IT WASN’T EXACTLY spring cleaning, but it was an overdue clearing out of the “library” of books in the shelf behind the soon-to-be-replaced couch.
The books lined up like a vertical stratigraphy of past interests, books gifted and ones I thought would just be fun to have around.
Given my life goal of growing from being a dilettante to an eclectic, you might imagine the wide range of books and pamphlets I have collected.
I rediscovered a favorite book on the Lewis and Clark expedition, a book on the origin of place names of Washington state, and another by John Edward Huth titled, “The Lost Art of Finding Our Way.”
This last one is a thorough book on getting un-lost in the boonies if you ever find yourself there.
You never know when you will end up in the boonies, literally or figuratively, I must have thought when I bought this one.
At the encouragement of my wife, I began to stack books in three piles.
One was, for sure, throwaways.
Another stack was for books to go to the public library for sale or recycling into someone else’s pile, and the third pile was, “I need to keep this one for sure.”
The discard pile was the toughest to start.
I found a geology of the northwest text that was so old it didn’t have anything in it about plate tectonics, for example.
Just to have a text like that represented a major scientific paradigm shift in my lifetime, and it had historic importance to me.
I found another one titled “North Dakota: A Human and Economic Geography.”
That one went into my keeper pile for a while because it was a reminder that there are no dull places, just dull geographers. (My two graduate degrees are in geography).
My preliminary “keeper” stack was turning into a leaning tower of Pisa, while the other stacks were barely growing.
One of the reasons for their stunting was that I stumbled into all the books I had collected on theological or spiritual matters.
I found ones I bought back in my “spiritual but not religious” phase.
I found ones from later seminary work I wanted to re-read.
I dusted off books, too, about saints like Francis of Assisi (a Deacon, by the way) and mystics like Hildegard von Bingen and Julian of Norwich.
One of the “jewel” books I found was “The Liturgical Year” by Sister Joan Chittister OSB.
Here is a summary of what she writes about Lent, the church season we are in now. I quote from this little paperback book to be in my “for sure” keeper pile:
Lent is a call to renew a commitment grown dull, perhaps by life more marked by routine than by reflection. Lent requires me, as a Christian, to stop for a while, to reflect again on what is going on in me. I am challenged again to decide whether I truly believe that Jesus is the Christ and … whether I can live accordingly when I can no longer hear the song of the angels in my life and the star of Bethlehem has grown dim for me.
I didn’t really like cleaning out my bookshelves, and I have more to go.
But for the remainder of Lent, I will try to keep sorting through those shelves and renew commitments dulled with years of dust.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Don Corson is an Ordained Deacon in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and the winemaker for a local winery. He is also the minister for Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Forks. His email is ccwinemaker@gmail.com.
