April 14, 2008
Remnant
To the poet Homer, libraries were holy places like churches, and the priestly librarians a blessed race, a saving remnant in a world of sin. Whenever God grew impatient and decided to destroy the world he remembered the librarians and stayed his hand. (Jane Langton in The Thief of Venice, as quoted in Library Juice, 14ii01)
CP’s a librarian and likes this quote from Homer, says she’s never heard much at all about God staying his hand over anything we “other” priests are up to. Actually, she never needs to remind me, for I rather revel in it. There’s already among her other charms a sort of reference-desk ambiance, the kind that may well appeal to God. If it’s a Puccini aria for a crossword puzzle or a shortstop for the Cubs or a novel by Eudora Welty I’m wont to name-drop for an OoN column, she’s always there. Besides, knowing what Homer said about librarians and so long as we’re the both of us within firing range of celestial missiles always gives me a sort of comfort, something like a basement in a tornado.
Whenever I meet somebody who doesn’t even own a library card, I lament inwardly. And when I find out he or she depends altogether on internet book sellers to keep track of reading preferences, I cringe. My friend Walt, the wonder librarian at our branch, watches out for me and alerts me to the latest James Lee Burke, Robert B Parker, or Carmac McCarthy. I wonder would Homer feel the same way about Amazon as he did about librarians?
Before Google, when CP was actually a reference librarian instead of the top gun for the whole system like later on, she’d get calls from, say, a bar where some guys were arguing about sports stats and wanting the facts. She got offered ten bucks once to skew the data to the winning side. Of course, that was before greed became even more rampant and corporate. Ten bucks then amounted to something. Actually, she only told me that story, not whether she collected.
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A friend gave me this quotation when I began the transformation from reference / public service librarian to priest. It was the first time I had recognized I had been a priest all along - just in a different “guise” - and it gave me hope and a lot of comfort to realize that my COM was quite wrong - I could be both, because I am called to help people find the Way to live their lives.
Comment by Christine Gilson — April 21, 2008 @ 2:22 pm