I spent the last three days with my friend and teacher, Andrew Harvey, at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville. He was our guest speaker for Wisdom House's annual Mystic Heart Retreat. (Next April we are hosting Matthew Fox).
One of the things Andrew asked us to do is discover what we were most passionate about and then engage with that passion for the good of the planet. I have two passions: books and dogs. I chose to begin with books.
Tomorrow morning I will be opening a free library on my front lawn. This is a small book house where neighbors can share with one another books they love. When I was a congregational rabbi my community created People of the Books, an organization that worked with kindergarten and first grade teachers in some of Miami's poorer schools to buy new books for their students to own and read. For some kids these were the first books they ever owned. Eventually People of the Books expanded in a larger literacy program, but I always loved the idea of placing books in the hands of little kids. So now I am doing it again, albeit on a much smaller scale.
The "library" will hold a dozen books or so, and I hope little kids and their parents will drop by and take the books and add books of their own. If you would like to learn more about this project check out the website: www.littlefreelibrary.org/.
Carrying on the century-old Jewish tradition of responsa, this blog provides short answers to readers questions.
2 comments:
Love this idea. Wanna add a cool element? Have the people who add the books write in the inside cover what they loved about it and why they want to pass it to someone else. (Or at least on a piece of paper in the book, if you don't want it to be permanent). A sweet personal touch!
Great idea! Thanks.
Post a Comment