Waiting on Words and Reading Slowly

Advent Meditations About Waiting

Malcolm Guite is a polymath.  A polymath is someone whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects and is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to gain unique insights.  Guite is a poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. He is also a J.R.R. Tolkien scholar and he even looks a little like a hobbit, with his beard, wool vest, and pipe.

Several years ago I was introduced to his book Waiting on the Word: A poem a day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.  It is an excellent book and I recommend it to you as devotional reading this Advent season.  And if you don’t want to buy the book, he offers many of his poems for free on his website.  You can even listen to audio records of him reading in his gravely, British accent.  I promise it won’t disappoint unless you are a little like me and you do not possess the natural patience for poetry.    

Poetry requires slow reading.  I am a notoriously slow reader, but not by choice.  My desire is to work through books quickly, but I have to focus and plod through the text slowly, often reading and re-reading sentences or entire paragraphs over again.  Sometimes I resort to skimming the text just to get through it.  Audiobooks have been a dream.  I set the playback speed at 2X and blaze through the books.  But I never remember them as well as I do when I read slowly.  It is probably God’s grace because it forces me to attend closely and pay attention to the words on the page. 

Poetry demands slow reading.  You can’t read a poem quickly and hope to get the beauty or mystery that resides in the words.  You must attend to the words slowly, and closely.  Advent is a poetic season.  It requires that we slow down, wait, and attend closely to the word.  Mary attended to the word growing inside of her for nine months.  In Advent, we attend to the word, slowly. We must listen closely to perceive the beauty and wonder of Christ as his word comes to us.