You love words too. Before you argue that you don't, let me just cut you off at the pass. If you didn't, you wouldn't be reading this blog. Language - the spoken and written word - provides an outlet for the soul. Not only are we drawn to words, but we are also attracted to those with the ability to use them in such a manner that it takes our breath away.
Harper Lee and Pat Conroy. Two truly Southern writers whose insight into the human mind, soul, and spirit pierces me in ways that make me feel shamefully exposed for all to see who I really am, yet, at the same time, is strangely comfortable, like a favorite blanket or a well-worn pair of jeans. For many years, their use of words has left me breathless.
In celebration of their lives, revel with me in some their most profound and poetic passages.
HARPER LEE
April 28, 1926 - February 19, 2016
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
- To Kill a Mockingbird
"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions...but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."
- To Kill a Mockingbird
"Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common; they both begin where reason ends."
- Go Set a Watchman
"As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons."
- Go Set a Watchman
"The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person it in will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in."
- Go Set a Watchman
PAT CONROY
October 26, 1945 - March 4, 2016
"My poor boat poked along the waterway with the blinding speed of a manatee."
- The Water is Wide
"Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold...The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, the depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks."
- The Prince of Tides
"No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws."
- Beach Music
"Honor is the presence of God in man."
- The Lords of Discipline
"Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most."
- My Losing Season
In the span of two weeks, the world has lost two gifted writers; authors whose command of the English language makes me want to read more. To write more. To hammer away at my craft until I have perfected it the way they have. And now, in their passing, their literary legacy is even more precious. If you've never read one of their books, never buried your face in the pages of descriptions so vivid they paint works of art on the pages of your imagination, and of truths so ripe with wisdom and virtue that you become a better person for simply having read them, may I challenge you to do that? You won't regret it!
And while I'm issuing challenges, may I ask that ever-so-sensitive rhetorical question - when is the last time you read your Bible? You know, The Word. Or, using my emphasis, The Word. In all of the ways God chooses to interact with us, His voice is most audible in the pages of His Word. (Now is it starting to make sense why we are drawn to words?)
There's a reason that words touch us. Books. Email. Song lyrics. Love letters. Gossip. Eulogies. Wedding vows. Text messages. Rumors. I love you. I'm sorry. In whatever form they come, words have power. In both good and bad ways, they captivate us, spell-bind us, and leave us longing for something more, taking us right up to the edge of (but never over into) that space in us where the created meets its Creator. God intended it that way. After all, the spoken word, by His divine design, brought all of creation into being.
"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."
Genesis 1:3
No comments:
Post a Comment