BE KIND

        

Despite dwindling bookshops and newspapers in our age of information overload, local lending libraries remain sources of wisdom, inspiration, reliability, quietness, and stability. 

      Our South End library in Boston keeps its windows on the sidewalk up to date and colorful. The staff, helped by volunteer library supporters, regularly invite authors to give talks about their latest books; they plan interactive classes for neighborhood children; and they welcome everyone who ventures through doors that open wide to a busy suburban street.

      Although I don’t drop in more than twice a month, the staff know my name, don’t ask to see my library card when I take out a book, and are well equipped to converse about local politics, football scores,) or new movie releases—and it’s always with a genuine concern to make community life better.

      Our conversations often drift beyond mere courtesy to something more spiritual, in which we readily acknowledge the power of divine Love to bring harmony and healing.

      What I especially like about my library visits is the inscription on the front door—bold, clear, and unadorned: BE KIND.

      (A gentler message than the one a teenage grandson leaves on his pillow every time he surrenders his bedroom to us: BE NICE OR LEAVE.)

      One afternoon, as I greeted a longtime library assistant, I mentioned how much I delighted in the two-word greeting on the main door, and she looked up in smiling bewilderment.

      “0n our door to the street, you mean? I’ve never seen it there!”                                                  

        Brushing past me and ignoring a line of customers, she swept out onto the street, peered closely at the sign, and came right back in.

      “You’re right. I can’t believe it. How come I’ve missed it all these years. I wonder who put it there?”

      “In a way we could say you did,” I said. “You’ve been living those words for so long it’s part of your nature. You can’t help being kind to your borrowers, whether they’re six, sixteen, or sixty.”

      She smiled again, this time, shyly. “Thank you. I must have  learned it from you.”

      Now it was my turn to smile, with a touch of embarrassment. But her kindness reminded me that I had sometimes shared Bible quotes with her  when she had asked for guidance in her everyday life. One of them was from Proverbs: “A soft answer turns away wrath” (15:1, NRSV).

       I also recalled a passage from another book I rely on for inspiration, “Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896” by Mary Baker Eddy. She writes of qualities that speak to the power of kindness and its healing effects: “A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God” (p. 354).

       How thrilled I am that our library does more than lend books, CDs, and movies to a grateful public!