That would be Wendell Berry's book of poetry called LEAVINGS.
Never before have I experienced a book in which every single page spoke directly into my soul.
As I type these words I imagine my mother reading this entry and responding to me later in conversation that, "Kayla that's the role that Scripture should take. That's how you should feel about reading God's Word."
But this is a time in my life in which I feel almost nothing while reading Scripture. Just confusion, frustration, and sometimes even anger. Anger because I don't know how to read Scripture anymore. I no longer know how to interpret the words on the pages.
What should I take literally? What should I take metaphorically? What should I read as being completely 100% accurate and what should I read as a historical account written from one perspective? What should be interpreted in a cultural context and what transcends all cultures?
So since I don't know how to approach what I read...how to internalize and interpret...I have a hard time confronting the pages. It only leads to questions and questions and questions that don't seem to ever be answered.
Going back to Wendell Berry though; right now, in this country, I feel closest to God when I read his writings. Maybe this isn't how it should be, but this is how it is. And I am grateful to have at least this.
"I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.
I have no love
except it come from Thee.
Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind."
VII.
"Having written some pages in favor of Jesus,
I receive a solemn communication crediting me
with the possession of a "theology" by which
I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong
forever or forever right. Have I gauged exactly
enough the weights of sins? Have I found
too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or
the other way around? Have I found too much
pleasure, too much beauty and goodness, in this
our unreturning world? O Lord, please forgive
any smidgen of such distinctions I may
have still in my mind. I meant to leave them
all behind a long time ago. If I'm a theologian
I am one to the extent I have learned to duck
when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead,
dropping their loads of whitewash at random
on the faces of those who look toward Heaven.
Look down, look down, and save your soul
by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly
indifference this off-fall of the air. Christmas
night and Easter morning are this soil's only laws.
The depth and volume of the waters of baptism,
the true taxonomy of sins, the field marks
of those most surely saved, God's own only true
interpretation of the Scripture: these would be
causes of eternal amusement, could we forget
how we have hated one another, how vilified
and hurt and killed one another, bloodying
the world, by means of such questions, wrongly
asked, never to be rightly answered, but asked and
wrongly answered, hour after hour, day after day,
year after year — such is my belief — in Hell."
Never before have I experienced a book in which every single page spoke directly into my soul.
As I type these words I imagine my mother reading this entry and responding to me later in conversation that, "Kayla that's the role that Scripture should take. That's how you should feel about reading God's Word."
But this is a time in my life in which I feel almost nothing while reading Scripture. Just confusion, frustration, and sometimes even anger. Anger because I don't know how to read Scripture anymore. I no longer know how to interpret the words on the pages.
What should I take literally? What should I take metaphorically? What should I read as being completely 100% accurate and what should I read as a historical account written from one perspective? What should be interpreted in a cultural context and what transcends all cultures?
So since I don't know how to approach what I read...how to internalize and interpret...I have a hard time confronting the pages. It only leads to questions and questions and questions that don't seem to ever be answered.
Going back to Wendell Berry though; right now, in this country, I feel closest to God when I read his writings. Maybe this isn't how it should be, but this is how it is. And I am grateful to have at least this.
"I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.
I have no love
except it come from Thee.
Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind."
VII.
"Having written some pages in favor of Jesus,
I receive a solemn communication crediting me
with the possession of a "theology" by which
I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong
forever or forever right. Have I gauged exactly
enough the weights of sins? Have I found
too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or
the other way around? Have I found too much
pleasure, too much beauty and goodness, in this
our unreturning world? O Lord, please forgive
any smidgen of such distinctions I may
have still in my mind. I meant to leave them
all behind a long time ago. If I'm a theologian
I am one to the extent I have learned to duck
when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead,
dropping their loads of whitewash at random
on the faces of those who look toward Heaven.
Look down, look down, and save your soul
by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly
indifference this off-fall of the air. Christmas
night and Easter morning are this soil's only laws.
The depth and volume of the waters of baptism,
the true taxonomy of sins, the field marks
of those most surely saved, God's own only true
interpretation of the Scripture: these would be
causes of eternal amusement, could we forget
how we have hated one another, how vilified
and hurt and killed one another, bloodying
the world, by means of such questions, wrongly
asked, never to be rightly answered, but asked and
wrongly answered, hour after hour, day after day,
year after year — such is my belief — in Hell."
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