Reading a Newspaper as a Spiritual Exercise
When my first-grader began school this fall, I was reminded again and again during those outset weeks of the school year of the importance of reading with my child every nighttime. More than than math and more than facts that she has learned in science, reading is the skill that her school wants the states to reinforce at domicile. Reading. We are supposed to read xx minutes each evening, and we are given charts and graphs that demonstrate how this accumulates over time. Akin to charts near saving for retirement and chemical compound interest, they testify the states how many words our child is exposed to if we read for 20 minutes each mean solar day vs. ten minutes each day. All of this is designed to motivate us into doing that reading at present, striking fearfulness in our hearts that our kid will be woefully behind her peers in terms of linguistic communication if she does not become enough exposure. And this is truthful plenty.
My middle schooler is required to read each day, and she has a reading log that she must fill out each week to demonstrate that she has done this independent reading assignment. It includes listing the title and page numbers of the book and writing a brief summary of what she has read.
While both of these assignments strength my children to read, neither of them really helps my girls embrace the joy of reading. For both of them, reading winds up becoming a chore. Maybe for some children this is not the case. Some may love the reading log; I may well have been one of them — I am an archivist by nature and love the idea of cataloging and tracking what I accept read. But that is not truthful for my girls. And I don't call up it is truthful for almost children. In most cases, these assignments turn the joy of reading into a burden.
I don't error the teachers for making the assignments, though. What else are they to do? There'south no question that reading is important — perhaps the most important thing that my children will larn in grade school. It is the kind of life skill that i needs to succeed in most everything — from securing a Ph.D. in some liberal arts field to following instructions to install a faucet in your kitchen sink. "If y'all can read, you can cook," my mother used to tell me. Until the very recent development of radio and television – and even more recently, YouTube videos and podcasts – any information that was transferred from ane person to another (without beingness in the presence of the other) had to exist written downwardly and so read.
But that is all very practical.
But what of reading not as a applied skill, but every bit a practice? A spiritual practice even?
Gratitude
I recently had a conversation with a friend who is retired from the mission field. Her work was in Bible translation and she has been all over the world, participating in the work of giving people the Scriptures in their ain language for the very first time. In many cases, the Bible had been available to people in a linguistic communication they knew, probable an enforced national language, but not in their first language, which is sometimes called a "mother tongue." The mother tongue could be a tribal linguistic communication or some other kind of ethnic language that had been spoken to them since nascence. My friend said that she frequently worked with marginalized people groups, and that their ethnic linguistic communication was very often a language that they had been told was "rubbish." Then sometimes the start task, before simply translating the Bible, was to teach literacy in their language, to teach the ability to read and write in one's own native tongue. And that, in and of itself, was transformative. To exist able to express and share ideas in the language of ane's own identity suddenly gives validity to that indigenous identity, which had been pushed to the margins. To be able to capture the stories of 1's own civilization in the language of that culture preserves its history; what was one time an oral tradition can besides be captured in material that can exist read and re-read. And finally, then, there is the possibility of the gift of the Bible, which is then able to exist offered in language that sounds natural to the ear, and thus to the heart.
Many of united states are often not grateful enough for these gifts: the power to read and write in a linguistic communication that is our own, to have the Bible at mitt — and not just i family unit re-create, but many copies, in many translations. Information technology is easy to forget, though, that none of this could very easily be part of the exercise of Christians for the first millennium and a half of our organized religion. It was not until the invention of the press press and the translation of Scripture into the common language of the people that individuals had admission to the Bible to read and study and pray through on an individual basis. This completely changed the Christian'due south ability to read Scripture as spiritual exercise. Reading was no longer mediated past an authority. Reading Scripture became a personal exercise.
It is not hard to defend the reading of Scripture as a spiritual practice. That is what reading Scripture is, by definition. Arguably all kinds of reading of Scripture can count as spiritual practice, whether i is reading it for study, in preparation for preaching, in search of guidance, or in prayer. Madame Jeanne Guyon, a 17th-century French mystic, draws a particular distinction betwixt "praying the Scripture" and reading the Scripture for report in "Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ." When praying the Scripture, "you do not read speedily," she says, "you read very slowly. You lot exercise non move from one passage to another, not until you lot have sensed the very heart of what you have read. You lot may and so want to have that portion of Scripture that has touched y'all and turn it into prayer."
Considerateness
What Guyon describes could too be described equally a deep reading of Scripture. "Deep reading" is a term coined past Sven Birkerts, an author and editor who is particularly concerned about how technology has made it increasingly difficult for us to concentrate. Deep reading is what he understands as the antidote to this problem. Birkerts does not arroyo his task from the perspective of faith, equally does Guyon. But their ideas are similar. While Guyon is focused on Scripture, it is non only Scripture that can be read deliberately. All kinds of fabric can be approached slowly and purposefully. Deep reading is a kind of reading that can exist defined as reading attentively and carefully for a sustained flow of time, looking for more than simply simple comprehension, but also making comparisons, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating and critiquing. When I consider deep reading, I normally think virtually the reading of longer texts — this may exist somewhat different than Guyon's management to dwell on short portions of Scripture. This sort of discipline requires us to involve ourselves in the sustained argument of a theological treatise, to engage in the narrative arc of a novel, to attend to teaching of a work of non-fiction. To involve ourselves in this kind of concentration, a weblog mail that you tin can read on your phone in the grocery shop checkout line will non practise. Deep reading will hateful that you go and then engrossed that time passes without your awareness of it. Deep reading very often reads with pen in paw — it takes notes or marks upwards books. Deep reading can arroyo difficult texts because information technology goes slowly and willingly struggles through texts that are demanding.
