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Introduction (from pages ix-xiii)

Spiritual reading, designated lectio divina by our ancestors, has fallen on bad times. It has always been a prized arrow in the quiver of those determined to cultivate a God-aware life, but has suffered a severe blunting in our century. This particular arrow has lost its point more through ignorance than indifference or malice, ignorance of the sense that "spiritual" carries. For the modifier "spiritual" in spiritual reading does not refer to the content of what is read but to the way in which a book is read. Spiritual reading does not mean reading on spiritual or religious subjects, but reading any book that comes to hand in a spiritual way, which is to say, listening to the Spirit, alert to intimations of God.

Reading today is largely a consumer activity – people devour books, magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers for information that will fuel their ambition or careers or competence. The faster the better, the more the better. It is either analytical, figuring things out; or it is frivolous, killing time. Spiritual reading is mostly a lover's activity—a dalliance with words, reading as much between the lines as in the lines themselves. It is leisurely, as ready to reread an old book as to open a new one. It is playful, anticipating the pleasures of friendship. It is prayerful, convinced that all honest words can involve us in some way, if we read with our hearts as well as our heads, in an eternal conversation that got its start in the Word that "became flesh." Spiritual reading is at home with Homer as well as Hosea.

Spiritual reading, for most of us, requires either the recovery or acquisition of skills not in current repute: leisurely, repetitive, reflective reading. In this we are not reading primarily for information, but for companionship. Baron Friedrich von Hugel once said it was like sucking on a lozenge in contrast to gulping a meal. It is a way of reading that shapes the heart at the same time that it informs the intellect, sucking out the marrow-nourishment from the bone-words.

***

For Christians the Bible is the primary book for spiritual reading. In the course of reading Scripture, it is only natural that we fall into conversation with friends who are also reading it. These leisurely, relaxed, ruminating conversations continue across continents and centuries and languages by means of books—and these books offer themselves for spiritual reading. After a few years of this, as with the Scriptures themselves, most of our spiritual reading turns out to be rereading. C. S. Lewis once defined an unliterary person as "one who reads books once only."

But leisurely and repetitively doesn't mean slovenly or lazily. G. K. Chesterton said there was a great difference between the lively person wanting to read a book and the tired person wanting a book to read. Nicolas Berdyaev represents the lively spirit: "I never remain passive in the process of reading: while I read I am engaged in a constant creative activity, which leads me to remember not so much the actual matter of the book as the thoughts evoked in my mind by it, directly or indirectly" (Dream and Reality [Macmillan, 1951], p. 13).

The necessity for alert and ready responsiveness to the Spirit is on display in a diary entry by Julian Green for October 6, 1941: "The story of the manna gathered and set aside by the Hebrews is deeply significant. It so happened that the manna rotted when it was kept. And perhaps that means that all spiritual reading which is not consumed—by prayer and by works—ends by causing a sort of rotting inside us. You die with a head full of fine sayings and a perfectly empty heart."

Walt Whitman gives the same counsel from a different angle: "Books are to be called for, and supplied, on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half sleep, but, in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or framework. Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does" (The Portable Whitman, ed. Mark Van Doren [Viking Press, 1945], p. 468).

***

I have a friend who became a Christian as a young adult, and then was ripped off and exploited by unscrupulous, predatory religious leaders. Disillusioned, he wandered off into the world of alcohol and drugs and spent the next twenty years trying to get his spirituality from chemicals. One day in the mountains of Mexico, on a hunt for drugs, he met some drug dealers who had recently become Christians. They talked to him about Jesus, prayed for him, and he reentered the Christian way. Back home in Canada, he knew he needed support in his new life, but because of his earlier experience with religious leaders, he was wary. One day he went into a bookstore and asked the manager, "Do you have any books by dead Christians? I don't trust anybody living." He was given a book by A. W. Tozer, and for the next year read nothing but Tozer—a "dead Christian." From there he cautiously worked himself back into the company of living Christians, in which he is now a most exuberant participant.

Most, but not all, of the books in my list are by "dead Christians." That means that they have been tested by more than one generation and been given passing marks. That means that what these Christians have written has been validated by something deeper than fashion or fad. But my list does not pretend to be balanced or inclusive or authoritative in any way. It is personal. Many important books are not included, some out of ignorance but many others simply because they have not yet become important to me personally.

Mark Van Doren once wrote in a poem, "Omission is murder." I hope this is not always true, for I have omitted some of my very best friends. The absence of Asian, African, and Latin works of Christian spirituality is conspicuous—and the most regrettable of my omissions. I have come on them late in my life. I considered inserting what seem to me to be the best and most representative of them, but decided that since they had not yet become a part of my spirituality, it would not be honest. But I am reading them most avidly. Perhaps, if there is a later edition of this reading list, I can repair this deficiency.

Some of my annotations are only a few lines, others a page or more. The reader should not attach significance to either the variations in length nor the order in which they are listed. I browse through my books. A passing glance can be as revealing as a lingering pause. The annotations are moments of attention I choose to share with my friends.

Lists like this have a way of expanding unconscionably, so I have imposed a limit on myself: twenty categories of not less than ten and not more than sixteen books in each category. Many of them transcend their categories—spiritual reading tends to do that. Not all of them are explicitly Christian—some I would classify as para-Christian, nudging in alongside the Christian faith but not explicitly declaring or embracing it. What they all have in common is that they have been used by our Lord the Spirit to deepen and nourish my life in Christ, sometimes in ways they almost certainly did not intend.

***

Not all of these books will become your books. Can I suggest a goal? Goal-setting is, for the most part, bad spirituality. But there can be exceptions. I think this might qualify as an exception: over the next five years, develop your own list of spiritual friends. Start with my list, but then gradually remake it into your own. You have to start somewhere. Start here. Eliminate. Substitute. Develop your own list, which over the years will become not a "list" at all, but a room full of friends with whom you have "sweet converse."

Luther, recommending one of his favorite books, wrote, "Indeed, this book does not float on top, like foam on water, it has rather been fetched out of the rock bottom of Jordan by a true Israelite" (quoted in The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther, trans. Bengt Hoffman [Paulist Press, 1980], p. 42). It is a recommendation I like very much and pass it along attached to each of my book friends.

Unfortunately, many of the books listed here are no longer in print, but that's what libraries and used bookstores are for.