Summer Reading

I just finished reading "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver.  It's about the life of the Congo from pre-independence through independence and on through the corrupt government of Mobutu, as seen through the eyes of four daughters and wife of an American evangelical missionary.  I highly recommend it, not only for its plot, but it's intense recollection of history. Here are a few passages that really stood out to me:

"'Be kind to yourself,' he says softly in my ear, and I ask him, How is that possible?  I rock back and forth on my chair like a baby, craving so many impossible things: justice, forgiveness, redemption.  I crave to stop bearing all the wounds of this place on my own narrow body.  But I also want to be a person who stays, who goes on feeling anguish where anguish is due.  I want to belong somewhere, damn it.  To scrub the hundred years' war off this white skin till there's nothing left and I can walk out among my neighbors wearing raw sinew and bone, like they do."

--Leah, daughter

"I can think of no honorable answer.  Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining?  There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world."

--Adah, daughter

"To live is to be marked.  To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.  In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."

--Orleanna, mother