Mister God, This is Anna

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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?” 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...

A book I loved, loved, loved when I first read it in the late 1970's. It is one of those books that stays with you for decades. . 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! Searching the phrase "Mister God, This is Anna", I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_G... but best of all this link: http://www.finchden.com/sgh/index.htm My skepticism was satisfied and I was able to read the remainder of the book with a more open mind.you know has got Mister God in his middle, and so you have got his Mister God in your middle too. It's easy.” 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. 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.

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. 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. So much of rambling and philosophy. I could barely stop myself yawning after every few paras. It was the sheer determination of not having another DNF so soon this year that made me complete this work. 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.

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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 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. 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". 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 see, Fynn, Mister God is different because he can finish things and we cant. I cant finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so its not the same kind of love, is it?”

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. 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. Well then,” she continued, “if we don’t know many things about Mister God, how do we know he loves us?” 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. 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.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 ] 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" 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. The ending of the book describes Anna's death at age seven after falling from a tree and Fynn's profound grief. "She never made eight years, she died by an accident. She died with a grin on her beautiful face. She died saying, 'I bet Mister God lets me get into heaven for this'." [4] Fynn experiences a period of angst, blaming God, but when he visits Anna's grave and sees it to be a riot of flowers, he lets go of his anger against God. The answer, he realizes, is "Anna is in my middle". This particular reference is to a conversation between Anna and Fynn. God is part of everybody and everybody is part of God. Fynn walks away from her graveyard with renewed hope. 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.

At five years Anna knew absolutely the purpose of being, knew the meaning of love and was a personal friend and helper of Mister God. At six Anna was a theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet and gardener. If you asked her a question you would always get an answer – in due course. On some occasions the answer would be delayed for weeks or months; but eventually, in her own good time, the answer would come: direct, simple and much to the point." [3] 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.

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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.