More Blessed E-mails

Selected Incoming Emails over two days.

1. A courtesy reminder from Glasgow Uni Library about books now due, with the gentle threat of draconian fines. So I returned them
2. Suggested arrangements from my pal Ken, coming over from the States and wanting to meet up. Where else, out at the Fort, in Borders, at Starbucks, near Christmas.
3. A friend informed me that a mutual friend has died suddenly, and my sadness is immediate and heartfelt. I pray for her and her family.
4. Amazon inform me that Jurgen Moltmann’s Autobiography, In a Broad Place, has just shipped from the US and will be with me by New Year. It will displace all other reading as soon as it arrives.
5. Confirmation a meeting is cancelled leaving space for other things that also need doing. The tyrranny of the diary occasionally broken.
6. Extra papers arrive for a big all day meeting on Monday. I refuse to open the attachments till early Monday. The tyrranny of the immediate, the urgent, the allegedly essential is also occasionally broken.
7. A thank you from the University nursery for sending now obsolete Paisley University headed paper to the nursery where children will ‘recycle’ them.

It’s too easy to moan and grump about email, the work it creates, the administrative nagging it represents, the impersonal tone and blunt instrument prose. But it also allows all kinds of social exchange – and can usually be humanised and made people friendly. On balance, I wouldn’t have wanted to not receive any of these emails – except maybe the late papers. But even then – why not make allowances for those times when people’s work is done late? How do I know the hassle, the late working, the impossible workloads, and the normal failings and mistakes of ordinary folk trying to do their job? Have I never missed a deadline, overlooked an important detail, failed with the best will in the world to get through the day’s ‘to do’ list? Course I have – and so have you.

Blessed are those who receive emails, and the wisdom, humour and patience, to see the humanity of the person who clicked ‘SEND’.