I read my way towards Orthodoxy. So, though I’ve offered some warnings about reading (Learning to Read), I do not mean to disparage its usefulness. Rather, it’s important to learn how to read across the years of a life. A good question (maybe even essential) is to ask, “Why am I reading this?” It is something of a principle that you only remember things that are answers to your questions. Mere information has nowhere to “cling to” in the brain. It goes in and flows out, often in the length of time it takes to pass a test on the subject. There can be no “mastery” in such an encounter. However, when we read in search of an answer (and find it!), to some extent, we become the book we’ve read, or, at least, it becomes a part of us. You are the answer to your questions. If we are not changed by the answers we find, then they have little to no part of us.
With that sort of criterion in mind, it is easy to see that we have actually only read a very few books in that manner. Indeed, we are deeply blessed if we ever find such a book.
Theophilus of holy memory, bishop of Alexandria, journeyed to Scetis and the
brethren coming together said to Abba Pambo, “Say a word or two to the bishop,
that his soul may be edified in this place.” The old man replied, “If he is
not edified by my silence, there is no hope that he will be edified by my
words.”
The Word of God is formed and shaped (within us) in our silence. Our silence is a crucible in which the Cross is imprinted on the soul. It is the sorrow of repentance and the quiet of inward shame (of the healthy sort). Silence in the presence of God is the sound of a question that has been fully formed. Christ directs us to ask, to seek, to knock – to hear the question at the heart of our being.
In a very imaginative description of the creation, St. Dionysius the Areopagite describes the nothing at the beginning leaping into being through eros, its desire, as it beholds the beauty and goodness of God. Of course, it makes no logical sense to describe the movement from nothingness into being, but his description draws a strong line under the power of desire, of the question and the longing of creation itself.
In a certain manner, the true question of our heart plays much the same role. We are always asking, seeking, and knocking but what do we ask, whom do we seek, and before whose door do we stand? If we can answer that question, it is already a work of grace.
There is another form of reading, probably the most common. We read for companionship. There are books we return to time and again. It is a very telling phenomenon. After a fashion, we like how we feel when we’re reading such a book (if by feel, we mean a rather thick range of emotions). This is more than entertainment – this is a sort of companionship – a book as friend. If you look at which books you have read more than twice (unless you’re still quite young), then you see something about the sort of friends you most like. And that, equally, tells you something about yourself. It might well point to the nature of our soul’s question.
When I was 15, my older brother gave me a book of essays by Leo Tolstoy (On Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence). It was a reading gift that was centered around the question of war (he was shipping out to Vietnam). An unintended result for me was to encounter someone who actually took Jesus at His word. I’m not sure I had ever heard anyone preach on the Sermon on the Mount (which is quite telling). Tolstoy seems to have thought that Matthew 5 and following were the very heart of the Scriptures. Imagine someone thinking that you should actually love your enemy! It made me read the Scriptures for the first time – and with a question: “Lord, what should I do?”
A second book given to me was Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. I did not understand most of what I read. Rather, it was the simple experience of reading a book of serious theology (Orthodox), which seemed to be less about ideas and more about the depth of the writer. It was not so much what the book said as what it represented: an introduction to the “soul” of Orthodoxy. This last experience is difficult to describe. I think of it as a moment in which “deep calls unto deep” and in which my heart simply became captive to Orthodoxy as a place in which I would find what my heart longed for. It’s worth noting that this was 20-something years prior to my being received into the Church.
These days, I read mostly for companionship – a book for falling asleep, a book for entertainment, a book that someone asked me to read. The one book I have read more than any other is The Way of a Pilgrim. There is no new information in it for me. It’s simply that I like to spend time on the road with the pilgrim.
I remember only a little of all that I have read, which says much about how poorly I have read through the years. To read poorly is not the same as reading badly. Little that I have read has done me harm – perhaps because I have never hesitated to stop reading something that seems problematic. At the very least, it has protected me from any temptation to study philosophy.
Having read my way towards Orthodoxy, I can say that reading mostly brought me to its threshold. The Orthodox faith is not found in books. More than anything, it is found in song. We do not unite our mind, heart, and body in the reading of a book. Singing, however, was designed to do just that. The hymnography and texts of Orthodoxy are an unrivaled treasure. Most of the Church’s theologians were also poets and hymnographers. We need to sing in the presence of God (who Himself sings to us – Zeph. 3:17). Singing is a communion of mind, soul, and body, a gift given to us for a true wholeness of being.
St. Augustine wrote: “Singing belongs to one who loves.” I read that somewhere, but I know it by heart.
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