time travel and freewill

today is gray, rainy, and cold. a relief from the thick heat of the last couple of weeks. the sun and the beach has really been fun, but a long brisk walk in the misty coldness of today was a different kind of great. it felt better. more real. not my usual taste. but it matched my mood.

just finished "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger.

i know i allow myself to live stories way too much. movies, books,.. It doesn't matter. ryan says that i always think i have become one of the characters. so, for the last few days, I have felt a strange awareness of time. no, not that I am no longer late for things-not that kind of time awareness. actually, the opposite is true. I feel detached from the present. as if the past and the present and the future are all happening simultaneously. so as i stood in front of the sink last night to brush my teeth, confused and only partly awake, bleary-eyed from reading for too long, i felt suddenly trapped. that my freewill is nonexistent. how much is my life already determined? has my future already played our unalterably. and i just have to live it out without being able to change it?

Henry, the "time traveler" wrestled with these questions only a few times in the book--when he would visit his past, knowing what would happen, but being unable to change it. He talked about chaos and determinism. But he didn't believe in God.
so as i read, i thought again about the nature of God and his relationship and role in his creation. questions that i haven't really thought or cared about in years were brought to the surface. how does my theology and my view of salvation explain or affect the rest of life and my ability to choose? not that i don't mind resting in God's complete control over the details of my life--if that's how it is. i know he's better at it. but I don't know if that's exactly how it works either.

hm.

this mattered a lot to me last night. i'm not so worried now. still curious though.

i used to be really sure about most things. now i'm pretty much unsure about most things, but the uncertainty doesn't bother me.

Other books recently finished: The Chosen (Chaim Potok) and Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

Any new reading suggestions for a teacher decadently enjoying summer break?