I-YOUniverse

I’m currently reading 12 books—actually, 11. One “book” on my list is the Sacred Text Archive online, which contains hundreds of scripture-type books. But Internet reading ain’t the same, is it?

You see, I’ve got all this time on my hands. Due to chronic pain, I have to rest my joints and muscles a lot; my brain keeps going 100 mph, however.

Maybe I should memorize the DSM IV, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4^th ed. This 1000+ page tome contains all the quirks, defense mechanisms, and mental disorders a psychiatrist can dream up.

Believe me, you’re in there. (Me, too.) And your insurance company has your number, the code which stands for the emotional or mental problem you want them to pay for the treatment of. It goes in a box on a form in a computer file. And it’s public knowledge. Ain’t no such thing as privacy where your insurance company’s money is concerned.

I like the classics: Shakespeare. I have all the plays on CDs, so I listen to one or two a week. I can’t keep up with the President, who read three Shakespeares.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKiWWi8rdJQ

Oh, I failed to mention how much I enjoy teaching DVDs: Shakespeare survey, history of Africa, Greek myths, Greek tragedy, surveys of Russian literature and existentialism.

Bitten by the used book bug, I find essential used books on Amazon and eBay; there’s always some book I, y’know, got to have. I’m careful, though.

For instance, C.F. Andrews, my current rage, referred to The Hidden Life of the Soul by Jean Nicolas Grou, a French Catholic writing at the time of the French Revolution. I found it on Amazon for $1777.00.

At that moment I got very nervous about the buy-it-with-one-click button.

Alibris had The Spiritual Life by Grou for $3.95, which’ll have to do for now.

Yesterday I became aware how I’m racing internally from one spiritual aid to another, trying to get better being still, better being for others, etc. It’s like all this popcorn’s exploding in my brain, and I’m compulsively consuming.

As a Nursing Home chaplain, I got a beautiful leather gilt-edged 1928 Book of Common Prayer to read with residents. I decided to start reading from that the Gospel and Epistle each week. Today the gospel was Luke 15, the waiting Father.

I’m into lectio divina. I have four or five essays on how to do that, and a small book somewhere on my shelves. I haven’t seen it in about five years.

Anyway I was lectio-ing away at the exquisite King James Version (naturally, because I’m in my Elizabethan English phase—y’know, the beauty of the language!) And these words hit home:

“And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat,” Luke 15:16 (KJV)

Dead bang! The Spirit uses scripture like a shrink uses the DSM IV.

Here I am, cramming anything and everything into my intellectual spiritual maw, like a whale engulfing krill by the millions.

What’s up?

Last week I jet read through Andrews’ Christ in the Silence; now I’m reading him one or two paragraphs aloud. Take this morning:

There was evidently a suppurating disease at the heart of Western civilization, draining its life-blood, which only the infusion of a life-giving spirit could staunch and heal.

C. F. Andrews, Christ in the Silence (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933), p. 31.

Suppurating – causing to generate pus. I guess he’d seen many a suppurating wound on bodies in Calcutta. In the West he saw suppurating souls.

The earthquake, tornado, and lightning strikes passed, and finally, finally I got still. I realized, both Sandy and I have some run ins with medical types in the next few weeks. These are supposed to be fairly routine. But I’ve had more than once, a medical appointment rip up my life, shred my planner, implode my future. Even so called routine ones give me the heevie jeebies.

“You’re skittish about these appointments,” the Spirit said. No scolding. “Don’t be afraid.”

Lectio divina. That means reading only six books at once, huh?

Well, I’ll stick to 10, at least until we get the all clear from the docs.

Working in a nursing home I met people who no longer read. Maybe they couldn’t, due to deteriorating eyesight or because of mental condition simply lost the capacity or interest to do so.

I resolved, then, to read all the books I could, especially the great books, so that if the day came when I also didn’t read any more, I would have read as many as possible.

Reading the great books

I have in mind some of the classics. Homer, whom I’ve never read. The existentialists Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski. The great Russians. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Of course, Shakespeare. I have him on audio CDs, and listen to one or two plays a week. Don Quixote has never held my attention for more than 100 pages, but one of these days…

I get distracted. I like biography. Bonhoeffer’s biography by Bethge is terrific. That led me to others of his works. The Cost of Discipleship. Life Together. Required reading for those of us who dream of a family-based monasticism. Mother Teresa’s Come Be My Light. Compelling, heart-breaking.

Distractions

At the moment I’m into C.F. Andrews. I noticed his character in the film Gandhi, and want to understand how this Englishman realized who Gandhi was and what was happening in India. So I read The Ordeal of Love by Hugh Tinker (Oxford, 1979), and I have Charles Freer Andrews (Harper & Brothers, 1950). The latter is more personal, lyrical, and more positive. I’m looking forward to two of Charlie’s books What I Owe to Christ, Christ in the Silence. These will shine light upon his religious quest, from High Church Anglican to some degree of Hindu and finally back to the person of the Christ.

I’m also reading Tagore. Gitanjali, for which he won the Nobel Prize. Sadhana: the Realization of Life. Selected Poems.

I also love liberation theology. We Drink Water from Our Own Wells I carry around with me. And I found Liberation Theology Resources Online.

Deciding what not to read

You realize that I don’t have all that much to do but read.

I’ve gotten to the time in my life when I realize doing one thing means not ever doing ten others.  Younger people think they’ll get around to everything. But decide comes from the same root as suicide, a root that means to cut off.

I feel conflicted. On the surface are the waves, the winds; in the depth is the Gulf Stream. You get to do both. Read the acknowledged classics and also read the blogs, some of which are emerging classics.

How do you decide what to read?

I’m making good progress in LOTR. The orcs have Frodo in custody, Aragorn and the Dunedain have taken the paths of the dead, and the Rohirrim are about to ride. Sam reveals that Frodo bears the Ring to Faramir, Boromir’s younger brother and son of the Steward of Gondor, and (in the book) Faramir has no desire to take it for himself or his father, not if he found it lying on the road.

Inconsistent, as Tolkien’s critics charged? Not to me. Faramir is a pure soul; nothing in him is snared by false promises of power and domination. Temptation arises because something within answers the external call. “One is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it” James 1:14 (NRSV).

Scapegoating

We keep tripping over the dynamic of projection, blaming others for our sins. It’s a strategy as old as Adam and as contemporary as 2008 presidential politics. It’s Eve’s fault Adam ate the apple. It’s illegal aliens who are wrecking the U.S. economy. I’ve never met a little green Martian; as far as I know there are no laws against them.

Hooray for California

Oh, speaking of projection. Imagine:

Two young MTV-watching kids go to their preacher. “We want to get married, be true to each other, forsaking all others, till death do us part,” they say.

“No way,” says the preacher.

“How come?” they ask.

“Everybody knows, gays aren’t monogamous,” the preacher replies, “and this isn’t California.”

I promise on a stack of Bibles to read

Speaking of temptation. My reading queue is getting quite long. I’m including it also as a text widget as a kind of self-discipline. Currently it includes:

• Anglo-Saxon Spirituality
• Julian of Norwich (in the Classics of Western Spirituality series)
• Selected Poems of Tagore
• Prayers of Tagore, ed. Vetter
• WordPress for Dummies
• Not yet delivered: Ordeal of Love: C. F. Andrews and India, Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods

Reading is what I do, mostly. Without it, this chair I spend my days in would be a prison. And I have few temptations stronger than amazon.com in my repertoire.

What are they?

Never mind.