We’re told not to judge books by their covers. When you’re wandering through the stacks at a library, you’ve often judging books by their spines and most often by their titles. I don’t know why “The Cedar Post” jumped out at me, with its boring name and its innocuous pale green binding, but I’m so glad it did.
It’s a work of fiction meant to teach a lesson, and it does it better than any other book I’ve read with the same goal. The story is centered on Jon, a teenaged boy growing up in Declo, Idaho, who feels discouraged about his life and isn’t sure how to become the person he’s always wanted to be.
One day he meets Ur, a man who was blinded and made deaf by experiments performed on him by Dr. Mengele while he was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Ur made the conscious decision that no matter what Dr. Mengele did to him, he would choose his own reactions and his own attitude. So strong was his resolve that he actually forgot how he lost his sight and hearing, and moved forward with faith in his future. He then lost both legs to diabetes. This did not deter him either. He embarked on a life quest of adhering to his own inherent rights, those rights which are ours by virtue of our birth. He teaches Jon, and consequently, the reader, about these rights, and Jon finds within himself the courage and the strength to become a man.
This book pointed out to me in very simple and profound prose that despite our challenges, we owe it to ourselves to handle ourselves with dignity and integrity. There is no virtue and honor to be found in throwing fits or blaming others when things don’t go as we would have liked.
When we are blamed for things we did not do by people who are, themselves, choosing to throw fits, we have a choice. We can, in turn, choose to respond benevolently and look for the good in them instead of acting the victim and turning the blame to our accusers. In essence, it’s taking the knowledge we have of our divinity as sons and daughters of God and putting it into every day practice with our interactions and our thoughts.
These are things that most of us already know, on some level, but this book brought it home to me with such power, I’m putting it down on my list of life-changing books and I encourage you to get a copy. You will find yourself forever impacted if you do.
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