Homeward Bound

No surprise I did not read as many book as I had hoped this year. 2022 ratcheted up the intensity a notch or three, but despite failing to reach a significant total to brag about on my blog I was blessed by many of the books I did read. As reading time shrinks with obligations, commitments, work--it is more important than ever to read real quality books. That is just what happened this year which featured a mixture of my usual eclectic genres: practical theology, well-written fiction, and the odd war history.  Here are my top ten for the year:  10. Letter of the Marque - Patrick O'Brian (1988) I have enjoyed this working through this 20 book series of Napoleonic era naval fiction. A slower pace from the also excellent Horatio Hornblower series covering the same era--O'Brian's series contains rich dialogue and brilliant characters as Captain Jack and Dr. Maturin sail the seas to impede French power at every turn. This twelfth of the series features a cutting out expedition

"Naked I was born from my mother's womb and naked I will return." Job 1:21 Try as we might, we cannot get away from nakedness. And we do try. Life is spent in the accumulation of all manner of temporal goods--some material, some immaterial--but all temporal nonetheless. From early ages we gain cognition and ability to communicate. We develop faculties of thought and reasoning. We form relationships with others, have experiences, make memories. As we grow to independence we attain certain achievements and build a stock of possessions. All of this rising to a peak of powers, a period of micro-dominance as that original naked state is pushed to the furthest margins of memory. Some experience magnificent heights and some see sustained plateaus with no hint of decline for decades. No matter how high that peak grows--however pronounced our intelligence, network, status, skillset, influence gets--it inevitably must return to the starting point of zero. Nakedness, like gravity,