Reflections on Reading and Writing

"If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own."  Fr. Richard Rohr

You may have, at some point, noticed the list of books on the right-hand side bar of this blog. Like most people, you may have paid it very little mind. And there's nothing wrong with that. My list of recently read books has always been mostly for my benefit. However, if you're reading this post, it's likely you've read others, which have often included my own take on books I've read.

For most of my life I have not been a reader. All through grade school I hated reading assignments. I was one of those kids who found all the loop holes in how not to do the required reading. Never finished a summer reading book. (Not something I'm proud of.) One summer, we were assigned The Grapes of Wrath. I never even considered reading it. I rented the movie, went to my friend Landry's house to watch it, and fell asleep during the movie. Like an idiot, I didn't re-watch it, I just returned it! How stupid can you get? (Also not something I'm proud of, but in hindsight, it's pretty funny.)

Not much changed for me in college; however, for one reason or another, I did read a few books independently during those years. Like a dolt, my junior year of college, I signed up for Introduction to American Fiction, only because I'd had the teacher before and liked her. Over the course of the semester we had to read like six novels. Again, what was I thinking?! I wasn't a reader. So, I did my usual, read as little as possible to get by in that class. I might have actually finished one of the Hemingway books (A Call to Arms)...might have.

As I was contemplating attending seminary, someone once said to me, "If you want to go to seminary, you'd better like reading and writing a lot, because you'll do a lot of both." My inner response to this comment was something of disgust, because, though I'd always received good grades on papers, I didn't particularly enjoy it. I went to seminary anyway.

In seminary, I was assigned more reading that I could have imagined. What had I gotten myself into? It was like our professors thought the only thing we did was go home and read for their classes. However, I was slowly maturing, and I managed to do a higher percentage of the reading that I would have in college. I even managed to finish the entire book a number of times (quite an accomplishment for me at the time). During the summers I actually began doing some self-chosen reading...Harry Potter (thanks to my brother lending me the books). It took me two summers to get through them all, but I did. I guess you could call Harry Potter the gateway drug to literature. I also made several strides with writing assignments. I wrote my first sermons, which I actually enjoyed. Then I wrote an exegesis (i.e. long Bible research paper), and was proud of what I produced.

Studying Greek and lots of Hebrew introduced me to the study of language, which I took to like a mosquito to my wife's fair skin. (Having her nearby, I don't have to wear bug repellant.) I learned so much about English from studying the Biblical languages, and this seemed to ignite my enjoyment of reading and writing. All the sudden I was able to spot all kinds of English words, take them apart and often trace the basic meaning back to their Greek or Latin roots. This also made reading theology easier, because high-folutent theologians like to use unnecessarily big words, which are usually just extended logisms on Greek or Latin roots.

I remember being assigned another 12-14 page exegesis for an upper level Old Testament class. I got so into the assignment, my teacher almost penalized me for writing over 20 pages. That was about the time I began this blog, which is an endeavor to explore and expand my capacity as a writer, find my own voice and test to see if I had anything worth saying that people actually wanted to hear. So far, I have developed as a writer, found my voice, and I'm still working on the "something people want to hear" part.

But, it wasn't until after seminary, during my first CPE residency that I discovered joy in reading. I began choosing books that I wanted to read. To my surprise, they weren't fiction or exciting tales, they were theology books; reading from which most people would vomit. I had some assigned reading, but I found myself enjoying it as well. And every time I finished a book, I experienced a rush of pride. This life-long non-reader just finished a book! Take that!

I decided to celebrate these achievements, and secretly boast about them, by blogging about the books I read. Thus, I have a list of book reviews on my blog. And I've just exposed a vulnerable secret with you, something I shared with Hannah while in Singapore: every book review I write serves a few different purposes, but one of them is to bolster my pride in finishing a book. But along with that, I write the reviews, because I like keeping a list of what I've read and when I've read it. I also like being able to go back and read what I thought about a book. It has already helped me in recommending books to others seeking some good reading.

Then, this morning I read a quote from Brian McLaren's book Naked Spirituality, "A secret to the spiritual life is desiring to actually be more spiritual that you appear to be...The secret to hypocrisy is desiring to appear more spiritual that you actually are" (p.87). And this quote, brings to mind my not-so-altruistic motives for writing book reviews: to brag to myself. Hardly a deadly sin, it still made me pause and think. This is exactly what I have been doing. Hypocritically, I was writing book reviews to appear more something (educated? spiritual? well-read? informed?) than I actually am.

But, so as not to wallow in self-pity or whatever, there's another quote in McLaren's book by Brother David Steindi-Rast that says, "Jokingly but with a great deal of seriousness, [Father Damascus would] say, 'Don't worry about purifying your motives. Simply know that they aren't pure, and proceed'" (p. 93). Ah, the sweet and heavy exhale of permission to be impure, it's very satisfying and right up my impure alley.

If you'll notice, the two most recently read books on my list are not hyper-linked. I have not written reviews on them. The Brown text was very enlightening: theology of the Third World, and how it differs from our own privileged theology. But, my sense is that theology book reviews on this blog are as uninteresting as blogs can get. The Martin book is a very gripping and popular fantasy novel, about which you can find far better reviews on the internets (that thing you're on right now). And if you surf the internets as well as I surfed the waves in Bali, you'll have no trouble at all!

So, while I'm still reading, and have many books that I still wish to get to, you'll probably see far fewer book reviews on this blog from now on. I will still keep the side-bar list current, and feel free to inquire about any of the books you see posted there; however, unless one of them is uniquely inspirational, I probably won't be blogging on them...unless I feel the need to brag.