I have a word of the month, and it’s ‘souvenir’. This year, I have a pebble as a souvenir of a summer break. I remember as a child bringing home souvenir dolls in French traditional dress as annual summer treasures, almost the highlight of each year. I still have scrapbooks full of holiday memories and a high number of old tickets for things. Over the years, the dolls and tickets graduated into other mementoes – some specifically aimed at tourists (the plastic Eiffel Tower, the glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary...) and others, in later years, more discreet (a locally-crafted pot or a painting). So now, there are many things at home which serve as souvenirs of other times and places in my life, and so hold special meaning. I’m thankful for that.

It's not just the obvious, though. All sorts of things are reminders of all sorts of times, places, people – not just the holiday souvenirs of summers. TS Eliot’s Prufrock says he has ‘measured out my life in coffee spoons’; I could measure mine out in bits and bobs. Setting them out in chronological order would tell you something of the story of my life – perhaps the chapters I feel especially thankful for.

I love the word ‘souvenir’ and all it suggests. For this French word I went to my French dictionary (a 35-year old souvenir) and found all the expected meanings, each rich in itself: memory, recollection, remembrance, keepsake, memento. It’s the verb, though, that I love – the doing, the action: se souvenir de... to remember. A verb suggests that something is happening, that something is alive. In that word there is ‘sous’ meaning ‘under’ and ‘venir’ meaning ‘to come’, and in that sense of something coming underneath there is the real richness of the idea. It suggests that a souvenir carries ‘underneath’ it, below the surface, within it, the time, place or person it reminds us of. It suggests that these real presences of time, place or person can come to the surface or ‘bubble up’ to appear to us very vividly, or even just faintly. And it suggests that times, places and people can ‘get under our skin’ and a souvenir can represent their impact on us, the change they bring or the impression they make. None of this is static, something is really happening. For me, all those suggestions are in that one word ‘souvenir’.

Maybe, I wonder, there might be echoes of faith in all this. Things of the past, collected and kept, and carrying an inner meaning and a presence that can still be present and true today; things that I choose to keep (even though some may be challenging); things that make me me, and develop as I develop, from childhood to maturity; things that point to something beyond what they are in themselves and invite a response or offer an experience. Perhaps all of that is partly what faith is, and maybe we recognise that for ourselves, whatever our faith. The words of Christ seem to run through as an echo: ‘Do this in remembrance of me’. Do it now, and it comes alive again. Bring it to mind and – somehow – it’s here.

So I have my treasure trove, my special souvenirs, my things to be thankful for, but of course it isn’t just the special and unusual that can be souvenirs. The things of every day, right on our doorstep, can carry meaning, memory, presence – if we let them. First we have to notice them. (Our Reflective Chester project is all about noticing what’s good for the soul in the everyday.) ‘The treasure which you seek is buried in the ground on which you stand,’ said Henri Nouwen. We don’t need the far-flung. The souvenirs of life are always close at hand.