I don't know about you, but I look back on 2012, and wish that I had made time to read more than I did. I read my Bible, I read a book for the women's Bible study at my church, started several books, and read books to my kids; but, sadly, that was the extent of it.
I'm so easily drawn to reading only the books on the best-sellers' lists, or the most widely-circulated blog posts. Those are fine pieces of writing for a reason, and I'm so thankful for modern writers of influence. And yet, as a child of the fast-food-drive-through-everything generation, I regularly turn to the easily digestible, the quickly accessible, the simply affordable. I resist anything that requires more time, more effort, more dedication, and more discipline. Like so many other things in life, good things don't always come easily, they are acquired through deliberate pursuit. I've been drawn to this quote by C.S. Lewis and am compelled by it:
It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it. [...] The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
Just because a book is old, does not make it good. However, those that have inspired and stood the test of time...well, they offer us gifts that our peers in the modern age simply cannot.
Here are a few that are on my list for this year:
Orthodoxy
Holiness
The Education of A Child from The Wisdom of Fenelon 1687
The Duties of Parents
The Weight of Glory
We want to become better moms. Can I humbly propose that we may achieve our goal, by adding not just how-to books on becoming more efficient home managers and patient mothers, but the great minds of old. The treasures to be found through older books and writers of the past can yield fruit that will build wise character and understanding, forming who we can become today in our practical, nose-wiping, child-training, Savior-loving daily lives.
Grace and peace to you, friends!
Ruth@GraceLaced, www.gracelaced.com
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