stop reading and start reflecting, or you'll rattle

If you're even the slightest bit into children's literature, here's a great read: E.L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler.

My friend Jenny introduced me to this book a few years ago. It won a Newberry Medal in 1968, so it's been around for a while. It's about two children who run away and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as you do.

All that's by way of preamble. What I really want to share today is a wonderful quote from this book that my friend Andrew posted on his Facebook profile:

I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside of you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow.

Here's a similar statement from Challies:

There is something in my nature, I think, that wants to glance instead of linger. I get restless quickly, I look for a moment and then move on to other things. I have come to see that it is often better to linger, that certain things can only be seen and grasped by that long and dedicated study.

So true! So very true! Sometimes I have to stop reading a thousand blog posts and just slow down and...read. A book. Slowly.

Sometimes I have to stop reading and just slow down and...think. Pray. Ponder.

Or I start to rattle.