Reading is Sacred

letters from a bookseller

#1. Reading is sacred

1) of the Eucharistic elements, consecrated

2) consecrated to, esteemed, especially dear or acceptable to a deity

3) of things, places or persons and their offices: set apart or dedicated to some religious purpose

Look up the word “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary and what you find is a circular definition. Sacred is that which is consecrated or set apart for a religious purpose. I stand before you, as a religious personality, with a 4th definition of the word. If religion is the relationship between a human and a transcendent, then I submit the sacred is that which opens the door. We, mortal beings, know the immortal in the material world and even in ourselves through the sacred. For some, mountains and valleys are that door; for them, the Sierras are transcendent.

Think of ancient sacred places where someone, long ago, had a soul altering experience: the well at Beersheeba, the Boh tree, or the valley of the New River— the name of these places is legion and all have opened a door. But not all sacred are great and well known. The totality of sacred cannot be measured; it is as infinite as the individual. The door to a transcendent can be as simple as using a bowl that your grandmother used, as simple as seeing a vista you’ve seen everyday that suddenly becomes real, as simple as handing someone a book.

Writing is what separates us as human. Our cousins, the other great apes, live in societies and use tools. But we alone among our order write down what we know. We write what we know, collect it in books and in it open the door.

Books are stories They have beginnings, middles and ends. Even manuals, texts and study guides follow that form. Novels and treatises, theology and metaphysics all begin in one place, offer information and then sum up. Collections of poetry, of essays and of short stories are other ways of telling stories. Editors tell very large, diffuse stories and place the poems or stories in very specific order, to support the arch of the collection.

Authors who collect their own stuff often tell the most complex and revealing stories. I offer two examples to support this: A Day of Pleasure and Axe Handles, by I. B. Singer and Gary Snyder. These books are beautiful spaces, buttressed by the individual stories or poems. Each of these are spaces of their own but together they create a greater whole. Singer opens the door to a small shul, where the walls shake with the voice of Reb Asher, the milkman. Snyder brings us into a hot day doing sweaty work where the deer lick the window sills. Stories upon stories and the book handler serves them all. Be we librarians or be we booksellers, we serve the story. Sometimes it is the clear and bitter story of Mme. Bovary and sometimes they are the tales of a frog and a toad.

Putting letters or pictographs together into words and thence into stories is very hard. I didn’t start reading until I was in 3rd grade and that drove my mother nuts. Every day I see the new readers, struggling through the heady adventures of the Berenstain Bears and the great essays on friendship of Frog & Toad Some children read easily and some are intimidated; one way or another we all have to learn to read. But even with all of the hard work, learning to read is not the opening of the first door.

The first door into the sacred nature of stories comes before reading, before potty training, even before memory. The door opens in a dim room, on a warm lap with an open book. Before we can read we already know that books are magical things that contain little worlds. Rhyme is the handmaiden of the word. From Jamberry to A Child’s Garden of Verses, the rhymed word enters our ears and becomes part of our DNA. I do not offer this as a scientific theory but as experiential fact. My store has a small stage that reproduces the Great Green Room from Goodnight Moon. The children take what they see at face value. They are in the book. It is to the parents that the words come, unbidden and automatically. Some of them cannot help but recite the whole book, and after over 60 years, Margaret Wise Brown strikes again. With clear rhyme, anyone can remember anything. Only music works better as a memory aid.

The lap reads the book and all too soon the child wants to DO IT MYSELF. They hunch over copies of Tamara Pierce and Lemony Snickett and ignore their parents when called to go home. They are the most loyal consumers, often wanting books they've already read. They will become the new fans of Stephanie Plum & Elaine Pagels and whoever is next.

That is where we come in. We specialize. Some of us read those beautifully written, dark modern novels. Others know poetry or sports or cookbooks or even picture books. Librarians and booksellers, we serve the stories and the words that make them. And I say that that which we serve is sacred. For the printed word is the portal to other minds, other sorrows and all of the gods. The word is sacred and we serve the word.