a story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise- Zafón

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. John 1:10

The thing about the family doing vacation together, no matter where in the world we wander, we drag the stacks of books around.  Alan is in the hammock rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude, in English this time around.  Angie's had lots of Italian cooking in it and it was very very thick, so she is now just getting to book two, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is about a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Things I never knew about.  Guess which book is next on my list?

 I am sneaking Dustin's book away from him when he is distracted because I guess I have never actually read the Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees and Heather and I and my mom are doing the at least one book a day thing we do when we get rolling.  So each of us is immersed in a different time and place, each of us swathed in bug repellant and 50 SPF do-they-really-do-more-than-persuade-us-to-stay-out-in-the-sun-longer Coppertone. I have swallowed pages of used booksellers living in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and Jewish women settling the Arizona border region in the 1800s.  Personal essays by a Yale writing professor hop skip and jump from Arctic explorers to the discovery of coffee to famous people who wandered the streets in search of elusive sleep. And now Virginia hillbilly does Tucson in precise prose.  After of course an opening round ofPride and Prejudice.  Once again after a thirty or forty year break every word rings familiar, every raised eyebrow, every “What are men to rocks and mountains?” sort of quote.  I still remember it. 

The point of all this is that the world does not know Him. There is a lot of stumbling about looking for sense and meaning from the vigorously stirred mixture of beauty and pain in which we all flounder.  

And somehow I am coming out from under this avalanche of nuance more tenderhearted towards man.  Even after the brutality of the limpieza, ridding the Iberiean countryside of teachers and clerics and poets and other impurities.  For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Very very aware of the sins of the world.  In crisp black and white print.  On pages damp from the sea breeze and now sand is everywhere and we will be shaking it loose for weeks on end.  

And the Lamb of God has arrived. To make Him known.  To take it all away and leave in its place faith, hope and love.  And the greatest of these is love.  

And I am reminded that all of our efforts even for His name's sake, without this love are just resounding gongs or clanging cymbals without gain.   

And what a hope it is, this true light, which gives light to everyone, and which has come into the world.  

 Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. - Carlos Ruis Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

And after a week on Playa Uva I have a much better sense of who this world is, and of who He is, His light reflecting back in my eyes.  May it be my heart as well.