Playdates: Books

It is raining. The wind hums to me down the chimney and a few errant drops plink, plink, plink on the grate in the hearth. The smell of spring comes with those metallic notes and the robins sing their robin songs outside the window as they scour the saturated earth for a soggy breakfast. The robust gusts and the lightening have passed, taking with them our electricity, so I sit here with candle lit--letting the quiet inhabit the space of me. The dogs are sleeping and the fire alarm starts chirping every so often—just to let me know: There is no backup. This could be dangerous.

No playing outside today. I am still nursing a migraine from yesterday afternoon--my head tender, my eyes heavy. I don’t want to move quickly, I want to creep slow through this day.  The rain is tender; it rocks my achy head in a steady rhythm.

I start thinking of my backup.

I remember my sister and me as girls, sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor as sheets of rain dash against the windows.

What do you want to do?

The possibilities were endless back then, but here I sit—cannot do the laundry that needs doing, no possibility of vacuuming in the near future, no internet access…

I’m in this house all alone with no power when I feel The Power ask:

What do you want to do?

And I smile.

We curl up on the couch with that flame aflicker and read. The light from the window is all we need and we are wrapped in words and each other. It is more than following words with eyes when we are together. I think of something I read recently and it names what we do:

The method of prayer proposed for lay persons and monastics alike in the first Christian centuries was called lectio divina, literally “divine reading,” a practice that involved reading scripture, or more exactly, listening to it. Monastics would repeat the sacred words with their lips so that the body itself entered into the process. They sought to cultivate through lectio divina the capacity to listen at ever deeper levels of inward attention. Prayer was their response to the God to whom they were listening in scripture and giving praise in the liturgy. (Thomas Keating in Open Mind, Open Heart).

We do read scripture, but we don’t stop there. I have this stack of books I’m working through and I offer the words of each one up to Him. We toss them back and forth, hold them in our hands, question each other about what they might mean. This is prayer conversation.

When my son was a toddler, he loved his picture books. He would sit in the floor surrounded by stacks and stacks of stories. One by one, he would pull his favorites. He would follow the simple words with his chubby fingers, pointing to the colorful illustrations with a look of concentration on his face. He loved his books so much that sometimes he would taste them.

I bring one of my books to my lips. I press it flat against my mouth, but I don’t bite. Instead, I breathe in its paper-scent, close my eyes and let dizzy love grip me.

My friend asked me just the other day, do I sometimes feel guilty for “just sitting there reading”? She said she was feeling mildly so. Do I feel that way? Yes, I said, I do, because there is always something else that needs doing. Always something that only mom can do.

I laugh at the gift of no electricity as I remember this.

Did you do this for me? For us? So we could read together?

There is nothing but quiet in the house and I snuggle into pillows and a soft blanket and turn pages with new love in my fingers.

How about you? How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. And come tell us about it.



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 Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also:

**the photo of my little redbird is compliments of ELK. She works wonders with paper!