The Contemplative Outreach Lending Library

Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis has a library of over 550 books that cover topics related to meditation, scripture reflection, spiritual life, 12-step work, mysticism, theology and other topics of interest to persons practicing or drawn toward practicing Centering Prayer. The library is housed at Grace Episcopal Church and can be found in designated space within their library. The COSTL library are those books located on the shelves marked with our label.

This rich resource is available to you, and we hope you use it. (But please help yourself only to the books on the COSTL shelves.)

Where is it?

  • Grace Episcopal Church, 514 E. Argonne Drive, Kirkwood MO 63122. Enter via the church entrance and look to your left.
  • Access to Grace Episcopal Church and library during COVID: The church building, including the library, is generally open from 10:00 to 4:00 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. To make sure that the building is open, as our COVID circumstances change over time, and to make sure that the library is not being occupied for a scheduled event, you can call Shari Bonham at 314-821-1806 ext. 10. Shari is a welcoming voice for a welcoming church.

The process is super easy: visit the library and take a book (or two) that appeals to you. Return it if you can or keep it if you want. Or pass it on to someone you know. No need to fill out the library card or create a record that you have taken a book or two. Our hope is that the books will leave our shelves and find a home in human hands and hearts.

If you do return a book, please place it in the box located at the bottom of the shelves on the left side.

We have a catalog of our collection, and you can find it here. Of course, we cannot guarantee that a particular book will be on the shelf when you come as someone else may have taken it; but we can guarantee that you will find another interesting selection. If you will place the books you return in the return box rather than the shelves, it will help us update the catalog periodically.

Book donations: Almost all of the books in this collection have been donated. It you have books to donate, please leave them in the return box located below the shelves on the left side of the COSTL shelves. We do ask that you leave no more than 8-10 books at a time as we have limited
space for storage.

For any questions: Please contact our “librarian” Sandy Johnson at shjohns665@gmail.com. If you have left books for donation, please send Sandy an email so that she can pick them up and integrate them into the catalog.

Thank you. Enjoy your book.

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