I saw a great story on NPR’s website, regarding “Six Word Memoir’s.” They were reporting that an online magazine was pushing people to write a memoir using only six words. The inspiration was Ernest Hemingway who was challenged to write a full story using only six words, he responded with: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” So this online magazine (Smith) - developed a similar exercise, tell your story using only 6 words.

Such limitations and brevity, push us to work with language in a much more profound way. Finding just the right words and creating a statement that captures who we are in six words. It is a puzzle - but like poetry; it is pure writing in a compact form. Mensa has a similar exercise which I have used quite a few times - to create a self-portrait using only five lines. I think such limitations find us having to edit out any extraneous and redundant information and leave only the vital and essential. It forces us to stop diluting and start distilling.

So what would your memoir look like in six words?

I was thinking about this while doing barn work last night. I moved from memoir to spiritual biography and then to a prayer. Such compact language lends itself to a handy prayer - one that is memorable, can be repeated with regularity and accuracy, and is said so quickly; yet has a profundity. So I ended up praying this six word prayer sentence:

As He is, may I be.

I have grown with this statement just in living with it the past 10 hours or so. There are quite a few layers to that statement - a prayer I find that is worth praying, considering, meditating on and carrying around with me.

So, what about you… what six words would you string together.

Oh, MY six word memoir?

“I fell apart, God is mending.”