Among the trappings of giants.

The following is a reflection I wrote after visiting the Wade Center, at Wheaton College while I was there for the Write To Publish conference.
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We left our bags in a side room and filed into the small museum, following the directions of our guide. Excitement rippled. "Is that the Wardrobe?!" and "Oh look, it’s Lewis’ desk!" But I stood silent. My eyes had found a wall, decorated with a display of covers and author signatures: Lewis, Tolkein, Chesterton, Sawyer, MacDonald. 
And all of a sudden, I felt like crying.

​Perhaps it was just exhaustion.
I three weeks away from home, two days into my second busy writers conference. I had reason to be exhausted. But this didn’t feel like fatigue. This felt like more like awe.
Choked up in my throat, held tight in my heart. I felt like I was standing among trappings of giants.

The Wade Center is small a museum. It honours seven writers. Holding a collection of furniture, letters, manuscripts, books and memorabilia. This place stores memories and stories about writers who lived, wrestled with their Christian faith, wrote and spurred one another on. I felt in that moment, the weight of their impact. The ongoing influence their lives and writings hold in our today.
I held back my tears and followed the tour. Through to the library of the centre and a table strewn with papers. We learned how Lewis used his manuscripts as kindling. How Dorothy Sawyer’s mysteries were more popular than Agatha Christies. We heard how Lewis and Tolkien’s desks came to be standing in Chicago. We lingered over original artworks, comparing signatures and stories.
Eventually the tour finished and most of the group left. But a few of us lingered. It seemed too soon to leave. I needed the silence of the room to collect my thoughts.
Like how appropriate it was for a group of writers, dreams heavy with hopes of publication, to stop and wander these rooms. How these humble trappings -a teapot, a wardrobe, a drawing, a book - were just ordinary objects once owned by writers who fought in their words for an integrity of faith. There was something about the tangibility of these items, and the intangibility of these writers' influence, that puts my own words and attempts to write into perspective.
And maybe that’s why silence felt like the best response. To pause in the roused emotion. Listen to the whispers of writers gone past. Wait for the moments to echo.
Comradery, persverance, legacy, belief.
These are the trappings of giants lingering in my my writers' heart.