Ever since I was a little kid I have loved to read. I can remember in third grade we had a read-a-thon and I read some 30+ books, more than anyone else in the school. I love to read. Yet over the years there have been times when it has been a chore to do so, in particular due to school. When school is in session I often
enter “over-load” or perhaps “burn-out” mode or a combination of both and just don’t feel like reading. perhaps this is due to the many books that I am reading at a single time for all my classes. In part as well it is being required to read all of the, for when I get to something not required, it is then I can find a tad pleasure, yet often I just can’t get there.
Perhaps yesterday at 4pm when my final assignments were in I celebrate with such exuberance, as I ran from the conference room with a spring to my step and perhaps a few leaps were seen as well and a glorious smile upon my face. Even though the thought of reading was not at the top of my priority. However when I opened The Patriarchs edited by Reed M. Holmes at about 5:35 in the Temple as a service started and I supervised the building the joy of reading came through me and I found myself caught up in the words before me. In part the experience was strengthened as in the first few pages of the forward I read Reed writing from the very space I was in. Not only was I in this sacred space of worship and education doing something I loved to do, I was reading words that were in part sewn together in that very space. How amazing. Then today as I sat within the visitor’s center and had time to read some more I found myself filled with great joy as page after page flew before me. pausing at times to read other items as well. By the end of the work day the book was done, parts of several others read, and new thoughts expressed upon paper and on screen in a crazy mess that perhaps represents the inner workings of my mind.
Not only had I read last night and today with such excitement, I did so in a time of prayerful reflection journeying thoughts and reflections, charting out ideas, some of which would not have come for it not been the text before me. Reading is a Joy! Be it reading a book silently, doing so with pen and paper at the ready, or like I did last night have a joy filled vocal exultation of written text as I read several pieces of another work.
I look forward now with even greater expectation to a year from now, when if all goes well, I will have another expensive piece of paper with my name on it and know that I am free to read and experience that great joy of reading in its fullest. Something I have a hard time doing when class is in session and there is so much I am required to read that I forget or am unable to engage the joy that should always be there.
So in this season of Advent, may you rencounter the joy, hope, love, and peace found in many things that have been, are, and yet to be.
Peace,
— Lyle II