A blog about books!

 

I love books! I love the look of them, the feel of them when they sit in your hand, the way they reveal their secrets sometime slowly and sometimes in a rush. I love the way they can entertain us, educate us and sometimes reveal things that are at the core of what it is to be human.

So my time in England has been time to reopen that love affair. I was creeping ever so slowly to electronic books, which you down load easily, and more cheaply. And in Perth the dearth of book shops compounds that desire to click a few buttons. However when you come to England and more particularly to London you are welcomed back to the land of the book and bookstore. A place to browse, to linger over an interesting title, an amazing journey someone has recorded or examine the shelves for your favorite author. Books, book, books, to touch and feel and smell, and which gather you in, call your name. Well they gather me in, and remind me of the endless number there are, and the endless treasure and wisdom that resides in them.

Last year in Ireland and this year in England shows me that the very best of us is not found in a phone or a tablet or a kindle. It is found in a old tattered edition of the bible, given to someone with love in the 1800s, or in the love story of kings or paupers, or the adventures of those who climb or walk or explore our world, or even those who use their imaginations to create wonderful and amazing creatures. It is found in those who seek to find and explore who we are, what it is to belong to one another, and maybe what it is to belong to God, whatever we perceive that word to mean.

And the best of us is found as we see the words on a page, hold them, touch them, and finally share them with another. For in the sharing we share a little of ourselves.

Karen