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1/ Reading Gregory of Nyssa's Life of his sister, St Macrina, and thinking about the way that writing of all kinds, but maybe especially nonfiction, opens our *social* circle to those in the future.
2/ Gregory & Macrina & their brothers St Basil & St. Peter, plus their parents, plus St. Gregory of Nazianzus and Eustathius of Sebaste and others, were a late-classical social circle, an extended family and group of friends. And they wrote-
3/ they wrote about the kinds of things that we write about, and want to read about, about theology and community. They wrote about each other, about God, about the practical details of founding monastaries, about all kinds of things--
4/ and by writing, they invited people in the future into that family, that circle-- and invited themselves into our social circles, we people of the future. Of course they're also currently praying for us.
5/ But the writing part is important, too, for the ongoing reality of the Kingdom of God, for the Communion of Saints. In every age, we must read and we must write, to be companions with each other, and co-conspirators with those in the past and those in the future.
It's very distinct and specific, the way this works with Gregory's Vita-- he's writing it as a letter to a monk called Olympius. He reminds him, in the introduction, of the first time Gregory had told Olympius about his sister:
"I ran across you in the city of Antioch; and you must remember all the different talks we enjoyed, for it was not likely that our meeting would be a silent one, when your wit provided so many subjects for conversation. As often happens at such times, the talk flowed on..."
That conversation, which began as one of those side-conversations you get at theology conferences- this conference happened to be the Council of Antioch in 379- is what became the Vita.
We are invited, as we read it, into the theology-conference-side-conversation of these two men, and into the dinner-table conversation of the big extended family in Pontus.
Writing is, in this way, linked with hospitality and with the joy that is good conversation; it's perpetuating those things across thousands of years. It's a preamble of the hospitality, the talk flowing on, that will be the great conversation of the Kingdom.
