Kirjahaku

This wonderfully entertaining picaresque novel by Harold Raley falls in the tradition of rogue literature established by 'Tom Jones' and other early novels. Set in the nineteenth century, 'Louisiana Rogue' will take you on a wild, fast-paced romp through all levels of Cajun society in the 1830s. The title page says the book promises to tell "The Life and Times of Pierre Prosp re-Tourmoulin, Picketpocket, Thief, Gambler, Fugitive, Undertaker, Barber, Doctor, Priest, Prisoner, Bandit, and Count; Latterly penned in his hand for the gentle reader of leisure, Spanning the years 1831-1839." The title page claims the book was translated by Peter Tourmoulin.

Immortal Destiny is the third of a trilogy of books on immortality. In The Light of Eden (2008) Raley invites the reader to a spiritual and intellectual feast featuring the mystery and reality of personhood and culminating in a new theory of human life. A radically new theory of life calls for a radically new theology, the main concepts and implications of which Raley explores In The Unknown God (2011). In it he argues for an expanded understanding of God, delves into theories of time, and offers fascinating perspectives of the Hereafter. The first two volumes of the trilogy set the stage for Raley's carefully reasoned but bold conclusions in Immortal Destiny. Summoning the discoveries of contemporary science, theology, and philosophy, Raley explores the dual modes of time and human life as creation, bodily reality, and survival. Raley peppers the pages of all his writings with rich perceptions and sidelong glances at many dimensions of truth.

No one can write our narrative for us, and no one should. For we are the novelists of ourselves, the composers of our personal melody of life. Daily we add pages to our story or notes to our song. Animals, our only flesh and blood companions in this world, are what they are by Nature's decree, but we humans are who we become primarily by our personal choices. This means that of all God's creatures, only we have the freedom--and therefore the responsibility--to choose how we live our life, and if necessary, to reconsider, to rectify, to repent and rewrite our story if it is sordid or change our tune if our music is discordant.I take these distinctions to heart in this writing. It is the story of the things I did for the first twenty years of my life and what happened to me as I did them. In a general sense, this is the description of any life, great or small, and mine conforms to the pattern with nothing exceptional to recommend it. Mine is the unremarkable tale of an obscure life in an obscure place. Yet I cannot dismiss it as insignificant, for that would imply that I am judge and jury of life's meaning, which I am not, not even of my own life, most of all, my own life.Within this general pattern, I admit that I write these events also out of curiosity. After I left the lower Appalachian country and its ways, I began a life so different in assumptions and obligations that it is hard to tie it to what followed. This writing is an attempt to make sense of it all, and for reasons that I do not fully understand. Much of life in those times, to quote the poet Wordsworth, seemed to be about "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago." But I would be the last to declare them meaningless now. The older I get, the more I believe that the tiniest flower that fades unseen, the loneliest sparrow that falls unnoticed, register their being on the Creator's grand scale. All things matter and link in secret ways we do not perceive. This is why wiser minds than mine tell us to walk by faith and not by sight.

These are tales of fortune and forfeiture, happiness and hazard, love and deceit. Some stories are set in specific times and places but not confined to them. Others arise in the mere vastness of the world and belong anywhere applicable or nowhere definitive. For wherever there is human life, there are the yearnings, dreams, possibilities and impossibilities we call tales and stories. For this reason, I do not think of myself as their creator, but only their author or perhaps their channeler. I say this because the people who come to life in this book do not always behave as I wish and plan. I push and they push back. Which is why I am as surprised as the next person by what they decide to do and who they choose to be. Perhaps their way is best. For if the decisions were left up to me, most likely I would be their tyrant. As it is, I end up being their friend.

The essays and lectures that comprise this book reflect decades of work in the United States, Spain, and Spanish America. In no particular chronological sequence, these writings cluster in thematic unity around the innovative concepts of the shared vision of philosophers Ortega y Gasset and Juli n Mar as. These include, among others, human life as the radical reality, the indissoluble bond of person and circumstance, innovations of philosophic genre and lexicon, perspective as reality and history as reason, and beyond the reductive claims of modern biologism, realism, and idealism the unique reality of the human person as creation. Harold Raley has written twenty-four books on philosophy, history, theological topics, and fiction, authored more than a hundred professional articles, delivered several dozen major lectures on philosophy, literature, and language, in addition to a decade of journalistic writing on language and intellectual topics. He has lectured in American and Canadian universities, at several venues in Spain, and lectured and taught in Colombia, South America. Raley has taught French, Spanish, and humanities. He has served as department chair at Oklahoma State University and the University of Houston, and as Dean of Fine Arts and Humanities at Houston Baptist University where he held the Robert H. Ray Chair of Humanities and was named Scholar- in-Residence.