Consumption

For Mothers Day, I sat around all day after church and read two books. I wish I could say that it was a day of deep thought and contemplation, but it's more accurate to say that I charged through the books, devouring for plot and then tossing them aside when I was done. I consumed them.

Consumption leads to satiation, but not satisfaction. The more you glut, the more you want, and the less what you get fills you. And alas, this has been my pattern since Easter, when I abandoned my Lenten disciplines. That lack of discipline is telling on me lately. I've done plenty of reading, but it's mostly been consumption. Mysteries, sci-fi, the kids' books, Facebook, the newspaper, and, in two days I'll never get back, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, a doorstop of a tome which I didn't enjoy yet finished anyway to see if it would ever get better. And in the meantime, the good things I want to do and read and write have slipped away from me.

I think the way to break through this cycle of malnutrition is fasting -- cutting back drastically on content. "Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what does not satisfy?" (Is. 55:2) We are at a point in our year where things are finally starting to break: sports ending, dance ending, school drama ending. Soon there will be time to breath, and lazier days when the time can be well spent on reading, without guilt. That time isn't yet, though. Right now it's time to stop consuming before what I'm consuming ends up consuming me.