It’s always pleasing to get something personally accomplished. Especially when what you’ve gotten accomplished is a mental accomplishment. Today, I finally figured out how to read G.K. Chesterton. I’ve been reading his book Saint Francis of Assissi, my first book by Chesterton, for about two months. Slowly plodding through the chapters, I finally figured out that G. K. Chesterton wasn’t trying to be difficult when he wrote the book; in fact, he was trying to make it so that the common man could understand it. His sentences are set up in such a way that he’ll explain something right in the middle of the sentence he’s writing. It’s as if he has a sentence in the middle of a sentence. Once I discovered this, any sentence that I come across, especially the lengthy ones, I simply break down into the main ideas of the sentence. Reading Chesterton for the first time was frustrating for me because I tend to have a very high reading comprehension level. The problem was that I’d forgotten that it’s not important who you read, but more important that you figure out what the author is saying. I could read G.K. Chesterton, and while it is good that I do, I gain nothing from it unless I understand what Chesterton was saying. Now that I know, his book on St. Francis has not only become mentally nourishing, but spiritually nourishing as well. I’m finally beginning to see what so many people saw in him.
