Wednesday, April 07, 2021

Interface: New Word for the Ancient Miracle of Text

(I wrote this preface to a Lenten devotion booklet that my parish St. James Episcopal Church published in 2011.)

Interface is a new word for the ancient miracle of letters. You face me through this page, and I, with a pad in my den one October night, face you. I'm concerned how you'll read me; you're wondering what I'm getting at. We're face to face, mind to mind, just paper between us.

In the same way, writers of this booklet have gone one-on-one with prophets and apostles who wrote on scrolls millennia ago. One contributor emailed me that writing her meditation was a "struggle" of many days that caused her to change her mind. I'm reminded of Jacob's wrestling all night with an angel. At dawn, Jacob takes a new name, Israel. Father Dean Taylor has preached that this "wrestling" is an image for prayer, and that one one who prays is changed by the struggle.

May this interface be an instrument of transformation for those who wrestled with ancient witnesses to write it, and for all their fellow parishioners who engage them daily through these pages.

[Photo: Interface between Mom and me early in the pandemic, months before face-to-face meetings were permitted.]

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