A Prayer for Librarians, by Trisha Arlin

Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=59885

open_content_license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Date: 2025-01-30

Last Updated: 2025-02-18

Categories: Congregation & Community, 🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November)

Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, civic prayers, Donald Trump, English vernacular prayer, memory, Prayers as poems, יזכור yizkor

Excerpt: "A Prayer for Librarians" by Trisha Arlin was first shared via their website, Trisha Arlin: Words of Prayer and Intention, on 7 December 2024. . . .


Content:
A Prayer For Librarians
Blessed One-ness

We forget a lot:
Data and addresses,
Old loves and enemies,
Where we put the keys
And where we put the freedoms.

But there are the people who remember
Or who remember where to look when it’s time to remember—
Librarians
Archivists
Collectors
Even hoarders
Cataloguing the past,
Keeping knowledge safe,
Sometimes at great risk
Because the first thing dictators do
Is ban books, history, music, science, art and journalism.

But libraries keep our stuff safe
Until it’s time to emerge.
The monks of the Middle Ages
The archivists of the Warsaw Ghetto
The librarians of MAGA America
Are heroes
And we give thanks.

May they have all the courage they need.
Amen


“A Prayer for Librarians” by Trisha Arlin was first shared via their website, Trisha Arlin: Words of Prayer and Intention, on 7 December 2024.

 

Contributor: Trisha Arlin

Co-authors:

Featured Image:
“December Gifts” drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright for Liberty Magazine
Title: “December Gifts” drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright for Liberty Magazine
Caption:December Gifts,” drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright for Liberty Magazine