Input: Sacred Reading

Any book is sacred if you read it from the void

Check out my first post here to read more about the namesake of this newsletter and make a copy of the input/output tracking sheet if you so desire.

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One of the most interesting books I’ve read in the past year is Harvard Divinity School graduate Casper ter Kuile’s The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices. Now, I’m not going to get into my current relationship with religion here since I’m sure Substack has a word limit of less than one million, but suffice it to say, I found the book quite meaningful.

The entire book is well worth reading, but today, I want to pull out one concept: Sacred Reading.

This does not refer to reading explicitly religious texts. Per ter Kuile:

“As my mentor, Harvard Divinity School professor Stephanie Paulsell, explains, a text is scared when a community says that the text is sacred. It’s that simple. When a group of people returns year in and year out, to the same text, wrestling with it by investing their questions, struggles, and joys—that’s what does it. It becomes generative, creating new responses in text, music, movement, film, and story. When we understand a text to be sacred because a community says so, we are given permission to infuse spiritual meaning into whatever text speaks to us.”

OK! We’re talking input/output here for sure!!

The books goes on to detail the basics of how to “sacred read” a text:

• Pick a book you’ve read before and found meaningful in some way, whether that’s the subject matter, the tone, the emotions it brought up for you, the character arc, etc. I’ve also done sacred reading with books I loved as a child, like The Giver and Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, revisiting them as an adult. Choose ONE SENTENCE or a smaller chunk of text to start.

• Then you move through four stages: 1) What’s literally happening in the narrative? Where are we in the story? 2) What allegorical images, stories, songs, or metaphors show up for you? 3) What experiences have you had in your own life that come to mind? 4) What action are you being called to take?

A book I’ve sacred read several times is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I choose this because I read this book in one euphoric-horrified sitting in 2011 when I was housesitting for a friend in Chicago. I plucked it off their shelf, not knowing a thing about it (iykyk). I read the entire thing in one marathon session, completely enthralled and aghast at the revelation of the main group of characters’ unique plight (no spoilers!) and how the book subverted what my mind was trying to force the narrative to do (have them rise up and fight!).

Here’s how I would break down the opening few sentences for sacred reading:

“My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That will make it almost exactly twelve years.”

1. What’s literally happening in the narrative? Where are we in the story?

   1. We’re at the very beginning. The speaker is Kathy H. She is thirty-one. She seems to be human. She has a career as a carer that seems curiously time-bound. She refers to a “they” with power over her career and we do not yet know who she is talking about.

2. What allegorical images, stories, songs, or metaphors show up for you? (ter Kuile adds that this stage should be loose and open to your imagination)

   1. The word carer seems separate from doctor, or babysitter, or someone who provides something like elder care. It’s ominous in its vagueness. Although she is quite young in my mind, her “retirement” seems imminent. And the “that sounds long enough, I know,” makes it appear as if her career is already longer than expected. What type of world has people retiring at the ripe old age of thirty-one? Who is she providing care for? Younger people? Animals? Robots? The overlord implied by the “they” makes me think of a show like Andor, which looked at the levels of bureaucracy in an autocracy (and so on, I like to linger at this stage).

3. What experiences have you had in your own life that come to mind?

   1. Briefly: being cared for as a child; being beside my grandfather as he passed and that process of waiting; who I was caring for at thirty-one and who was showing me care in return; caring for pets and knowing they’ll likely die before you; my own career path starting at twenty, etc.

4. What action are you being called to take?

   1. Reading these sentences again just now, thinking about end of life care, I cuddled with my dog for a bit and thought about a social media post I read a few weeks ago. Someone took their old dog to be euthanized and the vet gave them chocolate before they passed, saying, “every good dog deserves to taste chocolate once in their lives.” I’ll be honest, I had a little cry thinking about that time coming for Zander! (in the future, he’s only six now)

Ter Kuile explains that in stage four:

“Sometimes what the text calls us to do is life changing. Maybe we let go of an ancient hurt. Or we step up to a new responsibility…Other times, what we’re called to do is simple and fun…The connection between the text itself and our inspired action doesn’t need to be logical. Sometimes, the nudges from the text to help us live with more courage, love, and integrity are delightfully mysterious.”

Zander had been irritating me today, wanting to go out before his unusual times and being very clingy with me, refusing to let me go to any room alone. This exercise made me feel much more patient and connected with him, knowing he’ll only be with me for a shorter section of my life. I was incredibly glad I did it.

I have sacred read…The Stand by Stephen King (at its core, a battle between good and evil!). I like to read it every summer on the day the plague starts in the book. A true beach read! I’ve also done this recently with chapters from the memoir Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood to process my feelings on religion. Sacred reading the novel Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, has helped me manage a fear of flying.

This is a long one, but I wanted to do the concept justice. It’s one I’ll return to in future newsletters. Let me know in the comments what text comes to mind for you!

Sacredly yours,

Caitlin

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Discussion: what comes to mind when you think of a text to sacred read?

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Musical inputs:

This makes me SO HAPPY to watch! I have such fond memories of watching That Thing You Do repeatedly with my family and all of us loving it (hard for a family of five to agree on one movie). This clip is joy embodied—directed by Tom Hanks!

This playlist has been my rewriting companion for the past week. I enjoy that it’s not just piano classics, but seems to be newer compositions.

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Housekeeping:

I’ve gathered all my current classes on my website here. Here’s the next batch:

• Book Proposal Class, Saturday 3/25, 1-4pm ET: for beginners who are curious about the pieces of a proposal they can use to query agents

• Write Like an Athlete, Monday, 4/3 8-10pm: learn tenants of sports psychology to apply to your creative practice

• Funny Frameworks for Fiction, Saturday, 4/8: learn about parody, epistolary, and travelogues as structures for comedic novels

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ABOUT ME: My name is Caitlin Kunkel and I’m a comedy writer, long-time teacher, and creator of The Second City’s Online Satire Writing Program. I currently teach classes and consult on gift book proposals, modern adaptation, satire, and comedic literature. I co-founded The Belladonna Comedy and the Satire and Humor Festival, and I co-wrote the satirical gift book New Erotica for Feminists: Satirical Fantasies of Love, Lust, and Equal Pay, named one of the Top 10 Comedy Books of 201 by Vulture.