Blog to My Mentor: Prelude – From Letters to Blogs

Dear Ritson:

I hope you are well. It’s not the first time I’ve blogged about you on your birthday, but I was particularly keen to get something written on this occasion.

There’s a lot I could say to you and I want to say a lot, but it’s probably best to split this over a blog entry or two. First, it’s good to give the basis on why it’s a privilege to write to you about you and your impact on my life.

When I was a lot younger there was something significant about getting a personal letter. At school we had this pen-pal correspondence scheme that linked you with someone from abroad – sometimes from mainland Europe and sometimes from beyond. I suppose the thinking of it was to develop friendships beyond our own culture and get better informed about it. I did the penpal thing for a while but gradually lost interest. In its height it was a privilege to receive correspondence from a penpal and replying to the privilege was an expression of my gratitude.

When the penpal phase passed, I then started writing letters to one or two of my friends at school. As in I would write letters to them and give it to them at school. (True story.) Yeah, I could talk to them and often did, but I also enjoyed the correspondence with them at school. They would engage in the correspondence and it would be so fascinating finding out more about them through their written words than in their verbal one. Funnily enough once I left school I stopped the correspondence with them.

With my introduction to e-mails I more or less completely stopped with actual letter writing. Well, I say more or less. I did do some letter writing even when I got into emails. In fact one of the ways I endeared myself to my wife-to-be, at the time, was through my letter writing. Yet although WhatsApp has done me the world of good in keeping written correspondence going, it’s been a long time since I sat and wrote a proper personal letter to a friend. Indeed in this day and age as the occasion suits a letter itself is not necessary and an email doesn’t have to do the job, especially when you have something like a blog to do your writing.

As you know, sir, I love writing and I love words. It means a lot to me to write words about someone I respect and love. So the words I am about to write are coming from a line of enjoying the power of writing to develop relationships.

More on those words coming very soon – in the meantime I hope you had an outstanding day celebrating God’s goodness in your life.

To be continued

(Photo: Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden