Travelling widely in our backyard

Mark Meynell quotes Eugene Peterson:

Henry David Thoreau, one of our canonized American sages, wrote of having "travelled a good deal in Concord" (the small New England village in which he spent his life). An item in the oral tradition that formed around Louis Agassiz, the celebrated Harvard biologist and professor, remembers that he returned to his classroom after the summer vacation and told his students that he had spent the summer travelling and made it halfway across his backyard. I want to hold out for travelling widely in Holy Scripture. For Scripture is the revelation of a world that is vast, far larger than the sin-stunted, self-constricted world that we construct for ourselves out of a garage-sale assemblage of texts.

(p.45, Eat This Book)

Isn't that beautiful? I want that too, but get easily distracted.

Martin Luther wanted us to do the same. He commented:

I would have been quite content to see my books, one and all remain in obscurity and go by the board. Among other reasons, I shudder to think of the example I am giving, for I am well aware how little the church has been profited since they have begun to collect many books and large libraries, in addition to and besides Holy Scriptures [...]

It was also our intention and hope, when we ourselves began to translate the Bible into German, that here should be less writing, and instead more studying and reading of the Scriptures. For all other writing is to lead the way into and point toward the Scriptures, as John the Baptist did toward Christ, saying, "He must increase, but I must decrease" [John 3:30], in order that each person may drink of the fresh spring himself [...]

My consolation is that, in time, my books will lie forgotten in the dust anyhow, especially if I (by God's grace) have written anything good.

(pp.7-8, "Preface to the Wittenberg Edition of Luther's German Writings" [1539] in Selected Writings of Martin Luther, Vol 1)

I've always found this a funny thing for such a voluminous writer to say. There are a few naiveties about the both Peterson and Luther describe things too (but they know that). Nevertheless, I want to be a person who drinks thirstily from the spring, even if that means I miss out on other things.