Ruth, who is definitely the better half of this household was up before dawn finishing the gripping novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. A short while later she was reading Dr. Kitty Cat aloud to her enraptured three-year-old granddaughter. Ruth reads to her several days a week via Facebook. She wasn't aware that this is Unesco World Book Day, but she certainly got a running start on the spirit of the celebration.
Later in the morning she was bookish again, as we walked by the Bay of Quinte. A saunter in the natural world might not seem like a good read but some Medieval Christian writers would beg to differ. They suggested that God's revelation was through two books, the Bible and Nature. There is a later and quite famous quote by Francis Bacon which reiterates this.
I'm a book-lover on both counts. I do enjoy delving around in the bible and find that I always learn something new. The same can be said for the "text" of Creation. No two readings are alike when outside, and God is revealed in a great variety of ways through the seasons. I think of the people who have been so familiar and attuned to their fields and forests that they've read them like a book,
I appreciate that the spirit of World Book Day is about the printed word rather than time in nature. Yet the latter story is so often an engrossing page-turner with endless outcomes. Why not appreciate the Creator in both ways?
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