Tag Archives: reading

Sep 27 2012
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on, Quotes

today is the day | on Luke 4

He went to his hometown.
He went to the temple, like he always did.

He went to the place that taught him the scriptures.
He went to the place that raised him in the faith.
He took the papers they had taught him with.
He took the place they had raised him in.

And he turned everything upside down
even though it was all that had been there all along.

“The Spirit is on me
Because he has annointed me
to tell the poor the good news
to tell you all of the prisoners’ release
to tell of the blind being able to see
to tell of the wounded victims’ new freedom
to announce the year of God’s favor”

He handed them back the words they had long ago taught him
And sat back down where he had been sitting for many years.

They stared.

And he said, “Today is the day.”

And it wasn’t that it had never been said before.
And it wasn’t that it had never been read before.
But he was filled with something big and huge that has been
saying it since the beginning of time
and when he was in the right place
and when the time was right
the words said something they had never said before.

and that’s when the time comes, like it always comes.

djordan
Pine Tree

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May 22 2012
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reviews, what they are teaching me

like fish laid out on the grass | Fahrenheit 451

She made us read it our junior and senior years of high school, Mrs. Kee did. Fahrenheit 451 was one of many other classics that were required of our reading, so we read them like we were supposed to and came up with whatever answers we thought would get us the grade we needed.

And then the book went on the shelves afterward like all the old classics did. This classic from circa 1950, and already forgotten by 2002…much less by 2012.

But ten years later, noticed on those center sections in the bookstores where we pretend we know what we are looking for, I spotted it among the list of high school summer reading. And with Mrs. Kee on my mind these last several months for some reason, I bought the book and read it the whole road trip there and back.

“…hold onto one thought: You’re not important. You’re not anything. Some day the load we’re carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn’t use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us…” 

My biggest notion the entire time I reread this high school assignment was how ignorant we all were as we were asked to read this incredibly important work. And even still, ten years later as I began hearing about “recommended reading lists” and “don’t read lists” and “ask these questions” and “here are your answers” and “too much information will just confuse them” and “only one percent could ever  understand” and “just give them something to hang their hats on” being phrases tossed about as if common leadership protocol, the reason Mrs. Kee assigned the book in the first place became all the more important.

And so did picking it up again ten years later.

The book describes a world of the future, written in the 1950s lest we forget, where entire walls of living rooms were taken up with TV screens and “reality” programming. Earbud headphones were commonplace and firemen burned down houses with intellectual contraband instead of putting out fires.

And a ragtag group huddled in the woods, whose ideas had put them on the street, who reminded each other…

“…hold onto one thought: You’re not important. You’re not anything. Some day the load we’re carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn’t use what we got out of them…”

I think remembering this book, buried deep in the places we bury most of what we value when we are young––where we bury what it is about encouraging dissent, opinions, opposing views, challenges, diversity, thoughtfulness and disagreement––it is in remembering that the importance of continuing to evaluate the voices we have decided have no value, have no right, are better shut out…it is in noticing what those voices are and what we are afraid of in them that I can follow Bradbury’s words.

And Mrs. Kee’s words.

And the words of those who have come before us, and who have learned before us, the danger is silencing those who speak in opposition of us.

It is in the dialogue that the truth is always found.

djordan
Pine Tree

RELATED POSTS | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Real Life Fiction | Narrowing the Voices

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Apr 30 2012
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

the risk of narrowing the voices

asking questions, freedom, safety, church, power

Choosing a paint color is one thing; seeking the truth is another.

One of my favorite lines of Madeleine L’Engle’s is, not in quotations because I can’t remember where it was, that God does not need our protection, and welcomes as many questions as we can dream up.

And I’ve noticed in the meantime that we are at risk not only of taking other people’s answers for truth, but also of taking other people’s advice on what the questions are to be asking in the first place. When our questions are guided, we are of course lead to certain answers from certain narrowed voices.

When we narrow the voices, we weaken our ability to discern at all. In thinking throughout history of all the situations and all those power and all those in the church, even, who have been led in obedience because they trust that someone else is doing the discerning, it is horrifying. We mistake proclaimed expertise for due diligence, and we are left unthinkingly joining in protection of the status quo.

