“if the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?… A book must be like an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us” – Kafka

I’ve been reading Eugene Peterson’s latest release “Eat This Book” and I’m thinking of making it the first book in my yet-to-be-created online book club, it’s quite literally a book that has made me drool and crave more of as I’ve been reading.

He starts the book by likening the growling and playing that a dog does with it’s bone to the growling that Isaiah’s Lion does over it’s prey and then reflecting on the word “hagah” which is used to describe this growling. Hagah is also the same word that we usually translate to mean “meditate” quite obviously the image of a dog with his bone and one meditating on the scriptures would usually bring up two different images, but in bringing them together we start to see how Eugene would like us to view the scriptures, as a bone that we chew on, that we joyfully play with and gnaw on for ages, burying it and coming back to it in an almost ritualistic fashion.

The book’s primarily a sales pitch for the use of Lectio Divinia as a form and pattern of reading and “eating” the scriptures, opening up the ability for us to accept the metaphors and start to play with the text.

Last weekend I actually used some of the book as an introduction to a session on Lectio Divinia as a Spiritual Practice for young adults in year 11, 12 and first year university. The session went rather well, although I’m constantly reminded that when one trys to introduce something that is so different to the normally scientific/scholarly way that we read the bible it can scare people, and that Lectio Divinia is something that needs to be practiced in order to become comfortable with.

One of the great things about this latest series from Eugene is the addition of Study Guides which means that churches or groups could use it over a period of 9 sessions to go through the book and explore it’s questions and wisdom.

Eat this book is a text written to people who have become acutely aware of the ways that the words, poetry and metaphors in scripture have lost their life becoming just ink on a page and even more aware of the need for us and the Spirit to resurrect the words for our generation and world.

Book Information:
Title: Eat This Book
Author: Eugene Peterson
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (July 29, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0802864902
ISBN-13: 978-0802864901

My Rating: