One of my more treasured treasures is a library card. It hangs on my bulletin board in my office where I can see it every day and be reminded of a wonderful time in my life.

The card was issued from the British Library, and I used it one summer while on sabbatical and studying in London. The card is not easily attained. An interview is required where a most officious British bureaucrat quizzes you on your need for the use of their nation's, indeed the world's, premier library. After a few minutes of earnest convincing, I was stamped, sealed and sent to get my photo identification that would allow me entrance into the hallowed ground.

I spent many a lovely London afternoon sitting among the ghosts of students past including Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, to name only a famous few. It was a beautiful room with a sky blue ceiling and long tables made particularly private by the use of ingenious if antiquated book stands. I was researching the work of a theologian named Weatherhead who happened to have spent most of his adult life only a few blocks away from this cherished spot and so it was easy to imagine the very man sitting in the very seat in which I sat, writing the very words I was then reading.

This past week I read of the library moving from its ancient setting downstairs in the British Museum to another locale equally familiar but far less rich. I am sure this new location will provide for better light and heat than the old and I suspect it will be equipped with the finest of computers, perhaps even the friendliest of staffs, but nothing can replace that sacred space where you walked with soft steps and whispered requests careful not to disturb those ardent students surrounding you.

I have always loved libraries. They seem so incongruous and thus so sacred. In a world designed to have the customer come in, fill up and move out, the library invites the opposite. Sit for awhile. Languish long if you like. Savor the space and relish the read. You're on holy ground.

My first library had leather seats much too big for a six year old body but wondrously welcoming nevertheless. I would sit for the hour or so my mother went shopping and read of Henry Huggins or his sometime friend, Ramona. Older, I perused the periodicals and became familiar with the great photographers of Look and Life and the semi-suggestive cartoons in The New Yorker.

In college, I would meet my future bride amidst the stacks of dusty tomes and pretend to study. The fact she managed to get straight A's in spite of my spirited interruptions is still a source of amazement to me. Graduate school and seminary provided new librarial experiences and venues but always united by their evocation of mystery, wonder and wisdom.

Libraries change, of course. I am still flabbergasted and thoroughly shocked when someone speaks above a whisper in these hallowed halls. Now entire conversations are carried out only feet from some poor slob like me trying to quietly turn the pages of The New York Times. Not too long ago, I whispered a request to a woman at the reference desk and nearly fell over backward when she responded in a semi-shout. No wonder people gab in church nowadays.