My Poor Books

A NEW LEARNING
Of the making of books there should be an end. For pastors of my generation the gathering of books was critical to the craft of sermon preparation and training others. I spent a lifetime assembling my library and I had the good fortune to pastor churches that provided a substantial book allowance. Eighteen years ago we made the big move from Toronto to Cloverdale, British Columbia. The moving company that transported our possessions under-guestimated the weight of my books and failed to charge me enough. Seven years ago my professional next move meant I no longer enjoyed the luxury of a church office with bookshelves sufficient to house my library. The books couldn't fit in our home. Many books remained in boxes in our garage for the six years I have served in an executive position for our denomination. This past August at the completion of my term and as I moved into retirement, I brought several hundred Bible commentaries to my home den/studio and also began to address what I could do with the remaining hundreds of books in the garage. The Salvation Army and other stores took some. Used bookstores don't have shelf space. Libraries don't want my books. My own children are not interested beyond the few volumes I have already forced upon them. I began to make contact with several younger pastors with a view to assisting them to build their own libraries. There was some interest but I found that young pastors have CD libraries of resource material. I have Stanley's 1860 published chronicle of his location of David Livingston in Africa, but that book and the rest of my space hungry collection is not attactive to people any longer. One of my personal retirement realities is that I cannot keep my entire library and it is of little value to others.