Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 12:12am
Your 'visit' is in the mail
Column: Life at First Sight
I had no idea of the degree to which technology has deluged my days with demands until I stepped away from most of it over the summer.
No cell-phone calls for nearly two months. Email only once or twice a week, and only if my travels brought me into contact with the opportunity. And no answering machines or voice mail of any kind to keep up with for eight glorious weeks.
Life got better by the day. The fact is, I was reachable. Every stop along my route had a phone number or email address, or both, so that if I had to be found, I could be.
But, oh, how I loved that wandering freedom. How deep those depths I sounded within each lengthening day.
And a big part of that was my rediscovery of letter-writing. I had actually veered quite close to the decision that I was too busy to write them anymore. Thankfully, a few things came along to straighten out my thinking.
The first was the rediscovery, upon my father's death, of correspondence we'd shared a long time ago. It wasn't only him and our relationship that I was able to see in a new light, but even my view of myself. The letters gave me an observer's view of my life at an age when I'd been blind to a number of things, ones I very much want to understand now. What a gift it was to see those letters again.
Then, at a retreat for couples, I rediscovered the magic of letter-writing when it's shared with your spouse. Each of us was asked to address a question by writing a letter to each other about it, and later sharing these. The result was like re-encountering much-loved aspects of each after a long hiatus.
Then, while cleaning out a drawer, I found the "Secret Friend" letters. Back when our children were small, they'd receive a postcard or letter every few weeks signed only with a small smiley face and the words "Secret Friend." Most often, the message offered encouragement, compliments or noted something positive that they'd done or that had happened in their life. Sometimes, if they were facing something difficult or had had a disappointment, it shared sympathy and support about that.
It was quite a few years before our daughter picked up on the fact that the writing on those cards and letters looked a lot like the neat block-printing on her father's engineering plans. Even then, she was kind enough not to point this out to her younger brother right away.
Those little pieces of correspondence meant a lot to them. In addition to their appealing element of mystery, they were a periodic reminder that someone out there had their interest and their happiness in mind, and wished the best for them.
They were also a reminder for me that there is something powerfully important in the written word that seems to transcend every other communication experience.
It's undoubtedly no coincidence that the founder of every major religion brought a book, each its own kind of letter to humanity.
"Write all that We have revealed unto thee with the ink of light upon the tablet of thy spirit," Baha'u'llah encourages humanity, soul by soul. "Should this not be in thy power, then make thine ink of the essence of thy heart."
When we associate with each other through the deliberate intimacy of the written word, we share an experience of inner life that we otherwise seem to be rapidly losing in a world of voice mail, text-messaging and email.
Enter a wonderful resource, "Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children," from author Dorie McCullough Lawson.
The three centuries of correspondence collected here feature letters from the likes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ansel Adams, Jack London, Albert Einstein, Mary Todd Lincoln, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Thomas Edison.
In addition to the good counsel they often share, these letters offer an intimate glimpse into families and relationships at a time when good models of those can seem particularly scarce in our world. They also represent the truest kind of history, one that's people-based and gives us the most from which to learn.
In a wartime letter written as though penned by the family dog, Groucho Marx not only gave his soldier son plenty to laugh about during a tough time, but was able to express some of his deepest sentiments for his son, too.
Women's-suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that she was "making the path smoother" for her own daughters and everyone else's.
Illustrator N.C. Wyeth cautioned Andrew Wyeth: "There's a real task on our hands, Andy. Modern art critics and their supine followers like the flat and the shallow." Imagine how those words kept his artist son company in later years.
As historian David McCullough, father of the book's author, observes so aptly in the book's foreword, "Often the authors want only to save their children from making the mistakes they have."
Of course, while they can't accomplish that, such "missives of love," as he calls them, can at least keep the next generation company and give them heart and encouragement on the path.
Within the letters our daughter sent us from China, we were able to see the heights and depths of the strong young woman she was becoming. These could be harder to see in crowded family gatherings or busy day-to-day details, when so much of what we "share" and "communicate" with each other involves so little of our truest feelings or best intentions. I remember how moved I was the day she told me that reading our letters, unlike talking with us, was like knowing more of who we really were — even more deeply.
Letters give both the writer and the recipient the opportunity to invest one of the most precious and rarest of resources in a relationship these days — time. You can't write or read a letter and give your attention to anything else at the same time. It is truly a visit, and one that reminds us that what's most real about our selves and our relationships absolutely transcends time and place.
