Big Hairy Audacious Goals

I cannot go one step further on my quest without pausing to recognize the achievements of my friend Carol Weaver from The Well.

I discovered Carol's blog shortly after I started Classical Quest. What a thrill it was to find someone who had actually finished the Well-Educated Mind lists! I discovered that Carol is not only well-educated, she is a well-balanced, largehearted wife, mother, and friend. I love her sense of adventure! I love how her faith in God comes through in her writing. You can't read Carol's blog for long before you notice just how much she loves life!

Carol has read a lot of books. Not only has she completed the WEM lists, she has completed other lists as well. She calls these accomplishments her BHAGs for "Big Hairy Audacious Goals."

In the past 555 weeks she has read 287 classics.

I think all the reading she has done through the years has served her well. Yes, I believe she just might be an example of what reading widely can to for a person of faith. If reading makes us more human, then Carol is very human indeed!

This could be a portrait of Carol Weaver's mind. (Via Pinterest)

Now, hop over to Carol's blog and read this post about her experience with classic literature. Don't forget to comment on her post!

Late Have I Loved You

Lately I've been enjoying the music of Matt Maher. The other day a friend pointed out to me that one of his songs, "Alive Again", was inspired by the famous prayer from St. Augustine of Hippo in Confessions. I read Confessions back when I was trying to muddle through the WEM list on my own. The words "late have I loved you" sounded familiar, but I had completely forgotten the prayer. I wondered if I had really taken the time to let that rich, beautiful prayer sink in. I searched online to find the location: Book X Chapter XXVII. Then I found my well-worn paperback copy. I saw where I had underlined stuff nearby but that prayer was unmarked.

Of all the books I've read on this quest so far, Confessions has by far been the most important. I see now that it's one I shouldn't skip over when my friends and I reach the autobiography list. Confessions must be my first official reread. I'm really excited about discovering other spiritual insights within its pages that I missed before.

"A classic is a book that with each re-reading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading." ~Italo Calvino

St. Augustine by Botticelli

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

from The Confessions of Saint Augustine

Matt Maher, "Alive Again"

Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (A Review)

by Adriana I love to read  promiscuously.  If you've followed this blog for any length of time, perhaps this is something you've noticed. Many, perhaps even most, well-meaning Christians from my conservative circle would consider my reading habits excessively liberal. In fact, I've been pressed to defend my preferences more than a few times. Some of the titles I've read could easily have been chosen as fodder for the book burnings I witnessed a few times as a child.  Still I read on.  Now and then my quest feels daunting. I'm always grateful to receive encouragement from Christian intellectuals whom I respect. For the past several months, I have enjoyed being part of the growing community at Tim Fall's blog, Just One Train Wreck After Another. Not long ago, Tim posted a review of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Swallow Prior, Professor of English at Liberty University.  The mere idea of Booked intrigued me immensely. Tim quoted Prior's insights on what reading promiscuously means and why it is an important habit to cultivate. I had never heard of an Evangelical apologetic for reading indiscriminately before. The day Tim put up his "Hooked by Booked" review, I flew straight over to Amazon and loaded the book to my Kindle within seconds.

What a joy it was for me to read Dr. Prior's insights! In Booked she articulates the need for stories with candor, grace, and wisdom: 

I know that spiritual formation is of God, but I also know -- mainly because I learned it from books -- that there are other kinds of formation, too, everyday gifts, and that God uses the things of the earth to teach us and shape us, and to help us find the truth.

I am certain that God is leading me on my quest.  He draws me farther and deeper with my reading; consistently nudging me through the Holy Spirit to probe and listen carefully, and to examine ideas in the light of Holy Scripture. 

As Prior says,

. . . God who spoke the world into existence with words is, in fact, the source of meaning of all words. My journey toward that discovery is the story of this book. I thought my love of books was taking me away from God, but as it turns out, books were the backwards path to God, bramble-filled and broken, yes, but full of truth and wonder.

