How to Read a Walking Book

Well hello, Dick Foth again, and it is known, stories to make sense of it all. It's summertime, still warm, still doing the things we do in summertime and one of the things I'm doing in the summertime has been walking. There was a time in earlier years in my 40s when I ran, like five to seven miles a day, but those days are pretty much gone, I'll do walking and jogging. There's something about walking that is what we're built for, but there's also something about walking with another person that is the greatest places for conversations, actually. Well, we're at chapter eight in known, finding deep friendships in the shallow world, and the title of this chapter is How to Read a Walking Book. This is how it begins. Then, Schaeffan, the secretary, informed the king. Will Kaya, the priest, has given me a book, and Schaeffan read from it in the presence of the king. Second king's 22-10 from the Old Testament. What do you do if you become a king at the age of eight? Well, you do the best you can, and by all indications King Josiah of Judah was the best. He ruled for thirty-one years, and he changed the face of the nation for the better. Unlike his father, Ammon, and grandfather, Manasseh, Josiah as a young man chose to follow the Lord. We aren't told in the record how he knew about the Lord. I'd like to believe it was through the story's hand to down from father to son. Whatever the case, the teenage king made his move. He was what it reads, in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy. He began to seek the god of David's father, and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and metal images. The house of the Lord had crumbled over the decades, and Josiah ordered its restoration. As the builders started the work, they found a book, which they gave to Josiah's aid. The aid, excited. I'm sure, went to the young king and said, He'll call the priest as giving me a book. Not any old book. This was the book, the scrolls of the law of Moses, unread for years. When Shafan read the book to Josiah, it confirmed in writing what he knew to be true. So what does this twenty-something king do? He gathers the leaders and all the people together at the house of the Lord to read them the book. After he finished, this is what Scripture says. The king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. In it all, the Lord responds to Josiah's humility and obedience with the promise for his later years, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace. As Josiah read the book, it became a journey of discovery which would consume the rest of his life. As I read in print what happened, I am stirred by his passion, it thrills me. The only thing better would be to hear his voice speaking of the day he first touched the book. If he could talk to me, I would be reading a walking book. That too would be a journey of discovery. What an adventure. In Emily Dickinson's words, there is no frigate like a book to take you lands away. Written books and walking books. We have two kinds of books in our lives, written books and walking books. One is off the shelf, and the other is in the flesh. It's worth noting that when dictators want to destroy a culture, they jail the clergy in academics and burn their books. They get rid of two wellsprings of ideas at the same time. The walking one, and the printed one, and therein lies a tale. I just finished speaking at the University Chapel Service and the Director of Student Life said a number of students would like to chat with you informally for a bit. Do you have the time? I did. So several dozen of us congregated on the lawn in front of the library. The setting overlooked the Pacific Ocean, it was lovely, and the questions were good. What are some of the favorite books in your library, Mr. Vothe? I named a few. When surprising myself, I said, I actually have two libraries. One of them is full of written published books like the library behind us. You check out a book, read it, return it in two weeks. The other library I have is sitting next to you. These are in the flesh books. They have passion and energy and spontaneity. Their words have tone and volume and intensity. Their dynamic and always changing. These are interactive books to talk to you, and you don't need to return them. I went on to say that in writing papers, we cite passages from printed books in the bibliography. Those citations are called secondary resources. If however we interview someone for the paper, that's called a primary resource. Why? Because the power of a first person telling has an intimacy and punch that a written account two or three times removed cannot capture. A surprise walking book. The 80-year-old man sitting in the back of the room was auditing the history class at a university in Southern California. The topic for the hour was D-Day, June 6, 1944, on the Normandy beaches. As the teacher set the stage, she cited various authors describing that day about which war correspondent Andy Rooney later wrote. There have been only a handful of days since the beginning of time, on which the direction the world was taking has been changed for the better in one 24-hour period by an act of man. June 6, 1944, was one of them. The