A new read.

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While I have many books I could read, I was... called.  Dante's Inferno.  Why?  No clue.  I even tried to avoid it.  Not having the book, I had to find it, then add it to my basket.  I may have tried to remove it, or actually removed it, a time or two even.  And, yet...  The compulsion was grand.  Even though I thought it would be just another silly book.  Perhaps it will be.  I am only two chapters in.  Got it late this week, had too much else happening, thought it might disappear into a pile somewhere.  Yeah, while feeling a pull, almost a command, I can't say I was all that interested.  Actually, I often fight such draws.  Sometimes I win.  Still might.

I read it long ago.  I probably remember... things in, or of, it, rather than passages.  I read it before I started with Shakespeare or even finished the whole of the New Testament.  I am guessing somewhere between seven and eleven years old.  I have had doubts about my readerships, and okay.  I have no absolute evidence.  The only thing, for myself, I am sure regarding is that my foster father tested my knowledge of the bible.  That was, in his belief, because he wasn't sure I understood the King James version.  That test wasn't the first year I was there, my eighth grade, but I believe my second year, as a Freshman.  The fall of my freshman year, or early winter.  I had finished the N.T. two years before, which would have been in the seventh grade, or ~12... right?  Actually, make that 13, I was held back a year because my brother and myself were barely a year apart and didn't do well together.  Yeah...  I had not read all of Shakespeare, never did.  But I probably read eight to ten of his plays, with some solid understanding.  Remember, I had already had to fight for my life and had already had sex, choosing my first lover when I was five.  Yeah, I... understood a bit better, if not, of course, fully.  Marriage, a job, things like that, are well above where I was, but not so far above as most of my peers.

I should be honest.  Even reading things now, I don't always fully understand.  Though, too, I realize that if I don't understand, many others, regardless of what they say or write, also don't understand.  Fair enough.  I'll take that.  I do my best but my best is not good enough.  I read the notes in The Inferno.  I hope they are more sure.  I do not know that.  I am guessing I could find very solid dissonance among the various experts, varied so deeply, radically, that I could if I so chose completely write the notes off, if then I might have to do a great deal of research, possibly to include learning the language it was written in from the period... which would also... be problematic, as there are just as great of debates regarding the meanings of words and phrases as there are about the interpretations of translated meanings of things in the book.  So... you know... I'll just abide it, unless I disagree.  Perhaps, then, maybe, I might seek elsewhere.  Ugh.

The bible?  I have read the N.T., I think, about six times (cover to cover).  As to exposure otherwise, I have been in church through most of my youth and some of my adult life, so have had solid exposure to sermons and readings.  And yet... it is a living book.  It's truth is singular, I'll grant that.  But neither man nor other can know that singular.  As well, I think the bible can speak to a moment, even if it doesn't make sense always in context, or out of it, or when fully read... or partially read.  It's an amazing book, one which I think the Holy Spirit can guide through.  Not an ouji board sort of thing, but a true spiritual thing, from the God of Abraham, moving the reader through the seeking in the Word.  But I won't always pretend to know.  And those who do... I, at the very least, expect a very humble approach to sorting the meaning.  Don't tell me what you were taught by men who were taught who were also taught, none knowing save the Source, for sure.  Humility, not certainty.

Why this book.  I don't know.  I was very powerfully called to it, right over my sometimes bored indifference, ill health, and my want to do other things... real things.  I have, to a degree, given up on most books.  Bleh.  Just... scribblings of mad men.  I can do that with the best of them.  Perhaps not poetry, if I think very little of poetry.  An art for the lazy and indolent... and giants.  I'll keep going, see if there are any peanuts ahead.

No real sense to the post.  Just... couldn't sleep, read a bit, was pondering why this and that... trying to make sense of things that may have no rhyme or reason.  Later or good night.