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © Copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.
No cell-phone calls for nearly two months. Email only once or twice a week, and only if my travels brought me into contact with the opportunity. And no answering machines or voice mail of any kind to keep up with for eight glorious weeks.
Life got better by the day. The fact is, I was reachable. Every stop along my route had a phone number or email address, or both, so that if I had to be found, I could be.
But, oh, how I loved that wandering freedom. How deep those depths I sounded within each lengthening day.
And a big part of that was my rediscovery of letter-writing. I had actually veered quite close to the decision that I was too busy to write them anymore. Thankfully, a few things came along to straighten out my thinking.
The first was the rediscovery, upon my father's death, of correspondence we'd shared a long time ago. It wasn't only him and our relationship that I was able to see in a new light, but even my view of myself. The letters gave me an observer's view of my life at an age when I'd been blind to a number of things, ones I very much want to understand now. What a gift it was to see those letters again.
Then, at a retreat for couples, I rediscovered the magic of letter-writing when it's shared with your spouse. Each of us was asked to address a question by writing a letter to each other about it, and later sharing these. The result was like re-encountering much-loved aspects of each after a long hiatus.
Then, while cleaning out a drawer, I found the "Secret Friend" letters. Back when our children were small, they'd receive a postcard or letter every few weeks signed only with a small smiley face and the words "Secret Friend." Most often, the message offered encouragement, compliments or noted something positive that they'd done or that had happened in their life. Sometimes, if they were facing something difficult or had had a disappointment, it shared sympathy and support about that.
It was quite a few years before our daughter picked up on the fact that the writing on those cards and letters looked a lot like the neat block-printing on her father's engineering plans. Even then, she was kind enough not to point this out to her younger brother right away.
Those little pieces of correspondence meant a lot to them. In addition to their appealing element of mystery, they were a periodic reminder that someone out there had their interest and their happiness in mind, and wished the best for them.
They were also a reminder for me that there is something powerfully important in the written word that seems to transcend every other communication experience.
It's undoubtedly no coincidence that the founder of every major religion brought a book, each its own kind of letter to humanity.
"Write all that We have revealed unto thee with the ink of light upon the tablet of thy spirit," Baha'u'llah encourages humanity, soul by soul. "Should this not be in thy power, then make thine ink of the essence of thy heart."
When we associate with each other through the deliberate intimacy of the written word, we share an experience of inner life that we otherwise seem to be rapidly losing in a world of voice mail, text-messaging and email.
Enter a wonderful resource, "Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children," from author Dorie McCullough Lawson.
The three centuries of correspondence collected here feature letters from the likes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ansel Adams, Jack London, Albert Einstein, Mary Todd Lincoln, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Thomas Edison.
In addition to the good counsel they often share, these letters offer an intimate glimpse into families and relationships at a time when good models of those can seem particularly scarce in our world. They also represent the truest kind of history, one that's people-based and gives us the most from which to learn.
In a wartime letter written as though penned by the family dog, Groucho Marx not only gave his soldier son plenty to laugh about during a tough time, but was able to express some of his deepest sentiments for his son, too.
Women's-suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that she was "making the path smoother" for her own daughters and everyone else's.
Illustrator N.C. Wyeth cautioned Andrew Wyeth: "There's a real task on our hands, Andy. Modern art critics and their supine followers like the flat and the shallow." Imagine how those words kept his artist son company in later years.
As historian David McCullough, father of the book's author, observes so aptly in the book's foreword, "Often the authors want only to save their children from making the mistakes they have."
Of course, while they can't accomplish that, such "missives of love," as he calls them, can at least keep the next generation company and give them heart and encouragement on the path.
Within the letters our daughter sent us from China, we were able to see the heights and depths of the strong young woman she was becoming. These could be harder to see in crowded family gatherings or busy day-to-day details, when so much of what we "share" and "communicate" with each other involves so little of our truest feelings or best intentions. I remember how moved I was the day she told me that reading our letters, unlike talking with us, was like knowing more of who we really were — even more deeply.
Letters give both the writer and the recipient the opportunity to invest one of the most precious and rarest of resources in a relationship these days — time. You can't write or read a letter and give your attention to anything else at the same time. It is truly a visit, and one that reminds us that what's most real about our selves and our relationships absolutely transcends time and place.
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © Copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.