Nine Times And I Stopped Telling People

It is nine times now and the last three you have not mentioned to anybody.

The first few you told people about, cheerfully, the way a person mentions a thing they like. And somewhere around the fifth or sixth a small pause started appearing in the conversations afterward, and a question, always kindly meant: have you not read anything else.

So you stopped saying the number. And then you stopped mentioning the book at all, and now there is a paperback in your house with a broken spine that you have read nine times and that nobody in your life knows about.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what anybody ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is that question, because it assumes something about returning that Scripture does not.

Going back to a thing you love is not a failure to move on. It has a name in the psalms and the name is delight.

Delight is why a person goes back

There is a line at the front of the psalms about somebody who returns to the same thing constantly, and the reason given is not duty.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. (Psalm 1:2, King James Version)

Read the word in the first half.

Delight. Not obligation, not duty, not a plan being followed. His delight is in it, and the delight is given as the reason for what follows.

And then look at the frequency. Day and night. That is a description of somebody who keeps going back to the same thing over and over, and the psalm treats the repetition as the mark of a person who is doing well rather than of a person who is stuck.

You are returning out of delight, and nine times through the same book has never once been a failure to move on. Psalm 1:2 names delight as the reason and treats the constant returning as the mark of a flourishing person, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a paperback with a broken spine.

There is one more thing worth having in it, and it is about what the returning does.

The psalm goes straight on to a tree by a river whose leaf does not wither. The returning is what the fruitfulness is attached to. Nobody in that psalm is congratulated for variety.

You have returning treated as the healthy thing, and reading widely has never once been the measure the psalm reaches for. It is written and in his law doth he meditate day and night, the constant return is what the fruitfulness is attached to, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The question was about them and not about you

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth naming plainly because it was never unkind.

Have you not read anything else is a question about variety, and variety is a value that got attached to reading fairly recently and attached itself hard.

Ask where it comes from and there is no good answer. It is not from anywhere in particular. It is a general cultural sense that a reader is a person who covers ground, and that a person who reads the same book nine times has somehow not been getting on with it.

And under that sense there is a quiet confusion between reading and consuming. Covering ground is a consumption measure. It counts titles. And a woman who has read one book nine times has had nine complete experiences of a thing she loves, which is a different and larger fact that the title count cannot see.

You are being measured by a title count and not by what happened, and nine complete readings have never once been less than nine. Psalm 1:2 puts delight first and the constant return after it, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who has stopped saying a number out loud.

And there is a second layer, and it is what the silence has cost.

Not mentioning it has not protected you from anything, because nobody was attacking. What it has done is make a good thing private, and private things stop being spoken about, and things that are never spoken about start to feel slightly wrong even when they are entirely fine.

Three unmentioned readings later, and there is now a small secret in your house made out of a paperback you love.

You have a good thing that quietly became a secret, and three unmentioned readings have never once made a delight into something to hide. The written word names the delight and then attaches the fruitfulness to the returning, and His Spirit is the one who takes a title count off a woman.

Ten pages of the one you already know

So here is the assignment, and it is the same book on purpose.

Read ten pages of a book you already know.

That one. The nine times one. Not a different one to be fair to the shelf, and not the tenth read framed as a last hurrah before you move on to something else.

Ten pages of it, tonight, for the tenth time, because you want to.

You are returning out of delight, and nine readings of one book have never once been a failure to get on with anything. The Holy Spirit is the one at that shelf with you, and Psalm 1:2 names the delight first and then calls the constant returning the mark of a flourishing person.

Here is why the same one and not something new.

Reading something new tonight would concede the whole point. It would accept that the nine times were a phase to be worked through, and they were not. They were nine good experiences and there is a tenth available.

And ten pages rather than the whole thing, because you know how it goes, and there is nothing to finish. Ten pages of a known book is a specific pleasure that a first reading cannot produce.

You are able to open it for the tenth time on purpose, and a tenth reading has never once been a smaller thing than a first. Psalm 1:2 says but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman opening the same book for the tenth time.

And say the number out loud to one person this week. Not a defense of it. Just the number, in passing, the way you said it the first three times.

You have delight that needs no justification, and a number said out loud has never once needed a reason attached to it. It is written and in his law doth he meditate day and night, the returning is constant and the psalm calls that flourishing, and the Spirit of God is saying it here.