Finally, Maggie's gaze skimmed over the books on the windowsill, and she eased off from her daydream and flipped through the Portrait Gallery listlessly, but quickly pushed the books aside again and turned to look at the small row of books tied with rope. The Bystander's Selected Works, Lascellas, The Economics of Life, The Gregory Epistles—she knew what was written; the Year of Christ—looked like a collection of hymns, so she put it down again; Thomas Campis [1]? She had seen the name before when she was reading books. She had a sense of contentment that anyone could understand—the name that had been wandering alone in memory, and now she wanted to know more. With a little curiosity, she picked up the little, worn-out book; it had many corners, and a deceased reader had marked some passages with thick strokes, which had faded brown over the years. Maggie looked at it page by page, reading the places marked by her predecessors.
……
She kept reading the old book, and she read it eagerly, talking to the invisible teacher in the book, feeling the sadness and the source of all strength; even if she was called away, she would come back and read it until the sun had set on the willows. Imagine rushing with the book, unable to stop in the present. As she sat in the deepening twilight, she conceived of many plans of self-humiliation and total conversion; for the first time she was thrilled to find that giving up the ego seemed to give her the satisfaction she had been longing for but could not attain.
She couldn't understand the inner truth that the old monk had revealed (how could she understand it when she was so young?). Giving up the ego will be all about sadness, but people will gladly accept it. Maggie still craves happiness, and she is ecstatic to discover the secret of happiness. She knew nothing about the teachings and systems of mysticism and stillness; but this voice from the ancient Middle Ages conveyed directly the beliefs and experiences of a soul. For Maggie, this was an indisputable revelation. Why is it that this old-fashioned little book, which can be bought for sixpence on a book stall, can still create miracles and turn bitter water into a sweet spring to this day, while the newly published expensive sermon books and anthologies cannot?
I think it's because the book is written about the author's voice, a hermit's record of hidden pain, struggle, trust, and victory. The author does not sit on a velvet mat and write a book, teaching those whose feet are bleeding and still walking on the stone how to endure. Thus, the book has always been a permanent record of human needs and comfort: the voice of a brother hundreds of years ago. He had felt and suffered in the monastery, and he had given up on himself. He may have also been ordained, wearing a beeping robe, fasting and chanting; he spoke a different language than ours, but he was under the same silent and distant sky as us, with the same fervent desires, the same struggles, the same failures, the same tiredness.