People of the Book

How important are books?

Well, God thinks that books are so important that He inspired mankind to create a book of His words. The Bible...66 books written over a thousand of years. When skeptical scholars posit that the Scriptures were some type of inside job, a conspiracy, promulgating an oppressive religion, I wonder if they have actually read the Bible in depth. The Bible attacks the powerful, not the weak. It extols service rather than self-centeredness. What self-hating 1% of history would pen a book that would skewer their entire way of life? Not very likely.

And we all know that the poor have the ways and means to write and print books...

In fact, Jesus is called the Word. Heavy. And words created the Universe. Should make every English Lit and MFA student feel a surge of importance. Even if jobs are hard to come by. The great news is that if one loves words, a lot of what the world puts value on fades in importance. Even the most lonely and introverted can find solace and companionship in books. If one has a roof, a meal, and a book, that is a life, in my reading.

The framed poster picture is hanging in my Dad's living room. He is a big reader as is my Mom. Not sure they had a whole lot in common otherwise. When my family convenes, we read newspapers like most families play board games. Or as I call them, Bored Games. Never quite understood why I would create a meaningless competition of rolling dice...although some games have cognitive benefits, most of them are pretty shallow. I used to get invited to a card game that wanted to make me scream...it was so boring and irrelevant. I finally abstained. I would go and hang out, but then read something laying around.

We are trying to encourage our students to read at the high school. There is so much richness with stories. We create our own internal films when we consume  books, and our imaginations need to be engaged. Books are true soul food. We cannot starve our need for words and then wonder why we feel so un-nourished and empty.

"If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape."  - Ray Bradbury