Reading is Fundamental

My father wheeling my mother into the Activities Center where he and my husband would  play pool...

.

 I couldn't help thinking of this scene (and many others) when I read and underlined these words:
"The old are wounded too but more used to bearing it."

Reading The Duty of Delight: the Diaries of Dorothy Day is taking me a long time.  

For one thing, it's a long book (almost 700 pages).  

For another, it is intense.  

For another, it is timeless. 

For yet another, I have had similar thoughts, resolutions,

impatiences and yearnings.

Very few pages have been turned before I underline, star, or write a word or two in the column.

I want to absorb these words into my character.

I read slowly because I don't want it to end.

I'm in the 1970's part of her diaries  The last active decade of her life.

Here, in her mid seventies. she writes, 

"The fact that this may be the last year of my life should make me faithful in keeping this diary."

 

No matter how old I get (and I am 75 in Nov 1972, this year), no matter how feeble,

short of breath, incapable of walking more than a few blocks, what with heart murmurs, heart failures, emphysema perhaps, arthritis in feet and knees,

with all these symptoms of age and decrepitude, my heart can still leap for joy

as I read and suddenly assent to some great truth enunciated by some great mind and heart.

(Dorothy Day)

Without a doubt, MY heart still "leaps for joy" as I read

and contemplate the impact of Ms. Day's great mind and heart!

Reading IS fundamental.