When you are 86 (how did I get here?) you begin achingly to wonder what you are going to do with all these books. I’ve already given away hundreds. When we left Birmingham I gave some to Samford and some to a Bible school near by some to young preachers or friends. And the last year or so I have scratched my head and wondered what am I going to do. I do not think I am about ready to kick the bucket but I don’t want my kids to have too wade through all my bookcases.
But the question remains : What am I going to give away? I’ve started with some theological books that have helped immensely but I never need them anymore but I’ve cleaned out shelf after shelf. But this is just a start. What about those books that helped change my life? Opening some of those books took some of the scales off my eyes. And sometimes they stirred something deep within me and stretched me. Reading some of those books opened doors I did not even know were there.
I’ve still have some of those books that I had in grade school. My name is scratched over and over in a child’s handwriting. Remember the Jungle Book?I still have my old weather-beaten Tom Sawyer book. Remember Black Beauty? I do And all those ten-cent comic books I loved. My brother and I were both addicted to the Hardy Boy mystery books. A little later someone gave me a small leather bound Bible. Maybe just the New Testament and the Psalms. I didn’t read much of that Holy book back then but the having was important to me. And keeping it close I thought was my Talisman.
I don’t know how many books I have treasured that were autographed by some author—some with a special message just to me. Some of these books came from famous preachers. Famous politicians. And all those not-so famous authors that carried me along. Others my Mother wrote lines in a book she heard me say I liked. My wife has given me a score at Christmas or birthday time. And my children and friends. Sometimes poetry. Sometimes books on faith or art books or jokes or meditations. And I cannot ignore all those novels. In the early days of my ministry while I was being shaped or misshaped some friends sent me books. Anchors in a stormy time. One friend sent me sermons by a man with a strange name Frederick Buechner. I have every book he has ever written. And so many of these God-guided books took my hand and led me along. Do I just put these gifts in a box and give them to strangers?
My whole history is bound up in so many of those books. As a little boy our house could be very stormy. And I would escape in a corner somewhere and drown out all that noise and anger with a book. I remember as an eleven or-twelve year old riding the bus downtown to the Carnegie Library. I would come home with a stack of books. Someone said: “There is nothing like a book to take you lands away.” And this is true. I still find myself with a book when things seem wrong.
I wish I had time to remember some name those very great books that helped shaped me and made me better. And so as I write these lines I look up still wondering how I will answer the: what am I gonna do with all these books. But this I know I cannot even picture my life had I never opened some book. Life for me would be like a desert.
This new band of zealots who want to tell us what to read and how we might protect our supposedly fragile children. They have at least 1500 books that they have banned. It reminds me of another time when the fires of Germany burned all those books not suitable or were thought to be downright dangerous. Where does all this fear come from? I do not know. I do know banning books, attacking authors, smearing reputations of those that try to work for the common good does not square at all with my understanding of patriotism.
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
