This summer, the Faculty Ministry Leadership Team (of which I’m a part) is reading two books: Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness by Eugene Peterson, and Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.  Yesterday, I sat for a few minutes in awe of this passage from Jayber Crow, in which Jayber, the barber of a fictional Kentucky town, Port William, explain the origin of his name:

If you have lived in Port William a little more than two years, you are still, by Port William standards, a stranger, liable to to have your name mispronounced.  Crow was not a familiar name in this part of the country, and so for a long time a lot of people here called me Cray, a name that was familiar.  And though I was only twenty-two when I came to the town, many of the same ones would call me “Mr. Cray” to acknowledge that they did not know me well.  My rightful first name in Jonah, but I had not gone by that name since I was ten years old.  I had been called simply J., and that was the way I signed myself.  Once my customers took me to themselves, they called me Jaybird, and then Jayber.  Thus I became, and have remained, a possession of Port William.

I have experienced firsthand the confusion of names in small town Kentucky.  In Benton, where I grew up, “Hickerson” was not known, but “Henderson,” “Henson,” “Dickerson,” and “Nickerson” were, so I spent a fairly significant part of my childhood correcting my name on official forms of various sorts.

But notice what Berry pulls off here, with a quick series of bird images. “Crow,” of course, begins the passage.  “Jonah,” however, means “dove” in Hebrew, and “Jayber” is a derivation of “Jaybird.”  In case that was not enough, we learn on the next page that Jayber’s mother was Iona Quail.  After reading this, I sat for several minutes, letting the images come to me and imagining what they might portend for this book.

There is a nice article today on the InterVarsity website about InterVarsity’s commitment to discipleship of the mind and the importance of reading to both mental and spiritual development: Leaders Who Are Readers.  It discusses a little bit of InterVarsity’s history with books and reading, including the formation of InterVarsity Press, our ministry’s publishing arm.

Here is an example from the article showing reading in action within campus ministry:

“To encourage reading in the InterVarsity chapter on campus, I have required reading that all student leaders must complete in discipleship each semester and over the summer. The Leadership Team is reading A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene Peterson, (InterVarsity Press),” said Tim Borgstrom, campus staff member at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

I am encouraged by hearing this.  Peterson was a strong influence in my early Christian formation, and, along with J. I. Packer, was one of two authors that led me to consider Regent College for graduate school.

One final note about InterVarsity and reading: the first time I ever considered joining InterVarsity staff was when I discovered that staff received a discount on IVP books.  InterVarsity has an “auto-ship” program by which staff can elect to have every book published by IVP sent directly to them (you can also choose to receive a “best of” selection or only academic and reference books).  I was at our staff David McNeill’s house, and he opened up a box simply stuffed with brand-new books – I think Philip Johnson’s Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds was included.  Soon, however, I came to see that a desire to get a great discount on books was not a good reason to enter campus ministry.

When I was a child, I visited my town library quite a bit – at least once a week, sometimes more.  I have always been a book lover, and discovering new books was one of the joys of my childhood.

Libraries back then used cards to record who had checked out the book.  When I found a new book, I could see who had read it before me, or if I had already read it and had just forgotten.  Because it was a small town, the same names kept popping up, people who shared my same interests.  Seeing their names created a virtual community.  At first, it was only other students a few years older than me; I remember when I started seeing the names of some people a couple of grades behind me.  It was both nice to see others with my interests, but also annoying to see that “some kid” had beaten me to the book.

I like used books for the same reason, especially used books in which previous owners have written their names.  While at a training event for InterVarsity last month, at our National Service Center in Madison, WI, I had the opportunity to pick up some used books that people the NSC no longer wanted.  Two of them, I found, had belonged to Pete Hammond, a gentleman I had the good fortune to have lunch with shortly before he retired.  I feel privileged to carry on the community of these books.

In a related note, Slate.com recently published a story about original editions of Shakespeare’s First Folio, which have been catalogued and tracked for hundreds of years.  Samuel Johnson apparently dribbled food on his copy.

I was never much into traditional young adult books when I was a young adult.  Instead, I spent a lot of time reading fantasy and sci-fi paperbacks cast off by my dad after he finished them, and also way too many UFO and Greek/Roman/Norse mythology books from the library (everything about my personality is now explained).  So, five or six years ago, I started reading more “young adult” books, including some classics, like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Last week, it was RLS’ Kidnapped. Originally published as a serial (which means lots of cliffhangers), it tells the story of 16-year-old David Balflour, a Scottish orphan who begins the novel seeking his wealthy uncle, whom he has never met.  Well, as you might guess from the title, not all goes well for young David.  His uncle, who turns out to be a miserly recluse, sells David to a ship bound for North America, where he is to be sold into slavery.  (The novel is set in 1752, pre-Revolution, but was written in 1886, so even then it had an air of historical fiction.)  But before they even leave the coast of Scotland, the ship is wrecked, and David finds himself thrown in with Alan “Breck” Stewart, based on an authentic historical figure, a Highland Jacobite rebel.  Balfour himself is a Lowland Whig, which means they are on opposite sides of both cultural and political fences.

If you don’t really know what a “Highland Jacobite” or “Lowland Whig” is, don’t worry: neither did I when I started the book.  But the edition I was reading included excellent historical notes, and part of RLS’ genius is his ability to flesh out political and cultural concepts in interesting characters, situations, and plot turns.  I enjoy both reading good stories and learning new things, and Kidnapped gave me both.  I gained an appreciation for Scotland as its own country, and for the cultural, religious, and political divisions in 18th-century Scotland.  If that sounds abstract, believe me, it was not: many in Kentucky are of Scots-Irish descent, and I belong to a church tradition founded by a Scots-Irish minister, so I gained a greater appreciation for the cultural roots that gave birth to both Kentucky’s culture and the Christian Church.

My wife and I recently welcomed our first son into the world, and I look forwad to sharing with him the joys of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novels.