Recently was away from home for a few days. Forgot to take my Bible. Now there was a Bible there, but it wasn't my Bible. It isn't the first time I've gone away without my Bible. But the unmistakable sense of loss, the definite feeling of non-attachment to other available Bibles, the apparently irrational annoyance that I didn't bring my familiar 20 year old re-bound but otherwise quite ordinary Bible, all got me thinking.
What exactly is it I don't have, if I don't have my Bible? How far is familiarity with one particular Bible a significant element in my relaxed contemplation of "the Word"" in the words?
Does using an unfamiliar Bible deprive me of familiar context; render less accessible that acquired inner mapping of literary memory that is the geography of this specific Bible I know so well; dissipate that resonance and reassurance that comes from knowing and finding yourself in familiar places? Well, yes, probably.
But does all that invest the physical printed object (the unavailable my Bible) with more significance than it should? After all I still have several Bibles I've used, each of them for years, before replacing them with the next.
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