As has been my tradition for the past five or so years, I recently posted another year-end booklist. I’ll save you the rehash here, but suffice it to say, it was not a good year.
First, I need to remember Solomon’s words:
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
This year was not a particularly good season for reading for a lot of legitimate reasons, but rather than feeling sorry for myself and nursing my wounded pride (more on that in a minute), I need to let it go. Spending the first half of February interviewing for a new role that, between March and June, would then require our family to pack, move, unpack, and begin to figure out our new lives in Oklahoma took a toll (especially on top of teaching and coaching along the way).
It wasn’t sin; it was just a season that I didn’t read a lot of books.
But let’s talk about sin. Reading can be an idol for me. Walk into my study and you’ll see my trophy cases; check out any end table in our house and you’ll see my Asherah poles of books to read. Sure, I post my annual reading list to help others who might be looking for a book, but as I’ve never had a pure motive in my life, I confess I want people to see not only what I read, but also that I read.
I’m not saying I’m proud of any of that; I’m just saying my motives are mixed (as they are with just about everything I think, say, or do; welcome to my humanity).
Emotionally speaking, and as much as it has therapeutic properties, reading can be a drug—one sold over the counter (or the Internet) and peddled by a variety of dealers (family, friends, teachers, librarians, etc.). Sometimes I need a little literary hit and can get worked up and seriously grumpy if I don’t get it. These reading “shakes” may seem as foreign to a non-reader as craving alcohol is to a non-alcoholic, but I swear it’s real (my wife and daughters do, too).
My name is Craig, and I have a reading problem.
What else complicates all this? Since I seem to have less and less time for picking up a good book, picking up a good book becomes all the more important. The problem? Reading can be like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get.
Another reality is that, in the name of reading ever-broadly, my wants can overwhelm my needs. Do I want to read the popular biography of a modern visionary whose time partially overlapped my own (Steve Jobs) or a 2000+ year-old set of histories of foreign lands and peoples of which I've rarely heard (Herodotus’ Histories)? I can choose the candy as quickly as anyone...and this year it seems I did.
A friend of mine told me in a discussion on reading that, physically speaking, one can live a long time on junk food, but eventually the body needs a change of diet to a more balanced meal to run optimally. The same is true literarily, and why I feel the way I do about the lack of meat, potatoes, and veggies in my reading diet this past year.
Why lament any of this? Because by offering to God what I feel to be a failure in need of redemption, there’s a lesson for others, I think. Let me explain.
A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a dad at our school. As often happens in these parental conversations about education, I picked up on his insecurity in talking with me by way of questions and comments like, “I haven’t read/studied like you” and “I’m no scholar like you,” etc.
These words, of course, played to my pride, but letting them do so only evoked a hollow feeling of fraud in my heart. Yes, I’ve read, but there’s so much to read that I haven’t. Yes, I’ve studied, but what of my studies have I already forgotten? Yes, I want to be a scholar (and want to be thought of as a scholar), but I’m not. I'm a guy in a role with a title that can lead parents, teachers, and students to think (or hope) I am or might be.
All these mental gymnastics were going on in my head during our conversation and I immediately tried to explain some of it to my friend. I'm not sure he fully understood or believed me, but the important thing was my attempt to disbelieve what I knew to be a lie. I wish I could convince all our parents, staff, and students of how much I still have to read, study, and learn as a classical Christian headmaster. Too many of them may think too highly of me in this area, so perhaps this year’s posted reading list will pull back the curtain and reveal more of who’s really trying to run Oz.
In the meantime, there are good books to be read with more redeemed motives. Maybe I won’t post a booklist next year; maybe I won’t even keep track of what I read at all. As silly as I feel for making an idol out of something so seemingly benign as reading, taking what God created as good and using it otherwise has always been my problem.
For the record, I read that in the best Book...or rather, it read that in the worst of me.