{"id":25028,"date":"2019-11-23T10:57:46","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T18:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=25028"},"modified":"2019-11-24T22:48:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T06:48:27","slug":"pb-and-j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/pb-and-j\/","title":{"rendered":"PB and J"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The last few months have been full of all kinds of new learning for me. I have thoroughly enjoyed the books we have not read together. Yes, it has been highly informative the learning from different perspectives, viewpoints of classmates on books they haven\u2019t read and sharing my thoughts (to the best of my ability) on books that I haven\u2019t read. Of the books that I haven\u2019t read this semester, Pierre Bayard\u2019s book \u2018How to Talk about Books You Haven\u2019t Read\u2019 is my favorite. Though not the book that I have read the least of this semester, I certainly haven\u2019t read a great amount of it yet, somehow there have been smatterings of understanding that have shone through to shed light on the reality of non-reading.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t read books, entirely. Even, books that I crawl through are not thoroughly read. Many years ago, I read a book by Daniel Coleman, \u2018In Bed with the Word\u2019. Every word of it, seemingly, was well thought out. I have no recollection of this book other than the title, that has stuck with me for whatever reason. Quickly, just as the book popped back into mind, I thought to refresh my thoughts on \u2018In Bed with the Word\u2019 by reading a summary on Amazon. The book came back to life just as it had been alive in me years ago. Not only that but, the summary of the book was written by the Professor whose curriculum the book was a part of in my studies at Carey Theological College. I remembered my Professors passion for this book and her passion for other books and authors that at the time I had never heard of, like: Buechner, Vanier, Carretto and Merton. And, I wonder now, had she read any of these books? I bought most of the books she mentioned and others by the same authors, they are on my bookshelf, margins littered with my engagement. Have I read these books?<\/p>\n

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Reading books ‘very quickly’ is a discipline that has been encouraged by our teachers and the structure of the program\u2019s curriculum thus far. It has been emphasized that reading at a doctoral level requires a different kind of attention. This is new for me. Bayard\u2019s book is the Cherry on the top of this sweet message cake and, it is sweet because liberation is sweet.<\/p>\n

When I was in the 5th<\/sup>grade there was a Reading Board set up at the back of the classroom. The board was laid out on graph paper. Each person had a line across the board and every square filled yellow along that line represented a book that we had read. The Reading Board was set-up for the entire year and along my line were 10 or 12 books that I had not read. Most people had read 15 to 20 books and my friend Mark, he had read more than 150 books. I couldn\u2019t even make it passed a few Chapters in a Hardy Boys book. When I looked at Mark\u2019s line on the board, growing weekly there were two predominant thoughts that would ride through my mind. The first was, \u2018No way, Mark is a genius; so cool!\u2019 The second, was fairly close to it, \u2018Yeah right, there is no way that anyone could read that many books, Mark is being dishonest.\u2019<\/p>\n

The truth is, I was struggling with my inability to read as much as everyone else. Reading was not a priority for me. I remember reading and quiet time was administered as a consequence for disobeying my parents or for bothering my brother. Playing sports was of far greater importance to my family. I struggled to come down from the overload of excitement, playing sports daily after school until bedtime, to the quiet internal thought world of words worked out into wonderful stories. The truth is, when I looked at my line of unread books in comparison to Mark\u2019s golden square road of intellectual accomplishment, I felt ashamed.<\/p>\n

\u2018It should be the most normal of behaviours to acknowledge that we haven\u2019t read a book while nevertheless reserving the right to pass judgement on it. If we rarely see this practise in action, it is because acknowledging our non-reading (which, as we have seen may be quite active rather than passive,) is, in our culture, deeply and ineradicably marked by guilt.\u2019 [1]<\/p>\n

Even though I owned the books, had glanced eyes-glazed at them and some pages inside of them, I couldn\u2019t admit that I had not read the books I squarely noted in yellow that I had read. Now, I understand these books are representative of libraries of books of thoughts shared and explicated between covers. Now, I’m beginning to understand that there is a library that is still taking shape within me as I continue to learn and grow both from what I read and what I don\u2019t read [2]. What a perplexing notion!<\/p>\n

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I was four years old when I bought my first book. It was August 1981 and I was at summer camp with my family. The night before I had heard someone speak of a man who I did not know but, who knew me. I learned about a man who did amazing things, helped people, loved people and that he loved me too. Even, that I was on his heart when he was killed without good reason. I remember being broken up and thankful, that he died and that he loves me. I was told there was more to his story and the next day I went to the tuck shop with money I had saved and bought my first book, the Bible.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.\u201d Hebrews 4:12 (NIV)<\/p>\n

In my library is the idea that words are alive and on my bookshelves is the possibility that the written, prophetic word can come to life in us and through us. Yesterday, I was speaking with a man named Mel. He has not read the Bible extensively; he has heard about Jesus and he loves to talk about Jesus over a cup of coffee when the right time arises. Mel knows that Jesus can change lives because his life has changed because of him. The stories he tells of Jesus are not precise according to scripture; they are mixed with some stories from his First Nations culture. Mel\u2019s stories of Jesus are beautiful, true and God has used them to change lives!<\/p>\n

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[1] Bayard, Pierre. How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. London: Granta Books, 2007.<\/p>\n

[2] Popova, Maria. Book Review: How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Brain Pickings. Retrieved From: https:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2012\/06\/15\/how-to-talk-about-books-you-havent-read\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last few months have been full of all kinds of new learning for me. I have thoroughly enjoyed the books we have not read together. Yes, it has been highly informative the learning from different perspectives, viewpoints of classmates on books they haven\u2019t read and sharing my thoughts (to the best of my ability) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,476],"class_list":["post-25028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jesus","tag-pierre-bayard","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25028"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25057,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25028\/revisions\/25057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}