Finding Words

It's strange that so much life can happen, and yet I cannot find the words to describe it. Or more accurately, I cannot pull the words together into a coherent whole. They are just fragments of thoughts floating around on the pages of my journals and emails. I started taking a picture a day. Sometimes the pictures capture exactly what I want to say, sometimes they don't. Quotes are different, though. In them, I find exactly what I want say in an even more beautiful fashion than I could ever have said it. Soon I'll gather my thoughts and marshal them into a blogpost. Yet for now, here are some quotes that fit my life so, so perfectly.

"The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."

(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

"This is the real discipline. It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visibile, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded with lies. ... Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy."

(Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son)

"And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path, that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it."

(Libba Bray, Rebel Angels)

"A sense of place is not sentimental: it is practical and necessary. The mistake is to consider place provincially. While a sense of place is based on local knowledge, it is not limited to local knowledge - it includes a range of places... what is one caught in the forced mobility of our culture to do? The answer lies in story... though I may be out of my place, I am not out of my story."

(Grace is Where I Live, John Leax)