Why I Keep Writing Here
I have three bullet points to share today: widows, postage, and why I keep writing here.
The Importunate Widow
It’s a big week ahead for the United States. You don’t need me to tell you that, nor to pour fuel on any fire. What I would like to do, instead, is share a quote that I have shared here before, and one that I meditate on it regularly.
I hope it will nourish your imagination about prayer and deepen your hunger to do it. I want to serve you in your prayer: your poor, inarticulate groaning to God, the prayer that puts you into contact with yourself as helpless, defenseless, fearful, and trembling; mad, even vengeful, betrayed, doubtful, discouraged, and distrusting; guilty, ashamed, and fearful. As poor as you feel there — for that is all of us — as prayer-less as the prayer you pray in that kind of headspace, I hope you will dare to persist in pouring that prayer, your worst form of it, out to God.
Helmut Thielicke (1908-1986), a German pastor, Protestant theologian, and rector of the University of Hamburg, preached the sermon from which this quote (below) is excerpted. The translator who edited the volume of Thielicke’s sermons Christ and the Meaning of Life, chose the old-fashioned word “importunate,” which is not one that I use in everyday speech. That it rhymes with “unfortunate” is, well, unfortunate, because it doesn’t mean “unfortunate.”
Importunate means “persistent, to the point of annoyance,” in the lofty language of the King James Bible, which uses idioms and vocabulary from a particular era of time and a particular place. The language of the KJV does not unlock God’s heart nor wields any magical power that merits our awe or obedience, even if its rhetorical power has been significant in the world and some cherish its familiarity and find it inspiring. No shame in that either.
God’s heart is already unlocked and open to us in the person of Jesus Christ, our advocate, our rescuer, and our loving brother in the flesh. He longs to hear our prayers; he goads us to risk annoying him, to dare us more deeply and beyond our small selves, to pray like the persistent widow of Luke 18. And Thielicke, in his sermon, from his own place in history, reminds us of yet deeper truths related to this helpless, insignificant, and yet audacious widow:
"...What did Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzar, what did Hitler and Stalin really know about their role in the drama which Another had written and was then staging, the last act of which will end before the throne of God at the coming of the Lord? The church of Jesus Christ is in truth a defenseless widow, and when it engages in ecclesiastical politics and strategy it never accomplishes much; this is nothing more than a feeble arrow launched at armored giants.
"But one thing this church, this company of believers, does have. It has access to that Other who causes the unfolding of the drama of the world. And therefore it has a power greater than the magnificent and arrogant figures in gleaming armor who enter and leave the stage. In the end only Jesus Christ will be left upon the world's stage. Then it will be clear that in all the acts of this cosmic drama there is traceable a mysterious trend, an ordering tendency, that points to this great finale of history. And all those who considered themselves great, who made their entrances and exits and for a few moments were able to make us little people down in the pit of history hold our breath and set us trembling, all these could not in the end do anything else but bring on this one royal moment of God. They knew nothing about this finale, because they were under the delusion that they themselves were directing the drama of the world, whereas they were only supers and extras who were permitted to walk for a moment across the stage in grandiose costumes, only to disappear in the wings on the other side."
The Cost of Postage
I have long said that I will keep my newsletter free and open to the public, and that remains true. I have liked using this particular email service because it had been free for me to use with my modest subscriber roll. But that reality has changed. The cost of postage has gone up for me here. So, may ask, would you consider a small, regular gift — even $5 — to support my writing and help me cover these costs to keep it free and open to others?
Why I keep writing here
Speaking of postage, I find email a kind of old fashioned way of communicating, which it isn’t. In my most idealistic dreams, I would write each of you a handwritten letter. This dream is well beyond my human limits. That is a very dear form of communicating, and I reserve it for very dear ones.
As a writer, though, I love paper, pens, and ink, and the tactile pleasure of creating with words, with writing by means of my own body through a tool like a pen. I don’t love that so much of writing these days entails social media. I don’t cast aspersions on it, but I don’t like what it requires of a reader as well as of a writer. Much as the tech giants invite us to flee our shared embodiment and its humble needs and demands, and much as we importunately participate in that flight, we humans remain embodied despite a growing “digital consciousness,” which is ever more shaping our embodiment.
Looking back over the last ten years, I don’t like what this new form of digital asceticism has done to me. Yes, there are researchers working on it, and they are everywhere on social media talking about it! But like them, it’s true that I have also participated in it. I keep writing here because I cherish the more personal aspect of this kind of connection, even if it still entails a kind of disembodiment. I am grateful that you receive it and read it.
For it is my fingers typing this, my hunched back now stretching to sit up a little taller as I feel myself typing this phrase, and my mind and heart seeking to make sense and to put words to work. It is at times slow and hard, and my work with words only makes sense in the context of seeking to serve other human beings, in the same way that I am served by other writers, readers, thinkers, artists, bakers, and bureaucrats. Doing all of this work, faithfully, even importunately, as a human, with a body, matters to our shared common humanity. (Chris Smith’s importunate work on this point is beautiful and critical; here’s a list of his work.)
So there it is: widows, postage, and why I write here. Peace to you, and to your neighbors, both the ones that you enjoy and the ones that annoy you. And prayers of blessing and peace to God on behalf of our opponents and our enemies, in this coming week.