teacher went on to give more details, and over 5,000 allied vessels of all kinds from battleships with 16-inch guns to Higgins landing crafts with no real armament stretched from the surf line to the far horizon of the English Channel, was the largest naval armada ever assembled. Hundreds of landing crafts had to plow through rough seas, some from over 10 miles out. Almost every man was sick as they approached the beaches. As the teacher began to tell the story suddenly, the old man raced his hand and said, excuse me, but that's not exactly how I remember it. With that, 30 faces turned toward him. Here was the real story. This was first person. This was the walking book. How do you read a walking book? She was a small-ish woman with a quiet commanding presence. How she taught changed my life. The Ph.D. from New York University, Dr. Lois Labar, led the Christian Education Program at Wheaton College grad school in Illinois in 1964. Her calm presence, passion for teaching, and nudging questions opened the world to me in a fresh way. She introduced me to a group of her friends, a set of questions, known as the Six Honest Serving Men, which she quoted from the first stanza of a Rudyard Kipling Poe. I keep Six Honest Serving Men. They taught me all I knew. Their names are what and why and when and how and where and who. Those questions were her template for open-ended conversation. She was a 57-year-old single-professor and I was a 22-year-old married student, so we had little in common from the outside. Yet, I could sense her deep love for Jesus and her appropriate love for me because of the kind of probing questions she asked. The time she took and her unwillingness to let me settle for easy answers. Always gentle and always direct. Her teaching approach was a turning point for how I do what I do to this day. She always engaged me in meaningful conversation. Years later I read what philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler said about conversation. Love without conversation is impossible. And I said to myself, that's how Dr. Loas made me feel, loved on the educational journey. Her premise as a teacher was that if you wish to have a real in-depth conversation, stay away from questions that can be answered with yes or no because the answers to those questions would be periods, not commas. Her discovery for learning for growth, the conversation needs to keep going, and that's where the six honest serving men came in. Questions we ask while walking. Open honest conversation has a perfusion of questions and responses, interruptions, and talking at the same time. Still the reading of the walking book works best with questions, all kinds of questions. People, history questions, people who shaped your life questions, what are some of your favorite places, questions? What did you do for fun as a kid, questions? Non-threatening personal questions helped me. When you asked me about my past as opposed to my current career, for example, I feel much safer. I can pick and choose my answers with some level of ease. When you ask me right out of the shoot, what do you do? And I've just lost my job, that's not comfortable for either of us. Where are you from originally is an easy place to start because it flows easily into who, and how, and why, and what, and when. When you asked me that question or any variations like where were you born or brought up or when did your people come to this country, you allowed me to explore where parents and grandparents came from. And a day when discovering family roots is all the rage on TV programs and determining ethnicity through a DNA sample is becoming more popular by the day. The story can be quite stimulating, assuming, of course, that I want to learn by reading walking books, learning as the key, understanding another person is the byproduct. Some of us don't want to ask or be asked those kinds of questions. Pain surfaces too quickly. Perhaps we ping pong through a foster system or grew up in an orphanage. Be gentle is the operative phrase. You're dealing with my story. I didn't choose it, but I lived it. I may not have liked it, but it's one of the lenses through which I see the world. And it is valuable for you to know where I came from and at least pass through. My responses may not be articulate or in sequence, but they'll be real. We are one of a kind walking books and have good things to add to lives of those listening. Perhaps best of all, in a competitive world when others ask to hear our stories, it's the one place. The one place we always get in a. Before we start, we have an A. In the middle, we have an A. When we're done, we still have an A. Who wouldn't want that kind of affirmation? Some folks just have a gift for moving the story along by describing their roots. Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of journalism at the University of Alabama, is one of those. Ruth found him in a thrift shop in Falls Church, Virginia a few years back. Now, not exactly him, but a book he had written based on the life of his mother called, all over but the Shouting. As will he unbed that evening reading before we went to sleep, as we do most every night, Ruth said, wow, this is writing, you have to read this. I did. The opening paragraphs of chapter one painted a picture of the place his parents were born. It took my breath away. My mother and father were born in the most beautiful place on earth and the foothills of the Appalachians along the Alabama, Georgia line. It was a place where gray mists hid the tops of low, deep green mountains, where red bone and blue tick hounds flash through the pines as they chased possums into the sacks of old men and frayed overalls. Old women in bonnets, dip, broot and snuff and hummed, faded love in winter roses as they shelled purple hulls, canned peaches, and made biscuits too good for this world. It was a place where playing the church piano loud, was near as important as playing at right, where fearless young men staring long black buix loaded with yellow whiskey, down roads the color of dried blood, where the first frost meant hog kill in time and the mouthwatering smell of cracklents would drift for acres from giant bubbling pots. I could see it all. His words put me right there and I'm a city guy from Oakland, California, who's never seen a blue tick hound or tasted cracklents. The only thing I wanted more than reading those words was hearing them. So I went on YouTube and listened to Rick Bragg tell stories, loved it. The only thing better than that would be a real live conversation with the walking book. I have questions you say. I read walking books and I am a walking book. Back to the questions for a minute. Questions are at the heart of discovery. That's true of science, it's true of leadership, it's true of the law, it's true of faith, and it's true of relationships. The willingness to ask questions and respond to them is the seed bed for any relationship. The old adage when you're talking you ain't learning is accurate. Questions are to relationships. What travels and brushes are the archaeologists on a dig every part of that exploration informs the picture. Unlike an archaeological site, I am alive and breathing and growing. I must invite you to explore my world. I control the process so be aware and be gentle. When you ask my opinion on a matter or my feelings on a subject, I'm honored. But when you ask me about my roots or family or education, I begin to believe you might actually want to know me. If indeed I am a walking book with sections and chapters and paragraphs and key ideas, then your inquiry turns the pages. When you begin to read, each page has its own dynamic. Each chapter reflects an episode or a season, and the early chapters inform the later chapters. A few years ago, I was introduced to a process called a life plan. With the one-on-one help of a facilitator, it's a two-day in-depth look at one's history, personality, gift skills and dreams. The point is to help plan your trajectory going forward. So I decided to complete it with my friend, Jeff, who's great at this stuff. When I woke that morning ready to get after it, Ruth began to chuckle. When I asked her why she was laughing, she said, I think it's hilarious that a 71-year-old man wants to do a life plan, I said, hey, hey, I could have 30 years left. I need a plan to know where I want to go and what I want to do. One of the results of that two-day adventure is this book. The heart of the life plan was two days of reflection, led by nudges. Tell me about your earliest memories with your family and inquiry, who was the greatest influence on your thinking as a teenager. It wasn't counseling, it wasn't therapy, it wasn't psychoanalysis, it was pure and simple storytelling. Many lore was told of great uncles and hilarious aunts who made family gatherings real. I told Jeff about my great grandparents who came west and covered wagons. With my scots, Irish roots, there might have been a wee bit of myth and fancy thrown in, but I told the stories as I remembered them. Trips taken and people encountered all mixed in with the highs and lows of 70 plus trips around the sun. He helped me put words to the pieces of my life. As I talked, he wrote and asked follow-up questions. On the second day when I walked into the room, my story was hanging on the wall, written and charted on large pieces of butcher paper. I saw my journey. Turning points, ups and downs, things of inconsequence and consequence. Meet with spiritual watershed moments, they were all there in black on beige, the summation of my years. I don't quite know why, but when I looked at my life on the wall, tears welled hot behind my eyes. Over those two days, I had been the walking book, red and no. Not felt like coming home. So as you walk the rest of this summer, and if you walk with someone, I would encourage you to have those kinds of conversations. Even if you don't do the walking thing, understand that when you speak to a person, when you inquire about their story, you're in fact reading a walking book. And I have to tell you, that's got emotion, that's got exclamation points, that's got laughter and tears, and all of that put together. And I just find that the most delightful reading. So that's it for now. We encourage you to check out the podcast you may want to just subscribe on any of the platforms that you're listening to this on. And we'll catch you next time. Until then, dick folks, going out for a walk, bye-bye.