Time

A Reflection on Reading and the Height of Autumn

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

I love those days where I can sit outside in comfort and read. Likely, I could have them more often if I tried. Still, whether I have them as often as I ought or not, at least I still have them.

Yesterday, I decided to take some time to read for myself and for work. For those who don’t know, I’m a humanities teacher at a Catholic, classical high school in the Inland Northwest.

For work, I finished reading Dante’s Inferno. I love working at a school where a book I’d read annually anyway is officially part of my job. I am looking forward to the conversations my students and I will have about the sin of reason, how pride really stands behind all the sins of Hell, and how we must take care to repent of our sins (which is the lesson of Hell) so we can learn their cure in Dante’s Purgatorio.

I also spent some time reading The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis. This book I’m reading both for work and for me. It’s not a prescribed book, yet I think reading it through it will help next semester’s discussions about friendship when we read the Nichomachean Ethics. I also think the chapter on friendship may prove useful as a text to read, or at least share, with my fellow faculty members. We are, after all, walking shoulder to shoulder headed in the same direction. Then, of course, this is a wonderful book and I feel sure I will benefit from reading it again.

Finally, I spent some time reading Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. This one I’m reading just for me. It is a book that always does me some spiritual good. And I have need of that good just now.

Autumn is a funny time for me. I love the cooler weather, the leaves changing color and falling, the foods now come into season––especially apples. And yet, it is a time of busyness and melancholy. As a teacher, work picks up speed right as everything else is slowing down, and the incongruity can be difficult. All I want to do is drink cider (hard or soft) and wine, read, and write. But I must teach and grade. The teaching I don’t mind. After all, it is mostly reading and talking with others about what we have read. But the grading is a nightmare (not really, but it does feel that way sometimes). Then comes the melancholy: my books I’m supposed to be (or want to be) writing are not where I want them, and the sun has done more than cool, it has disappeared.

But no! I cannot let Autumn-infernal win. I must find his paradisal aspect and there I will find delight. And to find it, I need only do two things: First, I must learn to live intentionally, to not let time pass me by and use me. Instead, I must meet each moment head on, with purpose, even if that purpose is rest, so long as it is not apathy. The second thing I must remember is that I cannot do everything I’d like to do. Instead I must find what is needful and do that. Of course, these tasks are not easy and they will require the grace of Christ and the prayers of all his saints and angels to accomplish, but so does every breath I take and I do that easily enough, most of the time.

I pray your Autumn moves you closer to Christ as we head toward the end of one liturgical year and the beginning of another.