UNIVERSITY BAPTIST CHURCH
  • Home
  • Start Here
  • Staff
    • Annette Hill Briggs, Pastor
    • Rob Drummond ~ Music Minister
  • Listen & Read
    • Sermons
    • Pastor's Blog
    • #ITSYOURCHURCHTOO >
      • About >
        • When & Where?
        • Ministries >
          • Worship >
            • Music
            • Worship Arts
            • Worship Resources
          • Fellowship >
            • Wednesday Night Supper
            • Church Recipes
          • Service >
            • MCUM Collections
            • Habitat for Humanity Project
          • Vacation Bible School
        • Our Story >
          • Denomination
          • Who We Are
        • Contact
        • Calendar
    • Social Media Feed
  • Give
  • Newsletter
  • Recommended Reading

Pastor Annette's Blog

"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD . . . NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC

A Good Read

3/5/2014

0 Comments

 
Beloved:

For all my knitting, sewing and gardening, I’d still rather read.  I get sad realizing I may have only forty reading years left, knowing there’s fiction, history, geography, theology, poetry and science I’ll never even touch. Or that I could read everything written in English and not scratch the surface of it all.  When I was a new reader, I worried I would forget how.  It was a relief to look at the cereal box every morning and confirm I could still do it.   

Right now I have bookmarks in The Federal Papers by Alexander Hamilton, The Finest Hour by Winston Churchill, This Is the Story of A Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett, and R.E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman. (I find it funny that he abbreviates Lee’s name but not his own). Churchill was a beautiful writer.  Every third or fourth page in between are excruciatingly detailed verbatims of meetings with his Lord Admiral.  Mr. Lee, finally graduated from West Point and has been in St. Louis dredging the Mississippi River for three chapters.  Hamilton is occasionally interrupted by James Madison and John Jay as the three of them campaign to sell the country on the new constitution.  Patchett’s essay on plant life in Tennessee is poetry in paragraph.  

I’m not nearly as smart as my book list suggests which is why I read, to know stuff.  But only partly.  The process  is sacred to me.  Someone had a thought in his brain.  He channeled the thought through his arm into his hand which pushed it out through a pencil onto a sheet of paper.  He sent the paper to someone who launched it through a factory and a book popped out the other side.  The Churchill book lived hither and yon for 59 years before landing in the Bloomington Antique Mall where I found it and carried it home in a grocery sack. And while I don’t much care which ships carried fourteen and sixteen pound guns, how amazing is it that I get a front row seat to that conversation!   

I can’t remember my kids’ phone numbers but I remember things I read in books  when I was in 4th grade. Writers are my heroes.  I’d rather lose an arm than lose literacy.  I’m grateful not to have to choose, of course, as arms and literacy are endlessly useful and so essentially human.  Like eating and breathing.   I’d like to high five the Mesopotamian who first thought of it.  But that thought has me wanting to read about linguistics now and I simply must let the dog out and feed the chickens.  Alas . . . .

peace & prayers, pastor annette

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC.  It is also posted here. 
     
    Enjoy!  
    Pastor Annette

    Copyright
    Everything on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which gives you permission to copy freely, provided that you attribute the work to me, that you use the work for non-commercial purposes, and that you do not produce derivative works.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    March 2011

3740 East 3rd Street
Bloomington, IN 47401
812-339-1404
[email protected]

Photo from TheReptilarium
  • Home
  • Start Here
  • Staff
    • Annette Hill Briggs, Pastor
    • Rob Drummond ~ Music Minister
  • Listen & Read
    • Sermons
    • Pastor's Blog
    • #ITSYOURCHURCHTOO >
      • About >
        • When & Where?
        • Ministries >
          • Worship >
            • Music
            • Worship Arts
            • Worship Resources
          • Fellowship >
            • Wednesday Night Supper
            • Church Recipes
          • Service >
            • MCUM Collections
            • Habitat for Humanity Project
          • Vacation Bible School
        • Our Story >
          • Denomination
          • Who We Are
        • Contact
        • Calendar
    • Social Media Feed
  • Give
  • Newsletter
  • Recommended Reading