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Monday, November 23, 2015

Regarding Writing and Memories....an early-morning email from Carlene

Often after I check first thing to see if you have new blog entries, I read some of Beuchner's "Beyond Words"' and today his word is "Diary" and it corresponded (in my mind, at least) to your wonder about the "life in a box" you wrote about:

Even the most cursory of diaries can be of incalculable value.   What the weather was doing. Who we ran into on the street.   The movie we saw.  The small boy at the dentist's office.   The dream.

Just a handful of the barest facts can be enough to rescue an entire day from oblivion - not just what happened in it, but who we were when it happened.  Who the others were.   What it felt like back then to be us.

"Our years come to an end like a sigh...." says Psalm 90, "so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."

It is a mark of wisdom how precious our days are, even the most uneventful of them.  If we can keep them alive by only a line or so about each, at least we will know what we are sighing about when the last of them comes.

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