“You need to learn to expand your hori­zons.” This is def­i­nite­ly one of the most com­mon phras­es that I utter as a par­ent, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regards to food. How­ev­er recent­ly it has tak­en on new mean­ing in our school. It’s easy to read books that we are inter­est­ed in, and it’s quite dif­fi­cult to read books that we are not inter­est­ed in.

So should we?

The most dif­fi­cult book I read some­what recent­ly, was Jay­ber Crow by Wen­dell Berry. It was the first time in a long time that I strug­gled to read. I couldn’t stand the main character’s pre­sumed hum­ble wis­dom, and the con­clu­sions drawn to rabid agnos­ti­cism were painful to say the least (clear­ly I am still annoyed). But I feel so thank­ful to have worked through the book, and it was work. It made me think about truth. It made me bear with the weak­ness­es of the char­ac­ter. It hum­bled me. Suf­fice it to say, I had expand­ed my horizons.

Part of my job as a par­ent is to teach my chil­dren that if you only learn what you are com­fort­able learn­ing, you can’t real­ly grow. And part of grow­ing, is shak­ing off the teth­ers of intel­lec­tu­al pride, and sit­ting at the table with dif­fi­cult peo­ple. If our roots are deep in the ground of truth we can enjoy so many more books!

Read on.