Our friend Jay Bridge is building us a littlefreelibrary, one of the more than 50,000 little free libraries – take a free book and return a free book –  now spread across America – mostly rural America.

We thought we would be the first in our town, but we came across another today near the Vermont border, “Peggy and Patrick’s Little Free Library” just a few miles away. We expect to be the second, and it will be a special moment for me.

For me, sharing books is an especially gracious thing to do, it fosters community and spreads valuable ideas. It advances my idea of humanity, also Pope Francis’s idea – we care for one another, we are responsible for one another, we share what it is good in our lives.

At various points in my young life, I collected comic books, raised tropical fish, stole silver dollars from my parent’s dresser, and read the Hardy  Boys. Other than that, I have not had many friends or hobbies. As an adult, I became a book sharer, and that was one of my passions for a long time.

I love to choose books for people and share books with people. It is a great source of pride and satisfaction for me to give friends a book when I see them at lunch or go to their house for dinner. For me, that is better than flowers or wine. I almost never miss.

The library says a lot about Peggy and Patrick, it tells me they are generous and open people. i hope to meet them one day. In their library, they thoughtfully included a list of summer reading. Maria and I read a lot, and we can’t wait to put our books in our library, we both love the idea of these books moving out into the community, being shared and read over and over again. This is how books were meant to be.

I think I am good at matching books with people, and I love sharing the books I read and love. As we all know, books have taken a beating recently, they are still around and still strong, but their place in our culture has been diminished greatly. I gave a book to a teenager recently, and he looked at me as if I had handed him a frog from outer space.

He reads all the time, but rarely paper books.

In a compelling sort of way, my hobby is being reborn through the littlefreelibrary.org program. Book sharing is back, and it suits rural communities especially well, we all have lawns and space to stick our libraries into the ground, and we already know and trust one another.

I can’t imagine where you would put one in a big city, and in many suburban communities, they are not, I am told, welcome. We expect to have our Little Free Library in a week or so, I’ll keep you posted. I love this new moment, it is just the sort of grass roots democracy that can help rbring us all back together again.