By Robynn
English teachers always say, “Write about what you know”.
Well today I don’t know much. I think I’m all wrote out.
Being a part of the Communicating Across Boundaries blog has been a high privilege for me. I love the weekly discipline of writing. I love being forced into a corner and being made to put it all down on paper. It’s been so good for me, so cathartic, so healing. I love you, the readers. I cherish your interactions with each piece, your comments. The moment, although rare, when a friend or an acquaintance who, unbeknownst to me, reads the blog and tells me so when we meet…that moment is priceless! I’m humbled by the idea that you take time to read and interact with what you read.
But blogs are relentless critters. The weekly blog starts whimpering the minute the previous one has been submitted. Blogs refused to be ignored. They bark. They bicker. They belch and bitch.
And they make so many assumptions. Each week the blog presumes I have one great thought, or one brilliant insight, or at the very least one mildly amusing anecdote. There’s no room for nothing. I must generate something. I must encapsulate one moment and wrap it in clever jargon and serve it up with a discerning punch line or wise moral message.
Today my pen is dry. My thoughts are garbled. My moments mock interpretation. Wisdom is scarce. Amusing isn’t funny.
A friend of Henri Noewen, the prolific Catholic writer, once said of him, “Henri never had an unpublished thought.”
I guess some of mine aren’t worth publishing…at least not today.
Of course the bemused reality is that –voila! –I did indeed generate a clever blog piece for today and I did provide one thoughtful insight, namely that not all insights are that thoughtful. Basically the subversive blog wins again, proving my point and bringing up that old cliche: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Or perhaps it’s what that great writer Madeleine L’engle says: “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”
