Comfort Reading

The Earth is the Lord's by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Fall has moved in with a cold fog, a warm quilt, a hot cuppa, a purring cat, a symphony playing on the radio....time for a good old favorite book. Often in such a mood I turn to Heschel for the beautiful simplicity with which he writes about life totally absorbed in God. I can read a bit and think a bit and read a bit more, enjoying the beauty of the spiritual universe contained in a nutshell of language. The subject of The Earth is the Lord's is the lost courtly world of Jewish Eastern Europe, described poignantly and lovingly by one of its royal princes for an audience of Americans who never were there and never can go. Every word, every one of the magnificent woodblock illustrations conveys love: love of the life of holiness, love of the holiness of life, as close to "on earth as it is in heaven" as you can get. I close my well worn copy gently with my soul purring.