Different perspectives can warp your mind.....

This has been a weird weekend and I've inflicted it on myself. Audible had a sale on books and I got "The Shack" and "Mennonite in a Little Black Dress". The Shack is about one man's search for spiritual resuscitation after his little daughter is murdered by a serial killer. There's a lot of other stuff, but essentially (spoiler alert) he believes he spends four days with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit (under other names), while the option is given for people to believe he spent four days in a coma after being hit by a drunk driver, and all the long spiritual guidance conversations were a hallucination. It expresses a very personal type of relationship with God, and doesn't quite sneer at ritual and liturgy, but comes close. Made going to church this morning a thoughtful process, as we went through the ritual and liturgy that I find so reassuring. The other book is about a woman who was brought up in a strict Mennonite home, goes on to college and associate professorship and marriage to man who has bipolar syndrome but doesn't take the meds. After 15 years of marriage, he leaves her for a man he met on Gay.com, and in the same week she also is hit by a drunk driver, suffering major injuries and in short, going home to live with her parents for a while. This produces many anecdotal stories of the limitations she felt were etched in her psyche, and contrasting anecdotes of the world she lived in with her atheist husband. I haven't quite finished this book, but it sounds like she's coming around to valuing parts of both worlds. Listening to both of them, one after another, is head-twisting. As I said, I've done it to myself. Time to take the meds and go to bed.