Letters from Greece – by Ruth Bonetti

When did you last receive a real-live letter? In a stamped envelope? Special, non?

When a friend mailed me a postcard, I mused how rare letters are in these digital days. How much will be lost in the ether when we move upstairs? 

Letters from seven years’ exploits in Europe almost 50 years ago were diligently typed by my “surrogate mother”. (Précis: When two daughters flew their wings she opened her home and heart to a lonely waif in a proactive move against empty nest syndrome. When I also headed overseas, she was an avid correspondent and shared our lives. "MorMor" and her love still resonate after her death.) 

Letters are Treasure Troves for posterity

What a gift to read letters of our adventures after we returned home! They remind me of my day’s bus tour of Mycenae, Ephesus and Corinth. "Ten hours on a bus is no joy with a Delphi-belly. During stops, I made quick, glassy-eyed forays out, then crept back to the bus." (Remember travel?)

Of  meeting a donkey (not a goat, python or an oracle) at the Corycian Cave on Mount Parnassus, overlooking Delphi. This sanctuary was dedicated to the Greek satyr godling Pan. 

Write YOUR Life Stories

At Saturday’s Omega Writers Book Fair Anne Hamilton urged us to write memoirs for future generations. (How blessed are we, that as in 2020, Omega Writers Book Fair went ahead just before lockdown.) 

 

• How will our descendants piece together our lives without hardcopy written letters? 

• How will they discover about their forebears and discern generational patterns?

“What if your calling is not for this lifetime but later?” Anne challenged. “What if your calling is not for this lifetime but later?” She told of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a medieval epic that languished suppressed, unread for 500 years until popularised by Tolkein. 

“Words have a life of their own. Practise hope.” Her book Dealing with Azazel links Pan to a spirit of rejection, panicked flight and – all too topical – PANdemic. 

Another Greek island; another cave 

Imagine St John the Evangelist in his Patmos Cave of the Apocalypse, writing parchment scrolls to seven churches. Could he have dreamed how many would read his letters of Revelations after Caxton invented the printing press? Or that 2000 years later livestream services beam around the world to hundreds, even thousands? (Sermon credit: Rev Canon Gary Harch at St Mary's Kangaroo Point.) 

Book Fair panel on marketing 

Speakers reminded us to embrace digital technologies of eBooks, Podcasts, Audio Books. We came away uplifted and energised after learning from each other, supporting other writers, and brimming with ideas to send our words around the world wide web. 

St John's gospel concludes: 

"It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true."

What true testimony are you called to write for posterity?

ABOUT RUTH BONETTI

Ruth is grateful for prolific letter-writing forebears, whose treasure troves she shares in her Midnight Sun to Southern Cross Trilogy. View her recent book launch of The Art Deco Mansion St Lucia: What drove the man who built it? Ruth's Indie Publisher great-uncle Karl Johan Back enjoys some limelight at events and ghosts his own FaceBook Author page. 

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