If I ever had the chance to talk to her, I’d ask Maria two things: how on earth do you manage to read all this stuff? And, more importantly, how do you manage to assimilate the seemingly endless insights into your own life and thinking? How do you translate copious learning into compelling living?
Because that’s where I find the challenge lands for me. Not just the ‘how can I learn to read more?’ (although that always has large appeal) but ‘how can I assimilate more?’ - more of the wisdom, the considered and reflective take on the world, on church and ministry, on the Bible and on God himself.
So I find myself wondering, Is the problem the biblically-noted one of the endless making of many books? Is there deep wisdom in having a more limited library, thoughtfully curated, that is consulted repeatedly and known intimately? A library that can be added to (and subtracted from) but only slowly and with deliberate intent. Has such a pattern already been set for us in that the Bible itself is a limited collection, albeit one that has reached a fixed state?
Where would one start, though, after all this time? Can a start be made? Perhaps by singling-out the books already read that seemed most helpful at the time. By making such a selection with proper breadth and depth in mind, with chosen works being in some senses representative of others too. Perhaps.
Maybe at the start you really do need to read as much and as widely as possible, to get a feel for where things stand, to enable a wise choice of more consistent, longer-term conversation partners. And perhaps that has to continue in some way so that breadth isn’t lost and development doesn’t cease. Which almost takes us back to where we started. It’s been said that serendipity is a gracious intervention and I don’t doubt that to be true.
And perhaps the very bottom line, the clarifying centre, is that real assimilation, true learning and growing through learning, can not happen, will not happen, without turning insight and reflection into prayer, in the light of scripture and in the presence of God, harnessed for loving God and neighbour.
