A Garden of Books
September Arts and Culture, Household Happenings, and Libraries as Gardens
Welcome to the October issue of Notes From the Fray! Although I’m a little later than scheduled, I’m glad you still came to check out this month’s collection of arts and culture, household happenings, and thoughts on libraries as gardens. I truly hope you enjoy this month’s Notes from the Fray!
September Arts and Culture
A short section in which I mention the books, music, and movies with which I engaged over the past month.
Books
The Baptized Body, by Peter J. Leithart - This book was recommended by a friend of mine. It explores baptism in Scripture and what Scripture says it means to be baptized into the body of Christ, the Church. It has been interesting and, while I don’t agree with everything in it, I do think Leithart raises some good questions regarding the way most evangelicals view water baptism. I recommend it as, at least, a challenge to common American assumptions regarding baptism. I’m a little over halfway through it currently and look forward to finishing it up in October.
The Bullet Journal Method - Yes, I’m still working my way through this. I’ve finished up the sections of the book where Carrol describes the system and practice, and have entered portions of the book where he gets philosophical; I really wish he hadn’t. The method itself is great, as far as I’ve used it. I’m the type of person who likes to use paper and pen as much as possible. This method of personal organization has been helpful to me primarily because it allows me to organize my life in a notebook in a way that makes sense and is consistent. That said, his philosophical excursions are pretty bad. Most of it’s influenced by Eastern thought and religions and is, therefore, at odds with the Christian worldview. Thankfully, his system is workable outside of this worldview. Overall, I'd recommend the system if you are the type of person who likes to work with physical pen and paper. But, I’d recommend just going to YouTube or articles on the internet. This book doesn’t really seem to be necessary to the system, so if you can learn it without having to slog through the Eastern philosophy he includes, that’s the way to go.
Music
Even Dragons Shall Him Praise, by Brian Sauve - This album has been my go-to this month; I’m not quite sure why other than I enjoy the style and the fact that most of these songs are based on Psalms. Brian Sauve’s music has been a help and comfort to me and my family as it helps remind us of the truths revealed in the Psalms.
Movies
Sage Against the Machine - My wife and I watched this documentary produced by Canon Press a couple of weeks ago. Neither of us was familiar with George Gilder, except for my listening to a couple of Man Rampant episodes in which he was a guest. The documentary was interesting, primarily because Gilder seems to understand economics and technology well enough to be able to guess pretty accurately what some of the developments would be before they happened. A lot of his work against feminism seems helpful, as much as I think he’s wrong about some things. Overall, the documentary was enjoyable to watch and one I’d generally recommend.
Household Happenings
This month has been packed but, when writing it down, it doesn’t sound like as much as it feels.
We’ve been back in East Tennessee and getting settled all month, our first full month here since moving. However, the house hunt has proven much more difficult than we initially anticipated, so we are still looking for somewhere to call our own. While we’re very thankful to my parents for their hospitality, we’d like to begin to get settled in our own place, especially with our next baby due in November. We’ve looked at quite a few houses and town homes but very little has been both in our price range and the size we need.
I’ve begun a part-time, online English tutoring job that allows me to work hours around my primary job at a local credit union. It’s been great to finally get some experience helping others learn to communicate effectively in English, even if it’s not in a classroom setting. My job at the credit union started this month and I’ve been in training all month, with my first day out of training being yesterday.
Jen has been home with the boys, which has been good and challenging. My parents have more room outside than we had at our house in Oklahoma, but our children are also feeling the fact that we’re still in limbo, which has been hard for them, I think. They’re adjusting well, though, all things considered. The church here has been wonderful and we are so thankful to have been able to begin fellowshipping with such a like-minded body of believers.
All in all, we are blessed and grateful, and we’re looking forward to working through these growing pains and establishing deep roots here in this community.
On Libraries and Gardens
I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this analogy, but it is one I thought of back in May. The comparison is this: a library should be cultivated for a specific purpose, just like a garden. Also like a garden, the environment, season, and gardener will all be reflected in the produce. I realize the analogy isn’t perfect and breaks down fairly quickly, but I think it’s a helpful comparison to a point.
The first thing that led me to think of this comparison is the idea of cultivated libraries. I come from a family that loves books. However, that love of books can be indiscriminate. I’ve been learning for a couple of years now the value of cultivating a library. My goal is for my family’s library to be cultivated in a certain direction, not just a collection of whatever books I think will make me look cultured.
That tendency to just collect books without having a clear purpose for your personal library leads to an overgrown library. Like a garden, a library can become overtaken with unwanted weeds, grass, and sprouts of some mystery plant that seems able to survive on nothing. It’s easy for a purposeless library to become a place for filler books: outdated books that are interesting but not really worth reading or books that were popular when they came out but nobody remembers until they see them on someone else’s shelf. There are good books mixed in there, but they’re nearly impossible to find because of the literary muck one has to trudge through.
