I read a couple of really good book over the last couple of weeks after a happy trek to Barnes and Nobles. The first was a new paperback called “The Shack,” which I can already see as a feature film. It was one of those books I was in no hurry to finish. It starts darkly, when a little girl is abducted and murdered on a camping trip. As the years pass and her father struggles to deal with the pain and the guilt of not being able to protect her, he receives a letter from God, asking him to return to the shack where police found traces of the little girls blood. When he returns, the place has been brought to life like a little garden of Eden. God is there to greet him and she is a heavyset black woman who, along with a funny, homely Jesus and a sparkling, glowing Holy Spirit, draw this man back into the world of the living, with humor and great love and much grace. I found myself struck by the author’s vision of divinity, and wishing that God’s love is as it is portrayed in this little book. At the end, the author writes that plans are in place for the movie. If you want to know more, visit theshackbook.com.

Also read “The Scapel and the Soul,” a book by a brain surgeon named Allan J. Hamilton, M.D., who writes about how intuition, premonitions, hope and faith, have altered the destiny of his patients. Hamilton is a good story teller, and takes the reader right into surgery and he deals with matters of life and death and the little miracles that touch all of our lives.

I love to read books like these because they affirm for me that how many people experience a connection to something greater than ourselves and while I’m not willing to join up with those who feel certain as to what that something is, I dearly love to explore the ideas.

So, I had some fun reading those books. But, I’m out of good books again and I hate that. I’m going to have to make a trip back to the book store. There’s a lawn chair next to a kiddie pool in my driveway just waiting for me and my next batch of pages.