For many years, I have kept a commonplace book. A rather quaint custom, these personal anthologies were first compiled in antiquity. At various points in western history, the practice has been revived. When books were an expensive commodity or had to be borrowed from a library, it was not always easy to retrieve information. It was easier to copy out striking passages for future reference. Of course, with the advent of Google and other search engines, the practice may seem unnecessary, even redundant.

But for the last thirty years or so, I have jotted various things down. It’s a curious selection - a kind of scrapbook, filled with quotations, proverbs and prayers, which provide a telling commentary on things that I have read over the years (and sometimes forgotten), things that have struck me, or provoked me, or challenged me, as well as things which have consoled and guided me. Among the random passages, there are a few gems. Here are a couple of extracts which come from another commonplace book, Waymarks by Jim Cotter:

"To take off your shoes as you approach the “holy ground” that is another human being is to remind yourself that the soles of your feet are tender, as is the soul of the one who needs your kindness."

“Be jolted out of any complacency that you possess the truth, the Word, against all others. Respond rather to the challenge to live the truth, the Word, towards communion with all others.”

“Mystery is not a puzzle that you can solve but a question that you cannot answer, a reality you can never control, a perplexity that you can only live into.”