The Benedict Year › Reading Backwards from the Pascha › The Spiral
Week 38 · 14–18 June 2027 · June
Name what’s coming
The Spiral: The same texts, and the child is not the same reader.
Session A · the reading
About 55 minutes. Open and read aloud before any framing: no introduction, no “today we’re looking at”. Scripture first, then the Father.
No reading this week.
Session B · the argument
About 35 minutes, on another day. Never both in one sitting.
Name what’s coming. Tell the child plainly what was left out and that it was deliberate (see the list on the year’s page).
Going out. Then take the child to a ballgame, and say nothing about why. Baseball has no game clock: it ends when its end is reached, at the last out, not when time runs out. You score by leaving home, going round, and coming home, as the year left Luke 24 in September and came home to it in June.
Optional: one piece of media
Field of Dreams (1989), and then a game of catch; or The Return of the King (2003, rated PG-13), an ending that keeps ending. Watched together, with nothing said about why it was chosen; how the list was made.
A spiral admits incompleteness and delivers appetite. The season is in full swing in June; any level of ball will do, and a game of catch afterwards is the point.
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