I was visiting a hospice patient back around 2000. The home was quite modest as was the woman who was the subject of my visit. We had conversations that ranged over her life and her family – the things that mattered most for her in her last days. The climax of our time together came when she pulled out her heavily worn Bible (King James) to show me something. “I’ve read it 96 times, from cover to cover.” She had a page where she had tallied her reading across the years. She was at least a decade shy of 96. It had been the work of a lifetime – a way of dwelling with God.
I recently posted a couple of questions on Facebook: What book have you read more times than any other? How many times would you estimate? The answers were interesting. Children’s literature (Chronicles of Narnia) were popular. Tolkien’s trilogy was there. Jane Austen novels (among my wife’s favorites), and many others (including the Scriptures). My own candidate was The Way of a Pilgrim, which I’ve read at least 10 times. The topic holds interest for me for what I did not ask: Why would you read something that many times?
Having reflected on this, I will suggest a possibility: repetitive reading is somewhat akin to a liturgical action. I have “read” the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom thousands of times. Those who attend the Divine Liturgy hear the same thing every Sunday with very few variations. It is a “common reading” that has taken place for centuries.
When we read a book repetitively, it is obvious that we are not looking for information. There are no surprises waiting for us. We always know how the story ends. There is, however, something about the story, something within the reading experience, that is not only worth repeating, but doing so again and again. When someone reports that they have listened (yes, I count audio books within this experience) to the Lord of the Rings over 50 times, it is worth asking, “Why?”
Some years back, a prospective seminarian and I were meeting with our Archbishop. The candidate asked what he should be reading in preparation for seminary. The Archbishop’s answer brought a world of understanding with it: “Don’t read theology. Read good literature.” Which, of course, begs the question, “What constitutes good literature.” I have come to think that good literature, at the very least, consists of books that you would read more than twice.
How is such a reading experience (apart from the repetitions) similar to the Liturgy? I would suggest that both contain the phenomenon of communion – the Divine Liturgy in particular. In such literature, there is something about the story, the characters, the period or situation that becomes a place in which you have a shared experience. In listening to The Lord of the Rings 50 times, surely there is an aspect of sharing in the saga of the Ring. A haunting aspect of such communion, of course, is that we are encountering fiction.
I can almost imagine a work of fiction that has no relationship to the world as we know it. I say, I can almost imagine it, but for a work to make any sense at all, it must have some relation to the world of sense. I have seen books whose deviation from sense was so marked, however, that they went on the rubbish heap of books that are a waste of time. Good literature, to my mind, is related to becoming a good human being. That might well include lessons on what not to become.
Timothy Patitsas draws attention to Jonathan Shay’s work, Achilles in Vietnam. Shay did pioneering work on PTSD with soldiers returning from the Vietnam War. One of his suggestions was an interesting treatment of the ancient Greek poem, the Iliad. He suggested that its ancient public recitation served as a liturgy, a public work of healing the trauma of war (a constant presence in ancient Greece). Of course, as our culture has shifted and changed, public liturgies have become more and more rare. In general, our public liturgies are centered around entertainment. How well will a civilization function that is largely driven by feel-good hormones. Football is clearly a public liturgy. Its narrative, however, is thin gruel for the meaning of life.
For some, the most common “liturgies” in life are constituted by gaming. It is a new, ersatz form of literature. Even good literature can become a way to doom-scroll into the empty world of listlessness (acedia). Boredom is, perhaps, the foundational sin of modernity. (footnote). To press deeper into boredom risks hollowing out the soul.
The cure (or antidote) for boredom is worship – engaging in the most essential human activity of them all. Boredom is a symptom that we have become estranged from our true selves as well as from the purpose of our existence. In the Roman Empire, cities of note all had arenas (coliseums) where the local population enjoyed games, at someone else’s expense. By the same token, the lower rung of the population was also entitled to bread at the city’s expense. This two-fold reality is the origin of the phrase “bread and circuses,” a description that captures the heart of an empire rotting at its core. And lest we Orthodox consider ourselves to be somehow immune to this history, we do well to remember that it was under the Emperor Justinian (St. Justinian) that the population of Constantinople, stirred by political issues and sports rivalries, rose up in riots that destroyed the first Hagia Sophia, and nearly killed the emperor himself. His police action to suppress the riots resulted in an estimated 30,000 people being put to death. Boredom (acedia) has always been dangerous.
The heart of worship is the offering of praise and thanksgiving to the God who has given us life and sustains all things in their existence. It is Christ Jesus who has made Him known, and reconciled us to Him in His own death and resurrection. Our inward resurrection begins with a heart that gives thanks (always and for all things). In that action, the beauty and purpose of all creation is made known to us. In worship (as we behold Christ face-to-face) we are transformed into His image, becoming what we were (and are) created to be.
In the “literature” of the Liturgy, we are presented, in the context of hymns of thanksgiving, the story of our creation, redemption, and eternal destiny. Even deeper than the story is the mystical reality of which we become partakers. The voice of thanksgiving is the sound of love in its fullest expression. We speak of it to one another in the generosity of spirit that is human interchange in its highest form.
I hear echoes of this same thanksgiving in the “songs” of good literature. Perhaps, like children, we call out, “Sing it again!”, never tiring of the echoes of transcendence that touch the soul.
The dear soul whom I knew as a hospice patient concluded our visit one day with a prayer. She was making her way through the 97th reading of the Bible. I tended to keep my prayers brief, respecting the exhaustion that accompanies dying. Despite her advanced COPD, she prayed for nearly 20 minutes, finishing with a whispered effort to complete the last sentence.
I said, “Sister, that was a powerful prayer!” She managed enough breath to respond, “You can’t pray too much…”
Indeed.
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