Why I Do It

Most communication is electronic these day so we text, email, instant message, video blog or post. We pay our bills online. And those who don’t will very soon be replaced by those who do. Paper is increasingly becoming useless. Books are being replaced by Kendals. Newsletters will soon be passé. Television and radio no longer command the airwaves.

One of the things about living on Tybee Island is that we have a Post Office that doesn’t deliver the mail so you have to go get it. This proves to be a challenge for many of us. So once or twice each month we swing by the Post Office and spend half an hour trying to pry the mail out of the box. Yesterday was my first trip to the Post Office in…well, I’m not sure when.

Back home I made my way through the stack and there were two old fashioned handwritten cards to me. The first was from Preston Blackwelder of Port Wentworth, Georgia where I grew up. Pep has always been in my life and is one remarkable man. He was the first true story teller that I ever saw and he can cast a spell on a church crowd.

Inside the card he had clipped out all of the press that I got when I resigned from Union Mission. “A mere thank you seems inadequate for the leadership and accomplishments…you end your mission on a firm foundation of hope for the ‘least of these’.”

I wiped my eyes.

“From the days of your infancy, till the Lord calls me home, I’m on stand-by as a stand-in Dad if you ever need me.”

Tears rolled down my face and I had to walk outside to compose myself a bit. Goddess was rubbing herself against me trying to force my attention in another direction.

Returning inside, I opened the second card which was from Gretchen Patricio, my High School English teacher and the one largely responsible for me graduating with any knowledge in my head at all. “Micheal, thank you for everything that you have done to love the unlovely…when you generously gave me a copy of “Tour of Homes” I was not in a place to read it. Seeing your retirement on TV, I remembered it, and have spent the last two weeks enjoying it Reading it was like seeing parts of your life over the last thirty odd years. (The language was rough!)
I laughed out loud as I wiped my eyes again.

Later at my computer I read messages from people who read my daily blog. “I am not liking how late they are these days. They are like coffee to me.”

“Thanks for seasoning my days well with your blogging. Keep on being real. You help me…” wrote a minister friend of mine in another city.

Then on Face Book there are all of these posts under the blog. Many are funny. Many are heartfelt.

I write first for me. They are prayers of my life. Some of Thanksgiving. Others of frustration. Celebration. Or anger. They represent the realities of my day and it is helpful for me to write them out of me. My son Jeremy once said of my writing, once he writes it out it is gone from him.

Then I share it. I used to share it through my books, articles in magazines or newspapers and still do from time to time. But most is through the blog posted in a couple of places. When I wrote books people would send me letters. When I post the blog they send me instant messages.

The thing about sharing yourself is you receive far more back than you give. New friends arrive out of nowhere and you love them as much as you have ever loved anyone. Old friends reacquaint. Many respond privately with confessions from their own lives which puts whatever I am going through into perspective. Through the sharing, community is born which is a very holy and precious thing.

Some think it to be self-serving and I suppose that it is. But, by giving you shall receive, we have been taught. And giving yourself away is how you get yourself back. And that is why I write.