If These Walls Could Talk… (by Bob Turner)

Bob Turner

…If These Walls Could Talk…

You probably haven’t heard of Paula Kaufman. She is a leader in her field. She is an American hero. She is a librarian.

I know what you are thinking: sensible shoes, conservative attire, and bad hair. Or, maybe: rule-keeper who hates noise, food, drink, and gum. Once more: passive, timid, introverted, pseudo-academic. Getting colder.

Kaufman was a librarian at Columbia University. In 1987, she received a request from the F.B.I., who was collecting information about perceived terrorist threats. Basically, they wanted to see what the Ahmed’s, Abdul’s, and Mohammed’s of NYC had been reading at their local library.

Obviously, this information was confidential. Kaufman countered that if patrons could not come, read, and learn within a context of privacy, they might not come at all. She resisted the F.B.I. and put her self at risk, in hopes of preserving the freedom of the curious, the interested, and the inquisitive. She won.

In my work as a theological librarian, I don’t get many visits from the F.B.I. Further, I don’t enter work each day to serve on the front lines of a national security conflict. That would be cool, to be sure. But most visitors rarely ask for more than to be pointed to the restrooms. But I do enter the workplace with a sense of gravitas for what goes on around the stacks. This is because good theological libraries play a significant role in the life of the church. Theological libraries aren’t just warehouses of books; they are houses of theological renewal.

This is why my favorite place to sit in our library is the Reference Room. There, the words of Paul jump off the dark, 20 foot-long wall in large, yellow letters: “…but be transformed by the renewing of your minds...” For Paul, the discovery of God’s will requires a change of within the mind. While our culture demands that we act on feelings and be true to ourselves, Paul challenges to act on knowledge and become what God transforms us into.

Renewal is a process. The only people I know who are more obnoxious than those who refuse to change their minds are those who change their minds only once. They swing the same sword, just as hard, only now in a different direction. True change should cultivate our humility, not redirect our outrage.

The digital world affords the opportunity to talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Even sentences like that now sound cliché. But when we talk about God, how should we talk about God? Perhaps too often our conversations feature exclamation points (!!!). Of course, this is probably not the best punctuation for talking to strangers. Periods might be a little blunt. Yet question marks trend postmodern. And semicolons, according to Kurt Vonnegut, are only good for showing people you went to college. So what’s left? Ellipses…yes, ellipses…those dots…. These are the punctuation markers that best characterize the theological library. They tell us that a statement has been made, but that the conversation is not over. They are a grammarian’s way of saying To Be Continued. When they come before a statement, we know that it has a past. When they follow it, we anticipate a future.

These dots signal that our conversations are not voices in the wilderness, but parts in a symphony. When we speak about suffering, we not only reference our own experience, but join that of Job, Irenaeus, and Wiesel. When we argue about the atonement, we are not simply engaging John Piper or N.T. Wright, but also Paul and Augustine. Whatever they said is probably not trivial. Whatever we say is probably not new.

But we are.

That is, when we engage in this larger conversation, we participate in God’s renewal of our minds. We trade in our question marks and exclamation points for bold sentences that end in ellipses. Our conversations have a past, so our contributions have a future.

This experience of renewal allows us not only to focus on how we might change, but also on developing the humility to prepare us for the next change. The next one is always the hardest.

So I don’t view myself as a gatekeeper of materials or as an enforcer of policies. Librarians are the architects of houses of renewals. We promote and defend the transformation of the mind. And we invite others into a centuries-old conversation on which we all are invited to eavesdrop. A library is a great place to listen to the ancient witnesses.

And an even better one to hide from the F.B.I.