Blogging is doing it for our time ...

If civilisation is one gigantic neurosis, then writing is, like all art, a form of illness. While there's some mileage in that view, there is even more in the belief that writing is actually a self-curing illness. The writing is what cures the pain of being human. While writing can be a painful process in itself, the pain cauterises even as it burns. Writing heals. When my partner died of cancer much too young, leaving me with two children to bring up, it was the pen that ultimately cured me, not the scalpel. The knife cannot cure suicidal depression. The pen is mightier than the sword.

Or than the WORD -- the spoken word. Which is why I was delighted to see that On An Overgrown Path's quotation from my recent book, To Travel Hopefully, was to do with television, the box that babbles inanely in the corner most of the day and night. It's a box of tricks. And it had no trick in it that could heal my pain. For that I needed a donkey, a voyage of self-rediscovery, and finally the pen.

Illness, bereavement, loss of a loved one through divorce or death - these are the gates of grief we all go through. In recording and analysing my own grief and recovery, I wanted to universalise the process in such a way as to be of some COMFORT to others - in the original sense of that word: to make strong again. Tennyson's In Memoriam did it for the nineteenth century. The Bible does it for all time. But blogging, it seems, is doing it for our time. Tennyson would have been delighted and I'm sure God is. For me it's certainly a great pleasure. Thank you - Christopher Rush
Email received On An Overgrown Path this afternoon from author Christopher Rush whose new book To Travel Hopefully was featured in my recent article Meanwhile on television ...

Image credits - Profile Books. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to The bookless Mrs Beckham

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