How I loved reading Mockingbird my sophomore year in college!  It was certainly not on any assigned reading list, but we all read it and talked about it in the dorm.

Shortly thereafter, Atticus came to look and sound just like Gregory Peck and remains so in my mind.

Lee’s new/old book is just out.  In it our beloved Atticus says to his now adult daughter,   “Honey, you do not seem to understand that the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.” That is a very hard truth to swallow.

In Mockingbird, we saw Atticus through a child’s eyes.  In Watchman, through an adult’s.

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In another familiar story, the deity creates first humanity (Actually, in Genesis, there are two different stories about this.) and puts them in a beautiful garden.  In this garden is everything they might need or want.   These two have just been patted out from from the soil. They are, in every way, in their childhood as a people too.

In the Genesis stories, the deity is described as a father, the perfect, loving parent.

Well, and this has always puzzled me, what kind of parent puts his innocent, totally naive and inexperienced babes, in a wonderful play room and, in the center of that room, puts a poison fruit tree and says “don’t touch,” and, for a finishing touch, there is a deadly, talking snake?

Many of our classic myths contain a lot of truth and leave us with a lot of grownup questions.  Asking these questions is daring to look at things in new ways, and questioning things we would not have dared to when we were still in our childhood.

We do not dishonor our history, our myths, when we do this. Having the privilege of becoming grownups, we are, I think,  charged to do so.