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Thursday, November 29, 2012

of Love and Long Distance and Writing

I'm not sure how I found this book, but it was a good read, the tale of humanitarian/missionary 30-somethings who find each other by blogs and emails and fall in love.  One of my favorite real-life stories, which has been repeated a handful of times even in Bundibugyo.  Here is the author's site.    Enjoy.

And here is my favorite quote:
". . That I started writing the essays largely because it was fun, but I kept writing them even when it wasn't nearly as much fun because I sensed that it was an important discipline for me to cultivate-that in the face of a constant kaleidoscope of airports and faces it would serve me well to learn to narrow my focus to a moment.  To take that moment for what it was and to think carefully about what else it could be.
  That over time, without my even really noticing, writing had become a spiritual discipline -one way for me to snatch breaths from beneath the waterfall of life.
  That now, like the chemicals on a photographic negative, it is the keyboard that helps me define my experiences.  On my best days, a jumble of moments, like so many bright pixels, coalesce into something vibrant and evocative as I type.   Often I feel as if I have not understood anything of waht an experience has really meant to me until I have anchored it in text.  "

Yes.  That's writing.

And as a person who anchors in text, and who spent four years in a long-distance writing relationship with the love of my life before we got married, I resonated with this book.

2 comments:

Lisa McKay said...

I found this blog post after noticing an unusual amount of traffic hitting my blog from a blog named "ParadoxUganda" :). Thank you for reading my book, and for writing up this note about it. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I wish you all the very, very best with your important work.

DrsMyhre said...

Lisa I'm honored. On the same path as you, almost two decades further down the road, but the issues are still the same. Especially: is it worth risking the life of our kids? Looking forward to your next book.