She called her neighbors
and said, “Rejoice with me, for what was lost has been found!”
(a parable from Jesus, in the Gospels)
As I wrote my thesis I had enormous stacks of books from
multiple libraries, piled, spread, tucked, and scattered around my study. At
the end of summer, some of these had been renewed over and over for months.
Thinking I was “mostly done,”and feeling guilty that someone else might want
access to some of them, I returned most of the stack to Wheaton’s Buswell
Library. A few short weeks later, about a month into the fall semester, I
checked a few of them out again, whilst checking references and following up
some lingering questions.
Some time later I needed to check something in Christoph
Wolff’s The World of the Bach Cantatas.
But for some reason I could not lay my hand on it. A week later, following some
serious searching and pawing through and re-organizing, I still could not find
it. I began to feel alarmed. I conducted several searches through both
vehicles, I went through all the bags in the house. I went to coffee shops to
see if I had left it behind somewhere.
Beyond alarm, I was now beginning to wonder how I was
going to afford to replace this book. I borrowed the book from another library.
Finally I talked to the circulation librarian at Buswell. She kindly offered to
put out an APB at the library, “just in case.” Of course, this proved
fruitless. Equally kindly, she suggested we talk “after the holidays” about
what this was going to mean.
So, I was technically at liberty but preparing to plead
guilty, and waiting for my sentencing.
Yesterday, preparing to listen to the St. Olaf Christmas
Festival online, my Karen suggested I drag out the speakers from my church
office to use in the family room. They
were easy enough to find, in a box, under my desk, tucked away with photos and
other things I hope to put back in a professional office one day.
And what to my wondering eyes? There, in this open-topped
box, in a hard to reach place, which had been left alone for about a year, was
Christoph Wolff’s The World of the Bach
Cantatas. How in the world did it get there? It could not just fall in. Everything
under my desk is waiting for my next job; there is nothing from my current writing
or teaching down there; indeed, I can barely pull my chair up to sit at the
desk. Obviously someone (and it would have to be me) put the book here. I have absolutely no idea.
But that just adds to the wonder, the delight, the
adventure of tearing a house upside down, and then being surprised long after
giving up hope. So I invite you to “rejoice with me, for what was lost has been
found!”
I can’t wait to put this into my librarian’s hands and
celebrate with her!
