We went to see the Spiderwick Chronicles last night. It's OK, but not worth seeing if you're not a fan of the books. My daughter loved the books and we wanted an excuse for a family outing, so we went. There was one moment that stuck out for me, completely out of context, that I thought I would pass along. The main character is Jared, a 12-ish year old boy who comes to live in an enormous old house in the country. The story revolves around a book, a field guide, that contains some powerful secrets about the natural world. The book has become highly sought after by various different forces, particularly an evil guy named Morgrath or something like that. Jared tells his great uncle that he is afraid of what will happen if the book is lost. And his uncle replies, "You've read the book. The knowledge is in you. You are the book."

Which is kind of an interesting new way of looking at how to interpret one's sacred text, if that's not too much of a logical leap for this early in the morning. Once you've read it, digested it, you've worked on it and it's worked on you, it lives inside you. Literalism is irrelevant in that case, I think.