A ways back there was a poster contest for children at my local public library. The theme was on the importance of reading books, and the winner would have his or her poster printed on the library bags that a patron could purchase at the circulation desk. That year there were a lot of creative and insightful submissions, and the winner ended up being a little girl who made a poster of a book and a heart that was titled “Reading Makes Your Heart Grow.”
Isn’t that lovely? It has always stayed with me. Probably because it seems that little girl depicted a less talked about truth of learning and education. A truth that may even be as important, or more important than academics, that reading and books can be sacred.
This past weekend I had some very old and dear friends over. Women I’ve known for about 30 years. And over the course of our long conversation that went well past our dinner, the topic turned to books.
The conversation was initially prompted by my toddler taking all of my books off my bookshelf and carrying them one by one to my friends. We all thought it was quite amusing, but then my friends began to ask me about the spiritual and religious books that have made an imprint on me. The books that really spoke to me that I might recommend to others.
For me, this was a great question and a great conversation, but very personal. Like the little girl who won the library poster contest, books hold a very special place in my heart. I can remember the time and place I was in in my life when each significant book took my mind and perspective in a whole new direction.
The photo above is a stack of a few books that made such a mark on me towards the beginning of this journey. These are some of the books my toddler was pulling of the shelves- jacket covers and all!
They include (and this is in no particular order):
The Place That Scare You by Pema Chodron
A Chosen Faith by Forrest Church & John Buehrens
The Spiritual Emerson edited by David M. Robinson
When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat Zinn
Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore
Christian Meditation by James Finley
Living Your Yoga by Judith Lasater
A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield
The New American Spirituality by Elizabeth Lesser
Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope
Reflecting on this list, that for me is sacred and holy text, brings me back to the early beginnings of my spiritual awakening.
For many, me being no exception, spiritual and/or religious journeys often begin with a book. Recently I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of Fr. James Martin Sj who is a Jesuit Priest and Author. He says his awakening began with Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. Go to Social Researcher and Author Brene Brown’s website and you will see a list of her “Favorite Books” which consists of a section on “Whole Hearted Reading” that includes some of the authors I’ve listed above (Anne Lamott, Sue Monk Kidd, & Pema Chodron).
I think the books that primed me for a life with books at the center of my heart were two children’s books and any and all books by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto.
I was actually not a big reader in childhood until I was about 17 years-old. Though I was fortunate to have been read to by my parents when I was a small child, I got jaded with the forced reading of the 80’s in elementary school that included a lot of sterile Americana sentences like: “Jane and Dick see Spot run.” This reading did not make my heart grow in the slightest. But two earlier books that made a very deep impression were the classics: The Little Engine that Could and Ferdinand the Bull, and later, when I was in high school and working at my local library on weekends, I encountered the book Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.
Kitchen was the first book that I ever read on my own that truly spoke to my heart. It is a small book, maybe a couple hundred pages, and it includes 2 stories about young women who are moving through phases of grief and loss in the context of a modern world. As I read this book, multiple times actually, my heart actually swelled as I felt, for the first time in my life, a sense of kindred spirits and not being alone. It allowed me to understand the empathetic value of having my own experience mirrored before me- a lessen I still hold true now as a psychotherapist.
Then came the first more overt spiritual reading that has opened up doors in my imagination that I did not even know existed. It started with the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron.
The year was 2003, I was a 26 year-old, and I was in my 1st year of psychiatric social work training . One day, early in the year, my supervisor Rebecca, who identified as Jewish, Buddhist and gay, recommended I read When Things Fall Apart. Being the over-achieving-wanting-to-please-my-mentor-gal that I was, I went out to Barnes and Noble that very same day and bought my first book that touched on anything spiritual and religious.
What a momentous occasion that was in the life of my spiritual journey! And yet, when I took that book home, opened it up to the first page, and began to read “bodhisattvas” this and “bodhichitta” that, my first thought was “Why in the hell did Rebecca want me to read this?!” Followed by my second thought “I’m going to need a translator for this book…”
It’s funny now, 12 years later, to see the very same book as one of my core spiritual texts. It reminds me of the beginning of movie and musical The Sound of Music when Sister Maria is just starting to teach the Von Trap children how to sing, and she starts with the scales. Sister Maria knows if the children are familiar with the scales, memorably sung in the form of the song “Do a Deer,” then any more difficult songs to come will be more possible because they’ve been studied in the basics.
I feel the same way about my early spiritual reading. I think of some of the books that I go back to again and again when I feel alone and confused, and it is like revisiting my touchstones. Suddenly I don’t feel so lost, and I have a compass to point me once again toward true north.
What books represent your early spiritual texts? What books formed the early foundation of your spiritual and/or religious awakening?
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