Take Up And Read

My annual week at the beach is now just a warm hum in my memory and a faint umber in my flesh.  Beyond the playing in sand and surf, the beach has always meant one thing to me: reading.

This year, my seven days at the beach involved reading, and a blessed break from the march of churchy books I've been reading for my doctorate.  It five novels, around 1,500 pages or so of storytelling goodness.  

Three of the novels were recent offerings from the publisher that, God willin' and the crick don't rise, will soon be working with me on getting my own novel to print.

Those were intimidating, at first, serious books written by clearly gifted authors.  I'm going to be in the company of these folks?  Sure, I've self-published and ePublished.  But looking at that stack of books, hardbacks one and all, was peculiar.  They bore the labels from the library, that place of deep magic remembered from childhood.  I felt a bit like a clueless, as-yet-unsorted muggle-born, wandering into Hogwarts and gawking at the towering, godlike seventh-years as they bent reality to their whims.  

It took me four days to read them, and then I moved to one I'd loaded onto my Kindle.  It was by Stephen King, just because, well, it had been a while.  Darned fine yarn, as it so happened.  And the last was one my wife had read on my Kindle, and came with her recommendation.  It did not disappoint.

I inhaled them, as I do with books, as I always have.  I breathe them in, and whole days disappear as I lose myself in the worlds they create.

What struck me, as I packed up my books from a week of intense, blissful reading, was the book that I had brought and not read.  I'd brought my study bible, as I do, everywhere I go.  But I'd not cracked it, nor had I been tempted to crack it.

It's not that I haven't read it recently, of course, or that I don't read it as part of my usual weekly discipline.  Reading and studying scripture is a part of my every week, as I first meditate over the selected readings, seeking one that seems to resonate or harmonize with my soul and the things of the world.  I refresh my understanding of a text, reading through commentaries in preparation for interpreting it in worship.   I find that fascinating, because the text--as the Spirit moves in it--is always different in different contexts.  It's why, after over ten years of interpreting from the many and various books of the Bible, I still find the process of preparing the Sunday sermon a life-giving place.  It is a task I enjoy, like the good feel of a well-made tool in your hand, or the good sweat that comes from working the earth when preparing for a planting.

But what struck me, in that week of reading other stories, was just how important it is to know other tales.  Bringing the ancient and sacred texts of our tradition alive requires an immersion in other stories--in books, in film, in the stories shared by those around us.  Relating those living stories to that life-giving story, understanding that dance, that exchange?

It makes that One Story--the one we know, and in which we are free to participate--more meaningful, more filled with purpose.

Words and Paper

This morning, I came bucketing up the long gravel driveway of my in-law's house in Western Maryland.  The five inches of snow already on the ground had been augmented by an overnight snow, and the flakes were still falling heavily.

Between the new tires on the minivan and a healthy dose of objects-in-motion-tend-to-stay-in-motion, it was only just enough muss and fuss to make it entertaining.

I was on my way back from the morning jaunt that has defined almost every morning since I started coming out here decades ago: The newspaper run.

The paper has always been a necessary part of any lazy flannel-jammie morning.  That newspaper run used to be earlier, years ago.  Back in the 1990s, I had to get out by no later than seven, and even then, there was always the risk that every single newspaper would be gone.

Now?  There are always papers, no matter how late I sleep in.  That form of media is fading.  We've moved away from physical media for our news, and now are increasingly moving away from it for our reading.  Books have also been a major part of any time off, and this year, for the first time, I find myself sitting at the Western Maryland house and reading an eBook.

I've read books online before.  I've read an entire book in a game on my PS3.  I've even published to Kindle.  But I've not made a regular habit of reading books that weren't paper and ink.  With the arrival of the lowest-end no-ad Kindle in my life, that's going to become a much more regular event.   It's lowest-end by design.  I don't want a tablet computer.  I don't want apps, or videos, or games.  I want none of those distracting, pointless bits of popcorn-brain electronic frippery.

I just want to read, to lose myself in a world spun of words.

The first of the books I downloaded was the latest in Ian M. Banks Culture books, a series of thoroughly enjoyable hoo-hah hard-sci-fi space operas.  Others will follow...more hard sci-fi, and likely some Teilhard de Chardin.

It's a different tactile feeling, having that light sliver of plastic in my hand.   But the reading experience is exactly the same.  I'm still immersed in that world, engaged deeply with the reality woven into being by that language.

That's the important thing, eh?

George MacDonald

As I fumble my way through the endless supply of stuff I Really Should Read, I've finally gotten around to George MacDonald.

MacDonald is a mystic Scot from the 19th century, one who was driven from the one church he ever served for his heretically open-minded views. He lived the life of a pauper and remains somewhat obscure.

His influences, though, are deep. Lewis Carroll might not have published Alice in Wonderland were it not for MacDonald. J.R.R. Tolkien acknowledged some of MacDonald's work as being formative. But it was C.S. Lewis who was most intensely changed by his intersection with MacDonald's writing and theology, to the point of declaring MacDonald to be his spiritual teacher. Given the influence Lewis had...and still has...over my own faith, it was high time for me to check out MacDonald's writings.

MacDonald was mostly a novelist, who spun tales of magic and mystery that were suffused with his faith. I'm intending to get to those later. No, really. I will. Phantastes and Lilith are going to work their way through my consciousness in the very near future.

Two of his books now grace my nightstand. One is a collection of devotional poems entitled "Diary of an Old Soul," intended to be read daily over a year. The second is C.S. Lewises own anthology of MacDonald's key teachings, the ones the were most formative to his thought.

I'm looking forward to it. A bit of reading is good for the soul, particularly if it's the right reading.