The Accidental Community
We
by
Heather Hawkins
didn't intend for it to happen; it just did. It actually began on our honeymoon, when we popped into quiet, out-of-the-way bookstores in Paris between visits to more traditional tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower and Versailles. It continued during the couple of years we lived in Europe, where we scoured used bookstores in towns like Hay-on-Wye, Wales; Strasbourg, France; Salzburg, Austria; and Dublin, Ireland. But mostly it happened closer to home—date nights at our local used bookstores, online ordering, semi-frequent weekend getaways to new towns, and Friends of the Library book sales. After more than twenty years of book browsing, searching, and purchasing, my husband Josh and I currently find ourselves with a growing collection of around 13,000 books that we view not just as a personal library, but as a legacy for our six children and (God willing) grandchildren. In the early years, we accumulated classics from my college years as an English major, Protestant classics and ministry helps from our time as church leaders and missionaries, and spiritual texts and theology tomes from my husband's stint in seminary. Then came homeschooling and our conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy, and our acquisitions shifted to children's classics, historical fiction, history, and science, along with early church fathers and broader theology selections. More recently we have immersed ourselves in classical education and philosophy and our library's growth has reflected those subjects. Our library has become an evolving timeline and biography of our family's story. When others walk into our library, they are often struck by the floor-to-ceiling shelves and the books stacked here and there waiting to be mended, catalogued, or shelved. They sometimes see too much work and too many texts that take up too much space. To us, however, our library is not merely words from dead authors or antiquated relics of the past; it is a living representation of our family's heritage, our expansion as we added children, our moves to new places, and our growth in wisdom and knowledge. That Jane Austen book with the Shakespeare & Co. stamp? We purchased that in Paris in our first week of marriage. The poetry book that Josh carries with him everywhere he goes? He rescued that from a dumpster outside the Catholic school near our house in Ireland. That signed copy of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy? I picked that up for one dollar at a library book sale in our hometown. The copy of Rifles for Watie with the cover falling off? Josh has read that aloud to our family at least five times. That old, ratty Bible? It belonged to the grandfather Josh never met, complete with the devout man's notes and underlines. These books are part of our family. And when I say books, I don't mean paper and ink and spines. I mean the stories they tell, the truths they contain, the lives they lay open for us to experience. We, like the Hebrews with God's Laws, speak of them when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. Our children have been raised by the saints and the sages who inhabit our shelves. The characters and the authors are our friends, our confidantes, and our mentors. These Heather Hawkins is a writer, editor, and homeschool mom of six children. She teaches Latin and other classes at Highlands Latin Stillwater and is pursuing her master's degree at Memoria College. She is the librarian, homeschool consultant, and chief book rescuer at Schola Living Books.
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The Accidental Community
MemoriaPress.com
