Mister God, This is Anna

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No,” she went on, “no, he don’t love me, not like you do, its different, its millions of times bigger.” There are some who say this child could not have just come to live with this family, It did happen in the 1930's and having little children run the streets was not unheard of. There are some who may say no child could ever do or think what Anna did but I am here to tell you, I personally know of at least one. And don't forget Mozart wrote music at this same age and played his sister's violin without being taught at this same age or younger. Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, cant I? But Mister God is different. You see, Fynn, people can only love outside, and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so its different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.” Es ist kein allzu trauriges Buch, da man von vornherein das Ende kennt, allerdings musste ich mir dennoch am Schluss ein Tränchen verkneifen, da es wirklich ein 'schönes' Ende war. Toll beschrieben und mit einer wunderbaren Anekdote, die zum Buch passt. Wundervoll! This is by no means a sentimental, trite, or simple story, as the title might suggest to today's reader. In fact, I intend to re-read parts of it and add reference notes in my copy of the book. As a whole it is beyond amazing. It is astounding.

In his preface to both the British and American editions of the book, Vernon Sproxton remarks that he has seen Anna's drawings and notes and that he believes her to be real. There is some uncertainty about Fynn's age on first encountering Anna. Early editions of the book say he was nineteen, but this would be impossible if he was to know Anna for three years before the outbreak of war, and in the latest editions of Mister God, This Is Anna his age has been amended to sixteen. [10] Sources [ edit ] One of the things about Anna is the incredible relationship she had with 'Mister God'. Not some distant childhood vision of a god sitting on a throne up in the clouds, but in her wonderful matter of fact way she just really knew 'Mister God'. And her insights were just incredible. And as you read you find yourself, along with Fynn, learning so much. Anna's mirror book, her understanding that you can do billions of sums when you start with the answer, the way she could see everyday objects in a way which reflected her understanding of 'Mister God' are just some of the amazing aspects of Anna.

of God. It isn't the devil in humanity that makes man a lonely creature, it's his God-likeness. It's the fullness of the Good that can't get out or can't find its proper "other place" that makes for loneliness.Anna's misery was for others. They just could not see the beauty of that broken iron stump, the colors, the crystalline shapes; they could not see the possibilities there. Anna wanted them to join with her in this exciting new world , but they could not imagine themselves to be so small that this jagged fracture bird?" Indeed, how could he? So, like Alice in Wonderland, Anna ate of the cake of imagination and altered her size to fit the occasion.After all, Mister God did not have only one point of view but an infinity of viewing points, and the whole purpose of living was to be like Mister God. So far as Anna was concerned, being good, being generous, being kind, praying, and all that kind of stuff had very little to do with Mister God. They were, in the jargon of today, merely Anna dies before she even reaches her eighth birthday and yet at the end of the book I put it down with a sense of feeling full, of wonder and of gratitude for the life she lived and the impact she made. "Anna's life hadn't been cut short, far from it, it had been full, completely fulfilled" The book gives an account of their friendship. Anna by nature is the inquisitor, the forever probing creature who likes to find a reason for everything. Fynn, a student, tries to follow her hard-to-understand, yet simple logic. Philosophical questions are investigated through the eyes of a child, who proposes simple, common-sense solutions. Many of the conversations involve religion, with Anna personalising God, calling him "Mister God". Anna is involved with everything. The gist of the book is the philosophy of a child who has the wisdom to comprehend more than what would be expected of her.

I must have made some movement or noise, for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled. The she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut from the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon. The relationship between Fynn and Anne is very fluid. As he himself says, "I saw myself variously as father, brother, uncle, friend." I admired their immediate connection with each other and Fynn's clear devotion for the little girl. But instead of focusing on this beautiful, short-lived relationship, Fynn decides to focus mainly on Anne's thoughts about God, and the hundred thousand questions raised in his mind by her constant musings. This is what brings the book down. The conversations between the two get very repetitive and dragged. I think I should have been much more of a religious idealist or much more of a philosopher to truly appreciate this book. Sadly, I am neither. Even the dirt and the stars and the animals and the people and the trees and everything, and the pollywogs?” The pollywogs were those little creatures we had seen under the microscope.She was silent for a little while. Later I thought that at this moment she was taking her last look at babyhood. Then she went on.

