Ever since Walhydra entered the cyberspace bulletin boards and listservs back in the mid-1990s, she has marveled at the power of online correspondence to create and sustain friendships among people who have never met. She is still in touch with some of her closest fellows from that era.
It's no longer a mystery to her to learn in biographies and histories of the lifelong, voluminous exchange of letters between friends and lovers of previous centuries, people who lived across continents or oceans, and who might not see each other for decades, if ever.
Now, with the blogosphere, Walhydra sees an even deeper level of intimacy...intimacy which is remarkable for its frankness, given that it is out there for everyone—including our government's spies—to see.
The longing—and readiness—to know people at a real level of personhood ignores the dangers of distance or chance discovery.
And so...Walhydra wants to acknowledge the writing of one of her newer friends, Cat Chapin-Bishop, who, with her husband Peter Bishop, publishes Quaker Pagan Reflections.
In particular, Walhydra wants to direct the gentle reader to Cat's latest piece, about family life a decade ago with Peter's then 90+ grandmother Nora.
Cat and Walhydra—and the amanuensis, of course—have been trading comments across each other's blogs, as well as across the larger Quaker/Pagan blogosphere.
A harmonic resonance gets going in such exchanges.
Yesterday Walhydra cried—thankfully—when the story of Nora connected with that of her own mother, Senior Witch.
In turn, last night the amanuensis was finally able to write "On waiting and squirming" for The Empty Path, having now understood what it was actually about.
Thank you, Cat. Thank you, all of you cyberfolks. Thank you, readers.
And Blessèd Be
