It's a shame if the word 'browsing' becomes confined to that desultory form of internet information gathering that requires a browser. This week I've been a browser browsing in my own library. Books I haven't looked at for a while I've handled, leafed through, read, reminded myself why I have it on my shelves, and even decided that maybe the time has come for some books to make way for others.
I'm in the process of re-uniting my library which for 11 years has been split between College Study and home. How to accomodate a library that embodies an intellectual, spiritual and theological journey is not so much a problem as a life-changing challenge and searching process of remembering and reflecting. Some will have to go, but that's OK as long as there's room for the ones that matter, and the ones that really matter, and the ones I couldn't do without. Now these seem four sufficiently broad, arbitrary selection criteria. But there aren't many that sit in the fourth category of those outside the standard of being important now or at some time past, or will some time in the future. I don't buy much ephemera. And by far most of my books have been read, consulted, or used "in the pursuit of learning in Divinity", that lovely Victorian phrase that describes the purpose of St Deiniol's Library down in Hawarden - (where my friend Jason has been for the last wee while and I am trying so hard not to be envious, and not succeeding - bless you Jason!).
So over the next few months I'll post some of the recovered treasure and rediscovered wisdom, and newly uncovered insights as I browse, commune, reminisce, anticipate and celebrate the wonderful gift of books.
Yes I have a Kindle. And yes I think it's a good thing. But it ain't a book, it has no smell of familiarity, no substance of which real friends are made. OK for novels and the occasional theological middleweight. Brilliant for classics so that I have several of the big novels wherever I go. Just made it through Middlemarch reading mainly in rescued minutes. But do I want to read poetry without the feel and weight of even a slim paperback? Maybe. But only if I have to. What about that large volume of Vermeer's paintings reduced to Kindle or I-pad - don't get me started! And as for Raymond Brown's commentary on John, all 1000 plus pages of it, They are an obvious can't do without. I've had those two volumes since I was 22 and they are foundation bricks in my intellectual and spiritual structure. They are un-kindleable!
Yesterday I was browsing along my Bonhoeffer shelf and there's not much there that doesn't matter any more. I came across this -
There is no part of the world, no matter how lost, no matter how godless, that has not been accepted by God in Jesus Christ and reconciled to God. Whoever perceives the body of Jesus Christ in faith can no longer speak of the world as if it were lost, as if it were separated from God: they can no longer separate themselves in clerical pride from the world. The world belongs to Christ, and only in Christ is the world what it is. It needs, therefore, nothing less than Christ himself. Everything would be spoiled if we were to reserve Christ for the church while granting the world only some law, Christian though it may be. Christ has died for the world, and Christ is Christ only in the m idst of the world. It is nothing but unbelief to give the world...less than Christ. It means not taking seriously the incarnation, the crucifixion and the bodily resurrection. It means denying the body of Christ.
That from his Ethics, and it is Bonhoeffer at his most passionately Christological.
'Un-kindleable' - what a great word!
Posted by: jason goroncy | April 06, 2013 at 10:04 AM