again

i'm reading it again--cormac mccarthy's the road. my mother gave it to me for christmas last year and i finished it before the final scraps of wrapping paper were found and discarded. compelling and frightening, that is how i would describe it.

i was walking through my hostel in bangkok and saw it sitting there. so i picked it up and started reading. just like the last time i find myself negotiating for one more chapter before putting it down for some sleep. it's so beautiful because, like the phantom of the opera, the reader is put in control of the imagery. mccarthey paints just enough to start you off, but the reader fills in the shades of gray.

this time through i am struck by something i barely saw the last. the fathers conversation with the Almighty. it's a brutal conversation.

"he woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. slow and half opaque. he rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. he descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched and he coughed for a long time. then he just knelt in the ashes. he raised his face to paling day. are you there? he whispered. will i see you at the last? have you a neck by which to throttle you? damn you eternally have you a soul? oh G od, he whispered. oh G od."

i am not sure why i like this conversation. maybe because it's truth from the inner most of the father's soul. perhaps it is because i see the beauty in such a threadbare soul pouring itself out before it's Father as though there should be nothing to hide. faith. confidence. understanding, that in a world where hope is a rumor long lost, this man still sets his face heavenward. if you think about it you'd like to say you'd act like job. but would you really? the psalms teach me that an unleashed and free-to-speak heart is what is most faithful. so, i suppose i like this conversation because it is the one i would speak. not out of denial of Him, but out of a desperation for Him.