For an Audience of Three

I wrote a book last Saturday night. The idea was conceived at 9:00 p.m., written down by midnight, illustrated and published in the wee hours of the morning, and the single inscribed copy delivered to its readership of three persons just hours later at our Sunday morning worship service.

Each line is printed large within a hardbound journal on a page coloured by big and bright photographs pressed in with glue. The written text is biblically patterned and runs along these simple and familiar lines:

On our island, there is a time for everything under the sun

            A time for sailing and a time for fishing . . .

            A time for harvest and a time for tea . . .

            A time to be together and a time to be alone . . .

And so it continues page after page, the story of our three grandchildren on their “without-mom-and-dad” holiday to our island this past week.

Naturally, the children were delighted to receive a book in which they were the main characters but what startled me was how breathlessly elated I was to have produced it! Several dozen scholars and students (if I am lucky!) may read my scholarly book on Noah and many more might eventually read a book that introduces the Dead Sea Scrolls into the life and worship of the church. Yet this book-for-three may never leave the home of these “Three Little Wolfs” living in Abbotsford.

So I wondered whether, for me, the satisfaction of producing a written work is not necessarily dependent on the number of its eventual readers. Instead, perhaps the more I love my subject and the more I love the persons I am writing for, the less I care about the size of the readership. (Naturally, a publisher is obligated to care about the numbers but that is another matter, entirely!)

As biblical scholars at TWU, we hope that our work and the work of our graduate students might “make a contribution to biblical scholarship.” At first, this phrase would chase my imagination into a massive and imposing library of stacks upon stacks of scholarly books and journals into which I might dare to venture from time to time in order to deposit my slim offering in the hope that someone (anyone!) might pick it up and find it useful.

More recently, in my imagination, my scholarly writing has become much more personal than that, more like a gift given to respected friends to whom I have been listening for years. When it is my turn to “speak,” I try to present a gift that consists of well-constructed argument and carefully chosen words. While I am fashioning a paragraph or a chapter, I say to myself “This part is especially for you, Alison, or for you, Esti or Devorah or Henryk or George or Marty or Gabriele or Peter.” Then, I look forward to their response, in person or in their scholarly writing, for I am eager to hear the thoughts of my friends on this subject of interest to each of us.

And yet, for me, the most important writing that I do is for the Audience-of-One.  A gift of words sometimes carefully thought out and spoken panim el panim (i.e. “face to face”) or, sometimes, indiscriminately poured out as tears upon His feet. I speak of things stored and treasured in my heart and, because I love Him so, this gift prepared for Him satisfies my soul even more than written gifts opened up for public view.

These last eight months have offered a rare opportunity for writing for the Audience-of-One and for "the Few." I have loved just being in a restful and relatively hidden place. However, in a rather unexpected turning, words written down over these past months are soon to be opened up to the public view before "the Many" although (not yet!) in written form. 

The conference: http://uniteinworship.com/index.php/uiw-toronto-2009

Conference speakers: http://uniteinworship.com/index.php/uiw-toronto-2009/54-uiw-toronto-2009-conference-speakers-and-worship-leaders

The event details: http://uniteinworship.com/index.php/events?task=view_detail&agid=18&year=2009&month=10&day=31