| Heya <<First Name>>,
This mail is more somber than my usual weekly newsletter, but I write it in the hope it gives comfort to anyone going through difficult times. …
I’ve attended three memorial services this year and at each one I’ve been struck by how, in times of distress, we turn to reading aloud for solace. I have listened as friends and family members have read — from scripture, from poems, from hand-written personal remembrances held in shaking hands — and I have been comforted every time.
Why is it that reading aloud comforts us so? Perhaps it’s a combination of medium and message. The medium of the page offers a supporting structure that allows our voices, however much they falter, to convey the enduring message that we are not alone in our suffering.
There’s another memorial ahead of me in September, and this time I’m the one putting the program together.
Given that it’s me, there will be ample reading aloud. 🙂
And, given that my mother loved the sound of the geese that gathered on the river behind her home, one of the poems I’ll be reading will be Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese.” It starts with these lines:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
My mom specifically requested the poem be read at her service. I think she wanted to remind her friends, family members, and perhaps herself, that we are at our best when we let go of the “shoulds” and let our hearts lead us.
Funny, Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote something to that effect in “The Little Prince”:
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
It all comes full circle.
May reading aloud give you and yours comfort, throughout all your days.
Happy reading,
Jeff and Bob …
… who believe that reading with kids can change the world for the better |
