Adventures on Aisle Number Two
“The one who gets wisdom, loves life.”
Since I introduced the guiding idea of STILL last week, I thought I’d take a moment this week to give you some context for where this idea for Passages (my weekly Sunday morning post) comes from and what it is about. Check out last Sunday’s Passages here: Pulled Off Your Path.
Thanks for being the first people to check out STILL! Please help spread the word to others who might appreciate this space.
“The one who gets wisdom, loves life.” -Proverbs 19:8
Two library aisles are filed away in my memory.
Aisle Number One is dark and downstairs. Books mysteriously float between the shelves. And ectoplasmic residue covers the nearby card catalog, evidence confirming the spooked librarian lady’s report that there’s something strange in the neighborhood. This aisle, of course, is from the opening scene of 1984’s Ghostbusters. A movie my brothers and I watched too many times to count.
But, believe it or not, Aisle Number Two feels even more mysterious to me than this slimy Aisle Number One. Because, unbeknownst to me at the time, it foreshadowed my future—as well as the creation of this newsletter, STILL. Unlike the ghostly first aisle, Aisle Number Two was a real life place I’ve actually been to: the World Religions aisle in the local library of my youth.
My barely-teenage self felt at home there. There was something powerful about it. As a church kid, I was well-acquainted with one of the books on the shelves of Aisle Number Two. I heard it and read it—at church on Sundays and at school each day and around the dinner table every night: The Bible. Literally, the book (though it’s actually a collection of many books and poems and songs and letters).
Knowing this one book meant that I was also familiar with the idea that ancient words could be in a sense… timeless… That something written way back then could have something to say to us right now.
And this is exactly why Aisle Number Two amazed me. There wasn’t just one book. There were so many books on the shelves. So many books, special and meaningful and sacred to some group, somewhere on the planet—just like the Bible to my family and community and me—passed on down through time. And, not to mention, so many commentaries and reflections on all of these other sacred books.
I was fascinated. So I started checking out books from Aisle Number Two.
Like the Tao Te Ching, the Chinese classic.
Books on the Buddha.
Writings from Jewish mystical traditions.
English translations of the Quran.
The Book of Mormon piqued my curiosity (maybe because I liked the blue cover).
And so did The Apocrypha, a rogue assortment of pseudo-biblical books, including one called the Book of Tobit (Did Tolkien write that?). I wondered, How come nobody ever told me about The Apocrypha!?
And it was especially ancient India’s Bhagavad Gita that intrigued me. And in no small part because in my head its name kind of sounded like “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” an album/song by Iron Butterfly that the Columbia House CD catalog was always trying to sell me back then in the early 90’s.
Anyways…
Checking out these different holy books felt a little bit rebellious, like I was smuggling something home. Why? Because my tradition told me about one book. But here I was getting into the stories and wisdom and truths of other books.
I was only scratching the surface. Back then, I wouldn’t have been able to put it into words, but some part of me knew that Aisle Number Two was a treasure trove of wisdom. A place filled with accounts about what it means to be human and how to live our fullest lives. Insights about love and service. Practices for growing one’s consciousness. Lessons on starting over and risking and failing and growing. Inspired voices from across the array of human experience contending with the mystery of existence and trying to figure out how to make the most of being alive. Literature helping us explore our inner lives so we can enhance our outer lives in the world.
For a long time, I let most of the books on those shelves gather dust, save one. The Bible—that book of books that I inherited from my family and community. I learned its original languages and studied it when I got my Master of Divinity degree, and I shared its stories as an ordained minister and neighborhood pastor for over a decade. Most significantly, however, when I made space for it, the timeless insights and enduring stories of this book of books helped me listen to my life. They nourished and inspired and guided me. They helped me get quiet. They helped me be still.
While I spent years and years focused on that one book, the good news was that Aisle Number Two didn’t forget about me. It had more to teach me and show me. Its various books started showing up generously again and again when I descended into a deep, years-long season of self-discovery. And also when the expression of my vocation expanded. As I worked with religious and spiritual leaders from across traditions at The On Being Project. As I began to teach a meditation practice stemming from the lineage of the Bhagavad Gita, the book that had grabbed my attention so many years earlier. And as I wrote my book, The Way Home, which engages all sorts of stories from Aisle Number Two.
Beyond these activities, however, for years now in the quiet corners of my life, the wisdom of Aisle Number Two—just like the book of books did for so long—has nurtured and challenged me. Comforted and disturbed me. Inspired and changed me. This wisdom has helped me become more fully human, more fully alive!
Which is why I want to invite you to join STILL. A core aspect of STILL is that it will kind of like Aisle Number Two, a space overflowing with wisdom literature, poetry, sacred texts, and other soul-stirring writings from there and then that have so much to say to us here and now. This will especially be the case in Passages, my free weekly Sunday post, where I’ll engage excerpts—snippets or sections or full stories—from these unending, assorted writings.
To be clear, we will not be dissecting these passages in order to get after beliefs. We’ll look at them to acquire wisdom—a form of knowledge that comes from experience and observation. We will glean insights from these passages that can be applied to our own lives.
And isn’t this kind of time-tested wisdom what we need right now? Because these days it’s scarier than Aisle Number One out there! Social media is devoted to dishing up junk food instead of nourishing our hearts and minds. Meaningless commentary about meaningless things is constantly bombarding us. And our attention is continually being manipulated so someone can sell us something. This all leaves us dehumanized and disengaged from life itself, and no doubt contributes to the increasing polarization and conflict we are witnessing around the world.
Instead, it’s time to be transformed by nourishing wisdom and give our attention to stories that have staying power.
It’s time to learn from timeless insights that connect us to self, to others, to the world—to life!
It’s time to explore inner life so that we can enhance outer life.
In other words, it’s time to be… STILL.
Questions for Reflection
How about you? What sources of wisdom have nourished your life?
Do you have a favorite verse, poem, or myth that is sustaining you right now?
I’d love to hear from you in the comments!