Why I Need Well-Read Mom
Written By Marcie Stokman, Well-Read Mom Founder and President
*Reprinted from Well-Read Mom’s Year of the Contemplative Reading Companion. (copyright 2018)
Although it has been seven years since Year of the Contemplative and nine since our first Victor Hugo selection, it is wonderful to pause and reflect on the beauty of accountability and friendship within the Well-Read Mom community. We continue to be better together.
Read more. Read well. Happy Mother’s Day Well-Read Mom!
“You’re not going to read this huge book, are you?” Pete put my anxiety into words as he thumbed through our yellowed copy of Les Misérables last May.
“How am I going to read this massive novel?” I panicked, “Why did we put this big old book on the list anyway?”
Then an idea struck. “I know! I’ll suggest to my group that since we’ve been faithful with the reading all year long, we should take a break and watch the movie instead. The ladies will probably be relieved,” I reasoned.
But walking into my group, there came Linda, raving about Les Misérables.
“I apologize for starting the book early,” she was saying, “but I needed to get going on it and oh my, the writing is absolutely beautiful. And the surprising thing is it’s not so hard. It reads easy and the beauty! Oh, the beauty!”
So much for suggesting the movie. Instead, I went home and began to read Les Misérables.
This is why I need to be accompanied, to overcome my objections. I wish it weren’t so, but each time I pick up the next Well-Read Mom book, the mental battle begins: “I don’t have time. It will be too difficult. I’m overloaded now.” But again and again I find, when my friends are reading, I’m helped to read too.
Another objection that becomes a roadblock to reading older books is the belief that they are out of date. C. S. Lewis offers correction:
We need the wisdom of old books in order to set the assumptions of our culture in some perspective. Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially libel to make certain mistakes. We all therefore need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period and that means the old books.
Great books don’t have an expiration date. In fact, the “outdated” books often become our favorites.
Sometimes people mistakenly think that because I lead Well-Read Mom, reading classics comes easily to me. It doesn’t. Reading each book requires an intentional decision. The good news is I am amazingly faithful when accountability is entwined with friendship. Growing in friendship is a great gain, but so is reading books from our tradition. Why? Because we long to preserve what is good, beautiful and true. These treasures are not safe-guarded when they are vaulted in the stacks of libraries. Great works of literature are preserved when we read them.
By taking part in what is good, beautiful and true, the best thought of the great authors ignites thoughts of our own. Mind speaks to mind through the pages of a book. In the process of deep reading, life’s profound questions surface: what is it to be educated, to live, to love, to be happy? Because our interior landscape is enlarged when we read, so is the possibility for contemplation.
As we accompany one another this year, may the roadblocks to reading be challenged, smashed, hurdled and overcome.
Thanks for joining the Well-Read Mom experience. Together we are reading more and reading well.
Marcie Stokman, Well-Read Mom Founder and President
Marcie Stokman, M.A., is founder and president of Well-Read Mom, an international movement and book club. As a former clinical nurse practitioner in mental health and longtime homeschooler, she writes and speaks to encourage women and share the power of reading. She and her husband, Peter, have seven children and 20 grandchildren. Marcie is the author of The Well-Read Mom: Read more. Read well.
About Well-Read Mom
In Well-Read Mom, women read more and read well. Our hope is to deepen the awareness of meaning hidden in each woman’s daily life, elevate the cultural conversation, and revitalize reading literature from books. If you would like to have us help you select worthy reading material, we invite you to join and read along with us. We are better together! For information on how to start or join a Well-Read Mom group visit our website wellreadmom.com
