I Don’t Know Enough So Where Do I Begin?
For as long as I can remember, I have been writing. I’ve been ruminating upon and examining my own knowledge and lack thereof. It has placed my ignorance directly in front of my face. There is so much that I do not know. J.R.R. Tolkien said, “The essence of education is repentance. It is recognizing that we don't know what we ought to know. We don't do what we aspire to do. We make up a thousand excuses as to why it is that we're not all that we are called to be.” When I first read these words, I had that mysterious feeling that somehow the author wrote them to me, like when you hear a passage in the pew that seems to be just for you. I have clung to this quote from Tolkien as I might hold on dearly to a friend’s hand. It comforts me because I am plagued daily with the list of things I “ought to know”. I run back to repentance, especially asking forgiveness for the many excuses I’ve made over the years. And then I begin again.
I am not sure if I pursue my own education or if it pursues me. Sometimes when I am reading voraciously and yet feel as if I’m getting nowhere, mentally I am aware of a hot breath breathing down my neck. So I rush on. This inspires a whole new guilt because I am supposed to be delighted by truth, goodness, and beauty. But most of the time, I’m only fearful. Amidst all this fear and trembling, Shannon and I decided to take on this small endeavor of writing about, talking about, exploring everything we love - publicly. So I might as well apologize right now because I don’t know what I ought, I don’t do what I should, and I am not all that I have been called to be.
Over the last few days before publishing the site and days after writing the paragraphs above, something happened to my attitude. I think it happened organically because I hadn’t been consciously thinking about my fear. First, I realized that I had been competing, or trying to compete, with the many masters I encounter daily. There are beautiful websites, articles, and podcasts all over the place. I couldn’t not run into them and I learned something new every time I did. My reaction was complete angst, deep down. I didn’t want to be proud, but I was. I didn’t want to feel so inadequate, but I did. I am not a teacher. These people are teachers. How could I ever consider myself one?
And then the shift. I cannot tell you what catalyzed it. But over a couple of days, I was filled up with pure joy. It was the kind of joy I used to experience at the very beginning of a semester in a class with my favorite professor. He would walk in and give his opening comments, before introducing the syllabus, and my whole being would brim over with happiness. I was about to learn new and wonderful things. Nothing could be better. That same feeling overwhelmed me just days ago.
“The essence of education is repentance. It is recognizing that we don’t know what we ought to know. We don’t do what we aspire to do. We make up a thousand excuses as to why it is that we’re not all that we are called to be.”
For I am not a teacher! I am a student. Through and through. I know next to nothing! And now, instead of quietly and timidly confessing that to you, I am ready to burst with it. It is still a humble confession, but perhaps Tolkien did not mean for my spirit to be so weighed down by the fact. Making that confession is tied inexorably to the next step - learning something new. And that is nothing but pure joy.
So I begin again. Truly, there is so much beauty and brilliance in the world. One could start almost anywhere, but I believe there are a few places that are better than others. I am trying to develop a foundation that will inspire and nourish in some proper order. It is adaptable to suit many interests but also gives a solid structure upon which to build. Assuming that most days I am busy, tired, and unsure of my capacity to add another project to my plate, this plan aims to take small bites and move slowly, completing well a few goals for study instead of haphazardly beginning and interrupting many.
Begin with Prayer
Building a habit of prayer doesn’t have to be daunting. Begin slowly, but make sure you pray at the same time each day. Aim for five to ten minutes. It is good to pray ex corde, but our hearts need formation and guidance before we can trust them to fill our minds with true sentiments. It is too easy to be led astray by our feelings. So begin with these options, and you will quickly find that your thoughts and emotions will begin to follow what you pray.
The Lord’s Prayer - There is no better teacher than Christ Himself, so first learn to pray this daily.
The Psalms - The Psalms are beautiful expressions of the heart’s deepest longings after the Father. They also hold much honest reflection upon suffering that often speaks to our own lives.
The Proverbs - There is no better source of practical guidance and wisdom in the Scriptures. Committing the Proverbs to your being will shape and form your daily life among family and friends.
Traditional Church Collects (your hymnal should have a good selection.) These are prayers that have been written and collected by the Church over hundreds of years. They address most of the pressing issues in our lives and unite us to the invisible Church body.
Oremus: A Lutheran Breviary: If you love music, this is a challenging but incredible resource, put together by Pr. David Kind. It is simply a treasure of historic liturgical forms, beautiful homilies from a wide range of church fathers, a psalter, and much more. (Look for more information about this one in the future.)
Reading Time
I believe that it is impossible to read great literature and not be transfigured by it. Love feeds on these stories and seeks out a neighbor with whom to share that growing affection. So, in addition to building a habit of prayer, build a habit of daily reading. If you despise reading books and find none to interest you, that is the sign that you should begin reading each day, in ten or twenty minute increments. Ever so slowly, your interest will grow. If you already read often, I do not suggest that you quit reading those books which you are naturally interested in, but rather that you add these classics to your reading slowly. Everything listed here is designed to introduce you, in bits and pieces, to the greatest literature there is. If possible, read everyday. This does not have to take a large chunk of time, and you will miss days and that’s okay. You will find, I believe, that the amount of time you spend reading will grow because you will quickly grow to love it. Finally, this list is neither chronological nor exhaustive. It is not designed to progress like a checklist. This is simply a list of items to sprinkle among your daily life. Find the stories that you love the most, and reread them every so often.
