One Great Read -- For Freemasons and Other Free-thinking People!

Meeting God, by Thomas Trzyna, is the best novel I've read in a long time -- and I'm reading it for the second time now. It involves a great intellectual, spiritual quest in the form of a lively and highly readable adventure story, peppered with colorful, well drawn characters, very realistic conversations and exotic places. It isn't about trying to convert anyone, so relax! If anything, this novel might challenge some people who label themselves as "orthodox" -- whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jewish.

This novel includes a theme of interest to Freemasons, particularly those who are members of the Scottish Rite. Just as so many of the degrees of Scottish Rite deal with questions of religious and political history in the form of allegorical dramas which encourage its members to compare various belief systems, epistomology, ontology and so on, its protagonist, Dr. George Bourdon, a mature college professor, has been on a lifetime quest to understand, not just by study, but with the vigor of a serious anthropologist and comparative mythologist, all the religions of the world.

Dr. Bourdon seeks to discover if there is some over-arching unity or truth to them, something that might even reveal their common origins, a view known as perennialism, which may be explored to great intellectual profit in The Golden Bough -- or whether their differences are so profound that the impression that there are many paths to the top of the same mountain is simplistic and mistaken. Dr. Bourdon's first-person narrative often reflects, with a humor that reminds me of Voltaire's Candide, on the perennialism one finds in Sufism. 

The plot thickens (pardon the cliché) on a trip to Paris, when he enters a very ordinary bar with his brother to get out of the awful wintery weather. There, they meet a very unusual old man who seems to be, well, supernatural -- to Dr. Bourdon anyway. The mystery begins when the old man, almost as soon as they meet, matter-of-factly reveals that he had known Dr. Bourdon's deceased uncle, a famous marine biologist -- and pulls the obituary from his pocket. The short exchange between the old man and Dr. Bourdon makes such a powerful, other-worldly impression on him that his lifelong quest goes into high gear.

Meeting God features one colorful character Masons will love right away, Dr. Jacques LaPere, who is Dr. Bourdon's one academic confidant with whom he shares and debates his ideas on the origin of monotheism, the emergence of mankind in Africa and how humans populated the world and diffused religious thought. Dr. LaPere is introduced to readers as "the strange Freemason." The narrator paints this character with great affection: "Ask him a question about modern science and he was likely to respond with a stream of astrological reflections that underneath their lunacy revealed a staggering knowledge of physics, astronomy and mathematics."

Meeting God is a great read that will make you think, laugh and actually enjoy its lively dialogue, mature and erudite speculations of a philosophical, theological and anthropological sort. It is delightful to read and is well researched in terms of the customs and places Dr. Bourdon visits. Erudite and readable -- a balance Thomas Trzyna has struck with a master's touch.