The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection #4) - Richard Paul Evans Page 0,38
death. I suppose that I, too, was a cause. Even after I left Utah, she sent me birthday-Christmas cards and occasional letters, which I never reciprocated or thanked her for. I hoped she’d forgotten that I’d been so rude.
CHAPTER twenty–four
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20
Dear Noel,
Life, to be fully lived, must be lived free. The key to freedom is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a virtue often misunderstood. It is not to close our eyes to wrongs, rather to truly open them and see the wider picture. Forgiveness is release—to unlock the cage of another’s folly to set ourselves free.
To not forgive is to chain oneself to people and circumstances of the past. In doing so, our past becomes our future. This bears repeating. By chaining ourselves to actions of the past, our past becomes our future.
Let the past go, Noel. In the chess game of life, the past makes a good bishop but a poor king. We may take counsel from the past, but we should not be ruled by it. One cannot ride a horse backward and still hold its reins.
Tabula Rasa
CHAPTER twenty–five
Books are the best type of the influence of the past.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23
For the first time since I’d helped Grace, we didn’t have the book she was looking for: Kissinger’s Shadow, a nonfiction work on the American statesman. We had brought in five copies and they were already sold. It was a good example of just how eclectic Grace’s taste in books was: from French hors d’oeuvres to global politics.
“Don’t worry yourself about it,” she said. “Wendy can order it.”
“I hate for you to leave without a book.”
“Not to worry,” she said. “It won’t be the first time.” She smiled. “I’m sure I can find something to read at home.”
“If you haven’t burned them,” I said.
“If they were burn-worthy, I wouldn’t waste my time reading them again,” she said. “Oh, you might want to see what’s going on in the back of the store. Near the crime novels.”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s better if you just go on back.”
As she left the store I walked to the back corner, where I found a woman slightly stooped with her back to me. She was holding what looked like a jar, tipped on its side.
“May I help you?” I asked.
The woman spun around. Her face was beet red. It wasn’t a jar in her hands but an urn.
“Oh, you caught me,” she said.
I was still perplexed by what I was looking at. “What did I catch?”
“My father used to love crime novels, so I was just spreading his ashes where he was most happy.”
I looked at the pile of ashes that was already on the floor. “No.”
“Just a—”
“No. Take your… father… and leave.”
She scooped what ashes she could back in the urn. “It’s my father,” she said.
“Exactly.”
Near the front door she said, “I’m not ever coming back.”
“I hope that’s a promise,” I replied.
After she was gone I went and told Wendy. She just shook her head. “Really? People are always trying to dump ashes in Disneyland, but in a bookstore?”
“They dump ashes in Disneyland?”
“Pirates of the Caribbean,” Wendy said. “They have cameras everywhere. Did she get him all up?”
“No. The ashes stained the carpet.”
Wendy sighed. “Someone’s going to have to vacuum up her father.”
CHAPTER twenty–six
I write to discover what I know.
—Flannery O’Connor
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24
The next day was busy; people were buying gifts as they prepared for Thanksgiving. I didn’t know how much money the bookstore was making, but I figured it was probably a lot.
Also, Tabula Rasa delivered as expected.
Dear Noel,
As you are confronted each day by new ideas and propositions, do not forget to think. View each matter of importance from as many angles as is practical. Do not be swift to throw in with the current of mainstream thought or waves of indoctrination. Avoid anyone who offers to do your thinking for you. The masses follow a media shepherd.
Many mistake knowledge for wisdom. They are not the same thing. A cupboard full of ingredients is not a meal. It’s how knowledge is applied to real life that counts as wisdom. The world is overflowing with educated idiots, people who spout what they do not understand, profess what they cannot defend, advocate what they do not live, and claim what they do not own. Do not be over-arrogant in your knowledge. No one is always right, and everyone is sometimes wrong.
Tabula Rasa
CHAPTER twenty–seven
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.