Deep reading is a spiritual discipline because it requires attentiveness. It requires us to put aside distraction and to focus on only one thing. This is a countercultural move for some of u.s.a. who move and so quickly from item to item on our agendas or to-do lists, sometimes navigating ii or iii simultaneously. It is countercultural to requite extended focus to one thing when we are constantly bombarded past very important news. No one can read deeply nether these weather condition. In an article in The American Scholar, "Reading in the digital age," Birkerts writes: "Concentration is no longer a given; it has to be strategized, fought for. Just when it is achieved it tin yield experiences that are more rewarding for existence singular and difficult-won. To attain deep focus nowadays is besides to have struck a blow against the dissipation of cocky; it is to have strengthened one'south essential position." What deep reading does for us is train u.s. in attentiveness. Only Birkerts' focus is on what this kind of concentration tin do for the self. As people of faith, information technology is worth considering how training in attentiveness helps us to wait beyond ourselves. When we can focus with this much deliberation on a text, we find that we can focus on other things as well. We tin can focus on one another. We take trained ourselves not only to read securely, but to listen deeply. To attend to the world effectually us. To be still. To attend to God.
Communion of saints
There is however another spiritual benefit we receive from reading. When nosotros say in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the communion of saints," we generally remember of information technology as a glorious future promise. But in that location is a sense in which deep reading of texts can let united states of america to engage with the saints of the church, both ancient and modern, across all places and all times, because reading deeply allows u.s.a. to interact with others through their ideas. When nosotros read theological texts, ancient and modern, we enter into a continuing conversation with those who take gone before us and those who are grappling with the questions of organized religion now. You and I can engage with the thoughts and ideas of those who reinforce what we believe, putting what is in our heart into beautiful language. We can engage with those who have had very different experiences than we have, who make us inquire questions of what nosotros have always believed. Nosotros tin even appoint with those who present direct and personal challenges to what we believe.
But it is non merely reading from theological works that can aid us broaden our experiences. Fiction and nonfiction can serve u.s. well, too. But that involves making intentional choices. I know myself well plenty to know that if I just pick up a novel to read, without thinking about it, I will choose a novel by a living, white, Southern woman. Fine. But if I desire to engage with experiences that are different from my own, I should wait elsewhere. Several years ago, I decided that I wasn't reading as widely equally I ought. As a manner to solve this problem, I formed a reading group in the congregation. It served a couple of purposes: I could form a small group of people who could gather around a common purpose — e'er a job I am looking to attain in the church. And I could "require" myself to read some books I might not read otherwise. I recently asked the group what the practice of reading did for them. One of the women in our grouping said: "Reading gives me the opportunity to come across life and people from a unlike perspective. Information technology lets me get into the skin of someone I otherwise would accept not known; to walk with them and know what their life is similar. It expands my globe. Information technology gives me the opportunity to question how my theology would apply in new and unlike situations." I was particularly struck by her last comment. She sums up precisely why reading even works of fiction is a spiritual practice. Novels tin can serve every bit a examination case for our commitments almost who God is and how God acts. Nosotros can ask the questions of religion most any story, whether the writer has been obvious nearly the presence of the divine or non. And most importantly, we can examination our convictions: Practice the theological principles that we concur and so dearly nonetheless stand up in this state of affairs?
At the end of the day, you and I may not have the same contemplative disposition every bit Guyon, with her tendency toward mystical feel. But there is something to be said for slowing down our reading of Scripture until we are sure nosotros have gotten to the center of it. Similarly, information technology is probably for the all-time not to get caught up in the anxiety of Birkerts almost what technology is doing to us. And however. We lose something when we lose the power to pay concentrated attention for long periods of fourth dimension — to texts, to one some other, to the world around us. Equally in all things, the all-time response always seems to be one of gratitude. May we exist grateful for the gift of reading, for the gift of the Bible in all its diverseness, for the gift of theology and literature. And every bit we appoint those texts, may nosotros do and so with generosity and charity, recognizing that we are interacting with the thoughts of none other than the body of Christ.
Erin Kesterson Bowers is acquaintance pastor at Get-go Presbyterian Church building in High Betoken, North Carolina. She lives in High Point with her ii daughters and her married man, who is a United Methodist pastor. She enjoys traveling, all kinds of theater and performing arts, and reading.
Source: https://pres-outlook.org/2019/12/reading-as-spiritual-practice/
0 Response to "Reading a Newspaper as a Spiritual Exercise"
إرسال تعليق