A Life Page by Page

 

Not long ago son Isaac sent me the link for a BBC World Service Forum podcast called The Diary A life page by page. He knows that I have kept what I call a journal and others call a diary (po-tay-to, po-tah-to?) for going on forty years. Below is part of the description of the episode and above is a page from what must have been the childhood diary of a listener -- remember the Spirograph? 

In all these years I have rarely reread my journal entries and I'm not sure why. I still have all my journals, boring looking books with content which is admittedly often mundane. I do reflect on my day in various ways, from the very personal to global issues. Often there is spiritual content and I regularly conclude with a prayer of some sort, sometimes gratitude, sometimes asking God to give me peace or to help someone. Simple. 

The conversation with participants and the background were thought-provoking. I've never really considered that you need to be literate and have time to write a diary. So it isn't surprising that diaries or journals flourished in the monastic world and with those who had personal wealth. Keeping a diary really can be a spiritual undertaking.

I was surprised to hear that diary/journal writing has experienced a resurgence with Gen-Z, the under-forty crowd who are so adept with social media. And that this tends to be "analog", putting pen to paper, even though some entries may be shared on social media afterward. There is something about cursive writing that stimulates the mind in a unique way and is a creative form of self-expression. I can look back and see how my curious hand-writing has evolved through the decades. 

I have missed six or seven days in all those years and haven't missed a single one in the past twenty years or more. I am grateful that good health and relatively stable circumstances have allowed me to do this, even though there have been sorrows and deaths through those years. In all the "hatch, match and dispatch" of personal life and ministry it has been what I hope is a virtious habit to write each day, and I trust that God has been my companion. 

Since this is the Season of Creation or Creation Time I will note that I include the creatures I've seen each day and record the weather. After all, This is God's Wondrous World.

Unfortunately, this 50-minute BBC episode appears to no longer be available. I'm glad I wrote some of my thoughts about it in my journal!

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many people found that keeping a diary was one way of reducing stress during uncertain times. They also felt that it was important to chart their day to day experience of a historic moment in world history. Such diaries will be valuable sources in years to come for historians, providing future scholars with a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people.

These diaries form part of a long tradition of people chronicling their own stories, whether intended for publication or purely to put thoughts down on paper. One of the earliest texts we could describe as a diary was written by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose musings were influenced by Stoic philosophy. Later diaries, such as those by or the African American naval yard worker Michael Shiner or the teenage Anne Frank, have been important in helping us understand society and events from ‘the bottom up’ during a given period.

Iszi Lawrence explores what motivates people to keep diaries. She’s joined by a panel of experts including Dr Polly North, Founding Director of the Great Diary Project at Bishopsgate Institute in the UK; Julie Rak, the Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta who's an expert on what’s known as life writing; and Sergio da Silva Barcellos who’s published widely on diary keeping in Brazil, including a chapter in The Diary: The Epic of Everyday Life.