When was the last time you received a letter?
Strangely, there was a time before emails, texts, and all sorts of short-form communication. Try to imagine sending a letter to someone knowing they would not receive it for weeks or months. This was likely the case when Seneca and his friend Lucilius exchanged letters (known today as Letters from a Stoic) two millennia ago.
In their book How to Be, authors Judith Valente and Paul Quenon (previous podcast guests) explain,
There is a long tradition of letter writing among spiritual teachers. Christianity likely would not have spread as quickly as it did without the epistles of St. Paul or the letters of Peter and James. … Through letters, we gain insight into the spiritual lessons and struggles of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross, to name a few. By the time he died in 1968 at the age of fifty-three, Merton had written more than 20,000 letters to poets, novelists, political figures, religious leaders, and a host of other correspondents. The list of avid letter-writers goes on.
Why are letters particularly useful?
There seems to be something to the style of writing letters. Letters feel direct and personal. When I read Seneca’s letters for our Sundays with Seneca series, I usually feel as if they were written to me (and to you!). Take last week’s letter as an example, On the Parts of Philosophy, where Seneca wrote,
“I am not trying to discourage you, excellent Lucilius, from reading on this subject, provided only that you promptly relate to conduct all that you have read.”
The practice of writing letters connects with what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke called living the questions. Rilke put it this way in what is known today as Letters to a Young Poet,
Do not seek out the answers now, which cannot be given to you because it you cannot live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then, without noticing it, you will gradually come, on some far-off day, to live your way into the answer.
It seems that letter writing is nearly a lost art.
To help remind us of the wisdom of writing (and reading) letters. Beginning next week, our Thursday meditation will be in the style of a letter. I’m calling the series Letters to a Young Seeker an homage to Rilke. Granted, we might not all think of ourselves as seekers (or young, for that matter); the point is that we are all fellow travelers on a similar path.
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Until next time, be wise and be well,
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