The author of a book is a voice with a new body.                                                               Don Welch

As a girl, I lived in and through my books. I read and reread both the Judy Bolton and Nancy Drew series. Even today, I carry Carolyn Keene’s voice with me: Nancy Drew, smartly dressed in a navy suit, white pumps, and a patent leather clutch bag. . .  I understood, all too well, that Nancy never went anywhere until–and unless–she was smartly dressed. Carolyn Keene’s and Margaret Sutton’s voices took on new bodies as they narrated the Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton mysteries. These voices in their new bodies became essential characters through which I grew to love Nancy and Judy. I flew through pages, eager to solve the mystery but always grieving the inevitable final page. My only solace was the fact that these were series, and I could begin a new book the very moment I finished one.

In the Sanctuary of a Book, voices do, indeed, take on new bodies. And these bodies become companions and confidantes. Although they are birthed through words, through images and rhythms, through dialogue and rhymes, they live and breathe as tangibly as your best friend, your next-door neighbor, your mail carrier. They sit beside you at the dinner table, whispering in your ear: Tell them about. . .  In the moments before sleep, they kneel beside your bed, and the breath of their prayers rustles the bed covers. And when you wake, they take your hands, pull you from your dreams and say: Come. 

Last weekend, I had the privilege to participate in a book launch event for my father’s final collection of poetry, Homing. In the midst of family, friends, colleagues, and fellow poets, my father’s book became a voice with a new body. As we read his words, giving our best voices to his voice, from beyond the grave his new body, a palpable presence, filled the room.

In the Sanctuary of a Book, there is this kind of transfiguration. On the mountaintops of our rooms, the author’s voice, bathed in searing white light, takes his place alongside the likes of William Butler Yeats and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This voice takes on a new body with arms that turn the pages of a lifetime and with eyes that fix you–helplessly, blessedly–in the moment. And then, a cloud wraps you into the translucence of consonance and assonance, and you have ears to hear: This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him. 

One of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, N. T. Wright, asserts that bodily resurrection distinguishes Christianity from other faiths and beliefs. In his book, Surprised By Hope, he writes:

According to the early Christians, the purpose of this new body will be to rule wisely over God’s new world. Forget those images about lounging around playing harps. There will be work to do and we shall relish doing it. All the skills and talents we have put to God’s service in this present life–and perhaps too the interests and likings we gave up because they conflicted with our vocation–will be enhanced and ennobled and given back to us to be exercised to his glory. 

There will be work to do and we shall relish doing it. My father walked the streets of my hometown daily, finding his rhythm and his voice as he moved through the alleys and down the sidewalks of Kearney. And then he wrote. Sometimes he would stop to record images and lines in small notebooks he carried in his pocket; other times he would carry the images and lines in his head until he returned home. This was his greatest work, and he relished–and continues to relish–doing it. For my father’s new body and voice are enhanced and ennobled through the pages of his books. They live more urgently today than ever. Such is the glory in the Sanctuary of a Book.

In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis asks us to consider resurrection bodies that are more solid, more real, and more substantial than our earthly bodies. Through the poems in my father’s books, I hear his voice still. I would recognize its timbre, its cadence and inflection, in a room of a thousand voices. For me, like many others, this voice has, indeed, taken on a bodily presence that comforts, instructs, and inspires–a presence that is more solid, more real, and more substantial with each reading and rereading of each poem in each book.

The voices of so many great authors have taken on new bodies for me over the years. I have had tea with Kate Chopin, walked with Henry David Thoreau, cried with Elie Wiesel, sung with e. e. cummings, raged with Richard Wright, wondered with Toni Morrison, and grieved with Sylvia Plath. In my four bedroom home in rural Iowa, I have housed untold authors.

In the Sanctuary of a Book,  you can leave the light on and the door unlocked because you always have room for more new bodies. And as you welcome them in and their voices resonate, expanding to the very corners of your home and your soul, you know that it does not get much better than this.