Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Books as Sources

“I have few of the aptitudes of the scholar, and fewer yet of the methodical habits and industry of the man of business. I live in books a certain part of each day, but less as a student of books than as a student of life. I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey. My memory for the facts and the arguments of books is poor, but my absorptive power is great. What I meet in life, in my walks, or in my travels, which is akin to me, or in the line of my interest and sympathies, that sticks to me like a bur, or, better than that, like the food I eat. So with books: what I get from them I do not carry in my memory, but it is absorbed as the air I breathe or the water I drink. It is rarely ready on my tongue or my pen, but makes itself felt in a much more subtle and indirect way.”

(Burroughs, John. “The Summit of Years” in “The Summit of Years” Volume 15 of The Writings of John Burroughs. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913; pages 5-6)

Burroughs recognizes his limitations. And in his use of books he notes that he gets inspiration from them but so transforms the content that it really does become his. This is what I hope happens with the books from which these “Commonplaces” come.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

writing, thinking, and contemplation

Note:
This author is a professor at Northeastern university. And he is definitely not writing here in a Christian or spiritual context. But I’m struck, as you probably are, how when he writes about the conditions he sets himself to improve his writing it sounds as if he is writing about conditions conducive to contemplation.

Quote:
“To avoid the easiest, most comfortable narrative of the moment, I have learned that writing … demands a special discipline.

“It requires clearing away competing noise, reserving time for deep reading and critical reflection, seeking solitude away from the constant churn of today’s argument-fueled culture.

“It requires a writer to quiet the mind, and to stop thinking about possible criticism or praise for what they write. ….

“The price of zipping around on the Web and social media is a loss in our depth of thinking, the essential trait of the intellectual and writer. …

“I choose to spend my days surrounded by the stillness of my office or within the sacred sanctuary of a library, no digital screen in sight, filling Moleskin notebooks with observations, engaged in the type of deep reading and immersion necessary to tie together insights and arguments into a fresh web of analysis.”

Source: ‘The Mindful Climate Change Writer’ by Matthew Nisbet, PhD viewed online at
https://medium.com/wealth-of-ideas/the-mindful-climate-change-writer-102ad432b283

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

formative reading

Note:
What Sager calls “formative reading” is what we would call lectio divina. It isn’t our regular mode of reading (see the first paragraph below). It is slower; receptive rather than acquisitive; meditative rather than argumentative. It seems that so, so many of our reading experiences are, instead, either merely for entertainment or mostly to ferret out where the other guy is wrong so that we can triumphantly correct him. That’s not lectio. Even when we say that we are reading to learn, aren’t we usually in a disputatio mode? What could we learn if we were truly open to the text before us?

Quote:
“Formative reading is the kind of reading that nourishes the life of the spirit. Contrast that with other more typical approaches to reading. Often our approach is informational as we look for ideas and facts to enlighten the mind. Or our approach may be recreational as we just relax and enjoy the story line. At times our approach may be literary as we appreciate or analyze the text for its intrinsic quality and attributes. Or again, our approach may be exegetical when we try to understand the ancient text in its “there and then” meaning.

“Formative reading is slowed down and reflective. It is inspirational rather than informational, and more qualitative than quantitative.

“Formative reading calls for an attitude of receptivity, the grace of appreciation, and participatory engagement.

“The chief requirement of formative reading is to move from a mainly argumentative, rationalistic fault-finding mentality to an appreciative, meditative, confirming mood. We are called to move past challenging or rebuffing the text to a savoring of its timeless values. We are called to listen with inner ears of faith to what God may be saying or doing.

“Formative reading calls for a posture of docility and humility as we accept the gift of enlightenment coming from beyond our control. We expect not only to be touched by what is read, but transformed by it.” (p. 101)

Source: Sager, Allan H. Gospel Centered Spirituality: An Introduction to our Spiritual Journey. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990.

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texts and the student

Note: Augustine thought it important for students (especially students of Holy Scripture) to have ready access to good quality texts. This is really a foreshadowing of the Renaissance humanists’ call to return to the sources (ad fontes). Also, note how Christian scholarship leads to holiness, holiness leads to gentleness, and gentleness to avoiding controversy.

Quote: “The student who fears God earnestly seeks his will in the holy scriptures. Holiness makes him gentle, so that he does not revel in controversy; a knowledge of languages protects him from uncertainty over unfamiliar words or phrases, and a knowledge of certain essential things protects him from ignorance of the significance and detail of what is used by way of imagery. Thus equipped, and with the assistance of reliable texts derived from the manuscripts with careful attention to the need for emendation, he should approach the task of analysing and resolving the ambiguities of scriptures.” 

Source:
St Augustine of Hippo, “On Christian Teaching” Book 3, paragraph 1. Translated by R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), page 68.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

From hope deferred to a tree of life

I am here to confirm the truth of Proverbs 13:12 “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Just 5 months ago I was on my way home from Mount Katahdin, Maine, a place I had wanted to be for more than 50 years. Climbing Katahdin was the goal of a long-deferred hope of mine: to hike the Appalachian Trail. I felt that my time this past summer, my months on the Trail, was a personally holy time; that the hike was a pilgrimage taking me to “a tree of life.”

A pilgrimage is usually a long trek to a religious or spiritual shrine of some sort. Katahdin, if it is that for some (it is held sacred by the Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot nations), is not a Christian shrine in the usual sense. It commemorates no saint or martyr, has no church or monument, witnessed no miracle or event in the life of the Church.

