When is the last time you wrote a letter?

On Letter Writing
I'm going to be very specific in my definition of the word letter. By letter, I don't mean an email, I don't mean a post it note slapped to the front of the refrigerator, and I really don't mean a text message or instant message darting across a computer screen of any size or shape. By letter I mean a good old fashioned, sit down, pen to pretty paper event in which you express something of yourself to another person. When completed, it gets sealed in an envelope, addressed, stamped and mailed via the U.S. Postal Service, which is actually still in business, despite our fierce alliance with and allegiance to all things internet.

Obviously, the internet is a powerful tool in our world culture. Disseminating information is quicker and easier because of the web, and those are both good things, most of the time. But sometimes it is good to take things slower, and to invest them with more in-depth luxury, and handwritten letters can teach us that.

Love letters, for example, are best contemplated, pored over, edited and proofed a few times before being sent out with a wish, a prayer and a kiss. I think this is especially true at the beginning of a relationship, but perhaps even more so as a match settles in to everyday routine and comfortable habits. There is profound joy and delight in discovering someone thinks enough of you to take the time and thought to put together a message, in their own hand, just for you.

Thank you notes are more than an obligatory expression, but a recognition that what someone else has done for you is honored and appreciated. True gratitude, not just a flimsy, "Hey, thanks," matters. It changes us into something more than we were, and is a stepping stone to who we will become.

Letters asking forgiveness give us time to think, and to develop the wisdom necessary to carry out a difficult, but liberating task. I recently sat in on a teleseminar during which the coordinator reminded everyone several times to have their pens ready to take notes because writing down information solidifies its presence in the brain more fully than listening by itself. That remembrance is most crucial in such an important task as forgiveness, particularly of oneself.

The Bible expresses a fine measure of support for letter writing. The Epistles are letters written to various communities at specific times and moments in their histories for specific reasons. Understanding that communicative process between writer and receiving community gives us insight into their worlds, how they lived and applied their faith in daily events. The same can be said for our communication today, and the necessity to save enough of our interpersonal dialogue so people in the future know us as more than technological addicts who forgot how to be with one another.

I am grateful that the following passage, taken from Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth, survived: "Do we need as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts."

My assumption is that if we do not make time or have time to write out a love letter, a thank you note, or a message asking forgiveness, we do have the opportunity to live these letters out in our actions, our being in the world. It is clear we can "read" each other, in our words, behaviors and mannerisms. Knowing what is evident in your own heart and mind and soul, how do you think people read the letter you are sending each day?