Reading for Life

At the end of February, on a Sunday afternoon replete with light and air prefiguring spring, I sit down to read. Immediately I stumble on words and make little progress. It is not for want of comprehending the words. Yet I cannot follow them to habit in reading, to inhabit reading. It is a longstanding problem for me, odd for one who claims to relish this activity. When I have to read this or that, I balk in starting and progressing, regardless of the material, of my interest. I often put it aside and pick up something else, to avoid “have to” for “want to” in reading. How often this warp in inclination and action has resulted in being ill-prepared for obligations otherwise willingly undertaken, such as classes and papers in graduate school, yet certainly not limited to that and then. When reading is primarily or entirely “have to,” I remain outside, marking and resisting the constraint of time and space. The good burdens. When reading is primarily or entirely “want to,” I step inside, absorbed in opening of time and space. The good allures. I fully realize there is considerable “have to” in this life, this world, to survive and to do well, especially for others. I know I have to do better in acknowledging this, in recognizing my inclination and pattern, in seeking good not habitually my own. Amid all this I yet find hours and places, truly and graciously given, to being lost in reading’s wonder. And more, I long for that life, that world, to come, of Sunday all day, of winter to spring, suffused and fragranced with light and air, wherein to lose and find myself in reading a Logos unending.