adventures with prayer

turn towards the light

I've been reading White Fang by Jack London. It could be read as a spiritual adventure story. After the dramatic introduction of two men transporting a corpse in a coffin across the ice cold Arctic landscape, during a time of famine, after wolves eat all the dogs and one of the men, Henry is rescued, while a half wolf half dog watches over him. The wolf-dog teams up with a one-eyed veteran wolf and they make a litter. The wolf-dog crawls into a cave to give birth in safety.

White Fang begins life in a Plato-style cave, dark on three sides, a mysterious wall of light on the fourth side. Eventually the wolf cub gets up enough nerve to go through the mysterious wall, into the blinding white light, where he he is torn between fear of the unknown and curiosity to take charge of his destiny and to explore the world. The novel is filled with edifying discoveries, such as the law of hurt and the law of meat. Things could be classified into that which hurts and that which does not hurt. The law of meat is: eat or be eaten.