Saturday, July 24, 2010
"We're Here"
Minneapolis, Minnesota
It cost a dollar.
The new library card, that is.
“I lost my card,” I said to the attendant at the check out desk. “Can I get another?”
“Do you have ID?” he asked.
“I do,” I said, showing him my license.
“It’ll be a dollar,” he said.
“A dollar? You mean access to all these books costs just a dollar?”
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t pick up on the joyful impossibility of a single dollar allowing me to wander the book aisles on four flours of the sunlit beautiful library. When I was upon sabbatical once upon a time, I spent hours each day just perusing the stacks at Eden Theological Seminary, wondering what titles would catch my eye. There was no rhyme or purpose to my search, it wasn’t even a search. It was a wandering.
One day I saw title about the Civil War written from a southern point of view. I’d never read anything like that. And I knew I just don’t “get” the south. So I figured I’d better read it. It contained a letter written by a white woman, describe the plunder of her town when the Union troops entered its gates. They burnt schools, she said, libraries, and even a hospital. What manner of human being could do that? The costs of war, any war, once again came into view. She didn’t write about the slave trade. She wrote about something else.
That’s what libraries do. They bless us by giving a new perspective. And that’s what blessing does, it also gives us a new perspective to help us navigate our times. Blessings are free, and library cards cost a dollar. Astonishing how powerful both of them are. You may be thinking, “It’s not a single dollar. There are tax dollars. It’s part of the city budget.” I know that. And it makes me appreciate the library all the more.
I read on an airplane once that during the Great Depression not a single library was closed in the entire United States. Could that be true? I wondered. If it is, what a miracle. When all was lost the libraries survived. Now it is my generation’s turn to live a recession/depression. From what I’ve heard, libraries are dropping like flies. Besides who needs them with the web?
I do.
We do.
We ran out or space, and so I lifted a book shelf to the back of my desk. Four layers of titles greet me. The poetry of William Stafford, a few hymnals, a few bibles, A History of the Christian Church, watercolor books, Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country, Reconciliation, Native American History, Civilization, Sibley’s Field Guide to Birds, . . . and so on. The readings speak to my heart and perhaps even my mind, an d to a world of joy when I marvel that I just saw a Red-breasted Grosbeak. Over and over again, the creation and discovery of hope, the destruction of that same hope when the tide turns another way. It is not all beautiful, but all of it is essential.
One dollar.
And your books?
Are they saying, “We’re here?” Or are they saying, “We’re still here.”