 

In Booked, Prior parallels key moments of her own coming-of-age story with the literature that helped shape her. I was thrilled to find several titles featured which are also part of the reading lists from The Well Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer (Jane Eyre, Gulliver's Travels, Madame Bovary, and John Donne's Metaphysical poetry), as well as other titles from authors we WEMers are familiar with now (Dickens and Hardy). Prior cleverly connects her own unique memories with poignant literary scenes any avid reader would find apropos.

Discovering truth is a process that occurs over time, more fully with each idea or book that gets added to the equation. Sure, many of the books I read in my youth filled my head with silly notions and downright lies that I mistook for truth, but only until I read something else that exposed the lie for what it was.

Prior points to John Milton, who held that "the best books to a naughty mind are not unapplicable to occasions of evil"; whereas "bad books, to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, to illustrate."

Since reading Booked, I've thought a good deal about how literature has shaped my life. There are titles which stand out, in hindsight, as having proved crucial to my formation. Perhaps some of my reflections might show up in future blog posts here.

For me, the experience of reading has always felt much like entering into a conversation. And fittingly, classic literature is sometimes referred to as the "Great Conversation." Through reading widely I'm learning how to listen, discern, and empathize -- how to "examine everything carefully and hold fast that which is good."

I read to better understand both my world and myself. Great literature delights, elevates -- and at the same time it humbles. I am grateful that God often uses it to coax open the eyes of my soul. Ever so patiently He leads me to glimpses of Himself in nature and in the highest works of art which humankind has made.

What Makes a Classic? (A Repost From Last Spring)

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Now and then someone will ask me, "What makes a classic?" It's a good question -- not an easy one to answer. What feels classic to one person may not feel classic to another. 

Generally speaking, there are culturally excepted specimens most people seem to agree on. Some books, which may not suit my particular taste or personal standards, have deeply impacted the thrust of civilization. These books deserve close analysis -- whether they cause me to shudder in disgust or swoon with rapturous delight! It is a humbling thing to enter into the Great Conversation which has been going on for centuries before I was born.

I posted the following excerpts last spring. These definitions offer as good an explanation as any I've been able to find! Enjoy. (And feel free to add your thoughts in the comment box!)

Excerpts from 

Why Read the Classics?

by Italo Calvino

Let us begin by putting forth some definitions...

1.  The classics are those books about which you usually hear people saying: 'I'm re-reading...', never 'I'm reading'.

2. The classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.

3. The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual's or the collective unconsciousness.

4. A classic is a book that with each re-reading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of re-reading something we have read before.

6. A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.

7. The classics are those books who come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the languages and customs) though which they have passed.

8.  A classic is a work that constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.

9. Classics are books which, the more we think we know them by hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.

10. A classic is a book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on par with ancient talismans.

11. 'Your' classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.

12. A classic is a work that comes before other classics; but those who have read other classics first immediately recognize its place in the genealogy of classic works.

13. A classic is a work which relegates the noise of the present to a background hum, which at the same time the classics cannot live without.

14. A classic is a work which persists as background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

Do any of these definitions describe what a classic means to you? 

The Book That Changed My Life

Some time ago I received a phone call from the librarian at my local public library. She called to tell me that she had been looking over records and found that since the card catalog had been computerized about twenty years ago, I had checked out more books than any other person in my county. 

I was surprised by this news and also perplexed. All these years I have been seeking for something, but what? And why, after pouring through many stacks of lofty titles, did I still feel ignorant? 

I realized that it was time to submit myself to a list of recommended reading.

Lately, I have noticed a lot of literary bloggers referring to the moment when they "turned to the classics." It sounds like such a life changing, momentous event. And it is.

What I'll be reading for the next several months.

                                                                

Classics are books which, the more we think we know them by hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them. -- Italo Calvino

How has The Well-Educated Mind changed me?

