I finally have theological rational for the acquisition of books!
"The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul
reaching toward infinity, and this passion is the only thing that raises us
above the beasts that perish." - A. Edward Newton, 1863 - 1940.
Scott Wells has suggested that we sell them right back. O.K. do we get the benefits that Newton wrote about, and some free shelve space at the same time?
If a country is governed wisely,
its inhabitants will be content.
They enjoy the labor of their hands
and don't waste tie inventing
labor-saving machines.
Since they dearly love their homes,
they are interested in travel.
There will be a few wagons and boats,
but these don't go anywhere.
From the Tao Te Ching (Book of the Way,) translated by Steven Mitchell
Hmmm....could this be the possible platform for a whole new politics. The Wisdom Party proposes sustainable living, loving families, and arts and crafts. Sounds good. I can preach it. But it might be too late to live it.
There is a new project of Faith Voices of the Common Good that Unitarian Universalists might be interested in, it is called Gather Heart. It enables preachers who are preparing sermons on prophetic themes to collaborate with an online group. The program promises to support preachers working in Christian, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist contexts.
The Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr. is the Senior Minister of The Riverside Church, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph.D., is Director of The Shalom Center are the co-chairs of the project.
I hope they give this some time to get going, I have planned my preaching schedule already and it will take a national emergency or a local controversy to get me to change. But I think I might like to try this in the future.
Gather (Heb. Kah-vatz):
Join together, harvest, summon breath, assemble, glean, collect, congregate, rally, grow, deepen understanding, invite, attract.
We gather to "discern our collective responsibility for the present time in our quest for the unity of love, power, and justice.... God is the great gatherer.... It is a wonderful hope and vision -- that someday we will create gathering places for all people because we know we are already one people in the heart of God."
--Mary Donovan Turner, Old Testament Words
Heart (Heb. Lev):
Soul, Spirit, core, fundamental, center of values, courage, depth, mercy, empathy, compassion, love, joy, good will.
"The lodging place of wisdom.... The heart is the essence of who we are -- how we think and feel and carry out our living in relationship to God and to the world."
--Mary Donovan Turner, Old Testament Words
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
God offers the choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both.
In our post modern world, where we speak more of truths, than the Truth, perhaps repose might have its own truth to teach us. I assume that Emerson is assuming that seeking truth takes constant effort, and the results are mostly disturbing, and repose would require us to adopt a less ambitious attitude. So for Emerson, if repose were to be achieved, we would need to relax the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and just relax. This Emerson found hard to do, thus he gives us his proverb.
I am not convinced. I will admit that one may find it hard to do both at the same time, but some preacher once wrote "there is a time for everything under the sun." And while his list didn't include repose and truth seeking, he did have some wisdom about timing.
