A Prayer for Reading Freely

Lover of Curiosity, boldly open with us bookcovers and library doors and digital library gateways to authors we have never read before, to people we have never met, to times we have never lived, to ways of thinking that ask us to think anew, to questions we never bothered to ponder before, to imagination and wonderment and reverence and surprise and laughter and so much more. Lover of Curiosity, help us protect school and public libraries as actively circulating collections that invite us past the smaller world of comfort and our own creating, that teach us how to be responsible citizens who ask hard questions, that give us back our histories that were hidden from us. Lover of Curiosity, may we nurture a love of reading in our birth languages and in acquired languages, sharing profligately across cultures and beliefs and understandings, nurturing a world in which we can respect and care for one another in part because through reading we have learned a little bit about each other and how to be with what we do not know or understand while we are finding our way ahead. Lover of Curiosity and Lover of Liberation, may we reverse the book bans, get difficult books into the hands of readers turned off by stories and ideas they cannot find connection to, challenge ourselves and one another not to hide, ban or burn those books but to turn another page, have a deeper discussion about problems or questions from the text, think, talk about, share, enjoy, and return to books that change us. Amen.