Words I Carry with Me

plus: my four favorite quotes (so far) this summer

The written word has always been a way for me to connect with God. Novels. Nonfiction. A good article or essay. Even textbooks, on occasion (minus the math stuff…). Words make sense to my soul, giving me something tangible to grasp amidst what often feels like a torrent of ideas and emotions inside me. Like a bicycle that finally clicks into gear, words often find me at just the right moment. I read a word or a phrase and all these things I’ve been carrying within me suddenly “Click!” and shift into place. It is as if, even for a moment, my soul clears and breathes, “Yesssss. That.”

I have found words to be a good marker of seasons. Looking back, I can see how Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies found me at just the right time my sophomore year in college, or how I picked up Katherine May’s Wintering in a season when everything felt like letting go, when (in her words) “the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones.”

Words are magical, in that way. Maybe even a kindness that seems to teeter on the edge of the divine, meeting us in needed moments.

However, my method for keeping tracks of words I wanted to carry with me has always been a bit haphazard. Underlining. Starring. Dog-earing a page if the quote was really (I mean REALLY) good. But after too many times of telling myself “I will remember where I read that…” and then frantically pulling books off shelves to find that single underlined quote that maybe, possibly was about halfway through the book, I realized I needed to get my act together.

Earlier this year, I started a quote journal. I grabbed a soft, black leather journal I had been saving for something special and decided it would be the place where I copy down all the really good words I want to remember, right down to the details of where I found them (including page number). At first, the decision was practical. A protection for my sanity and my books.

But the more quotes I have copied, the more I realize that the physical act of writing them down or looking back over the pages seers the words within me in a different way. Perhaps it’s science. Like, the more we engage our senses, the more the words are embedded within us (or something like that). But either way, the practice has been life-giving, and the words stay with me a little longer. Plus, now I have a place to return to them when memory begins to fade.

Someday, I hope I look back at my quote journal and am transported to the particulars of that encounter, that moment when God seemed to peek out from behind the page and smile. When my lonely heart felt seen by the story of another or when sentences felt like manna in the midst of a wilderness.

Because someday, probably not that far away, I need to remember the Word Made Flesh is still with us, hovering amidst person and page.

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During my six-week summer break from book-writing, I was able to do quite a bit of reading and copying of quotes. Today I will leave you with four of my favorites (and I hope you will share a few words you want to carry in the comments).

This is temporal contentment: to inhabit time with eyes wide open, hands outstretched, not to grasp but to receive, enjoy, and let go.

—James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

—Maya Angelou, “Alone”

Our deepest prayers are spoken in our silent gratitude and silent tears.

—Ronald Rolheiser, Wrestling with God

…people who are afraid to look deeply at themselves will of course be equally afraid to look deeply at God.

—David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself