Cloverly, my grandparent’s home in Virginia, had a lawyer’s bookcase in the upstairs hall. Its glass doors folded down to protect the precious books on the shelves below. They were mostly novels, I think. My childhood memory is not clear on what was there but I do remember reading some of the old potboiler romance novels from the early 1900's. My grandmother had grown up in a home that had one room devoted to books... a room full of shelves... a home library. I have heard stories about the leather bound books that filled those shelves... how Aunt Dada had to sell them in order to help support herself after Grandpa Max died. I never got to see the room filled with books but the sight of that room, with its empty shelves, awed me. If I could slip back in time, I would love to see what my great-grandparents had on their bookshelves.
My parent’s home always had books and magazines everywhere. When they built their home, it was important to have some built-in bookshelves to hold our collection of books... daddy’s treasured college books on trees and genetics... my collection of "The Bobbsey Twins" and Louisa May Alcott’s works... Reader’s Digest Condensed Books...cookbooks... Bibles...old novels from the turn of the century... books on animal husbandry... picture/history books... fairy tale books. The piano top and coffee table had magazines and newspapers stacked high... Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, The Farmer’s Almanac, Progressive Farmer (with Ada the Ayrshire in cartoons), the Mennonite’s magazine and the Baptist magazine "Home Life", the Jacksonville Times Union, the Valdosta Daily Times, the Wall Street Journal. We could sit in the same room for hours... reading... saying very little to one another... and be content.
I am reading a book named "Contentment". It is a small book... bright orange corrugated cover with a picture of a mother and child (or a father and child) on the front cover... a found treasure at a discount bookstore. I am trying really hard to read it slowly... not rush through it drunk on the quotes and words and ideas that are contained in its pages. When I can make myself take time... time to savor... time to absorb... time to hear... time to let the words soak into my soul... the experience of reading becomes soul-full.
I have read for pleasure and entertainment since I was five. My ADD brain loved the stimulation of reading many different books at once... reading stories and rushing to the conclusion to find out who done it... the pure joy of seeing the world created by the author’s words in my mind’s eye. This kind of reading informs, entertains, amuses, diverts, gives pleasure. Reading for the soul’s sake is a different kind of process.
Like any good bookcase, my soul needs books from many different disciplines and points of view. It is not enough to read only what I agree with and understand. For my soul’s sake, reading should include something that challenges, irritates, pushes, expands as well as comfort, confirm, quiet and inspire. So I don’t read just one version of the Bible... I read as many as I can find. I don’t read one kind of theology... I read many . Just as reading only murder mysteries can give you a skewed vision of the world (how could there be so many ways to creatively kill?), reading only what pleases you can confirm your point of view as the "right" one. None of us has the corner on the market for truth, justice and the American Way... none of us has the complete and final version of God’s words... none of us are God. So, I keep looking for God in strange places... books... magazines... Bibles...finding an endless resurrection of God’s presence in this world in the many different words we use to try to describe the indescribable... the Love and Light that surrounds us all our days on this earth and waits for us in the time to come beyond.
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