Take Time to Read
If we are going away for a couple of weeks we might like to take a book or two to read. Most Sunday supplements have a feature on “What to read on your Summer break.” When I went to Nice recently, I ended up reading Agatha Christie’s “The Mystery of the Blue Train” – Hercule Poirot solving a murder on the Blue Train that travelled from Victoria to Nice.
I have two books that I will take away with me for holiday reading this year. Yes, they are religious!! The first is a recent book by Matt Anscombe entitled, “Don’t Forget the Holy Spirit.” (New Life Publishing). He tells his personal story about going to Mass on the feast of the Epiphany in the year 2000 and praying after communion, “Lord show me what I should do with my life.”
He talks about this as his “first heartfelt prayer made with the Holy Spirit which only the Holy Spirit bestows.” Ten years later he was ordained a priest. The blurb on the back of the book reads, “Through personal testimony, Fr Matt Anscombe shares his experience of coming to know Jesus as Lord through the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He also considers the action of the Holy Spirit and the difference the Holy Spirit makes through reflection on his own journey. He urges the reader to be open to a fresh outpouring and further release of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
The other book is written by the Irish Dominican, Donagh O’Shea, who taught me at the seminary. It is entitled “A Hundred Roads to Here – Introductions of Meditation” (Dominican Publications 2023.) This isn’t a book to be read through. He gives a hundred short thoughts that can be read at the beginning of a meditation session. They are meant to lead you to silence
At present, I read one of these short introductions before I embark on my half hour of silent prayer. In one piece he talks about the alcoholic who entered the pub to see a notice over the bar that said, “free drink here tomorrow!” In another, he talks about monkeys feeding in a zoo. These pieces are excellent and thought-provoking and can help you to prepare for silence.
I love his thought 77; “There are many kinds of silence. John the Solitary, a Syrian monk of the fifth century, listed a few: ‘there is a silence of the tongue, a silence of the whole body, a silence of the soul, a silence of the mind, and a silence of the spirit. And there is also a silence of the heart. Left to itself, the mind would settle like a dish of water. But the restlessness of the heart keeps it agitated. There is a kind of unfocused ‘wanting’ in us: we want something but we don’t know what we want: we just want to be occupied. We want to be occupied because we want to avoid the great silence…”
Whatever book you take with you, enjoy the time – and the silence – you give yourself to read.