Bishop John Spong, thank God for him asked, "Which book/s helped shape who you are?" In this post, I am going to answer the good Bishop and hopefully he will accept text/s instead of book/s.
John Milton's Aeropagetica shaped my life more than others. When I first read about censorship, I had been so censored in my life that I never spoke my own thoughts about anything. Although, I'm an American by the time I was in Graduate School the ability to have my own thoughts and words expressed had already been suppressed and removed from my life by public schools and higher education. Mind you, I currently teach in higher education and value public schools in America. Standardized testing and regurgitation of someone else's thoughts were more of a goal thank thinking myself. It wasn't until I really read Aeropagitica that I really thought about my own textual freedom and began to care about how our tradition was formed in a time of tumultuous incivility and frequent beheadings of those with their own points of view. http://www.bartleby.com/3/3/
George Herbert's collection The Temple was the next text that changed my life and became the primary text for my research. I was fascinated by the way that he used imagery, structured his poetry, and created verse through his own life experiences. I was also fascinated that somehow a priest was not so disillusioned in his own life that he actually thought about those around him in his parish and and yearned for them to know God as individuals. http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/HQ.html
While it may seem childish, Oh, the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20mMbEB0OhA I've always gone places. I love different places. Dr. Seuss always makes my inner child happy. There's just something very freeing about this book.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau is the next one. I found Walden when I wanted to live deliberately and was finding that I experienced God through creation around me. I was at one with the universe in nature and not in a church while I still needed the liturgical rituals that were necessary to structure my very unstructured life. I read Walden for the first time at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey in Pecos, NM. They have an awesome little stream there where ducks frequent, and I yearned for God more than anything else sitting with Thoreau in my hands by the stream. I found a kindred person in Throeau's penning of Walden. I spent part of my life on my grandfather's farm and Walden returned me to that part of my life when I had found spirituality by a pond in Chandler's Valley, PA for the first time. http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html and http://pecosmonastery.org
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman is the final book. It was in Whitman's collection that I found humanity deeper than other places. His relationship with the world around him and his ability to place his own story into verse captivates me. "The Song of Myself" guided me to consider Self as reality. Walt Whitman gave me rhythm and song just as my music education did, but found a place in humanity for himself without losing his own thoughts in those around him. Whitman gave me the variation of Self I needed in Academia. I read Whitman when I find that I have found too much time in the institution and need to find me again. http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/books/other/rhys.html
Interestingly, I found these texts in Graduate School. My late twenties were the point in time when I refound mystery, my Self, and explored monasteries in the woods.
I would love to tell you that the Bible was in the top five. Maybe next year, Bishop Spong; the Apostle Paul is not going to hold up to Dr. Seuss this year.
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