Little Things that Happen

Patrick O’Brien
1914-2000
It snowed in the ancient Hungarian capital today. No accumulation-- just a warning against the premature assumption of Spring.
We had another death in our wider Missionary Community last Saturday, Someone I first met in Romania during the days of Ceausescu, someone whose wedding I performed in 1989, someone agonizingly young. Partially to put off something painful, partially because I wrote about death in the last blog, I will postpone the eulogy until later. Today as a kind of defense mechanism, apropos of nothing in particular, I retreat to the trivial.
A few years ago I was reading the auto-biographical note by Philip Ryken on the Tenth Presbyterian Church Philadelphia website. James Montgomery Boice was secure enough to have a Pastor of Preaching on his staff at Tenth Pres, and he landed a great one when he recruited Philip Ryken while he was finishing up graduate work at Oxford. When Jim Boice died in 2000 he was succeeded by PR, one of the best preachers in America. In the bio Dr. Ryken registers extravagant interest in the historical novels of Patrick O’Brien—an author I’d never heard of though I learned later that the film ‘Master and Commander’ was made from one of his books. I was intrigued by the enthusiastic endorsement but not enough to do anything about it. Sometime later I discovered that a colleague in Budapest who reads and cares about the life of the mind was just as enthusiastic about the novels as Philip Ryken. I was again intrigued but, again, not enough to be goaded into action.
On February 1rst I arrived at the Budapest airport to board a flight to Moscow. The departure lounge at my gate was full so I took a seat in a deserted area next to another gate where all the passengers had just boarded. Prominent among the empty seats was a derelict volume, perhaps intentionally discarded, more likely accidentally forgotten. The flight was gone. The owner was likely gaining altitude already. But I waited a decent interval anyway before I touched the book. I wanted to satisfy my own ethical standards (regretfully never as high as, say, the Apostle Paul’s) before I exercised the old Finders Keepers prerogative - an option found nowhere in Holy Scripture. I tried not to view the acquisition as appropriating something which did not belong to me but more as providing a good home for an orphan. Oh yes, I almost forgot. I really ought to tell you the title:
Maritius Command by Patrick O’Brien the fourth of the twenty books in the Aubrey/Maturin series.
The Times of London calls O’Brien the greatest historical novelist of all time. Lavish praise that.
I’ve taken the hint.
And I’ve begun the book.
I feel guided by an unmistakable Providence.
I regard free books as a kind of sign.
Though we live in a decaying post-literary age--
Maybe I will become hopeful yet.