eat, pray, love

All my thinking last week about God was prompted by this book that I am reading: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm not finished yet, but even so, I think that I can recommend the book.

Here is something she said:

I believe that all the world's religions share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. When you want to attain communion with God, what you're really trying to do is move away from the worldly into the eternal (from the village to the forest, you might say, keeping with the theme of the antevasin) and you need some kind of magnificent idea to convey you there. It has to be a big one, this metaphor -- really big and magic and powerful, because it needs to carry you across a mighty distance. It has to be the biggest boat imaginable.

I, of course, also believe in metaphors. And Gilbert's attachment to the Sanskrit term "antevasin" (a person who lives at the border) is a fruitful place for me to start. I am always on the lines: between worlds, between rituals, between full understandings. Never apart but never a part either.

Much of Gilbert's search begins in Yoga. This is something I, while still on the fringes, understand more and more. It is a nice place to focus, a nice place to begin to focus on new things.

Anyway. This is a guarded recommendation for the book. When I'm finished, maybe I'll remove the guard.

Until then, the title does its own recommendation.