Holiday Reading and Rime

During my little end-of-year sabbatical from the office, I have with some difficulty managed to largely put next year's uncertainties out of my mind. Uncertainty, only because in my field there is always uncertainty and questions of resources, funding and expectations. Yet other than an errand I have to run today that is directly work related, by and large it has been a nice little break.

I have even managed to indulge myself in some light reading - light in this case meaning relatively short works. Upon recommendation, I read an extended essay on Understanding American Exceptionalism. Because everybody should, I read Thomas Paine's Common Sense. And for sheer enjoyment, I re-read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

There are times I wish my work was more labor-oriented than it is. Doing what I do takes a great deal of cognitive energy that at the end of the day often leaves me mentally fatigued. This condition negatively affects my desire to read, especially those works that take some effort to understand. I grieve over this, because with the increasing unlikelihood that I'll ever go back for another degree, reading for the purpose of expanding my education is the only logical path I have. For me, continuing study is essential, as it is the only sure means to counter the inadequacy of whatever knowledge and wisdom I possess. Without study, I find that the wellspring from which I write easily goes dry.

This thought brings to mind two paragraphs I first read just before the holiday break, and have re-read several times over the last two weeks. From Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, "Approved Unto God":

If you cannot express yourself well on each of your beliefs, work and study until you can. If you don’t, other people may miss out on the blessings that come from knowing the truth. Strive to re-express a truth of God to yourself clearly and understandably, and God will use that same explanation when you share it with someone else. But you must be willing to go through God’s winepress where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle, experiment, and rehearse your words to express God’s truth clearly. Then the time will come when that very expression will become God’s wine of strength to someone else. But if you are not diligent and say, “I’m not going to study and struggle to express this truth in my own words; I’ll just borrow my words from someone else,” then the words will be of no value to you or to others. Try to state to yourself what you believe to be the absolute truth of God, and you will be allowing God the opportunity to pass it on through you to someone else.

Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn’t know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.

In its proper context, and even expanding the context, the second paragraph resonates with me. I can know a thing without really knowing, but I can't truly know that thing apart from the ownership that comes with the struggle or the striving. The lesson to be learned may even require suffering the consequences of a folly (Water, water every where, And all the boards did shrink;), until we recognize that so much of what we think we know does nothing to quench our deepest thirst (Water, water every where, Nor any drop to drink). But once learned, the lesson and the wisdom it bequeaths becomes our own, with the credibility and authority to speak it. All we need then is courage at the appointed time.