The Alchemist

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Over the weekend I picked up The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian author described on the back cover as "One of the bestselling and most influential authors in the world." The blurb names 8 books which he has published "and others have sold more than 65 Million copies in 150 countries and have been translated into 60 languages."

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I have had a hard time putting the book down and am already half way through. It is a simple tale of a shepherd boy who sets out in the world to find his goal in life, his personal legend. Along the way he meets a variety of people who impart wisdom to him.

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It is extraordinarily rich in such wisdom from the boy himself and others. One quotation may whet your appetite: "intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there."

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I will write more when I have finished, and I intend to start again at the beginning when I have come to the end. I keep feeling there is even more here than I can appreciate in a single reading.

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His spirit and philosophy remind me of Kahlil Gibran, the poet from Lebanon, author of The Prophet, Jesus Son of Man and others.

Do I have any readers who are currently reading or have read this volume? Love to receive your comments.

Surprises Around the Bend

I just finished reading Richard Hasler’s new volume entitled Surprises Around the Bend. Richard is a former associate pastor of this congregation, 1960-1965. The book consists of stories and quotations from 50 Adventurous walkers. Most of them are people whose names we would recognize starting with Carl Jung and ending with Dietrich Bonhoeffer who continues to walk even when imprisoned in a tiny cell with only a half an hour a day in the prison yard. Hartford Native Wallace Stevens is on the list along with Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Also included are Soren Kierkegaard, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa whose life was changed when she went walking among the poor in Calcutta, and William Booth, founder of the Salvation army who discovered the worst slums in London on one of his walks that changed the direction of his life. Social prophets Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez not only walked themselves, but also used mass marches as a means of publicizing their causes.

Again and again these adventurous walkers praised the practice of walking for its benefits both for physical health, and for mental and spiritual health. Many reported that walking provided meaningful moments for prayer and meditation. Poets and authors repeatedly said that walking opened up for them the channels of creativity. Several said that if the circumstances prevented their walking they were unable to do their best and most creative work.

Dick includes as an after word a program for daily walking with a goal of 10,000 steps (about five miles) a day. I have followed this practice for several years and found that in good weather it is not difficult at all to log 10,000 steps a day by taking the dog walking two or three times a day and trying to walk sometime in the middle of the day as well. Parking in the most distant spot in the grocery parking lot helps me know where my car is and increases the length of the walk. I certainly feel better and sleep better when I get my daily exercise, and seem to accomplish more each day.

In a recent sermon on rules for daily living the first rule on my list was to take a walk every day, even better take several. (The other two rules were to spend less than you earn, and to give yourself to a cause greater than yourself.)

I have a copy of the book I would be willing to loan someone else, and a second copy is in process of being catalogued for the Church Library.