Could I Have a Word?

Could I have a word?

Or maybe two or three? Or, if you’re feeling lavish, a sentence?

I’ve been thinking about the value of short messages. Often I don’t write people because I don’t have time to write the long, reflective, meandering letter (or e-mail) complete with amusing anecdotes and appropriate quotes. So feeling chronically “behind” or remiss in maintaining friendships is a source of frustration and sadness for me. I want to love my friends well. But more days than not I have to cling to Chesterton’s observation that “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

I’ve asked many others how they keep up with far-flung friendships, social media, e-mail and even write the occasional letter or thank-you note on real paper (!), and have received a variety of practical suggestions. The one that seems most useful to me in a season of many obligations is “Answer in a line or two.”

I’ve asked myself, would I feel insulted if I received only a line or two? I don’t think so. I think I’d be grateful—especially if they’re good lines offered with good humor. A sentence is a gift. So I wonder, if I could offer you one sentence in a time of confusion, what would it be? If I could hold up one word for you to carry through a difficult day, what might that be? If I needed someone’s consolation or counsel or reassurance and could receive it in a sentence, what might that be?

Those questions help me approach the problem a little more playfully. I like sentences—long ones like the sixteen-line mazes one finds occasionally in Faulkner or James, but also short, crisp, surprising, precise sentences that hand you an image or point in a new direction without any fanfare.

I think of so many single sentences I memorized as a child that have stayed with me as basic equipment for living:

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.”

“In the beginning was the Word.”

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?”

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”

And later, as the Norton Anthology took its place on the shelf next to the Bible:

“Charge me to see in all bodies the beat of spirit.”

“God doth not need either man’s work or his own gifts.”

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

“I’ll tell you how the sun rose—a ribbon at a time.”

“For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

I think of the way orthodox Jews wear words from the Torah on their foreheads, how some people carry words they love in their wallets on small, frayed pieces of paper, how some write them on walls. At a college I visited all the walls of one student bathroom were covered with handwritten quotes people have decided are worth sharing where they’ll be seen often. Good idea.

I’m well beyond a sentence here. But if you’re among the many who haven’t heard from me because I’m still imagining the lengthy and adequate epistle you so deserve, I want here to make a commitment in this coming season of spring and resurrection to send you “a word,” or even a sentence, in the hope that you’ll find occasion to do the same, knowing the love lies not in length but in the gift of words, each of which opens, if I let it, a door to reflection and surprise.