the midst of pain and suffering,  she shines the light of hope and goodness without being cloying or unrealistic. 

In this latest book, The Book of Curiosities,  she has Inspector Gamache quote a poem by the mad poet Ruth.  

 “Evil is unspectacular, and always human  

and shares our bed and eats at our table.

And we are introduced to goodness every day

Even in drawing rooms among a crowd of Faults.”

How very true.  We are all such a blending of good and bad, clarity and confusion, selfishness and generosity.  We can go an entire liftetime without being exposed to evil as in the holocaust, but it is there in everyday insensitivities and selfishness.  Evil generally is unspectacular and commonplace, numbing us to horrific wrongs, such as racism, sexism, and the other isms that hurt and demean people.  Those kinds of evils are so, so much a part of life we simply stop seeing what is happening.  We can slide into negative behaviors without noticing, just as we can just as unthinkingly touch another’s broken heart and perform acts of kindness and great love because that is also who we are.        

We are hosts to both angels and demons as we struggle to understand and forgive our brokenness.  In the end, the issue isn’t denying the truth of our ambivalence but deciding which aspect of our complex stories, challenges, and personalities we daily choose to develop.  As Joshua says at one point (I think in the book of Judges)  “as for me and my house, we choose to serve the Lord.” 

Joyce Shutt is the author of Steps to Hope and is a veteran 12 stepper

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