Rebecca Moll's Blog - Posts Tagged "understanding"
Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison, A book Review by Rebecca Moll
Entwined in circles of light our lives take flight...
Upon typing Returning to Earth into my search bar, a variety of images appeared. Not exactly the returning to earth I had envisioned reading Jim Harrison’s novel about life, death, and finding redemption, the title invoking an ashes-to-ashes image, the cover, two ravens, one in flight, the other looking back over his shoulder, as if, remembering. As I contemplated a screen full of earth from space images, I began to wonder, perhaps, dying is less like us as ashes becoming earth and more like us as spirits becoming space.
I do hope the final experience of this life offers such out-of-this-world beauty, such vast perspective, such absolute freedom, and most of all, the open arms, come-back-to-me love and understanding of benevolent father-creator. Understanding is in many ways acceptance, even if only to a small degree. Isn’t that what we all really want – to be understood?
Understanding leads to forgiveness, forgiveness to absolution, and absolution to deeper understanding. Kind of like a full circle, back to the beginning, returning to earth concept. But, this time, this very last time we circle mother earth, perhaps we will see so much more than that from whence we came, galaxies and galaxies, light years, and light years. Oh, what a beautiful sight!
Returning to Earth is a beautiful and heart-wrenching novel about love, loss, and the healing powers of redemption. It’s about loving and accepting your family, your friends despite their failings, despite your failings. It’s about the first recalcitrant steps of understanding. It’s about finding a way amidst grief, your way, in honor and memory of their way.
Donald, a Grizzly bear-sized Chippewa-Finnish man, patriarch, is the stable, loving, and steadfast father, husband, friend. He is strong, loyal, and everlasting. He is down to earth, his very blood, tied to mother earth in both practice and beliefs. But Donald is dying. His wife Cynthia, brother-in-law David, son, daughter and nephew struggle with reality, his short time left on earth, their anguish and despair opening old wounds, eroding foundations, resurfacing insecurities, unanswered questions.
And in his absence, they try to make meaning, to understand, each their own way, in honor and memory of his way, to forgive and to absolve not just those they love, but themselves as well.
Set in the beautiful and rugged Upper Peninsula, this story will both tear your heart and heal your soul. A master story teller, Harrison navigates life’s most difficult complexities with ease and grace, the only way such a story could be told, from the characters themselves, each of their accounts entwined with that of the others. Perhaps, there are a multitude of circles? Imagine, a universe lit with the millions and billions of entwined circles of light, what is now and forever shall be, world without end.
Oh, what a beautiful sight!
The first of Harrison’s I’ve read, on the heels of this, today I begin a second. Need I say more?
Upon typing Returning to Earth into my search bar, a variety of images appeared. Not exactly the returning to earth I had envisioned reading Jim Harrison’s novel about life, death, and finding redemption, the title invoking an ashes-to-ashes image, the cover, two ravens, one in flight, the other looking back over his shoulder, as if, remembering. As I contemplated a screen full of earth from space images, I began to wonder, perhaps, dying is less like us as ashes becoming earth and more like us as spirits becoming space.
I do hope the final experience of this life offers such out-of-this-world beauty, such vast perspective, such absolute freedom, and most of all, the open arms, come-back-to-me love and understanding of benevolent father-creator. Understanding is in many ways acceptance, even if only to a small degree. Isn’t that what we all really want – to be understood?
Understanding leads to forgiveness, forgiveness to absolution, and absolution to deeper understanding. Kind of like a full circle, back to the beginning, returning to earth concept. But, this time, this very last time we circle mother earth, perhaps we will see so much more than that from whence we came, galaxies and galaxies, light years, and light years. Oh, what a beautiful sight!
Returning to Earth is a beautiful and heart-wrenching novel about love, loss, and the healing powers of redemption. It’s about loving and accepting your family, your friends despite their failings, despite your failings. It’s about the first recalcitrant steps of understanding. It’s about finding a way amidst grief, your way, in honor and memory of their way.
Donald, a Grizzly bear-sized Chippewa-Finnish man, patriarch, is the stable, loving, and steadfast father, husband, friend. He is strong, loyal, and everlasting. He is down to earth, his very blood, tied to mother earth in both practice and beliefs. But Donald is dying. His wife Cynthia, brother-in-law David, son, daughter and nephew struggle with reality, his short time left on earth, their anguish and despair opening old wounds, eroding foundations, resurfacing insecurities, unanswered questions.
And in his absence, they try to make meaning, to understand, each their own way, in honor and memory of his way, to forgive and to absolve not just those they love, but themselves as well.
Set in the beautiful and rugged Upper Peninsula, this story will both tear your heart and heal your soul. A master story teller, Harrison navigates life’s most difficult complexities with ease and grace, the only way such a story could be told, from the characters themselves, each of their accounts entwined with that of the others. Perhaps, there are a multitude of circles? Imagine, a universe lit with the millions and billions of entwined circles of light, what is now and forever shall be, world without end.
Oh, what a beautiful sight!
The first of Harrison’s I’ve read, on the heels of this, today I begin a second. Need I say more?
