the Familiar

I'm a notorious notetaker. When I find a line in a book that I want to keep, I write it in one of my many Moleskin notebooks. Today while reading Gail Caldwell's book lets take the long way home I stopped when I read these words: "...wedded to the sanctity of the familiar."

I often take sentences out of their original context— because those particular words or sentences speak to me on an emotional level. They may trigger off memories or send me off thinking in new directions. Sometimes the writing is exquisite or the metaphor so strikingly unique that I want to recall the words.

When I read wedded to the sanctity of the familiar , I thought of all the rituals and structures that surround life and how they both serve as comfort and as bars to moving beyond the familiar.

But it's the word sanctity that alters the familiar into something holy. Not everything that is familiar has that quality—it's something we bring to the familiar that lifts it beyond the ordinary.

And if we're fortunately enough to recognize the holy in the familiar it needs to be watered and nurtured.

Years ago I left for work before my two children left for school. They went to the next door neighbor's house to wait for the bus. We had established a routine—fifteen minutes before I left we all sat on the couch and I read a book.

One year I read the The Hobbit . It wasn't a rushed time and it started the day —structured, but more than that we were "wedded to the sanctity of the familiar." It was a holy time.