The first time I read The Well-Educated Mind, I was living in a basement apartment with my husband and two small children. I had dropped out of college to get married and I was starting to feel intellectual withdrawal. In her book, I discovered Susan Wise Bauer's advice for reading through five different types of literature: fiction, autobiography, history and politics, drama, and poetry. She explains how to read each type by following the tried and true method of the classical trivium. She quotes Sir Francis Bacon: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." --

[Bacon] was suggesting that not every book is worthy of serious attention. But the three levels of understanding he describes -- tasting, swallowing, and digesting -- reflect his familiarity with classical education. In the classical school, learning is a three-part process. First, taste: Gain basic knowledge of your subject. Second, swallow: Take the knowledge into your own understanding by evaluating it. Is it valid? Is it true? Why? Third, digest: Fold the subject into your own understanding. Let it change the way you think-- or reject is as unworthy.

Reading Susan Wise Bauer's words, I felt as though an older, wiser friend had come along beside me, offering to be my guidance counselor. I began to shape a plan for a dream that could be accomplished over my lifetime. 

Now that I have five children, allotting time for my classical education often feels daunting -- some days I don't get to it at all -- but I'm inching forward and the reward is always worth the effort.

I started out alone on my quest. I had never heard of a "blog" and I knew no one personally who was interested in working through the lists with me. A big part of the process in a classical education is conversing with a rhetoric partner, but I didn't find mine until recently. After I started Classical Quest, I did a Google search and discovered a A Classic Case of Madness, a blog authored by three mothers who are also working their way through the WEM lists. I had started with the autobiography list; they were going through the novel list. Switching lists midstream was not a decision I made lightly (the lists are arranged chronologically). But now that I've worked through two novels alongside them, I realize that I made the right choice. They put up new posts from our reading nearly every day and some mornings I start my day laughing myself to tears over what they have written.


The Great Books have been likened to "intellectual NordicTrack machines", helpful for preventing atrophy of the mind. This is a good analogy, but my favorite imagery is food --

I have noticed that readers of the classics always seem to have in common a love for sumptuous food. Perhaps science will one day prove that a refined palette and a love for classic literature are genetically intertwined; regardless, the analogy of food is a good way to describe what reading a classic work does for me -- It feeds me. Entering into "The Great Conversation", I have found I'm not eating alone. I am joining into a shared experience with countless others through the ages.

Some of what I have experienced:
Augustine’s Confessions, which contains some of my all-time favorite quotes, provided a buffet for my soul during a trying time. I have laughed out loud to the tongue-in-cheek humor in Moby-Dick which others have laughed at for 150 years.  I have developed a love/hate relationship with Michel de Montaigne after reading his Essays a few months ago -- yet, more and more, I find myself referring back to his tips for living a good life. I have silently wept over Uncle Tom's Cabin and thought: This is why this book started a war. And now I know by experiencing these books for myself, not just by being told about them second hand.

Books I've read since I started working through the WEM lists.

If you are interested in reading through the Great Books on the WEM lists, I would love to hear from you! I am in the process of compiling a "Well-Educated Mind Blog Directory", which I know will be a means of support and encouragement for those on this quest. 


You are also welcome to join me in reading any particular book on the list.  Please leave a comment to let me know!

To view the complete WEM list go HERE.

Moby-Dick: The Experience

The goal of my quest is to obtain a more enriching life experience. (And perhaps become a little smarter too while I'm at it.) This is something that can be achieved through reading great literature. By entering the Great Conversation of the ages. I read old books to think great thoughts.

 We believe, with our technology, that we have reinvented life. But this is not the case. The gadgets that surround us are minor details, the essence of life remains unchanged. It feels the same to be alive today as it did a thousand years ago.

Hence I turn to the old classics to find new stuff to chew on.

For the next few weeks I will be sharing my favorite quotes from Moby-Dick. Starting today with a famous one from chapter one, "Loomings":

I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts. 

I can sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts anytime with a good book. My family thinks I'm normal, predictable Mom, what they don't see is that I've spent the last month on a whale-ship hanging out with a cannibal who stabs his breakfast with his harpoon (among others).

If they only knew.