My high school education was somewhat lacking. For instance, my science teacher brought in videos of his wife giving birth because he thought it would be a learning experience, while my math teacher would routinely give us “free days” in class because she was depressed about her most recent break up (usually involving a member of our football team).  I could get over all that because I have never been extremely interested or gifted in terms of science or math…hmmm, good place to debate chicken or the egg.  However, I also left high school AND college AND graduate school somehow missing out on a great deal of significant literature. Being fair to my educators, it probably had as much to do with me being able to survive exams without participating in “required reading,” but regardless, I was a “writer” who was operating with major blind spots because of my lack of familiarity with the classics.

About 10 years ago, I started trying to atone for this deficiency. I was riding a train 30 minutes to and from work in Chicago, so I had plenty of time to read. I made a list of literature (books, authors) that I was embarrassed about never having read. And then I started working my way down the list. It’s been a very rewarding experience. I’ve stumbled upon a few authors who are now among my favorites (Salinger) and some that while I appreciate their talent, I don’t care much for their style (Joyce).  

Last week, I popped into the bookstore to reload my reading supply. I read in spurts, and lately I’ve burned through 5 or 6 books in quick fashion. Among the authors I met this time around were the aforementioned Joyce (you win some, you lose some) and John Milton. I started reading Milton’s Paradise Lost over the weekend.  I didn’t grab Paradise Lost because I was seeking a theological debate. He was just on my list, the one from 10 years earlier.  Here’s where God showed up.

My version of Paradise Lost is actually from the Barnes and Noble Classics series, and most of those books have lengthy introductions that provide a biological sketch of the author and historical context for the work. I’m not a big history buff, maybe something else to blame on high school. (Actually, my history teachers were really good.) But this time I actually started with the introduction, and God rewarded me with two insights.

1. I came to realize that much of Milton’s life and work, specifically Paradise Lost is about the struggle between the self and the spirit, and while his theology was an eccentric and complicated one (he basically built his own based on his studies, his experiences and history) there is probably going to be lots of applicable struggles within this text that reflect some of the things I’ve been working through as of late.

2. More specifically, the introduction was able to deliver a message that God has been transmitting for at least a year without success. A simple next step in my journey, more of less. The author of the introduction quotes one of Milton’s earlier works, Areopagitica, saying, “The light which we’ve gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge.”

More times than not, when a verse from the Bible has spoken directly to me during the past year, it has been from Isaiah. Starting at step one in this journey I’ve been on. It suddenly occurred to me while reading the intro to Paradise Lost that maybe God is saying that I should read the entire book of Isaiah and actually use the light I’ve been given to illuminate more, instead of just staring into it and marveling on the insight. So, that’s what I’m going to do. Read Isaiah. And I bet there is something for me to learn or be reminded of. And I bet that God knew I’d need that lesson/reminder 10 years ago when I started my list of must-read classics.

This is also prompting me to revisit other insights that I feel I’ve received from God and try to be more aware of how I might use those lights to better illuminate the path ahead instead of only using them to view what’s in front of me more clearly. After all, every light is both an answer to one question and a question for the next answer. But first, Isaiah 1, verse 1….