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Thursday, June 12
book learning
We hold on to books in this house the way some people hold on to their drinking habit, trading time, love and shelf space for just one more sip of an old favorite or a swig of We Might Need to Look That Up Someday.
Don't judge us. We can quit ANYTIME WE WANT TO.
In fact, I did part with some pages on my trip to Goodwill yesterday, including two battered, weighty dictionaries. It hurt to see them go. A lifetime of writing everything from tortured high school poetry to advertising copy has made words my good friends; a dictionary has always felt like an intimate dinner with half a million of them, right in the palm of my hand.
I've passed the dictionaries over twice before now in cleaning sprees, hanging on for one more round, and for one big reason: I've wanted my children to know how to use one.
But why?
I don't think it's important they they learn how to use an 8-track. Or a card catalog. Or a butter churn. I wish to heaven that someone at their school would pull cursive writing from the curriculum and teach them their way around a keyboard instead. In this age of instant information, they can find more words with more meanings in mere seconds than any book can hold.
It was time to let go.
My heart needs the same lesson: I hang on to familiar ways and patterns too easily, not opening my eyes to the change God longs to bring for today. I clutch at my dog-eared dictionaries, hoping the new me will find comfort in old things, while He moves ever forward, whispering for me to join Him at the speed of light.
Don't judge us. We can quit ANYTIME WE WANT TO.
In fact, I did part with some pages on my trip to Goodwill yesterday, including two battered, weighty dictionaries. It hurt to see them go. A lifetime of writing everything from tortured high school poetry to advertising copy has made words my good friends; a dictionary has always felt like an intimate dinner with half a million of them, right in the palm of my hand.
I've passed the dictionaries over twice before now in cleaning sprees, hanging on for one more round, and for one big reason: I've wanted my children to know how to use one.
But why?
I don't think it's important they they learn how to use an 8-track. Or a card catalog. Or a butter churn. I wish to heaven that someone at their school would pull cursive writing from the curriculum and teach them their way around a keyboard instead. In this age of instant information, they can find more words with more meanings in mere seconds than any book can hold.
It was time to let go.
My heart needs the same lesson: I hang on to familiar ways and patterns too easily, not opening my eyes to the change God longs to bring for today. I clutch at my dog-eared dictionaries, hoping the new me will find comfort in old things, while He moves ever forward, whispering for me to join Him at the speed of light.
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how do you do that, make throwing away dictionaries interesting to me?
Because she's got mad writing skillz, yo.