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Libraries – The Last Secular Dwellings of Silence

When I was a kid, I can remember my dad taking me to the local library. There he assisted me with one of the most rueful grade school subjects imaginable: geography. It wasn’t that geography was altogether boring. But the fact was, at my co-op, the materials being used were printed several decades before, and thus the “correct” answers were not always up to date.

For example, a number of African countries seemed to have changed names and capitals several times since the last edition of the workbook had been printed. Thankfully, our local library carried some behemoth atlases which were just as antiquated as the textbook my co-op was using.

When I began going to community college, I found myself in a disagreeable atmosphere. The noisome, crude culture stared me in the face every day, silently judging or silently overlooking. During this time, I found a peaceful haven on the second floor of the college’s library, which is where I endeavored to complete the readings and other assignments for my classes.

For many of us, this is what the institution of the public library has stood for – a residence of accumulated learning and even of peace. If we think about it, it makes perfect sense that these two aspects of the foundation go hand-in-hand.

The primary function of the library is seen as the provision of a place where one goes to be educated or entertained, or both. These pastimes are geared toward sustaining the appetite of mind and of soul. Here we encounter the works of predecessors and peers who have toiled in expanding the discourse on human culture and society.

For millennia, civilizations have been aware of the terrific merits a library has to offer. The ancient, now-legendary Library at Alexandria, Egypt was a compendium of Greek thought and culture, housing volumes of both poetic and scientific texts. From very early on, the concept of a library was seen as a place to seek learning and enjoyment. Especially in the modern sense, a library is hailed as an institution instigating leisurely recreation.

In more recent centuries, individuals who are ones of thinking and of doing, have seen the need for a communal library. Many of the American Founding Fathers were of this caliber. For instance, Benjamin Franklin, in addition to all his electrifying endeavors in the sciences, pondered what some of the best practices might be for the welfare of a city’s inhabitants. Among such proposals of his were a firefighting department, a law enforcement department, and a circulating library.

The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was an architect, policymaker, surveyor, and amateur paleontologist. He is also responsible for the initial drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Yet, before any of these, he was an avid reader.

In the early 1800s, Jefferson was owner of the biggest personal book collection in the U.S. Many of his works were sold for the purpose of refilling the Library of Congress, a national institution which has since grown into the largest library (via the number of works it holds) in the world. Despite the grandiose accomplishments America had under its belt, the rest of Western civilization was not unaware of the importance of libraries as public spaces. In 1850, British Parliament gave legal permission for the establishment of public libraries.

In the tradition of the Christian religion, the continual development of learning and the pursuit of the arts has long been fostered. In the mid-19th century, John Henry Newman (an Anglican clergyman who converted to Catholicism) would proclaim the following in one of his sermons comprising his body of work titled, On the Theory of Religious Belief:

“In the capital of Christendom the high cathedral and the perpetual choir still witness to the victory of Faith over the world’s power. To see its triumph over the world’s wisdom, we must enter those solemn cemeteries in which are stored the relics and the monuments of ancient Faith – our libraries.”

While much about the content of the secular library institution has changed in the years that have elapsed since Newman’s day, several of the key conceptualizations remain. Newman sees libraries as places filled with wisdom. To him, they are institutions that are fundamental to the support and spread of the Faith.

Furthermore, Newman alludes to libraries as sectors reserved for quiet thinking. Similarly, modern libraries have cultivated an atmosphere of preferred silence. (This atmosphere may have easily sprung up from the fact that the “common” libraries of the Middle Ages were located in monasteries, where monks were often dedicated to times of silence.) This ideal aura is likely held in check by the universally-recognized response to those who overlook it: the glare. Needless to say, the ambiance generated by the majority of libraries offers a haven of relative silence.

Being the home of silence is just as important for a library as being the repository of gathered wisdom. This silence is the mark of a place where reverence is respected. It is significant to point out that the devout religious already have such a place, and it is one which ushers peace into their hearts. This place for the faithful is a church. In part, it is the reverent silence perpetuated in a church which lends us toward inner peace. In this sense, the library has a certain aspect of the religious about it. Secularism, missing the relevance of faith, offers what it can: a sanctuary of silence. Or, as Newman so poetically put it, the library stands as a solemn cemetery of memory, of amassed knowledge.

People have recognized that it is therapeutic to seek silence amid all of today’s social turmoil and the bombardment of media. Renowned writer and evangelist Matthew Kelly refers to the time spent in this worthy endeavor as the “classroom of silence.” In silence itself, we can find something we can’t find elsewhere. Namely, we can find divine direction and wisdom, and in doing so, we will also learn more about ourselves.

Silence is an atmosphere that comes to the aid of thinking and leads to internal harmony. Even the non-religious have experienced this. In the fantastic brewings of their imaginations, writers such as H.G. Wells (see The Time Machine) and Rod Serling (see The Twilight Zone, “The Obsolete Man”) subtly mused over the disintegration of the library institution. It is one of the many sad attributes of their fictitious dystopias.

If you pay attention to your surroundings (and perhaps have not yet been severely numbed by them), you are aware of the world’s bickering, blurting, and blasting. Imagery and sound waves wash over our senses continually. And it becomes increasingly difficult to find those dwellings of silence.

In the secular world, apart from the church and the intentionally-hushed homestead, there is one final remnant of the era of silent recreation. This artifact is the institution of the library.

John Tuttle is a Catholic journalist and creative writer. His work has been featured by The University Bookman, The Wanderer, Culture Wars Magazine, CiRCE Institute, Inside Over, Regina Magazine, Catholic Insight, and the University of Notre Dame's Grotto Network. He has also acted as prose editor for Loomings, the literary magazine of Benedictine College.

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