I'm actually wondering, even before I write this short note, if its title,"Books, Culture, and Me," really fits. I don't really hang out much with a bookish, scholarly crowd. I often eat at places where law enforcement officers and construction workers eat. Even tonight, having dinner with some co-workers, the conversation focused more on dogs, beer, and TV shows (not that I know anything about beer, mind you).
That's why I like to read above myself sometimes, like when I read Books and Culture. I can't do it for long, as my eyes begin to glaze over or my head dips toward my chest as my eyes close, but I do it nonetheless for my betterment, for the sake of culture, because even if most of my friends don't read it or talk about the kind of things found in its pages, you never know. . . I might just meet someone somewhere who is really into such high-brow matters, who eschews sports for the movement of words on a page. Mostly, I like that someone reads the books reviewed in its pages and interprets them for me. At least sometimes I like that. Sometimes I just wonder why they read these books at all or how they find the time.
Take this issue, for example. Jeremy Begbie, whose brain set next to mine would be like placing Jupiter next to Pluto (he'd be Jupiter), writes a review of Christopher Page's apparently masterful and scholarly survey of the history of the Western church oh for about a piddling 1000 years (through AD 1000, that is) through the eyes of its singers, a book whose scope is daunting by its very title, The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years, all of this in a mere 692 pages. As much as I would like to think I could read such a book, it's highly unlikely that I will or that I have the patience or time to stay with it. And yet Begbie distills it down to a mere 1000 words for my pea-sized brain and challenged attention span. I'm appreciative. Just to pick up a thought like this one quoted by Begbie is enlightening: "The use of the voice is one of the principle continuities between the states of bodily life on either side of the grave." He gives me a sentence I can ponder for quite some time.
Then there's another short review, "The Holy Gaze," where Frederic Mathewes-Green gives me a much deeper appreciation for the meaningfulness of iconography. There's this wonder-provoking quote: "It has been said that God was the first iconographer, since we are living images of Him." Would I ever think of that? Probably not. And what are the ramifications of that truth?
Then there's Philip Yancey, in "Life in a Bubble," the bubble being the late 1960s fundamentalist Christian college in which he was educated. He writes both with great appreciation and with a gentle critique, the kind of nuanced remembrance that makes me appreciate him and accord him credibility. He opens up the world of such a school in that time so that it does not become a caricature for me to be dismissed but a place full of human beings doing what they thought best at that time to instill and conserve Christian values. Where else could I hear such a voice?
And that's just for starters. I'm only 16 pages into a meaty 46 pages issue. There's more to come.
Wait'll the guys at the local greasy spoon hear about this. Or don't.
[I highly recommend Books and Culture. Wow your friends. Impress people. Or settle for the more modest goal of looking over the shoulders and through the minds of those who read the books we seldom read and think the thoughts we need to think. Subscribe here.]
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