A Love for Books

Was sitting here this morning—as most—with my coffee in one hand and a book in the other.  I always have several books going and right now, one is Frederick Buechner’s Beyond Words.  My friend and fellow therapist, Jim Frost, a lover of Buechner and who has actually spent time with him, rekindled my interest several weeks ago.  I’d read Buechner decades ago, A Room Called Remember and Telling Secrets are great books.  But after being woke at four today by an alarm system mess-up—at times I bemoan being kept so ‘safe’ and secure—my thoughts got to rambling.  

Easter is almost here and it’s crossed my mind to send a copy of this Buechner book to each of my teen grandchildren.  Then I pause when I consider it’s a family joke when I wrap up yet another book as a gift, there’s a moan with “oh, gee, Grampa has given yet ONE more book”.  So I ask myself, why do I give books—even with the sarcastic cracks.  One client told me I was the “book of the week therapist’’ recommending another book every time he saw me.  My response was that he needed to be listening to other voices along with mine.  

Books to me have been windows and doorways into the world—worlds.   When I consider all of the trappings of my life (and if you know me very well, I’m a collector), my books are near the top of my treasures. Recent reads remind me that people did not always know how to read.  If you were a slave or ‘lower class’, life was too consuming.  ‘Lower’ like my paternal grandmother, Martha, who lost her husband when her two boys were only two and one years old.  Aunt Faye told me stories of grandmother, after putting a pallet at the edge of the field for the boys,  picked cotton as a widow to put food on the table.  She had little formal education yet she was one of the wisest, kindest women I’ve ever known.  Life was not easy or kind for her, after losing her husband, she remarried and had twins, one of which had cerebral palsy.  She cared for Robert, aunt Faye’s twin, at home until he died at age twenty-four.  During my college years I enjoyed times alone with her when I’d slip over from Stillwater to Cushing for a meal fit for a king (or farmhand).  During high school and college I’d also go up to Grove to visit Birdie, the widow of grandad Booher, his second wife.  I’ve longed many times that I’d had time alone with him, Henry Andrew Booher.  Family would say I was a lot like him, that I even looked like him—my maternal grandfather.  He died while I was in junior high. Even though he’d divorced (my grandmother filed and court records were not kind in what they said about him—yet at this age I’ve lived enough to know stories are often embellished by a lawyer),  so I extend some grace, and—as much as I dearly loved my grandmother, I wasn’t married to her.  

Just one of my bookcases in my study

All this to say, I relished spending time with older people. So as I debate sending another book, spending over a hundred dollars for books that will likely be shelved, I wonder.  Will books—the paper kind you hold in your hand—be antiques in the future?  Will my grandkids (or great grandkids)  ever develop an interest in reading, and holding a book rather than their iPad? Do they care to know how I see life as I did on occasion back when I was a bit older than they are now? Maybe this is just about getting old—just the nature of aging.  You know we grandparents won’t be around forever—a fact, but a card I won’t play in that it reeks of arrogance and whiny poor me. 

I’ve been so many places across the world and met so many people through books.  I’ve experienced life centuries ago and I’ve made great friends with the authors of my books—some of which I have actually met.  It’s surprising to some that I’ve done so, contacted writers, like somehow they don’t like to idea someone loves their book. Moments after finishing Masculine Journey I called Robert Hicks thinking I was calling his office and got his wife, who handed the phone to him.  I invited him to come to Nashville to speak and a few months later hosted a conference for over 700 men with him as the keynoter.  Or the time I met Barbara Brown Taylor at Sewanee: The University of the South.  As she signed a copy of one of her books (most all of which are on my shelf) I told her we’d been spending time together every morning for the last few years—an affair.  She gave a hearty laugh and kept signed.  Or, when on the second morning of my rite of passage at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, after being woken early by the coyotes, I found myself having coffee with Richard Rohr, who became a powerful mentor—who I’ve even hosted for breakfast in my home a few years back.

yet another of my shelves

It’s been wonderful to actually meet these writers, they in ways hard to describe have spoken into my life.  Their words have changed me. That is the power of books, of reading.  There are many others who’ve passed on, like Thomas Merton, Pat Conroy, Leon Uris, Henry Nouwen, James Kavanaugh, Brennan Manning, Huston Smith, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Julian of Norwich, John Bunyan—to name a few.  Or Bob Benson and Donald Joy, who both did become friends of mine during their life times. 

Reading has been so powerful and like most will tell you, is way better than the movie—as is the case of the book A Prayer for Owen Meany and the movie Simon Birch—the book is way better even as much as I loved the movie. 

So there is a plot here, to hope and pray that maybe one in four of my grandkids falls in love with books too.  Amazon, here I come.  I will send the book to each for Easter in hopes that Buechner will become their friend as he has mine.  How so very grateful I am for teachers, parents and living in an age when I was taught to read.  

Have I infected you yet? 

EVEN my favorite super hero SPIDER MAN is a reader!