"Book" was the first word of my first child. Sebastian was about a year old, standing beside the sofa at the house of some friends and playing with the baby books I had brought along for the visit, stirring them back and forth over each other, almost singing, "Book-a-book-a-book-a-book…"

"He’s saying ’book’!" someone said.

"No he’s not," I replied. But indeed, the evidence seemed incontrovertible, as he continued to caress the books and croon happily to them, "Book-a-book-a-book…"

Now that he is in college, an English major with a room full of books, the importance of this moment is clear. Sebastian was a cautious child, who didn’t walk until six months later; books provided both adventure and clues to the meaning of life’s mysteries—all from the safety of Mommy’s lap. He could step across oceans with Harold and his purple crayon, make mischief of one kind and another with Max and the Wild Things, enter a forbidden garden with Peter Rabbit, and be back for supper.

I, too, have followed the bread crumbs left by books as I stumble and saunter through life. I remember reading myself to sleep as a young teenager with The Conflict of the Ages series and Pilgrim’s Progress. Why did I read these conservative, old-fashioned books, instead of at least bringing home The Outsiders or Harriet the Spy?

My parents never tried to control my reading; I think perhaps these books made me feel safe in an Adventist environment (school, church, Pathfinders, Missionary Volunteers, summer camp), where I was constantly being reminded that the Time of Trouble would soon be upon us, that "the very elect" would be deceived, and that even one unconfessed sin could land me in the Lake of Fire. They guided me along what seemed to be a secure path.

But eventually even I began to feel ready for a riskier journey, to wonder what lay outside the Adventist garden wall. It was at that moment that my academy biology teacher told me I ought to read C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy. "It tells the story of the Great Controversy, without ever mentioning God!" he told me after class one day. How often do students actually read the books their teachers recommend?

I did, anyway, and then read through everything else by Lewis I could get my hands on. Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Surprised by Joy—they all helped provide the intellectual backbone for my beliefs, which I craved. I think now that C. S. Lewis made it possible for me to stay in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, by making clear to me the meaning and logic behind theism and the central Christian narrative.

Perhaps more important, he made me realize that I was not simply a member of my church, but of the Church Invisible, "spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners"—that far more united me with Baptists and Episcopalians and Catholics than divided me from them, despite what I had been led to believe.1

Strangely enough, it wasn’t until years later that I discovered Lewis’s children’s books. I vividly remember attending a conference for writing teachers in Lexington, Kentucky, when I was about twenty-seven. I took along The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which a friend had told me I must read. On Sabbath, instead of going to the meetings, I luxuriated in my hotel room with a view of the Kentucky hills and traveled to the mountains and valleys of Narnia for the first time. Somehow Jesus-as-Lion became more real and personal than the man whom I had met in the Gospels, his sacrifice more poignant, and heaven seemed to beckon more sweetly when it held unicorns and talking mice. Lewis made the old, old story seem new.

Then I discovered Paul Tournier. I was fascinated by the case studies of his patients, by his explanations for the way people act. Books like Guilt and Grace, The Meaning of Persons, and The Adventure of Living helped educate my emotional intelligence and link it up with my spiritual life. While living in Switzerland, I joyfully discovered used copies of his books not available in English in the stalls along the quay in Lausanne. I even visited Tournier in his home, interviewing him for Insight magazine and bringing him a jar of homemade chocolate chip cookies.2

At this time in my life I was still struggling with legalism. I distinctly remember the day I finally decided that God loved me, and that what mattered was not being right, but trusting that love. Tournier assured me that I could move forward, even if the path ahead seemed shadowy, because God would be with me on my journey. "I think [we have to] give up the idea that we must be clear, and let ourselves be led by God blindly, if I may put it so, rather than demanding that he show us clearly at each step what our road is."3

While Tournier wrote metaphorically of blindness, Annie Dillard, with her strange and beautiful prose, taught me to begin to see in a different way. The colors and textures of this world, especially of what we call Nature, she brought to my attention. Somehow she sees into and through things, beyond the trees and the water, looking for their meanings. "God used to rage at the Israelites for frequenting sacred groves. I wish I could find one."4 She is on an extended nature walk, watching intently for the secrets of existence, hoping to see them shine out when she least expects it. My favorite passage is in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It offers better traveling instructions than I’ve found in any guidebook:

The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price.…But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.…I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.…The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.5

This, then, is where my books have brought me: out of the small, rather claustrophobic space where I began, into a larger, more populated landscape; now it seems I am to set out into the universe for parts unknown. I hope, like Sebastian, to step across oceans, make a certain amount of mischief, enter a forbidden garden or two, and be home for supper.

Click here for recommended spring reading from Nancy Lecourt and other Spectrum Book Review Advisors.

Notes and References

1. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 5.
2. It wasn’t easy to make chocolate chip cookies in Switzerland in 1982. I had to buy big slabs of dark chocolate and cut them into "chips" with a butcher knife. I also had to use hazelnuts instead of walnuts, not easy nuts to chop. And, of course, I used whole wheat flour, like a good Adventist. They may have been quite an adventure for Tournier.
3. Paul Tournier, The Adventure of Living, trans. Edwin Hudson (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1965), 188.
4. Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 69.
5. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974), 33.

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE