600 Books

Since I began keeping records in 2005, today I reached the milestone of having read 600 books. The first was The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovannino Guareschi, the 600th was Encounters with Silence by Karl Rahner.

It made me think, what's been accomplished by the reading of all those books? There's an inclination to echo the Teacher from Ecclesiastes and say, Nothing. Nothing has been achieved. It's all been a kind of vanity. Of wanting to feel and seem important and smart. A certain uselessness. A wasting of time. Maybe there would be freedom in making that admission; a letting go, a letting be. It's all been a chasing after the wind. A wild goose chase.

And yet, it's also been so much more than nothing and useless. At some great depth of desire it's been a chasing after the pneuma, the ruach, the breath, the spirit. A chasing after the Wild Goose.

It's all been a life thread driven and sparked, I find, by a desire to engage with, understand, and have communion and companionship with the ways of God and humans. To explore the mystery of being. To fully engage with life. Even books read for the virtue of pure entertainment can tell us something about that. I want to find my identity and be shaped in these explorations, and find a place to belong. It's become part of my creative practice, my way of being in the world.

And when I post my thoughts/reviews online, as author John Pavlovitz notes in passing, "It’s all [part of] the beauty, truth, meaning [I've] encountered and deemed worth sharing with the humanity around [me]." (John Pavlovitz, If God is Love, Don't be a Jerk)

I have this hope that these explorations have somehow been caught up and interwoven with the expansive notion of the two great commandments: love God and love your neighbour as yourself. And thereby what it might mean to be and become fully human, to come alive and flourish. It's by no means the whole story but it's some of it.

The desire runs pretty deep of course. Much deeper than ink on page. As Karl Rahner said: "All it can give me is words and concepts, which perform the middle-man's service of expressing and interpreting reality to me, but can never still my heart's craving for the reality itself, the true life and true possession. I shall never be cured until all reality come streaming like an ecstatic, intoxicating melody into my heart." (Encounters with Silence)

That sounds grandiose, and perhaps far-fetched. I'm ok with that. It's also very commonplace.

Be curious, look for mystery, explore the place you find yourself.