
Photo and Commentary ©2026 by Maylan Schurch
Friday and Sabbath, January 23 and 24, 2026
I snapped the above photo last August, on a visit to a newish Barnes and Noble bookstore. I’m not exactly sure what the “&” symbol on the wall symbolizes, but maybe it means that the book categories beneath it are varied enough to not be able to be covered by a single word. Maybe the “&” is another way of saying “etc.”
And a glance at the white-on-black labels just above the books shows that the categories are indeed varied. “Self-transformation” doesn’t have much to do with at least the Christian version of religion, and if you could see the tiny gray tags subcategorizing “Religion,” you’d see the labels “Western Philosophy” and “Eastern Philosophy,” which take up most of the shelving on that side.
I’d like to think that if God is our creator, we really should consult His personal preferences about these topics, rather than relegating them to the “etc.” department. Here are three Bible links which might help:
https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/change






