Brian McLaren’s Letter to Librarians

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Brian McLaren’s LIFE AFTER DOOM: Wisdom and Courage For A World Falling Apart is a transformative tour-de-force, at the intersection of religion and culture, spanning ecological challenges, economic injustice, and the potential collapse of civilization. McLaren blends wisdom from philosophers, poets, scientists, and theologians, offering insight into hope and grief, in the face of doom.

We are thrilled to share a letter to librarians from Brian, journaling his childhood memories of the public library, not just as a space of independent learning and growth, but as a public good that can support climate and economic justice. When the world is falling apart, perhaps the library can put it back together.

LIFE AFTER DOOM: Wisdom And Courage For A World Falling Apart is available to download on Edelweiss and NetGalley

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I spent kindergarten and first grade living in Johnstown, New York, a charming little upstate city. The population was about 11,000 back in the 1950’s, and it’s even smaller now, with about 8,000 citizens. I have great memories of our little house and neighborhood there . . . the old coal furnace and hot water radiators, the big trees out front whose roots buckled the sidewalks, lots and lots of snow in winter. But the best thing . . . our house on South Market Street was a few doors down from the public library. I had one great passion as a boy: nature. That passion fueled my curiosity. How could I not love reading when a three-minute walk away, I could find shelf-loads of books about trees, stars, dinosaurs, rocks and minerals, snakes, frogs, birds, sharks, and fossils? It all fascinated me. So my mom would walk my brother and me up the street to the library and we would come home loaded with books. A week later, we’d go back and trade them for some more. What a gift, to have a building full of books for a curious boy like
me. It was better than a candy store.

When I was a teenager, we lived in the DC suburbs and a new passion overtook me: I was struggling to establish my own religious identity. The fundamentalism of my childhood brought many benefits, but its costs were also high. Now, it was a twenty minute bike ride to the nearest library . . . enough distance for me to delve into subjects that might have upset my parents: evolution, Buddhism and Hinduism, Marxism, philosophy, and the like. Nobody was looking over my shoulder when I looked through the card catalogue (remember them?) for books that would help me grapple with the doubts and questions that are essential to any self-differentiating adolescent. My third affair with libraries began when my wife and I were raising four kids. Now I had the chance to help my children experience the same freedom I had as a child: the freedom to let their own curiosities run wild. And now, thirty years later, I’m watching them introduce their children to the same delight.

Over the last couple years, I’ve visited my local library more often than any time in the last twenty years or so, and a new motivation lies behind these visits. Like a lot of avid readers, I’ve often found it easier to order a book than visit the library to borrow it. But as my concerns about the environment have grown—along with my concerns about the economic assumptions that are undermining environmental health—I find myself drawn to the library because of the beautiful, old-fashioned, yet strangely forgotten concept of shared space and shared resources. I find great joy in the idea of sharing books and bookshelves with all the people of my community (and county—with interlibrary loans).  That idea of shared resources means even more to me today than it did back when I was a young boy navigating the uneven stretch of root-heaved sidewalk between my own front door and 38 South Market Street in the early 1960’s.

Brian McLaren

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LIFE AFTER DOOM: Wisdom And Courage For A World Falling Apart by Brian McLaren; 9781250893277; 5/14/24