It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of the similarities, but God was not like us because of our differences. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love, and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable. This is a short book I want everyone to read, though there are some who will find it too simple to enjoy. I loved Anna and her many ideas. One of my favorites is when Anna realized she knew the answer to a squillion (the biggest number Anna could think of) questions. Just when Fynn thinks he is going to set her right, she proves she is already right: How much is 4 take away 1? How much is 2 plus 1? How much is 5 take away 2? By now you must have figured out we could go on all day with this line of reasoning. Indeed, Anna taught Fynn that it is the questions that are truly important. Even beyond that, it is the circumstance of the question that is important. Saying yes to the offer of a drink of water may be drastically different depending on if you are three days into the desert or just newly arrived at the restaurant. Aside from any spiritual implications, I remember the book’s emphasis on thinking for oneself, which I have tried latterly to hang on to, even at the risk of sounding like an idiot, or – more usually – proving myself one. As children, we thrive by thinking for ourselves. As adults, we’re cursed with sophistication. We recycle ideas, parade breadth of learning, are paralysed by the thought of being wrong. We call this sophistication cultural capital, which seems to me a good term because it is a currency: a system of value rather than the thing of value. There are some thoughts in the book that did not resonate with me, but much that did. In fact, so much so that I began reading aloud full chapters to various members of my family and enjoying the passages even more with each reading. Anna has the capacity to think out of the box, so to speak, because she has never been fettered with a box. Fynn is something of a child prodigy himself when it comes to all things mathematical. The combination of the two produces some amazing theories about metaphysics and Christianity.ster God. No! The whole point of being alive was to be like Mister God and then you couldn't help but be good and kind and loving, could you?” Sydney George Hopkins (26 March 1919 - 3 July 1999), as a teenager and young adult, lived in the East End of London in the early 1930s. He was briefly drawn towards the politics of Oswald Mosley, but soon became disillusioned. He won a scholarship to a local grammar school, Cooper's Company College, [5] London E3, and left aged 15 to work for The Russian Oil and Petroleum Company, where he had aspirations of becoming a research chemist. [6] Following a fall off a cliff he suffered chronic insomnia and in 1939 was referred to Finchden Manor [7] in Kent, a therapeutic community run by George Lyward O.B.E., and later joined the staff. [8] you know has got Mister God in his middle, and so you have got his Mister God in your middle too. It's easy.”

mind making himself small. People thought that Mister God was very big, and that's where they made a big mistake. Obviously Mister God could be any size he wanted to be. Schade ist - was man von Anfang an weiß, dass Anna nicht alt wird und das sie nur ganze zwei Jahre, glaube ich, bei Fynn lebt. Sie stirbt also sehr jung. Although the prose is relatively simple and somewhat coarse in some parts of the book and Anna's explanations are rough and terse even to the point of being abtruse, it just goes to show you that not all beauty is created by skilled and stylish techniques of trained artists and not all truth lies in fanciful and coherent arguments. Just as Jesus lied in the manger and Buddah among the ragged, sometimes the most beautiful poetry and the deepest, truest philosophy is 'in the middle' of a field of wildflowers, a child's indecipherable scribble or the silent smile of the common prostitute. In fact, this book eventually goes to demonstrate that when you're 'full' inside, you don't need to fret about what's outside or peripheral, you can concentrate on what's 'in the middle' and being 'what I am' and Mister God.

This is, by far, the most boring book I have read this year, and that's including the one book I DNFed. It sounded to me like a death knell. “Damn and blast,” I thought. “Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.” But I was wrong. I don't know why I was getting the feeling that this account is partly fictionalised. Children can be precocious but this book does seem to be a stretch. So many of the conversations seem impossible for a 5-7 year old. The pessimistic part of me just doesn't let me trust this narrative to be entirely based in reality. I was sufficiently troubled about all this to execute some google searching. Searching the word "Fynn", I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_G... could become a world of iron mountains, of iron plains with crystal trees.It was a new world to explore, a world of the imagination, a world where few people would or could follow her. In this broken-off stump was a whole new realm of possibilities to be explored and to be enjoyed.