Reading for Harvest

Bringing the Harvest Home

In mid-May we entered into the season of Beltane, which is the cross-quarter day that lies at the midway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. It means “bright fire,” appropriate for the approach of hot summer days. In Christine Valters Paintner’s book The Soul’s Slow Ripening, Paintner spends an entire chapter on the four cross-quarter markers that lie in between the changing of the seasons, all significant rhythms in the year’s cycle.

This month we celebrate Summer Solstice, another cycle of change. Yet change is in the air even before the first day of Summer. Shavuot, celebrated in the Jewish tradition, also known as the Festival of First Fruits, occurs June 8th - 10th. According to Menachem Posner, in an online article on Chabad.org titled “Bikkurim: First Fruits,” this elaborate festival celebrating the first hint of harvest in ancient Israel was accompanied by readings from sacred texts, declarations and processions to Jerusalem with oxen whose horns were dipped in gold.

We are indeed in a season of ripening harvest.

In his book, Anam Cara, John O’Donohue talks about harvest of another kind, experiences that pass with time and can be harvested in our memory. Those memories garner greater depth over time and become enriched through integration with other experiences of our lives.

This powerful principle can be applied to those of us who love to read, those of us for whom much of what we read becomes a part of us, frames our perceptions and even informs our writing. Finding a method to retain and retrieve those things may be one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves.

How can we keep track of what we’ve read in some organized way? Just yesterday I pulled a fresh notebook off my shelf to begin a new practice, big plans to start a journal specifically dedicated to the books I’ve read. Truth be told, it may be awhile before I get around to that.

What I do have in place though, is a solidly established habit of recording the name and author of every book I read in what I call my “everything” journal. I’ve been doing that for nearly ten years. And if there is something especially memorable about what I’m reading, I’ll make a short note of it. And I always record quotes that are exceptionally noteworthy.

The way we read may go a long way toward retaining what we’ve read. I’m currently reading Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard, a story about the Presidency of James A. Garfield. The author describes Garfield’s notes for his inaugural address: “He had written no less than a half dozen distinct drafts of the address in whole or in part, each profusely adorned with notes, interlineations and marginalia.”

It reminded me of how I read a book. I’m especially fond of marginalia, always having at the ready my Papermate Sharpwriter #2 mechanical pencil so that I can pull key words out into the margins, underline significant passages and star or set apart in brackets those parts of the text that are worth reading again. In this way, when I go back to review something I’ve read previously, it’s more easily accessible and the point of my interest can be recalled because of the notes I’ve taken.

There have been times, with really exceptional books that I’ve taken notes in outline form and put them on the inside cover of the book where I can easily find them. When I need to refer to the concept that so moved me at the time I read the book, I can simple run through the outline notes and be completely refreshed as to the inspiration I found there as well as the details that were so helpful. I’ve never regretted taking the time to make a record of the things that inspire me.

I spend a lot of time reading, probably not as much as some, but enough to consider it a substantial investment. The payoff comes in harvesting what’s been sown into my memory. There are innumerable creative ways to harvest the investment of reading and research.

What are some of the ways you’ve harvested your reading seeds?

Word Prompt For the Week: Summer Days