TOOLS: BLESSED BE THE LIBRARY

From the title of this blog it will come as no surprise that one of my favorite authors is Ken Wilber. In 1995 he published what is my favorite of his many books, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. At the time I was living in the country on eight acres of forrest at about 7,000 ft. in the Colorado Rockies. My home was seven miles from the nearest paved road and thirteen miles from the nearest town. In that time the town was still small, but it boasted a modest library with a heritage that went back to the eighteen hundreds. And inside this library was one computer connected to the world wide web, and more importantly the interlibrary loan system that spread across the U.S. and now the world. I was one of those nuts who actually read all of Wilber's notes that accompanied SES and enjoyed them probably as much or more than the actual text itself. An when I say notes, we are talking in the thousands not a hundred or so. From time to time, among these notes would appear a rarely mentioned title covering some small detail of psychology, philosophy, spirituality or any of a number or other esoteric topics. I would hop into my pickup with my labrador and make the half hour drive to the library, this time certain that I had in hand a request the library could not fill. Yet that small rural library never failed me. Without any commentary the librarian simply took my slip of paper and entered the title into her computer and told me I would be receiving a card in the mail when the book arrived. One of life's small pleasures for me at that time was to look inside the front cover of the book as soon as I had it in hand to see how far a voyage it had taken to come to my small town. It was amazing and made me feel more and more grateful for the wonders this institution continued to provide for me. I have never been able to keep up with Wilber's thinking as it seems to morph every year or so, but God bless the library for letting me give my best shot at it!