Sometimes they are recommended to you by a friend or family. Sometimes they arrive as a gift wrapped in colored paper. Many get assigned to you. A few reach out to you from the shelf with their eye-catching binding or thought provoking title. Some come to your attention while you are reading or listening to something else. The trick is to keep your eyes and ears open for books.

When you take one home it has that promising weight of an unopened gift. You anticipate the story like you imagine a movie after watching the trailer. Then you find that place with the right light and the right seat – not too comfortable, but also not a place with that sitting up too straight schooldesk feeling. There is the cracking of the binding – all books resist being opened for the first time. The first few pages do not always pull you in – sometime you need to be patient. Then that thing happens where you forget where you are sitting and the spinning voices in your head go mute. You get pulled into the story – the fictional world envelopes you: absorbed into the story, engaged with an imagined cast of characters, and immersed in a unique view of the human experience, you feel transported.

All stories end. There is always that last page to turn and that final sentence to read. And there is something about a good story that lingers. The image of a mapped hundred acre wood. A character’s choice to chase a pocket-watch wearing rabbit down a hole. A world filled with witchcraft, castles and golden rings. A provoking concept like a Wrinkle in Time. The stories we read become part of who we are. Finished, we place them on the shelf of our own library. 

If we step back and reflect on the stories we have read, we can see a thread of our journey, take stock in where we have been, reflect on where we are standing, and glimpse into what our future might be like. 

I hope during this upcoming break you each have an opportunity to lose yourself in a new story and add one more volume to your own library.

Peace,
Chris