I`ve been thinking about friends, what we learn from them,
and how we communicate. It used to be that when friends or relatives lived far
away, writing letters was important to keep friendship alive. Phones usually
were not an option. To phone my boyfriend on Christmas 1965, we set a time when
he went to the phone company and we talked for a minute before the static cut
our conversation short. A couple of times after I was back in Brazil, we had
friends who were ham radio operators make phone patch calls to my mom in the
USA, but it was a major operation, and by the time contact was established, we
did not know what to say. Since I was a young teen, I had a score of pen pals
all over the world, as well as the habit of writing for birthdays and Christmas
to my aunts and uncles.
I began to really write letters in the year and a half I was
in the States and the love of my life was in Brazil. Writing love letters is an
altogether different category, and we have never repeated the feat once we were
together for life. Sometimes he wrote morning, noon and evening, and I followed
suit. Love letters were life and breath to me and to him. He wrote poems. I
became skilled at describing life around me and the dreams and aspirations we
shared. We not only became familiarized with each dream and family story, we
became legend, myth, plans and reality as we corresponded, putting brains and
brawn, heart and soul, into what we wrote. I returned to Brazil in June, got
engaged in August and married in December 1966. Some time after we married, Lau
declared that we should burn our letters, lest our children or strangers find
and read them. Reluctantly I joined him in putting fire them on fire—but not
before hand-copying each of the hundred and sixty-so poems he had penned in our
correspondence. I typed that collection of poems and had them bound in leather
when we had been married about ten years.
We no longer write love letters, though love is present and still
growing strong—we have the presence of
each other to spur, provoke, inspire, exasperate, and continually learn caring
from each other. Sometimes he or I will still write lighthearted rhymes or more
ponderous sonnets to each other, but we never phone to the other and rarely
write notes. But Lau is the first reader of anything I write, whether about
children and grandchildren or Christian life and life on this blemished planet
or candid every day actions and reactions.
Back to communicating with friends and fellow-sojourners:
I`ve assumed today`s facebook as a tool to keep in touch. Some two thousand or
so between old friends from the past, some of their children and grandchildren,
and fellow friends who are writers, poets, composers, dentists and designers,
pastors and teachers and their wives, missionaries and non-religious activists,
plain people complicated by incredible stories—all my facebook friends are real life samplings of diversity in unity.
Some of my friends greet each day or evening with “Good morning (evening).
Aren’t you going to say good morning to me?”, or publish pictures of beautiful
flowers, children and pets, or fine porcelain teacups. I have to admit there
isn’t time to reply or “like” each friendly greeting. Can’t play each game they
propose to draw me into, or solve each puzzle people post—there’s simply no
time to lose. Some friends make
delicious doces and desserts; others
post their churrascos and family
gatherings, or the beautiful crafts they are making. There are people who post
terrible pictures of people dying of cancer or beheaded by jihadists, with the
saying: write amen if you believe God can heal them or save them all from ISIS.
I pray for the suffering church worldwide, and pray for those I know are facing
terrible illness and pain—but typing “amen” is not going to do anything for
them. Some people are dying for a good argument, and post philosopher or
Christian leader or politician’s declarations, expecting my feedback. Now, I
admire great thinkers, love a good discussion, but try to limit myself to
subjects that really have changed my life or the lives of people in our world.
Do not want to get into arguments about Pentecostalism, Calvinism or
Arminianism, (have friends who are serious about God in each and every one of
those camps) or denominational differences, though I have firm beliefs and
denials and adhere to basic Christian orthodoxy.
What do l like to write? Basically, what I like to read.
Words that touch the soul and stimulate the mind, goading to action. To sum it
up, I want to translate into understandable, applicable language, in whatever
language we are using, what Jay Richards said about C. S. Lewis:
Lewis was the consummate
translator. This is an academic achievement every bit as impressive and lasting
as any other. Translation of academic subjects into laymen’s terms is akin to hand-copying
Van Gogh’s Starry Night with a much
more limited palette of colors than the
great Dutch artist used for the original. The original required artistic
genius. But a good copy using a limited palette requires genius as well… He
once observed: “Any fool can write learned
language. The vernacular is the real test.” Many academics, in contrast,
disdain the task of translation. They seem to pride themselves on grinding our
turgid academic prose that is accessible to few and enjoyable to none… Lewis never
settled for such a provincial academic career. On the contrary, he made his own
academic life difficult by writing children`s books and Christian apologetics.
Most Lewis scholars suspect that this is the one reason he never advanced
beyond the title of lecturer during all his years at Oxford University. It was
only late in life that Cambridge University had the good sense to hire him and
give him a professional title befitting his academic stature… We must
distinguish the elite populist from the dabblers or “second hand peddlers of
ideas”… who have a disproportionate but mostly undeserved influence on culture.
Such pundits offer their opinions on everything from film criticism and science
to economics and politics; but their commentary is often superficial because
they haven’t first learned those subjects. Rather than translating, they merely
opine.[1]
Guess communication via social media has that same
superficiality of “second-hand peddlers of ideas”. I hope to get to the
sources, and share where living water and bread of life are found for anyone
who is really hungry and thirsty. So I read and write on facebook—as a
translator of unsearchable riches in everyday language!
Elizabeth Gomes
[1]
Jay W. Richards, “Mastering the Vernacular”, in John G. West, The Magician’s Twin: C.S.Lewis on Science,
Scientism and Society, Discovery Institute, pp. 182-83.
