Shusaku Endo, "Deep River"

This is the second book I've read by Endo. The first was an amazing look into the early days of Christianity in Japan titled "Silence." If you want to know what it's like to suffer for the sake of faith, in my context Christian faith, that book will strike you in the heart.

This book "Deep River" is more modern in context, but it brings up ancient faith and practices. A group of Japanese tourists travel to India as a tour group. The way Endo introduces them somehow reminds me of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," where the sitz im leben of each individual pilgrim is brought to bear.

But no direct comparisons can be drawn. This story belongs to Endo, and to every seeking, spiritually wondering and wandering person. At the center of the story is a woman named Mitsuko, who is appalled by deep spiritual ferver, and yet is attracted to it. Whether she moves closer to God through her experiences remains to be seen.

But coursing through the novel is the River Ganges, and in particular the spiritual interaction that everyone in the story has with it. It is accepting and constant, and like God, it draws all things to itself. It draws out of people emotions and actions that heretofore they wouldn't have considered.

This is a good story to use to think about the "suffering servant." It is also a good story to use when wanting to describe how confession happens inside the human heart when met by things like beauty, death and pathos.

Enough rambling. Hey, I actually used the word heretofore.