Lockdown Letters

This collection of “Lockdown Letters” contains selected entries of writing submitted to Sela Co-publishers and Mentor’s Collective in 2020.  The aim of this writing project was to capture personal lockdown occurrences, lest we forget how this time in history has deeply affected our lives.

To this end, “Lockdown Letters” is a concept that emerged from Ken Holloway: “What a great shame not to remember things that we may never have a greater chance to learn again. It would be wonderful to capture some of those discovered life lessons and genuine pearls of wisdom, and scribe them, God-centered, into succinct, eloquent and profoundly honest manuscripts for mankind!”  From conceptualisation, the invitation was delivered to the multilingual and ethnically diverse people of South Africa.  Novice and expert writers of any age, gender and cultural heritage were prompted to share their excitations and we encouraged submissions in any official South African language.

For many of our authors who scribed their lockdown life, these acts of writing became acts of healing.  Given the extremity of the lockdown experience – through months of house-arrest, sabbatical, isolation, dormancy, introspection, best holiday/worst holiday, hibernation, heaven, hell, bliss, abyss, call-it-what-you-like – it was natural for South Africans to experience a variety of emotive highs and lows.  “Lockdown Letters” demonstrates the complexity of such emotions experienced during this time. Yet, in this complexity, is a prominent simplicity: of heart, strength, and spiritual awakenings.

These letters are not pompous or perfect.  They are God-inspired inklings of raw moments lived out by others.  Full of beautifully vulnerable and spiritually real introspections, learnings, habits, developments, changes, acknowledgments, bewilderments, intentions, and promises.  A historical treasure that reveals intelligent insights and a peripheral perspective to our own personal experiences.