Writing

Write, write, write, that's my job right now. And rightly so, for like any old wright I have my craft, my right and true trade. At the time of writing, I have written 17,000 words out of the 70,000 needed for my dissertation. That comes out to 1 full chapter, 3/5ths of another chapter, and 1/5th of the introduction. Like usual, the stories behind those writing sessions are good yarns, as they rightly ought to be. There was the evening back at my parents' house in Kansas City where I had a lightbulb moment and sat down to write a good 3,000 words of Chapter 1. Or two weekends ago when after listening to a podcast about writing history, I pulled out my computer and typed out that 1,000 words of the introduction while flying to Baltimore.

Writing is one of the greatest markers of civilization, it's the closest we've ever come to achieving immortality. While we will all die someday, our written words will live on. Writing is central to our faith. We might still know the stories of Jesus through the oral record, after all I can tell you old Irish stories dating back to the first century CE that lasted for at least 600 years before they were written down.

But writing isn't the purest type of words. No, what has begun to be called "spoken word," that's the purest form. I find it silly hearing people go on about "spoken word" when really all they're talking about is talking. Writing implies permanence, it is the past laid out before us on the page. The future still lives in thought, the present in speech. Nothing yet to come is written. That's up to us and the people still waiting in the wings for their time to add a verse to this great cosmic play.

Oh Lord, let the future be written in Your Name. Amen.

Seán a Ph.D. Candidate in History in New York.