Begin with Scripture
Read the Scriptures outside of prayer time and devotions. (In fact, during those times, it is better to read short, guided excerpts with an accompanying psalm or homily. That time has a specific purpose.) Scripture tells a grand, yet intricate, story and we should spend time simply loving the story. I suggest beginning with Genesis. Genesis is familiar to most of us, but you might be surprised by how much you have forgotten since your Sunday School days. Genesis sets up everything in the rest of Scripture. It is literally the foundation for the Gospel story. And it is full of adventure, danger, and drama - excellent storytelling! Read it three or four times all the way through before you move on. Continue with Exodus or jump to Ruth, I and II Samuel, Esther, Job, or Jonah. Then pick one of the four Gospels to focus on. The beginning of Luke’s account is very familiar, so it would be a great place to start. Don’t hesitate to read each of these two or three times over the course of a month. Repetition gives birth to wisdom.
Begin with Myths, Fairy Tales, and Legends — Click to see my list of suggestions.
These stories are essential to developing our own humanity and understanding the Gospel. They reflect and retell the Gospel story. They do so not by direct allegory, but in type. That means they depict the human condition and our need for salvation, and expand our knowledge of reality by creating worlds that imitate our own but use significant peculiarities to reveal higher truths that we struggle to recognize in our own lives. They also enliven our minds to discern good and evil and strengthen our hearts with virtues like courage, loyalty, compassion, and patience. The premise for most myths is an explanation for origins or mysterious physical phenomena, but their true purpose is to communicate wisdom and teach discernment. Simply, they served to train virtue and to delight. Fairy tales and legends bear a similar purpose as myths. Traditionally, they were not composed for children, but for adults. Why is that such an important point? In our postmodern world, we do not recognize a need for the imagination of adults, besides its use in entertainment, perhaps. But our imaginations need to be nourished and fed with good stories because it is through the imagination that we interact with and understand transcendent reality (all things that you cannot touch, smell, taste, hear, or see, like God, Love, Trust, Faith, Hope, Wisdom, Honor, etc.) Through our imaginations, fairy tales satisfy our soul’s longing for an answer to injustice, heartache, and fear.
Begin with The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid — Click to see my list of suggestions.
These epic poems appear long and daunting. They may not seem appealing at first glance. But besides the Bible, these three books give our Western culture the foundation upon which all the pillars of great thought and belief rest. These are exciting and beautiful stories that need to be read, retold aloud, reimagined in various art forms, and never lost. Please do not let Hollywood’s misinterpretations dissuade or misguide you. (e.g. The Iliad is not a story about a gay/bisexual guy.) These three stories are not “some of” the greatest stories of all time, these three stories ARE the greatest stories. They are glorious and heartbreaking, nostalgic and hopeful. Do not confuse their reference to gods, and immoral gods at that, for an argument in favor of paganism. Their development of divine myth gave birth to our civilization’s understanding that there is something and someone greater than ourselves. They grappled with suffering, pain, ill-fortunes, and chance without throwing out their conviction of humanity’s humble place within God’s great universe. They asked the tough questions and found, in stories, a way to begin answering them. The world would not have received God’s Word and Christ’s sacrifice so easily or readily without the preparation these stories provided Western civilization.
Tips for attacking these awesome works:
Practical Suggestion #1: Begin with The Odyssey because it moves along a little faster than The Iliad (it is a great journey, after all) and will pique your interest in the Trojan War.
Practical Suggestion #2: Find audio versions. These stories were meant to be heard aloud, and the grand drama often comes across better aurally. This also prevents getting bogged down in difficult passages.
Practical Suggestion #3: Listen to them multiple times and with other people when possible. Discussing these great books is the best way to enjoy them.
Begin with Poetry — Click to see my list of suggestions.
It’s hard to know just where to begin with poetry. In a sense, the beginning is the list of epic poems above. But from there, a hundred different avenues open up. Poetry plays with language and can provide the most exact and truthful pictures. Poetry may not interest you at all, or it may seem intimidating in the extreme. But nothing else will expand your knowledge of God’s world so well. Believe it or not, poetry examines everything from biology to archaeology, and explores the whole scope of life from birth to death. Find poetry that you love. Nonsense poems are delightfully fun, Shakespeare and Spenser will have you reaching for an Oxford dictionary in the best possible way, John Donne’s theological poems are both beautiful and intellectual. Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley name only a few of the inspiring Romantic poets.
Reimagine Your Habits and Routines
We are all busy. I am not suggesting that you neglect your baby, your job, your exercise routine, or other responsibilities for reading. And I am not suggesting that you forget about kicking back and relaxing with your family. I know that making time for reading and study truly takes effort. Add in a few of these suggested works slowly. And keep rereading them. These works give us a place to begin and solid ground to return to. The list of great books to explore, meanwhile, multiplies exponentially: Greek plays, medieval and renaissance poets, Russian tomes and English and American novels.
Most likely, you have been introduced to some of these works already, perhaps as a young child or in school. The wisdom we may have lost is that we all need good stories, even and especially as adults. Feeling enchanted, encountering mystery and wonder, being swept out of ourselves and into other worlds breaks the entrapment of our daily anxieties and the enticement of worldly addictions. Stories establish a foundation for civilization. They bind a people together and create continuity from one generation to the next. Our culture of the last century is the first to dismiss and throw away these great stories as “old and stuffy”, “confusing and wordy”, or “stereotypical.” This is a great tragedy. But we have not lost them altogether and now is a wonderful time to reintroduce them to ourselves and our friends.