Slow Writing

This post is being written in haste, ironically, in praise of slow writing.

Most of the time I do fast writing, using the media of electronic mail, social networks (Facebook), and this web log to communicate quickly, even instantly. What I write is episodic, sometimes epigrammatic, but mostly telegraphic: terse and in abbreviation. How I write: sporadically, in a spurt, in constant edit, and usually in lazy reliance on set pieces and easy algorithms.

How different it felt, then, when I sat down this afternoon to mark my words with a pencil, not a keyboard; to leave my words on the grainy surface of our friary's cream-colored stationery, not the pane of a virtual window; seal them with my saliva, not the Save function; and send them with a stamp, not the Enter key. How aware I had become of the sacramentality of every word, every little letter, when I had to stop and consider before physically erasing them from the paper. Though I must be mindful of it when I tap the Backspace key, I am surely less mindful of it.

O my friends who will receive my notes in a few days, know of the great love I hold for each of you when you break open the words fixed slowly and care-fully in their lines. Through them and with them and in them may you see beyond them to the Word that has been inscribed hopefully in you and me.