Tidying Up the Reading Desk Before New year.

I usually have two or three books on the go - in this case four. I also like to finish whatever I'm reading by the end of the year. I'm well through two of these, the Advent one is a daily read but will get there, and the heavier one on Glory and Longing is the heavy lifting one.

 

Many of my reading habits go back to three books. One by a largely forgotten Christian philosopher, Nels F S Ferre, Making Religion Real - there is a chapter on reading as an intellectual and spiritual discipline. Read widely, read difficult texts, know one writer thoroughly, read novels and poetry, and don't worry about the number of books read. What we do with a book is far less significant than what that book does to us.

 

The second The Selected Letters of Baron Friedrich Von Hugel - repeatedly Von Hugel advised reading those authors who keep the mind supple, responsive, curious, patient, and unwilling to settle down on the well shaped comfort of our favourite intellectual easy chair. From Von Hugel I learned to value the spiritual experience of others, and to stop using my own experience as some of validity check on how others related to and thought about God.

 

Then there's the biography of Alexander Whyte, who remains for me an exemplar of that older Scottish tradition of education in the humanities before education in divinity. Whyte read with wide ecumenical sympathy across the theological traditions, in literature and biography, and in a spirit of both enquiry and prayer as he sat at the feet of those from whom he wished to learn. Read, pray, think were three imperatives he drummed into students at New College Edinburgh.

As to reading several books at a time, that's just how it works for me.

 

Anyway, these four will complete this year's agenda / menu / list.

Comments

[Dr Andrew Eaton]

Seasonal greetings, Jim, from an occasional reader who has not previously left a comment. Always encouraging to hear of others' enthusiasm for reading and I appreciated the wisdom of your quoted words.