“There is no one so grateful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soul has needed and he never knew it.”  Roger Mifflin (Bookstore proprietor and character in the book, The Haunted Bookshop.)

  Recently, I visited my mom in Vermont to help celebrate her 94^th birthday. During my leisure time, I perused her bookshelf to find a good book to read. I came across a copy of The Haunted Bookshop, a novel by Christopher Morley, first published in 1919. 

The preface suggests that inspiration for the story’s local color was the famous Schulte’s second hand bookstore on Fourth Ave, New York. Interestingly, my mom worked at Schulte’s bookstore from 1937-1942. In the days when women wore stylish dresses with matching hats and gloves, mom rode the L train into Manhattan to work. Her remembrances of those days are filled with enchantment amid the angst of WW II. It is hard to express what I felt as I opened the portal pages of this rare book. I thought of all the connections between people and places and the in between crevasses of our time. Steeped in a daughter’s curiosity, I began my time travelers journey back into the era of my mother’s youth.

This is the magic of books, they offer us a passport to places we have never been and show us unseen vistas. Here we are privy to the most intimate thoughts of the writer. We have the chance to live adventures vicariously through the eyes of another. Mr. Morley elaborates, “Lord! When you sell a man a book, you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life.  Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night – there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”   

Books are like a favorite friend, they are there for us in our times of need. An encounter with one may spark a personal exchange that can penetrate a heart of stone with palpable aches and quivers, or lightly feather the deepest secrets of a soul.  As generous companion, books can expand our knowledge; reveal the wisdom of great sages, cloak us in mystery, indulge fantasy, sing a poet's love song, and revive us from death to life.  Books can help us stop the incessant chatter of our minds,  the compulsive multi-tasking, and help us focus our attention on a solitary activity. Reading is a meditative exercise for our brains.  When engrossed in a good read we tend to lose ourselves temporarily and leave worry behind, then we are free to explore a life of imagination. Personally, I’m drawn to the musings of mystics; to alight on fanned wings and soar. 

Caregivers must give themselves permission to rebel from all the self imposed pressures of "should do" and relax into discovering the “inner landscapes.” If you do not do this for yourself, who will?  We think, if only I had time I would enjoy… We must learn to choose wisely.

The late great philosopher John O’Donohue offers this encouragement, “I think a question to all, is to ask oneself,  who are you reading?  Where are you stretching your own boundaries? Are you repetitive in that?  I'd say to anyone who is listening, who is interested in spirituality and who is maybe being coaxed a little away from believing it's all a naive, doomed, illusion-ridden thing, pick up some thing like Meister Eckhart or some one of the mystics and just have a look at it. And you can be surprised what an exciting adventure and homecoming it could become.”  

~ Liz Wessel