Writer and Reader

"There is no such thing as texts; only readers."

I remember reading that quote in one of Richard B. Hays's books a few years ago, though I don't know who said it and I don't know which book. I bring it up because lately there has been no such thing as regular posts on this blog; only a dwindling number of readers. I don't like this situation. I need to write, but before I do that I need to make the time to write. The temptation is to only write when it helps me in my task of completing an assignment, thus the writing required for blogging gets left by the wayside. This isn't healthy. The beauty of writing posts for Charismata is that it gets me absolutely no where. I only ever write on here because I love to think, I love to imagine, and I love to write. That's the way it should be.

Of course if the postmodern literary critic quoted above is right, then I am writing something that doesn't exist. There is no such thing as a blog post; only people with too much time on their hands. Be that as it may, there is such a thing as a writer. By having my own blog, I am at least pretending to be one. Hopefully I can become a more frequent one in the coming weeks.

I'm giving a presentation on Liberation Theology in under three weeks' time. I don't know very much about Liberation Theology, but my intention is to sketch some thoughts on it here over the next while. There will be nothing revelatory on display, but up to now Charismata has viewed theology exculsively through Western eyes. The next few posts (when they concern Liberation Theology) will thus be a watershed moment in the life of this waning medium.

Back to the quote that kicked all of this off. "There is no such thing as texts; only readers." I mentioned it to a couple of guys after a class in hermeneutics. We've been getting a good laugh out of it ever since, applying its logic to all sorts of real life situations. For example:

There is no such thing as shoes; only shoe laces.

See if you can come up with your own.