Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Despirited


I enjoyed reading this short but sweet book. I think I mostly liked it because I have always had thoughts and questions about spirits being separate from our bodies. I have my own thoughts about the subject but reading something like this was fun to add to my opinion. I felt like it slowly became creepier the longer I read. But she did a really good job representing spirits/ ghost. By the end of the book everything seemed overwhelming and almost surreal. I didn’t really like the whole idea of Blake’s body being taken over by evil. However the author did a really good job personifying both sides of Blake in an appropriate way. I believe that those kinds of situations are real and so reading about it kind of gave me the chills even though this was fiction. But that is my personal experience. Honestly, I am not sure how well this teaches along with the Latter Day Saint’s beliefs because I haven’t ever talked about this aspect. But I do think the author emphasized the important connection between the body and spirit, which is an idea I have always been taught at a young age. This book reminded me of a church lesson I had when I was younger.

The glove and the hand.
The glove represents our body and the hand represents our hand. The teacher would explain how the gloves only work when on the hand. Just like our bodies. We need our spirit to work our bodies. This book showed how depending on our spirit is how we will use our agency which is a principle with in the gospel. The author did a great job portraying this idea without being to religious even though as a member I could connect it.

In the end, this book challenged my beliefs in the most enjoyable way. It is a thinking book. Forces it’s reading develop opinions about these hard topics.

2 comments:

  1. I really like that you point out these topics aren't something talked about in depth in the Church. This probably varies from person to person in their own experiences, but it's not exactly a Sunday School topic. Either way, she does address that concept well, even though we might not be super familiar with the doctrine she may or may not be bringing into question.

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  2. I, too, was fascinated by the spirit/body dichotomy in this book. On one hand, the Spirit seemed to be able to do much more than we generally think about. On the other hand, Perkins made it very clear that the body was crucial to the spirit. I'd be really curious to hear what non-LDS audiences had to say about all this stuff.

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