words

I keep a book of words I don't know, words that are new to me. I write them down and try to use them in sentences like we had to do in elementary school.

I've been thinking a lot about words. Words we read. Words we write. The words we choose to speak to one another. The words, for one reason or another, we decide to keep to ourselves.

Reading words makes me want to write words. To combine words into sentences, and sentences into stories. Last week I got to listen to a famous essayist. He calls himself a story addict. He said he tells stories to crack open windows and doors inside him. Not only to let things out, but to let things in. Like laughter. Or tears.

Sometimes when those we love are far away, the written word is the only thing that connects us.

Sometimes the only way we can say things is by not saying them at all, but rather by writing them out, one word at a time.

There are times of silence when all is still and a million words swarm around in my head like a storm. I cannot find a beginning or an end to all the words words. So instead I say nothing. The moment or the feeling is too big and there are no words. Only the absence of them.

There are sacred words like the words of Christ and the words of the living prophets. Words like those that make up what we believe and know to be true can be written inside us -- not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. Not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of our hearts. (2 Cor. 3:3).