Charleston: Reading
“Quiet hours among my books, walking the path of pages, the written words of a thousand minds, all searching for the distant island, the clue to a deeper understanding, sent out in these volumes like paper notes in bottles, cast upon the wide spiritual sea, tossed by storms of ideas, following currents of faith, until they are washed up here, by my living room chair, where they are lifted from the sands of time, and read by an old sailor, like maps to treasure, like memories of an ancient voyage, remembered but never completed.” Bishop Steven Charleston Facebook Daily Message
Part of Robert's bookcase
My husband sits and reads for hours almost every day. He is our family encyclopedia of knowledge of worlds and words the rest of us have never heard of. For the most part, he wears his knowledge lightly. We both talk about others who also wear their intelligence lightly. It is an art, not overwhelming others with your knowledge of a subject or an experience. He tells me how hard it is to hear something that is common knowledge to him but unknown to others and not speak arrogantly and extensively about the subject.
He is teaching us that lesson as well. I daily see problems and situations and spiritual paths that I have had experience working through that others are working with or starting presently. The fixer in me wants to let them know what I know. I have learned over the years, however, that most people are not that open to words from others and only learn by making that journey, coming to that conclusion or another conclusion by themselves.
It is that way in spiritual direction. We may see a friend going down a spiritual path that we have been on so often. I want to tell them all about it and my experience. I have learned to wait to find about their journey rather than making it mine. I also learn from them about sights on the journey that I missed.
Joanna joannaseibert.com