For me, this pilgrimage was first of all just a part of my ‘pilgrimage through life’ on my eventual way to heaven. But it was also a pilgrimage within. I spent a lot of time in prayer, reading Scripture, and re-reading the Christian spiritual classics “The Imitation of Christ” and “The Practice of the Presence of God.”

So maybe my time was more of a walking retreat? It doesn’t matter.

Near the end of my time on the Trail another hiker excitedly asked me “So, what’s next?” He had in mind other treks, trips, and experiences, and was happy to share with me where he was headed after he finished the Appalachian Trail. What I replied was something like, “Well, I want to do some reading.”

And my last 5 months have included a lot of reading. A variety of things. Short stories by Flannery O’Connor, and by Leo Tolstoy; silliness by Jasper Fforde and by Douglas Adams; more of the Eastern Orthodox collection of spiritual texts called the ‘Philokalia’; some of Evelyn Underhill’s classic ‘Mysticism’; a Charles Dickens; some William Faulkner; and more. All tied together only by the fact that I had never read those works before. And if that is my selection criterion, I have a long way to go.

This leads by a winding path to something I’ve been thinking about since I got back from Katahdin: There are already way too many words floating around out here.

There are already words in books, words in articles, words in blog posts, words in conversations, words in arguments, words on the Internet, words on paper, words in broadcasts and podcasts, and more. Some days it seems that everybody is either talking or typing, and that almost everybody is publishing in some form or another. All of greatly varying quality.

And now I have just added more and published more. Mea culpa.

I actually feel like there is nothing I can say or write that is either new or interesting or of great quality.

So this blog, for now, will just let people peer into my commonplace book. I’ve already been doing that sporadically. Now I want to be more regular about it, to copy out notes from things I have been reading, and to offer my brief comments (so, yes, sorry, I will be adding yet more words to the world).

If there’s one thing I learned during my career in libraries, it is that there really are “too many books, too little time” because “of the making of books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). At best, these notes will lead you to find and read the full texts from which the snippets come. Do read some of those old texts. They’re better anyway.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

formative reading

“Formative reading is the kind of reading that nourishes the life of the spirit. Contrast that with other more typical approaches to reading. Often our approach is informational as we look for ideas and facts to enlighten the mind. Or our approach may be recreational as we just relax and enjoy the story line. At times our approach may be literary as we appreciate or analyze the text for its intrinsic quality and attributes. Or again, our approach may be exegetical when we try to understand the ancient text in its ‘there and then’ meaning.


“Formative reading is slowed down and reflective. It is inspirational rather than informational, and more qualitative than quantitative.


“Formative reading calls for an attitude of receptivity, the grace of appreciation, and participatory engagement.


“The chief requirement of formative reading is to move from a mainly argumentative, rationalistic fault-finding mentality to an appreciative, meditative, confirming mood. We are called to move past challenging or rebuffing the text to a savoring of its timeless values. We are called to listen with inner ears of faith to what God may be saying or doing.


“Formative reading calls for a posture of docility and humility as we accept the gift of enlightenment coming from beyond our control. We expect not only to be touched by what is read, but transformed by it.”

Sager, Allan H. Gospel Centered Spirituality: An Introduction to our Spiritual Journey. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990), p. 101.

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the Bible in solitude

“The Psalms are the true garden of the solitary and the Scriptures are his Paradise. They reveal their secrets to him because, in his extreme poverty and humility, he has nothing else to live by except their fruits. For the true solitary the reading of Scripture ceases to be an ‘exercise’ among other exercises, a means of ‘cultivating’ the intellect or ‘the spiritual life’ or ‘appreciating the liturgy.’ To those who read Scripture in an academic or aesthetic or merely devotional way the Bible indeed offers pleasant refreshment and profitable thoughts. But to learn the inner secrets of the Scriptures we must make them our true daily bread, find God in them when we are in greatest need–and usually when we can find Him nowhere else and have nowhere else to look!”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1958 ; pbk ed 1999), pp. 126-127.

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Bible in Benedictine monasticism

“We are struck by the extraordinary authority conceded to the biblical word, by the time and attention devoted to the reading of the word. The Rule of St. Benedict prescribes a total of from two to three hours each day to be devoted to lectio divina, the personal, meditative reading of the Scriptures.”

Barnhart, Bruno. “Monastic Wisdom, the Western Tradition” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 65.

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deep reading / divine reading

“In order to learn to keep silence and to nourish it with the presence of God, we should develop the practice of lectio divina, which is a moment of silent listening, contemplation, and profound recollection in the light of the Spirit. Lectio divina is a great river that carries all the riches accumulated over the course of Church history by the fervent readers of God’s Word.

“Lectio divina is never solely our own reading. It feeds on the interpretation of those who have preceded us. The monk, the priest, and the deacon are accustomed to it by the Divine Office itself [in the Office of Readings], which has them listen to the Holy Book and then afterward to the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church. These commentaries are sometimes very different. They can seem austere, disconcerting, and strange to our contemporary mentalities. But if we persevere in lectio divina and silent listening to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches, our effort will be rewarded by unheard-of jewels and riches.” (p. 240)

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), p. 240.

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reaching contemplation thru reading

“While on earth we come, through meditation on the Incarnation and redemption, to a contemplative experience of God that is not, however, a vision of His essence. . . . [F]or Cassian the way to contemplation is through meditative reading of the Bible.”

[And, interestingly, for Martin Luther, too.]

Merton, Thomas. “The Humanity of Christ in Monastic Prayer.” (1963) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), p. 155.