a little boo radley is good for the soul

I'm not one for rereading books. It's not that I don't love to read or that I am often disappointed by the books I read, it's just that there are so many books that I haven't read once that I feel have a right to be looked at first. 


That being said I just reread To Kill A Mockingbird, and I am beyond glad that I did. 


I don't want this to turn into a book report. I just have loved the past few days that I've been sucked into Maycomb, Alabama. I was severely attached to Scout, Jem, Dill, Atticus and Tom and found myself on the edge of crying several times. But I also decided that Scout and I have  remarkably similar brains. (Or maybe this is just an example of how people always try and over identify with characters they love.) But I really don't know how I could/would have lived my life in the south back in then. I felt the same way reading The Help this summer (a book you probably weren't assigned to read in high school so I say to you now, go and read!) 


Towards the end of the book Scout talks about how confused she is that her teacher can hate Hitler so much for what he is doing to the Jews, yet she heard that same teacher upon leaving the trial of Tom Robinson that it was time the blacks were put back in their place and Scout asks Jem "how can you hate Hitler so bad an' then turn around and be ugly to folks right at home?" and I wonder that still. How, or maybe why, do we find reasons to separate ourselves from each other? To decide who is deserving of good? At Stake Conference Saturday night someone said that we can never know or understand someone's complete situation, so giving people the benefit of the doubt is a kindness we can and should do for everyone. Assuming we are trying to do our best, why can't the same be said for those around us.


This reminds me of when Charles Dickens explains that Christmas is the time of the year when "men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-travelers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." And I think I would say that we were fellow travelers to life. 


I think that sometimes we get to know people just enough that we suddenly feel we have enough information to judge them, to decide if they're being wise or foolish and to see all the places they could improve. I know I can be guilty of that. But in the spirit of Halloween, I think we should get over ourselves, lest people like the Ewells try and accuse good people like Tom and no one but Atticus and a handful of kids are willing to look past convention and see truth and justice as they should be. 


Now stepping off my (maybe slightly incoherent) soap box.


Go eat some candy corn.