Bookworm
Ministerial Meandering
Bookworm
“I read it somewhere!” - I complain, when someone asks me where on earth I got such an absurd idea from. And that’s the problem, I find. I have this annoying habit of remembering quite a lot of what I read - but I haven’t the vaguest notion of where I read it, when, or who the devil wrote it. Just a week ago I went off at a tangent in my sermon - as I am wont to do - and then attributed a quote to a French polymath (René Descartes), when it should have been François-Marie Arouet - pen-name, Voltaire - who wasn’t born until almost 50 years after Descartes had died. Thankfully, one knowledgeable parishioner (Rick Probert) set me right later that week.
There is a coaster in our house that gives me reassurance whenever I glance at it; advice for life is written upon it with the words; ‘Read good books - drink good tea.’ I am slow at both. Tea is always too hot to approach when you sit down with your ‘good book’, and by the time you have been able to set aside said book, the tea is tepid and half an hour has passed. You must zap the tea in the microwave to make it palatable, and then the whole process starts again - until you give up, drink the tea almost cold, and settle in with your book.
In the last few years I have taken to increasing my library by buying electronic books to read on my pad. (Note careful and impressive avoidance of any brand names here.) I tell myself that this is so that I will not have to physically transport all of the literature in paper form to our next house, wherever that may be. However, given what my electronic library now contains, I will definitely need to survive (before the cheese slides totally off my cracker) into my 90’s, as my father did and my uncle continues to do, in order to be able to mutter “I read it somewhere!” to whoever has the sheer obstinacy to be living with me at the time.
Nevertheless, one of the joys of reading is that I am constantly being introduced to new authors - new to me, at least, even if they have been dead for centuries. Occasionally, these new authors are still living and exciting to read; occasionally, they are still living - and really should have been dead for centuries.
It is helpful, in this regard, to have had the opportunity (if it should arise) to watch these worthies speak. You Tube is a helpful outlet for such characters, and I have found that when they are logical and articulate, and make interesting arguments in debate, then I am usually happy with their written oeuvre. There are others who are undoubtedly highly gifted and intelligent, but are quite incapable of forming a sentence that doesn’t contain at least three knight’s moves, requiring you to replay that section several times to see if you can get even the gist of their verbal gymnastics.
Modern access to written material comes at a cost. The feel and smell of an old book in a hard cover, with slightly yellowed pages, and a dedication or inscription inside the front cover to someone called ‘Digby’ or ‘Freda’, written lovingly in sloping, cursive black ink, ‘on the occasion of your twenty-first birthday’ and dated 1892 - all these pleasures are irreplaceable by electronic readers, and so are lost.
Just so, but the world of the written word carries its own music, whether it be fact or fantasy, and because it does, I am incapable of reading with any kind of musical background. I either do the one or the other - read or listen. It really doesn’t matter as both may put me in touch with the transcendent - and frequently the numinous. At present, reading is quieter.
Philip+