“Often I would thank the Lord for my foolishness, for life without foolishness is dull and without flavor, and were it not for my foolishness I should miss out on such beauty.”
To read the Book of Sorren is to try to know the unknowable. But that is not to say that discoveries cannot be made. My early perusings have allowed me to gain insight into the man and the times which produced this artifact. If we fail to grasp its meaning, it may be because of a flaw of our own, or as Sorren himself said, "'Tis a fitting punishment for some undeclared sin."
Possibly the most important thing I learned early on in my study of the book was to accept the ignorance of Sorren without judgment and the imposition of my own knowledge, limited as it may be. It is easy to see the quest for knowledge as an advancement of subsequent and interlacing theories that have withstood the passage of time. This is the way science slowly came to tear apart, categorize and then reinterpret the world with the understanding of such new relationships. In Sorren's time this principal did not yet exist, and it was to the past that men yielded their own better judgment. But just imagine for a moment what it must have been like in such a time as one's thoughts were truly one's own and not a recapitulation of everything that came before. In such times as Sorren lived it was no less likely to believe in the existence of sea monsters than that the darkness should hide the secret workings of the Lord. Much beauty of the world was thus visible through ignorance and acceptance. It must have been wonderful to believe in such things without retribution. By comparison of our own world, acceptance of acclaimed knowledge is strict and in some cases demanded from us. If I had my choice I would like to believe in some things that can never be known and to battle sea monsters in my dreams. Sorren had such dreams, and when he recorded them he was not bringing them to life, for they were part of his life. And often what we deem as fantasy was at one time accepted as fact, even as a man's word was his honor.
