I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
? Jorge Luis Borges

Last week I was driving near my neighborhood library and realized I had not been there in a while so I turned in. I didn’t really need a book…I had one or two I was reading…but I felt like I could just use a good dose of library. Summer and the library are inextricably linked in my experience. I have fond memories as a child of riding my bike to the library on hot, sweltering, southern Ohio summer days. The library must have been air conditioned and walking through those doors brought instant relief from the heat while filling my nostrils with that library smell. What is it? Paper? Leather? People? Words floating in the air? Stories just waiting to be told?Wisdom to be discovered?

Walking in I noticed a dad with his three sons. They were lugging an enormous bag of books, that IKEA sized bag that holds nearly everything but the kitchen sink. They were in their summer uniforms of shorts and t-shirts and the older one, a new teenager I imagined, was exhibiting his independent streak by wearing one running shoe and one bright red Croc with mismatched socks. I smiled and silently wished the father all the best. Lugging the bag through the door, the younger one stood with his parent and put the returned books one at a time onto the conveyor belt that took them to that mysterious place that would prepare them for their next reader. The dad exercised great patience and presence.

As I roamed around the library I noticed those who sat at computers and those in some quiet listening areas with large headsets over their ears. In the children’s area, some little ones read with a parent while others worked with puzzles and a few played games on a screen. I thought of the great gift of this institution and how it has shaped not only individuals but our culture. So it was with joy that I watched a story on CBS Sunday Morning about the importance of libraries and the many ways they have grown and changed over the years. No longer a place for simply borrowing books, libraries have become a center of a community. They have always been and continue to be one of those safe havens for so many…different generations, people living on the margins, the curious, the searching, the creative, the shy, the hopeful. Choosing a book and taking it home to explore without cost is a freedom not to be taken lightly.  In fact T.S. Eliot said: “The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.” 

And aren’t we all looking for a little hope in a future for us all? With all that is happening in our world, I will take any good glimpse of it that I can. The library seems a very good place to start. 

As I was checking out the stack of cookbooks that I will likely never use but whose pages give me great joy to flip through, the dad and his sons were checking out yet another huge stack of books and packing them into their big bag. They were laughing and enjoying their time together. Much happens at a library and this is just one snapshot. They headed out the door to the reading that will happen this week, these summer days, that will be, before we know it, autumn days.