Canada Reads: final thoughts

   Canada Reads is over for another year.  I don't expect to read the five choices next year.  I have been increasingly disappointed in the choices.  This year, the books were overwhelmingly distressing.  Too much sadness in four of the five books to digest in such a short span of time.
  The distress of reading these books was compounded by family discussion on Easter. Some of the family attended the "March for our Lives" in Washington last weekend.  The pain and agony in the world seems overpowering.
  I am reminded of a poem by William Wordsworth:

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. - Great God! I'd rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old triton blow his wreathed horn."

   Instead of Proteus, we can think in Christian terms at Easter of the resurrection, and be hopeful.
  We all need balance in our lives- in our reading as well as life itself.  Spring is in the air and the world is full of possibility.

   Oh, yes, the winner of Canada reads was "Forgiveness".  Jeanne Beker really did a good job of promoting the book and had some thoughtful things to say about the need, in the midst of such world crises (yes, that means more than one), to 'build your soul'.  Amen!