Sandwich Artist Philosophers

Overheard in line at Subway:

Vegetable Specialist: You should read this new Danielle Steele book.

Cashier: I don't like Danielle Steele

VS: You'll like this one, I can't put it down.

C: No thanks.

VS: No, really. You should read it.

C: Isn't Danielle Steele one of those romance books? I don't read romances.

VS: But it's soooooo good.

C: No, because life isn't like that. Those give you false hope.

VS: You should read it.

C: Cause it makes you think...Oh, maybe I'll meet someone just like that...or my life will maybe be like that. It give false hope.

VS: You should really read it, you'd like this one.

Thinking the Subway cashier was a wise and sensible young woman, I sat down to eat my lunch and pulled out my current reading, Thomas A Kempis' "The Imitation of Christ." I flipped the page and read:

Love often knows no limits; its impetuous fire leaps across every boundary. Love feels no burden, makes light of toil, strives for things beyond its strength. Love never tries to make out that anything is impossible; everything, in the eyes of love, is both possible and lawful. Love, then can do everything; many a task there is that love can fulfil and many a wish it can make effective, where the man who does not love is powerless and fails.

Love is ever on the watch; it rests, but does not slumber, is wearied but not spent, alarmed but not dismayed; like a living flame, a blazing torch, it shoots upward, fearlessly passing through aught that bars its path...'My God, my love, you are all mine and I all yours."

Hum. Devotional literature as Romance: false hope? Or spiritual insight?