Hello friends, what a wonderful evening it is that freezes our insides to the core.
I hope you all are enjoying something nice and warm in a cozy bed of blankets. As for me, I screamed at some basketball players for 6 hours today and presently I present to you my current thoughts on this weekend's reading.
I feel like there are many push and pull, love and hate relationships that happen in this book. The relationship that is shown between the fathers and Kichijiro is most certainly (to me) a love and hate relationship, because at first Kichijiro brings them safely into the Japanese village of Tomogi, which honestly made me like the guy. Then this guy had to go and get cocky as if he was the "hero of the village" only to then be thrown to the wolves by the rest of the village. I see Kichijiro as someone who simply survives. He is a coward, yes, but overall what he really wants to do is survive. And we get it, we really do.
What I find more interesting about the book is how anticlimactic it is so far. You would think that things would start to change-- i.e. someone high in power would finally understand the love of God and begin to bring peace into the valley. But these dudes are ruthlessly killing their own people.
Anyways, back on my topic of discussion. As the character of father Rodrigues begins to develop more and more, we see him kind of becoming a crazy person, and another voice (perhaps even the enemy) slip in and start to say things and make him uncontrollably do things like laugh or smile or stick his head in the water and make dumb faces. He gets captured and I think the leading up to of this point makes me see the love- hate relationship that the father currently has with his eternal father. As he roams through the mountains after the deaths of Mokichi and Ichizo, he experiences many moods and in his discouragement begins to question his faith. He is very upset with God at this point, who is silent in the midst of all of this persecution.
I can relate (in a manner of far less extremity). I have found it frustrating that some people can very clearly and directly hear the voice of God, they see dreams and have visions and clarity of what God wants to do in their lives. But as for me, I tend not to hear anything from God, so I look for his words in his word and in other people. But it does get frustrating, just as father Rodrigues is being frustrated by this "Silence". However, I feel as if there is something missing in the story that has a lot to do with the silence the father talks about, and that there is something right under the father's nose, a revelation, an epiphany, that he has not reached yet. If there isn't I wouldn't see the point in writing the book, and especially entitling it "silence".
I commented on Logan and Abbie's blogs.
I hope you all are enjoying something nice and warm in a cozy bed of blankets. As for me, I screamed at some basketball players for 6 hours today and presently I present to you my current thoughts on this weekend's reading.
I feel like there are many push and pull, love and hate relationships that happen in this book. The relationship that is shown between the fathers and Kichijiro is most certainly (to me) a love and hate relationship, because at first Kichijiro brings them safely into the Japanese village of Tomogi, which honestly made me like the guy. Then this guy had to go and get cocky as if he was the "hero of the village" only to then be thrown to the wolves by the rest of the village. I see Kichijiro as someone who simply survives. He is a coward, yes, but overall what he really wants to do is survive. And we get it, we really do.
What I find more interesting about the book is how anticlimactic it is so far. You would think that things would start to change-- i.e. someone high in power would finally understand the love of God and begin to bring peace into the valley. But these dudes are ruthlessly killing their own people.
Anyways, back on my topic of discussion. As the character of father Rodrigues begins to develop more and more, we see him kind of becoming a crazy person, and another voice (perhaps even the enemy) slip in and start to say things and make him uncontrollably do things like laugh or smile or stick his head in the water and make dumb faces. He gets captured and I think the leading up to of this point makes me see the love- hate relationship that the father currently has with his eternal father. As he roams through the mountains after the deaths of Mokichi and Ichizo, he experiences many moods and in his discouragement begins to question his faith. He is very upset with God at this point, who is silent in the midst of all of this persecution.
I can relate (in a manner of far less extremity). I have found it frustrating that some people can very clearly and directly hear the voice of God, they see dreams and have visions and clarity of what God wants to do in their lives. But as for me, I tend not to hear anything from God, so I look for his words in his word and in other people. But it does get frustrating, just as father Rodrigues is being frustrated by this "Silence". However, I feel as if there is something missing in the story that has a lot to do with the silence the father talks about, and that there is something right under the father's nose, a revelation, an epiphany, that he has not reached yet. If there isn't I wouldn't see the point in writing the book, and especially entitling it "silence".
I commented on Logan and Abbie's blogs.
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