You won’t remember most of it, but that was never the point.
About five years ago I was having coffee with a local pastor, and we were discussing literature and my passion for reading. I was telling him about how vital I believe reading to be for us as ministers.
After hearing me out, my pastor friend sighed and said, “You know, I envy your ability to read like that. I really do. For me, the main reason I don’t read is because, whenever I do read, I don’t remember any of it.”
“You mean fiction or nonfiction?” I asked him.
“I mean all of it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a story or a book of statistics. I spend all that time reading and then, three days later, I don’t remember a bit of it.” He paused and then added, “So, truth be told, it just seems like a bad use of time to me.”
I sat forward and said, “But that’s the point I’m trying to make. Remembering what we’ve read is not the most important thing about reading; instead, just doing the reading is what matters. Taking the time is the whole point!”
Then I added, “I completely share your frustration—I’m only saying that uploading information to our brains is not the main reason for reading.”
I then pulled out a book from my briefcase, one I had stayed up into the wee hours of the morning grappling with and marking up. “You see this?” I asked him, putting Mircea Eliade’s classic The Sacred and the Profane on the table between us. “I have now dedicated at least 15 hours to this book … and I can barely tell you any of what I have read. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are certain ideas that stay with me. But the vast majority …
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