I first learned about Well-Read Mom after our family moved from Florida to Georgia, and I was looking to meet new people. A dear friend invited me to join her evening group. The structure and rigor of the book selections fed my love for literature. Unfortunately, evening book club meetings were not sustainable for our growing family. I tried reading on my own, but it wasn’t the same. If I wanted a book club that fit my family’s needs, I would need to start my own chapter.
I began my journey in the Year of the Seeker by responding to a forwarded email from a friend inviting me to join a local Well-Read Mom group. It was July, and my husband and I were coordinating the fall schedules of our seven children. We had also just found out we were expecting. Though I have been an avid reader since childhood, I have never participated in a book club. I thought reading some new books and chatting with like-minded women might be a good opportunity.
Unlike Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a solo trip to the beach is neither possible nor desirable for me. However, I have thought about this book several times throughout the past year, especially when I needed retreat and refreshment.
I first read A Severe Mercy in college and fell in love with it immediately. I was a lifelong C.S. Lewis fan and I was more than willing to read a book with C.S. Lewis’s letters!
Noah took time out for friendship. It is my hope in Well-Read Mom that we take time out for friendship too. Why friendship? When you really think about it, almost everything that is good, true, and beautiful in life is better through friendship.
Why does Mattie pick Rootser? As I read True Grit, I was struck by the deep Father Wound of Mattie Ross. This realization caused me to reflect on this question. Mattie is given the names of several different marshals, and Rooster is not even listed as the best.
If there is one work that spoke to me most this year, it would be Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. When I came across this quote from “Little Gidding,” it seemed to me like an expansion of the famous quote by Tolkien: “Not all who wander are lost.” When I think of the word “seek,” I think of an exhaustive measure of searching, perhaps a never-ceasing exploration, as Eliot describes.
Stepping outside our daily routines through travel or pilgrimage can make our perceptions finer. But a much less expensive and more accessible means to this is reading. Books like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek help teach our eyes to see and ears to hear God through the natural world right outside our door.
Yesterday, while driving my lively entourage from school, I entered into a dispute with my twelve-and-a-half-year-old son. Frustrated at his mother’s cruel infringements upon, what I considered, his all-too-free speech, he passionately retorted: “What about the First Amendment?” I could relate to my son’s bristling at limitations upon personal desire. Practically, all it takes is a mother’s encounter with her unruly toddler, wailing in exasperation as a contraband item is loosened from his iron grip to vividly illustrate the universal struggle to tame our desires. From our earliest moments, we consider submission to authority as infringing upon our freedom and, subsequently, our happiness.
Seen, Known, and Loved Written by Jill Rasmussen When Well-Read Mom announced the Year of the Seeker, I was immediately drawn to the featured quote by Saint Mother Teresa: “From the moment a soul has the grace to know God, she must seek.” It reminded me of the very first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic…