When books put us back together
Here’s one way of telling you this story: I was looking in a book for a line I needed to hear again and had forgotten. I hadn’t underlined or marked the sentence, and I was chiding myself for it now. If you just would have grabbed a pen and marked it. It would have taken just a few seconds. You could have at least dog-eared the page. Argh.
I kept skimming the same couple of pages over and over, knowing it must be there. I got more and more frustrated, even angry, at the book, at myself, my fingers even beginning to tremble. I imagined throwing the poor book against the wall, watching it hit, the pages splayed, then sliding down and landing on the ground with a thump. Yikes.
And then finally, there, at the bottom of the page I’d skimmed a dozen times, I found it. And yes, the line was good, just like I remembered it. And yes, it would have taken me less time to read the entirety of the pages I had been frantically flipping through. But I couldn’t slow down for that. In that moment, I saw a soft, white portion of myself that was, and is, so frantic, so afraid. Afraid of what it means to love and lose my place. Afraid of being loved and still forgotten. Afraid of never finding all the lovely things. So afraid of it all, that I would toss a beloved line, a beloved story, my beloved heart into the air and against the wall, splayed, landing with a thump.
To find the line I had to find the page, find the thread of the story. I needed to slow for myself and hear the still voice already always inside me. I needed to take my trembling hand in mine. Instead, to borrow from Rumi, I wandered from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace already around my neck.
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Here’s another way of telling you this story: A writer wrote a line that spoke to me so strongly that I heard it in the midst of my panic. The words sparkled so brightly that I knew they reflected the truth, and what I remembered of their beauty turned me from my trouble towards that light. I rushed towards that light so quickly that I forgot to see if there might be a path I could follow, plunging in without a map. And just as I thought that light would be lost forever to me, there, at the bottom of the page, the author’s good words returned me to myself.
Now, I could rest. The words settled in and helped me pause enough to go deeper and wider. I needed this dear, brave author to tell me her story in those precise words, to take my trembling hand in hers.
I keep coming back to Father Gregory Boyle’s idea of kinship, of the necessary act of being returned to ourselves by another. Sometimes, I cannot slow myself. Sometimes, I do not remember to pause. Sometimes, I crash through my life in a panic, forgetting my precious self. In these moments, I rely on the remembered beauty of words, art, and kindred souls to bring me back to myself and breathe, trembling, in my own life.
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I need both ways of telling this story: the forgiveness that comes from glimpsing my own soul's worth and the affirmation of that worth through another's words. Both ways bring me toward the path of wholeness and seeing the worth of the people around me, myself, and the things that we make together.
First appeared in Ruminate’s Issue 41.