reading in the New Year

                                                                rowan tree.... Psalm 1 

From PRAYER by Timothy Keller, I started ( along with my sister) to
read the Psalms and summarize each one. 

For Book Club, I started Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas and 
will give you a taste:

" But the welter of wonderfulness that was their heritage seems to 
have been a boon, one that buoyed them up so that each child seems
not to have stood on the shoulders of the giants but also to have
                danced on them."

I had to read that out loud yesterday to  my daughter Emma  who was 
reading out loud sentences from John Adams by David McCullough 
to me. She is learning about marriage and I am learning about a heritage.

From Bonhoeffer's childhood: 

" Under the rowan-trees out our meadow Dietrich lovved to sit and read
his favorite books, like Rulamann, the story of a  man of the stone age, and 
Pinocchio, which made him roar with laughter and whose funniest passages
he read out loud to us again and again . He was about ten years old at that 
time, but he retained his sense of high-spirited comedy. The book Heroes
of Everyday moved him very much. They were stories of young people 
who by their courage, presence of mind and selflessness saved others' 
lives, and these stories often ended sadly, Uncle Tom's Cabin kept him 
busy for a long time. Here in Friedrichsbrunn he also read the the great
classic poets for the first time, and in the evenings we did play-reading
with different parts. "
( One of the last books he read was Plutarch's Lives. He parted with it hours
before his execution.)