Symphony
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
A good book is a symphony.
Each letter is an instrument, each word a note, each phrase a melody, each chapter a movement.
And deep reading, like deep listening, is nothing short of a miracle. Think of all that’s happening even in casual reading, in the act you are engaged in this very second.
Consciousness! Cognition! Calorie-burning! Just reading those words triggered a billion neurons firing electrical signals down a trillion pathways in your brain. (Google how neurons fire—crazy stuff.)
Richard Foster wrote, “It’s a wonder how God uses squiggles on paper to do his work in the hearts and minds of people.”
A wonder, indeed. And we know that God speaks through more than squiggles on paper. He uses the spoken word, the “word” displayed in nature and art. Still, written words do possess a unique quality, especially when they come together in a book.
A book distills and expands. It ebbs and flows. It moves fast and slow to the tempo set by the reader-conductor.
Experiencing the gift of books means we actually have to read them. (Or listen to them. I see you, audiobooker.)
It’s no secret that many of us are losing our ability to focus and read at length. And personally I find it difficult to justify time for deep reading. Unlike vegging out on a screen, it demands something of me, which means it costs some of my best hours instead of just my leftovers.
But when I make time, I rarely regret it.
Know what helps? Friends.
I tend to read a little bit of a lot of books. That’s fine. Better to sample and soak it than rush to the end. But sometimes it’s good to finish. The last nonfiction book I finished I read with a buddy. Our meeting was on my calendar. It would have been awkward to show up without reading the agreed-on section (or at least listening to it on Audible). And because we talked about it, my retention was better. Maybe more importantly, the memory of that book is linked to the face of a friend — all kinds of neurons firing and illuminating the soul.
If you’ve been with us for a while, you might know Renovaré Book Club season is here. And of course I’m going to pitch it: It’s good. People find it helpful. Join if you can.
But regardless of whether you join, take this as a friendly nudge, if you need one — I’m taking it to heart myself — not to give up on long-form reading. Fight for the time. Find a friend. Hunker down with the Holy Spirit and read as you can, not as you can’t. Even a page or two of a rich book can, like a symphony, make your heart sing or break or both — which is often that space where God meets us.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
Nathan Foster has an in-person conversation with Mimi Dixon and Richard Foster about the first two books in the 2024 – 2025 Renovaré Book Club season on this week’s episode of the Life with God podcast.
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2.
I find that the structure of a class or a club — a schedule, friendly accountability, and discussion space — helps me to go through a book at a steady pace … not too fast and also not so slowly that I taper off and quit. If these are ingredients that you find helpful too, registration for the Renovaré Book Club just opened.
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3.
Carolyn Arends writes that the Renovaré Book Club is “part adventure, part intervention” and gives a preview here of this season’s books in her essay “Rescuing Our Focus.”
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4.
In this Book Club exclusive article from the 2021 – 2022 season, Rich Villodas shares that silence is a prerequisite to justice. (Rich joins us again in the club this season, this time to walk us through his new book The Narrow Path.)
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5.
Carolyn Arends talks with Winn Collier in a live webinar on A Burning in My Bones (the biography of Eugene Peterson) which we read in the Book Club a few years back.
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6.
Pete Greig discusses his book How to Pray in a Book Club podcast from 2020. I also love the practical “prayer tool” Pete shared with Renovaré readers called “How to Run a Non-Boring Prayer Meeting.”
WORTH QUOTING
“Perfection is neither more nor less than the soul’s faithful co-operation with God.”
– Jean-Pierre de Caussade
From Abandonment to Divine Providence or The Sacrament of the Present Moment, a 2024 – 25 Renovaré Book Club selection
TO CONTEMPLATE
Liber floridus
Lambert of Saint-Omer 1121
(source)
Images of the Trees of Virtue and Vice featured in our 2018 study of Rebecca DeYoung’s book Glittering Vices.
TO PONDER
What is the next book you’d like to read? When is a concrete time in your week to read? Who might you read it with?