Here and Ever

“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.”

― Allan Bloom, "The Closing of the American Mind"

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Dear Kate,

When you read a book, how do you read it?

Do you read as if you could have written it, that the speaker is speaking your mind as you speak the speaker's words?  Do you read like a contrarian, listening for any shade of doubt to dismiss whatever you think are you hearing?

I suppose it depends on what you are reading, how you choose your reading material.  If you are reading the latest novel from your favorite storyteller, it's fair to assume you are eager, or at least more willing, to see from the perspective of the writer.  But if the book is a bitter cup you must endure, you are probably more prone to talk back.

You could say how you are reading is already determined by what you choose to read.

Remember the days when your English teacher would have a stack of "Lord of the Flies" or what have you to hand out to the class, and that's the only book for everybody? how everybody has to go through Social Studies and be educated about the same "historical facts"?  Well, students can choose now, my kids, what they want to read for class, what other courses in lieu of what they consider boring or useless or likely both.  My kids know what is good for them before they've learned what has been good for anyone else before them.

And that's how we read too, especially the news, mostly not words anyway, podcast maybe, talking heads more likely, heads turning our way and we like, heads look like talking fox to us just because they are on the wrong network, the stupid network for them stupid people.

I want to go back to a picture I posted two days ago, the detail of the main bronze door of the Milan Cathedral, Jesus crucified with two criminals "taking side" with him.

Read it, again.  Look at the three faces, look at where they are looking.

We've all been there, searching for help, yearning to see the face of God and have Him taking our side, or looking away, hiding from His gaze, loving as it might be but always too piercing, too searching for our search.  We could see the world, ourselves, through the eyes of the two sinners.

But how about Jesus, where is He looking?  What is He looking at?  Who is He looking for?

If He is so good to us, so very willing to take the side of the sinners, shouldn't he be looking either at the sympathetic eyes on His right, endorsing their right view of things, or for the evasive eyes on His left, pleading for the backward glance of the Prodigal Son?

Where is Jesus looking?  How does He look to you, His face?

Yours, Alex