- Formation
- Imagination
- Literature
At Saint Constantine, we ask our students to read a lot. Perhaps some students would take exception to that phrasing: "You ask, Mr. Martin?" they might say. Perhaps they are right. We do not ask them to dedicate equal time to writing or note-taking or even discussing. I have not done the math, but students past a certain grade probably read books more than they do anything else at Saint Constantine.
Reading is a wonderfully strange experience with which we are all too familiar, although the experience of reading frequently disturbs our sense of its familiarity, not to frighten but to enchant. When I was a young boy and first beginning to read lengthier chapter books, the experience was little more than a story depicted in the cavernous firmament of my mind. The stories themselves were of more or less interest, primarily as entertainment. But one day a book came to me from which something beyond the book entered the dark firmament of my mind. I can't say how it happened, nor am I sure what happened, but light began to shine on the eye of my mind and in the mental heavens which it beheld. The words of that book were not merely a vehicle for recording a sequence of events but the manger of luminous dreams. It was my first experience of literature. While I am little better at explaining the experience now, my capacity for it has been strengthened, in large part due to that first book. If such an experience was reading, I had hardly read before.
Such experiences raise questions about the boundary between our mind and intelligible reality, between words and mental illumination, between authors and readers. Whatever considerations and answers may be given, such experiences teach us that the power of reading is in the reading. It is not primarily in the thinking about the reading, although this too is beneficial; nor is the power of reading most exemplified in discussing what has been read, although discussion provides an excellent environment for tending the fruits of the reading experience. The power of reading is in the vision of invisible realities.
I have been re-reading The Lord of the Rings in preparation for the beginning of the Spring semester of 8th grade Great Books. The reader is treated to a host of beautiful forms. Forms of nobility, courtesy, humility, love, mirth, nature, and peace pass before the mind of the reader like constellations of virtue rounding a little world in silent rapture. While city lights, with their own proper nobility and unbeknownst to them, have obscured the vision of celestial light, the window of the mind need not be closed to what the heavens declare. Good books may speak it. A friendly word may unlock barred doors. A gentle song may dispel fear. Not all enchantments are the dark murmurings of a troubled mind. If our students — nay, our faculty, nay, dear reader, if I myself — learn, just a little, the courage of Frodo, the hope of Samwise, the mercy of Bilbo, the humility of Aragorn, the courtesy of Faramir, the love of Gandalf, and the joy of hospitality, we will together have grown a little in mind and heart, as if by some magical draught, towards that ineffable beauty beyond our natural wont.
Now do I recall those words prized by the House of Saint Anne, hidden lessons still to be learned, for the gifts of St. Anne are not cheaply won. Those who follow her patient path, who imitate her enduring hope, at the end of a long and weary road will come to a door behind which is rest and an end of trial. May we read the book. May the door be opened.