The joy of a good read

By Sam Walker

On my first ever plane ride from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, I became the star attraction. “So you’re going there to ask this guy you’ve never met if you can marry his daughter? Are you nuts, just in love or both?” asked my aisle seat companion. Cheers followed. Right then I promised myself never to fly without a book again.

It would take a few years before my romance with reading and the power of words would begin. Books for me were to be studied. They were assignments written by experts in various academic fields. Reading was a responsibility, an often tedious chore to be done in library nooks.

Even on family vacations my beach or lakeside reading was “heavy,” as my wife surmised. One day she offered, “How about reading something just for fun?” Sometimes a person suggests you need to do something even before you know you need to. That afternoon I rode my bike to the summer library in a quaint clapboard cottage and entered a new world. The romance began with a small volume by Anne Morrow Lindberg called Gift from the Sea, and I displayed it proudly after dinner. I was hooked.

I would discover that, if stuck at a social gathering or caught in an awkward silence, you can ask, “What are you reading?” The conversation may surprise you. Book clubs are everywhere. The team from The Country Bookshop has guided me to folks I never would have met — Sue Monk Kidd, Laura Hillenbrand, Barbara Shapiro, Louise Penny, Khaled Hosseini and in a deeper way, Richard Rohr. Books can be wonderful companions. You can close a book, mark your place, and pick it up later. Dogs and people, wonderful as they are, don’t have a pause button.

Written or spoken, words are powerful. They can inspire, encourage and heal. They can also do deep and lasting harm. In these days of parties, promises and pundits, words can overwhelm and numb us. Sometimes mute is the better choice. Words on social media can be dangerous. Words can be walls to hide behind or invitations to breakthroughs. Words are part of relationships, part of simply being human.

Consider renowned photographer Ansel Adams, some of whose works were recently displayed at Reynolda House in Winston-Salem. The interplay of black and white, essential to the portrayal, was inspiring. But it was Adams’ words framed at the exhibit’s entrance that drew me in and spoke to me:  “I hope these pictures will rekindle an appreciation of the marvelous.” True of landscapes and, more so, of people.

Consider the images of some of our planet’s humanity unfolding from the opening ceremonies and throughout the summer’s Olympics. Inspiring and full of hope for the best of our world. But it was the poet Maya Angelou’s words as a lyrical accompaniment to a diversity of faces on the only commercial worth watching that drew me in and spoke to my heart: “We are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike.” True of our own community right here.

Consider a bookmark I grabbed on leaving a bookshop in San Francisco for the return flight to North Carolina following a friend’s wedding. It was strictly utilitarian. After takeoff I saw its odd design of sun, moon and stars set in purple shading with a small line of words around the perimeter. It would be these that really drew me in and spoke to me: “Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point of intelligence at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future cease to be perceived as opposites.” True, and a way to look through artificial stereotypes. The bookmark guides my reading of daily meditations today.

Why have these few simple words of a photographer, a poet and an unknown author spoken to me? Why have I shared them? Because, I suspect, I needed to hear them. Because sometimes words suggest something you need to know before you know you need to. May you take time to seek and listen to those intriguing, peaceful and true words that speak to you.  PS

Sam Walker, a retired minister, maintains a curiosity about life and is an old friend of PineStraw

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