Stifled questions means stifled dialogue, and it is in dialogue that progress is born and we get a little closer to the truth we are all of us after. Dialogue requires broad voices rather than a single voice, and there is perhaps no doubt in the promise that where two or more are gathered, there is something more true and holy present and happening.

I’ve been reading, this time by choice, the book that we long ago read in high school by mandate: Fahrenheit 451. I remembered thinking at the time that how ridiculous the notion was that people would be told what to read and what not to read, and that reading and thinking off of an approved list could result in death.

Book burning followed driven by those in charge, under the guise of protecting humanity from dangerous thought. Children then came up into families never knowing the art of book reading, thinking, questioning, debating, creating and imagining.

I thought it foolish then, but it doesn’t seem so foolish now. In fear of discerning many voices, we seek to narrow them down to the ones we know, or the ones we have been told to agree with: the approved book list. To read past the first page of another voice becomes treacherous and intimidating, because we wont know what to do with another line of thought. And so, as encouraged, we don’t think anymore. We ask the questions we’ve been told to ask and take the answers we’ve been given.

If we idolize those speaking or writing, or simply take their words, we aren’t able to listen to multiple voices because we have challenged the ability for the spirit to work in community, and given authority to some single voice.

With broad voices, however, we learn the art of listening and asking, hearing and being heard. With broad voices we learn how experience shapes understanding, and how injustice and power breed certain lines of thought. We learn where we are blind, and where we are gifted. With broad voices, we think enough to welcome for dinner a Boo Radley or a Hester Prynne. With broad voices,  the combination of these truly human acts yields compassion and humility.

I’ve been in meetings where a million voices made it impossible to choose a paint color, and it has indeed been a nightmare.

I’ve also been in meetings where power is used to beg discussion, criticism, thoughtfulness, ideas, questions, dreams and disagreement…none of which should be mistaken for disunity…and it has been a beautiful and community-affirming endeavor.

There’s a difference between choosing a paint color and seeking the truth.

And what have we to fear if it’s the truth we’re after together.

djordan
Pine Tree

OTHER RELATED POSTS | BECAUSE YOU DID NOT ASK, FEAR OF THE WEAK AMONG US

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Jan 21 2012
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on silence

Silence

Propped up in the bed holding the book, I must have been so chained down to the story that when the fly came barreling straight past my left ear, I nearly yelled. It was early morning, the kind of early morning that really belongs to the late evening before, and I was sucking the words off every page. I had become so silent that I was more startled by the fact that a fly could buzz past me than I was by the fly itself.

I laughed at my overreaction, and went immediately back into the book. Of course, thirty seconds later, the same fly and the same startled overreaction. Four times this happened. Every time, I was caught completely unaware.

 

Silence

I stretched out on an empty bench, looking at the great mountain as my park backdrop, thinking for just a moment about the perfect Sunday afternoonishness of it all, and I started to read. Silence.

But the silence was different this time. It was loud.

The winds were so strong that I could hear them crashing into my ears. That was the foreground noise, and the people and kids playing, laughing and running were the background noise. I could hear all kinds of things, and yet nothing at all. My mind had quieted completely. It was a perfectly loud, Sunday-afternoon kind of silence.

 

Silence

I think of times when I knew a horrible conversation of conflict was about to happen, or a horrible event was unfolding, and everything­­––whether there was other audible noise or not didn’t matter––everything became so silent.

Except for my heartbeat.

My body became cavernous and my heartbeat became connected to a loudspeaker that only I could hear. It’s the kind of silence I would try to turn down the volume on. My dry swallows become unbearably hearable.

Heartbeat. Heartbeat.

 

Silence

And then, just after those conversations start, a new silence comes and muddles out the heartbeat and swallowing silence. A certain kind of peace arrives, a clarity around the words being spoken, the truth of the people speaking the words. From the loud-heartbeat-silence I begin to hear the truth, and things quiet down.

The conversation has started: I can see where it will end.

The car is spinning off the road: I can tell I’ve lost all control.

A new kind of silence emerges.

A kind of chosen silence.

A kind of you-don’t-have-to-understand-me silence.

A kind of this-is-where-I-am silence.

This is who I am.

This is who you are.

This is where we are.

This is where we are not.

A kind of this-is-what-this-is silence.

 

 

 

djordan
Cape Town

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