Catching Up On the Interesting Things Behind

Perhaps I am becoming a more discriminating reader. On the other hand, perhaps my attention span is simply diminishing to the point that precious little holds it for long. Whatever the explanation, I find myself skipping over much.

Camped out in a hotel – in a much-appreciated retreat of sorts – while Lori attends a professional conference, I have turned myself to the stack of Christian Century magazines I unloaded from my desk drawer in preparation for the trip. It is a great magazine to which I faithfully subscribe, routinely full of articles both important and interesting. The issues, however, arrive twice each month and I get behind. Ummm, I stay behind. So, I have been looking forward to catching up – starting with the oldest in the stack (June 16) and working my way forward to the current October 20 edition that arrived just before we left.

Over the religious news summaries now months old I find myself agilely skipping. Articles begun with interest frequently lose their hold and I turn a page...or two. June, in this pattern, was dispatched in only slightly more time than had been required to change the calendar page earlier in the summer. I’m sure it didn’t have anything to do with the feature story on the pastor’s struggle with the criticism that inevitably comes her or his way. Now halfway through July I have read with interest stories on the unique dynamics within clergy families, plus Luci Shaw’s poem reflecting on relative merits of burial versus cremation. Looking ahead, the table of contents for the latter half of the month frankly doesn’t look like it will take me very long to make it into August.

There is, however, something profligate about this progress long overdue. I think about the care with which the writers crafted their essays and reflections. I imagine the editors arranging and rearranging, paring stories and deciding how much of what to go where. I imagine the sermons now committed to files that were nourished by the Bible Studies on the texts assigned for days already forgotten. And I am turning pages as though they were popcorn grabbed and swallowed by the handfuls. As though considerations of deeper questions had a shelf life. I should, I know, slow down and savor the words, the thoughts, and the efforts of those who proffered them.

But for reasons I can’t find I am driven to get current, which means pages to go and words to sift before I sleep. September, after all – despite this October date – is still before me.