quiet

My inspiration for blogging comes from the letter writers and diarists of the Victorian and Edwardian era, periods when folk put down words for all the sensations, thoughts, feelings and ideas buzzing around in their head. E.M. Forster once said that he never knew what he thought till he wrote it down.

These writers used language to paint pictures for us, giving us some insight into what it meant to experience life in the past. But they also taught us examples of how to be human.

Because they did not have radio or television (or other electronic opiates) playing in their ears, they had the opportunity to sit and reflect on naming the leviathons in their life, emerging out of the depths of the sea, the stuff of human experience, whether terribly funny or horribly tragic.

Willing to write down what was in their head, they lived life unplugged, to borrow an MTV term of a few years ago.

We need a chance to hear what is being drowned out 24/7 (an inhuman phrase). Seasons like Lent or Advent call us to be quiet. To think. To reflect. At the beginning of our Lenten litury each Sunday, to repent.

There was an article in the New York Times about Alistair Cooke's last letter from America for the BBC. He is 95 years old and has not been able to leave his New York apartment for the past couple of years. His doctors advised that he give up his weekly on-air letters. Cooke started this series in the 1940s and by the mid-60s he was never missed a week in meeting his deadline. A blogger of sorts.

Blogs can be full of nothing, silly little rants or giggly surveys (You are an AMC Gremlin. Squatty. An idea whose time never came). But blogs are also like Cooke's letters, describing for some unknown audience what life is like in another part of the world, interpretation, story telling, painting with words.