Give Me a Book
I am, unashamedly, a book man.
You may have expected me to say a “reading” man, which would also be true. As St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote, “Be assiduous in prayer and reading. In the one you speak to God. In the other God speaks to you.”
But for me, it’s not just about reading - it’s about books. I agree with the monk in Normandy who, in 1170, wrote that “A monastery without a library is like a castle without an armory. Our library is our armory.”
This means we should engage in building it, fortifying it, at every opportunity. When I was in graduate school, I recall one of my professors saying that we should have a line-item in our budget for books. That building a good library is one of the most important things we can do in ministry and for impact.
I tell my own graduate students the same thing - to invest in books. They are our tools. A mechanic has his set of wrenches; a doctor has his stethoscope; a chef has his cookware. Those of us in ministry, or scholarship (and ideally they are joined at the hip), have our books.
When I “require” books for my students, my intent is simple: these are worth not only reading, but owning.
Buy them. Build your library. It is your armory.
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