Where do "orphaned" books go?

Handle With Care
By Andrew D. Scrimgeour

Illustration by Jon Krause

Here are the first  paragraphs of a brilliantly written essay on the "liturgical" role of a librarian as he handles the library of a deceased scholar.  It demonstrates the way the smallest details to attention are important in preserving the qualities of an individual as found in the way their books are stacked or placed on shelves; markings of the readers in those books; and the insertions so often left in the pages of a well used book.  

You will not want to miss this essay in its entirety!

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I have been here many times before. Not to this particular library but to others like it. Some have been on college campuses, others in private homes. Some have sprawled through many rooms, including the bathroom; others were confined to a single space. One had no windows; another overlooked a lake. Most were crowded. All were dusty. 

Each was the domain of a scholar. Each was the accumulation of a lifetime of intellectual achievement. Each reflected a well-defined precinct of specialization. But what they also had in common was that each of their owners had died. And by declaration of their wills, or by the discernment of their families, I had been called to claim or consider the bereft books for my university library. 

One of the little-known roles of the academic librarian is bereavement counseling: assisting families with the disposition of books when the deceased have not specified a plan for them. Most relatives know these books were the lifeblood of their owners and so of intellectual value if not great monetary worth. But they remain clueless about how to handle them responsibly. Some call used-book shops. Some call the Salvation Army. Others call a university library. Many allow friends and relatives to pick over the shelves before bringing in a professional.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/books/review/handled-with-care.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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Christmas Eve 2012

The Gospel of Luke "does not simply say, 'Christ is born, but to you he is born.'  Neither does Jesus say, 'I bring glad tidings, but to you I bring glad tidings of great joy.'  Furthermore, this joy was not to remain in Christ, but it shall be to all the people....Christ must above all things become our own and we become his."

     Martin Luther (1483-1546) Sermon on Luke 2:1-14 Christmas Day 1521       

Reflections-Coincidence: Bible, Film, and Sandy Hook

A biblical text; the reminder of the classic Sophia Loren film, and the terrible tragedy of all of those children and adults being senselessly slaughtered in Sandy Hook (Newtown, CT) have stimulated these thoughts.

First, I was working on the biblical readings for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (Luke 1:39-56).  I had decided to preach on this text.  I was well on the way to developing a sermon with the title, "Put Mary back into Christmas."  Obviously a play on the popular song putting Christ back into Christmas.

The biblical story focuses on the meeting of two women, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Mary, the teenager who is pregnant and from the "does anything good come out of Nazareth" hick town meets the older Elizabeth, the wife of a priest probably from a more upscale, well-to-do, sophisticated and educated background.  Luke's account focuses more on Mary than on Elizabeth.  But the story is built around the relationships of two women from dissimilar and similar circumstances.

Second, comes the Sophia Loren Italian film, "Two Women, English title." Loren won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Actress.  The story depicts a mother and teen age daughter's relationship during World War II.  The terror, rape, loss of home, and all of the atrocities of war bring ever more problems to these two women.  I do not think the film glorifies violence to women as a few have indicated.  It does depict how women are the victims of the powerful and ruthless but the focus is on the complexities of the relationships of two women who are related, certainly differently than Elizabeth and Mary.

Third, we have all been assaulted by the images--and suggestions of even more disturbing pictures--of violence perpetrated on the children and women teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.  The special bond between teacher and child, in more than half the cases little girls (in no way do I wish to diminish the little boys and the many male police and first responders) presents vivid pictures.  The relationships of teacher, predominantly women, and student in the face of the powerful aggressor with a bundle of guns and ammunition calls to mind the relationships of "two women."  Then there are the mother's of those children caught up in the aftermath of the violence.  Again there were the fathers with the same looks of horror as their wives.

Each of these sets of images calls to mind the beauty and fragility of human relationships.  Of course explicitly in the biblical account God has played a role.  That role is on the one hand miraculous but not without its own complications given a teenager who was probably ostracized by her community after becoming pregnant.  Playing behind the film and the current events at Newtown are the inevitable questions of where God is and why do these things happen. In the coincidental meeting for me of these three stories many questions are raised beyond the where and why.  The presence and absence, whether of God or another human being, the relationships in these stories call us forth to not just seek some singular meaning but to discover the web of meanings that are intertwined in our own self's presence and absence.  This Advent Season punctuated by the tragedies of war and especially by the elementary classroom deaths reminds us of the need to never let the other in these stories go unattended.         

Newtown and Christmas Bells

From a friend I was reminded of Longfellow's "Christmas Bells."  The second of the three stanzas below contains what many of us must feel this day after the terrible violence in Newtown, CT.  And we await for our neighbors and ourselves the feelings of the third stanza.  Our waiting must be active and not passive.  We have much to do to with regard to finding new ways to deal with the violence in our culture that interrupts like an earthquake even those places that seem so tranquil.

It was as if an earthquake rent 
The hearth-stones of a continent, 
    And made forlorn 
    The households born 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men! 

And in despair I bowed my head; 
"There is no peace on earth," I said; 
    "For hate is strong, 
    And mocks the song 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: 
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; 
    The Wrong shall fail, 
    The Right prevail, 
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

"Christmas Bells," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Newtown, CT Tragedy

VIGIL FOR OUR NEIGHBORS IN NEWTOWN

DECEMBER 14, 2012  7:00 PM 

FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

23 WILLOW STREET  MYSTIC, CT 06355 

All are invited to share the loss of so many in a senseless act of violence and to offer hope for the future.