Thou Shalt Not

Apr 26, 2008 | Sunday Sermon, This Life

Boy Wonder: So, my friend. . . he likes to pretend he’s living in a television show.

Me: Really? What kind of show?

Boy Wonder: Well, it usually changes every time I play with him, but he likes to start out by saying, “Previously on. . .”

I can’t tell you how I laughed over that. It’s brilliant, really. I can so identify with this kid—blogging my life often feels like I’m writing for a reality TV show. Or maybe a medical drama or slap-stick comedy, depending on the week. Sometimes this blog even looks a bit like a public access version of Martha Stewart Living, bad lighting and poorly scripted craft projects included.

Of course, occasionally television writers go on strike. And in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been a week of a self-induced writer’s strike on this blog. It’s not that I can’t write. Or even that I won’t. It’s that I’m finding myself hording words. Saving them really. For what, I’m not exactly sure. IZ keeps whispering a nasty four-letter word in my ear. I keep batting him away with little flicks of the wrist, because I’ve never had any aspirations for publication (book became a dirty word in grad school).

Actually, that’s not exactly true. There was once a time in my life where I had every aspiration to publish—but that was because the word publish was directly linked to the word perish and as such, a necessity of life. I don’t doubt that my ego would have been immensely gratified, but it’s not like I’ve ever had a burning desire to see my name in print. While we might associate publication with glamour—uh, yeah, Oprah’s book club isn’t in the habit of pushing narrative theological tomes. Ever.

So, no. I don’t have dreams my blog will “make it big.” I could care less. And no, I harbor no delusions that anything I write here is publishable beyond the click-publish move I make to post this to my blog. It’s just that lately, what I have been writing doesn’t seem to fit here. Write what you know and know your audience. This blog isn’t the place for what’s been eating away my fingernails and haunting my sleep.

The thing is, though, I have no ambition for publication. It’s a ridiculous amount of work and I’m inherently lazy. I mean, for starters, I’d have to stop abusing commas and parenthetical statements—clean up my act and my copy to submit to an audience that might want to read my work. I don’t see that happening. Which leaves this blog abandoned while I write for no reason other than to horde.

For the record, hording is BAD. In fact, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures forbids it in Exodus 20. We know it as the 10th commandment. Thou shall not covet, something, something, something. . . Our understanding of that word, covet, is a bit off. We’re too literal as are most of the translations of the Hebrew. However,  some scholars are more liberal in their interpretation and believe that this is a direct commandment to not horde. It’s called latifundialization; we’re implored to not scoop up everything in sight in order to keep it for ourselves.

Now, this twenty-dollar-don’t-use-while-playing-scrabble word doesn’t really apply to my lack of posting. It is addressing the nasty business of wealthy land-owners consolidating land to the detriment of smaller subsistence farmers—putting the lives of many at risk for the enjoyment of the few. So, yeah, the 10th commandment has NOTHING to do with my self-imposed writer’s strike. Except, I can’t shake the sensation that I’m hording. Inside my head is this wicked 10th century (BCE) landlord shouting in his most miserly voice, “Mine, mine, mine—no words for you! You can STARVE! Down with the petty masses, it’s all MINE!” Of course, he speaks Hebrew, so that’s just a loose interpretation.

Hording thoughts and hording ideas and hording words. This is where the analogy stops. But it is enough to put me in a pickle. I’m writing words and hording them while leaving this page blank. It would be one thing if I were making an attempt to put those words out there in a different venue, but I’m not. It’s not that I can’t write or won’t write. It’s that I’m hording what I am writing. For no other reason than I can.

Thou shalt not. So maybe, I’ll call an end to this writer’s strike and start blogging again.