'The Year of Living Biblically'… so far

I have started reading The Year of Living Biblically, by AJ Jacobs, this weekend. The book has transfixed me. It is probably because I have always been a bit drawn to more extreme spirituality. I never do it. Maybe I should? I can say this though, when I hear about a crazy spiritual practice (like reciting a long prayer at several different specific times per day, fastening some odd piece of metal around your bicep or making the sign of the cross every time you hear an ambulance or a police car), I don’t think: that’s so weird. I usually think: that’s really compelling. Sometimes I even say: maybe I should start doing that?

Jacobs story is fully self-referential and bravely honest (there are any number of comments about real people in his real life that I can’t imagine went over well when they inevitably read it — or at least heard about it). I picked up his book at The First Person Arts Festival last weekend. In fact, I was lucky to be in the right spot after his presentation that enabled me to get my copy signed, complete with a blessing from the author. Go me.

So, I started reading the book this Friday on my way to New York City to hang out with some friends of mine, young parents with a baby daughter that I find surprisingly charming. I keep finding myself sneaking to the book for twenty minutes or so to read a day or two worth of his musings.

The author is agnostic, but he’s trying to fully commit to every commandment he can find in the whole book. He strongly focusing on the Hebrew part of it, but he’s doing to give the Christian bits their due when it comes to it. He writes it in a closely observed by humorous and modern tone that is fun and easy to read. He uncovers lots of fun facts about biblical history and theological interpretation different segments along the way.

I enjoy all of that, but the really compelling part of narrative, the parts that get me reading the most closely are these: the bits about praying. Here we have a full agnostic who is committing several times a day to serious prayer. He starts it off by just repeating prayers he likes from the Bible. In that phase, he reminds me of this bit from Job that I’d like to start reciting from time to time:

This one was picked up by a guy who was raised wholly without faith. Jewish, if anyone asked, but without a single significant Jewish ritual in his whole upbringing. So if that’s his upbringing, which prayers does he pick out?

That one is the first he cites in the book. I’m only a hundred pages in the book, but I am hooked by this question: what will prayer do to this agnostic? He has already hinted that it will do something. Just what I can’t wait to see.