Ender’s Game
Just finished reading Ender’s Game (it’s great if you get a chance to read it). It’s about humanity dealing with a superior invading force, and what we’ve done to prepare if they were to return. Ender is taken to Battle School when he is 6 because he has all the qualities that the military commanders need to command a fleet successfully against the “buggers”. Ender experiences much sadness and fear, some created by those in command to make him the commander he would become. I hadn’t been reading Ender’s Game for any particular spritual purpose when I ran across this section about Ender being seperated from one of his few friends:
Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “Salaam.” Then, red-faced, he turned away and walked to his own bed at the back of the barracks. Ender guessed that the kiss and the word were somehow forbidden. A suppressed religion, perhaps. Or maybe the word had some private and powerful meaning for Alai alone. Whatever it meant to Alai, Ender knew that it was sacred; that he had uncovered himself for Ender, as once Ender’s mother had done, when he was very young…she had put her hands on his head when she thought he was asleep, and prayed over him. Ender had never spoken of that to anyone, not even to Mother, but had kept it as a memory of holiness, of how his mother loved him when she thought that no one, not even he, could see or hear. that was what Alai had given him; a gift so sacred that even Ender could not be allowed to understand what it meant.
It’s in the ordinary that I’m suprised by “memories of holiness” and acts of kindness that are so sacred I cannot be allowed to understand them.
