UNFINISHED READING - The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware

 

Sometimes you just realise that life is just too short, to persist with something you are doing. You get the vibe that you really should be moving on. You come to a realisation that you are continuing with a book simply because you think you should. Here you are one hundred and thirty pages into it, yet find yourself constantly nodding off to sleep whenever you try to read it. Until you finally have to admit that this book is just boring the tits off you, and put it down with one huge sense of relief. Hallelujah!. 

When I originally picked up this book I was responding to an urge to investigate this old and much revered form of Christianity. Just a general overview, that's all I needed. And this looked like the baby. One thing about it concerned me at the time, was that this book was originally written over fifty years ago, and has been through countless tweaking in revised editions. Timothy Ware was an Orthodox Metropolitan Bishop, and he died three years ago at the age of eighty seven. And though he must have had huge amounts of lived experience of Orthodoxy to draw upon, this book is just excruciatingly dull to actually read. 

The opening third of the book that I did read, is a brief overview of the history and development of the Orthodox church, and how it parted company with Roman Catholicism, over something and nothing really. Well, that's not quite true, it was over Catholic arrogance and assumed supremacy, what a surprise! But the way that Ware decides to present this is in a methodical and certainly factual manner, but it also resembles how I imagine listening to someone read a telephone directory at you. You feel like you might need the toilet soon, as an excuse to leave. There is no life nor engaged imagination put into it, this is a deadly monotonous recounting of incident and fine detail. 

Maybe, this is telling me something about Orthodoxy, or Timothy Ware, or me, but this grindingly flat footed and grey toned recital of history is tedious to engage with. And, though it maybe that for Timothy Ware, he saw this book as part of his final legacy to the world, it will not stand the test of time I'm afraid. After all, I bought this half price in a bookshop clearance sale. It was being remaindered - just saying.

  

CARROT REVIEW - 2/8