In contrast, when a library is cultivated, it has a clear purpose. Like a garden, it’s clean, purposeful, intentional, and a pleasant, refreshing place to be. A cultivated, family library will have a definite shape and personality. It will have a few odd pockets here and there that reflect the quirks or hobbies of a family member. But, generally, these libraries are centered around a canon of books that form the basis for that family’s culture and thinking. These books are the foundational books to the family’s beliefs, culture, and direction. When I’m cultivating a library for our family, it looks like adding books to our library that have been influential in shaping our family culture. Therefore, the list of books to add is always growing, but (hopefully) in a particular direction and for a particular purpose.
This brings me to one of my main points in this whole analogy: we should consider libraries on the same terms we do nearly everything else: on the level of households. Our household has a specific history, culture, and place, and specific needs. As I’m choosing books to include or exclude from our library, I’m thinking about what the culture in our family is and what I want it to be. I’m generally choosing books that have been highly influential for us or that are part of the Western Canon (we have a Western heritage and should understand it).
This unique nature of a family library means there are some books with which you disagree, but make for good conversation about family history. Although I certainly didn’t keep all of them, I’ve kept a good number of the books from our Calvary Chapel days, partly because I grew up in Calvary Chapel churches and, therefore, those books form a significant part of our family culture. In that case, the part they form is generally to express views we now disagree with and have come to different convictions on. But those books and the beliefs they communicate are still a part of our family story and culture, even if they now serve as an example of what we no longer believe and a conversation starter for why. And, they serve as a counterweight to our current perspective, keeping us humble and preventing us from convincing ourselves that a caricature is enough to describe people who believe that. They remind me that I, too, held to those convictions once. Some of our books I’ve bought but not read yet. They reflect some of my aspirations for our family.
I hope that this library that I’m starting is multigenerational. There will be books that seem out of place or odd to future generations but they will reflect my generation in the family, our lives, jobs, interests, and passions. My children will, I hope, contribute to it and keep up the generational work, and the library will take on a bit of their personality, too. I hope the Adams Family Library goes on for generations, each generation leaving its own mark on the books included.
A Common Canon
This multigenerational project of building a family library will, I hope, be a cornerstone in establishing a family culture. One reason I believe this will be the case is that reading the same books as others gives you a common language with them. When an author explains a concept well, the terminology they use becomes the lens through which you think about that topic. When you have a whole collection of books that your family has read, whether together or separately, your family has a common language for how to talk about ideas, events, topics, and literature. This creates a kind of family canon or common language.1
Our culture understands this underlying principle fairly well. Many Americans recognize the importance of the books we read. That’s why we admire the libraries of those we respect and want to know what they contain. Looking at a person’s library is like getting a glimpse into their thoughts. Although it is slightly different now, when we can have books read to us or borrow them so freely, we still have ways of seeing what other people are reading (I think of Goodreads as an example) because we understand the influence books have on us.
Having a canon is, as far as I can tell, a major component of any culture, whether it’s a family culture or another one. This is part of why communities with solid, Christian schools are often the ones that see the effect of Christianity the most in their area. When the majority of serious Christians in an area send their kids to the same school or schools with similar convictions and reading lists, that whole generation of Christians there, regardless of where their church membership is, grow up with a similar canon and language and, therefore, culture. If you can have this for your family, it will breed intergenerational unity.
The Blessing of Reading, Books, and Household Libraries
We forget how blessed we are to live in a time when most people learn to read and can have access to inexpensive books. Think about how blessed you are to be able to read. Several times over the past year or two, I’ve had moments where I remember the difficulty of learning to read. I was a lazy child and, because learning to read was hard, I did not want to do it. However, once I put in the work (for which most of the credit goes to my parents, who provided the needed motivation), a world of freedom and possibility opened up.
This is a foundational principle in every area of life: the hard work of personal discipline leads to the joy of freedom. Skill and experience take long hours of hard work, but once they're achieved, the enjoyment of freedoms previously unthinkable becomes available to us. Reading is like this. Don’t take for granted that you live in a time when it was both possible and expected that you would learn to read.
This does have its downside, though. Because most people can read and we all have access to relatively inexpensive books, we can end up with cluttered libraries. Our household libraries should be cultivated, not overgrown. These blessings bring with them the responsibility to steward our reading and personal libraries well. We should be seeking to accept the blessing of the opportunity to cultivate our own family library and the responsibility that comes with it.
Do you have a purpose behind your household library? Have you thought about it? Consider what your family library is like, what books make the cut and what books don’t. I’d love to hear down in the comments what books you end up including (or excluding) as you think about your family library’s purpose.
I want to give credit to Ben Sasse who wrote a book titled, The Vanishing American Adult, which is the first place I heard of this idea.
Thank you for the explicit encouragement on cultivating the family library. I think I’ve tripped in every ditch you mentioned....This is a timely reminder as I go volunteer at a book sale soon!