We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are, to see through plastic sham to living, breathing reality, and to break down our defenses of self-protection in order to be free to receive and give love.
~Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water, 67.

Recent years have been challenging on many fronts for me. There’s a certain cynicism that can come into play with the facts before me. It’s from a lack of seeing. I don’t see full reality. The spiritual plane is beyond me. Even the physical plane is beyond me. I can’t process it all. Sometimes it skews negative. There’s plenty wrong with the world. But there is more that is and can be. That hope needs to be held onto.

I originally started this website because I was inspired by the community and creativity of people like Tom Sine. I was inspired by the prophetic imagination of Walter Brueggemann. And if I had a muse, it would be Madeleine L’Engle. There’s signs of life in pop culture, as Paste Magazine taglined. There’s life that can be found, if we want to see it. It’s challenging for it all not to be drowned out in the culture wars and the many other wars. I’m not arguing for complacency, but rather for bold imagination. And the religion that grips my imagination is the one that loves the other, that goes where there is darkness, that serves those in need, and that doesn’t live in angry fear. And with that, I look forward to rediscovering my imagination in 2016.

This is the dogma we find so dull—this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero. If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore; on the contrary, they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left to later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him “meek and mild,” and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. (Sayers, 6)

It would not perhaps be altogether surprising if…there were a number of people who knew all about Christian doctrine and disliked it. It is more startling to discover how many people there are who heartily dislike and despise Christianity without having the faintest notion what it is. If you tell them, they cannot believe you. I do not mean that they cannot believe the doctrine: that would be understandable enough, since it takes some believing. I mean that they simply cannot believe that anything so interesting, so exciting, and so dramatic can be the orthodox Creed of the Church. (Sayers, 20)

These words from Dorothy Sayers are part of a collection called Creed or Chaos published in 1949. She outlined the drama before the first quote above. I want to highlight her main point though, that “The Dogma is the Drama.” The doctrine, or teaching, centers around the story of Christ, which as Sayers says, is anything but boring.

Now, there is a bit of a straw man here. Doctrine can be boring. Dogma can be boring. However, if we’re actually teaching our creed without taming it first, it isn’t boring. It’s kindof like primary and secondary school history textbooks, in a way. When we tame history to the point where it isn’t offensive to anyone, it’s boring. History isn’t boring.

Further, the Christian creed contains a historical claim of a supernatural event involving a God. If we try to make it too rational so it’s believable, we rob it of the drama. Now, one can make a rational case for the existence of Jesus and the resurrection, but the proof is insufficient. I personally believe in the resurrection as a historical event while also recognizing there is an element of faith to it. But not faith purely. I believe in the supernatural based on experience and stories I’ve heard from others.

And this is part of it: we are a community of people who are part of a story which is absurd based on our current understanding of what is rationally possible. We need to embrace that and embody that. We can’t expect everyone to believe a supernatural story is true. We can’t expect people to believe in a moral code based on the supposed inspirations of a superior being. But we can present the supernatural drama as the story we are part of, and we can be changed by it. Besides, based on the movies people watch, we seem to like the unbelievable, don’t we?

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully. Fiction is an art that calls for the strictest attention to the real—whether the writer is writing a naturalistic story or a fantasy. I mean that we always begin with what has an eminent possibility of truth about it. Even when one writes a fantasy, reality is the proper basis of it. A thing is fantasy because it is so real, so real that it is fantastic.
-Flannery O’Connor in Mystery and Manners

What O’Connor says about fiction can apply to any story, and that’s the way I’m going to look at it here, though I do happen to agree with what she said about fiction. Feature articles, which are technically nonfiction, are written using story elements. Biographies are also driven by story.

The New Testament gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John) are said to be in a format that was used for biographies during that historical period. One could quote Jesus, “I am the bread of life,” or one could quote words written about Jesus, “Jesus wept.” Sometimes, this is enough, but there is more experienced meaning in the whole story, is there not?

Jesus often told parables. Summarizing the parable of “The Good Samaritan” isn’t the same as hearing Jesus tell the story, and some of the experienced meaning isn’t the same because Jesus told that story to a specific man at a certain place in time. Still, he knew others were listening.

God could have inspired a collection of books of facts. He did give us some of those, but the Bible is mostly written in poetry and narrative, and thus it’s more than just cognitive. This isn’t about modernistic rationalism vs postmodern experience. Both are inadequate. It’s that the story is more than the summary at the beginning or the description on the back of the cover. For visual mediums, like movies, experience also applies. Reading a review of a movie, such as The Hobbit, is not the same as watching the movie.

I agree with O’Connor that truth and story are not on opposite sides. Good stories are not so abstract as to have no relevance. They have an element of truth that we experience.

As Madeleine L’Engle says in Walking in Water:

When the powers of this world denigrate and deny the value of story, life loses much of its meaning; and for many people in the world today, life has lost its meaning, one reason why every other hospital bed is for someone with a mental, not a physical illness…The world of fairy tale, fantasy, myth, is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it, for it is interested not in limited laboratory proofs, but in truth… We are to be in this world as healers, as listeners, and as servants. In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars. We write, we make music, we draw pictures, because we are listening for meaning, feeling for healing.

When L’Engle references the secular world, she is talking about the modernistic side of it that puts too much emphasis on facts and propositions. Now, facts are important, but we are more than simply rational beings. And thus, we offer the world more than principles and perceived facts. We tell and live stories. We show and create stories. We give flesh to truth.

Slavery is part of the American story, our story. Yet, there are so many stories untold. There are moments where I’ve thought further back in history to the stories told, and how many of those stories are of the elite, of the victors, or of the warriors. That’s not surprising. Written literacy has often been limited, writings may not have preserved, and printing was expensive. Also, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that victors tend to write the dominant historical accounts and that people at the bottom of the social ladder, such as slaves, don’t have much social capital to have their personal stories be recorded.  No doubt there are exceptions in history.

There are just so many untold stories in the world, and it makes me curious. Today, many of those stories are recorded in some fashion, but there are still stories we’ll never know. It’s hard to foresee what our stories will look like in the future with the advent of social media and the ability to publish our ongoing stories. That is only part of the narrative though. For we are more than what we represent in snippets online. We’re also more than long journal entries, though they may tell a more complete tale. Maybe we’ll be able to construct a virtual persona of a past person based on what he or she said and did, but that still won’t be all of that individual, and it won’t be that person.

We have one of the ironies of today, that we can be so known, yet still be not known. People can read my posts, and still not know me. It’s hard to fully know a person though, save my creator who knows my past and knows my present thoughts. I can be more known than my public persona though, through long time friends and relationships. I’m thankful for that, but I still wonder about all the people in history who we know almost nothing about.

What of all the commoners? What of all the surfs? What about the various slaves? We know much of the Greeks who wrote philosophy. What of all the slaves whose labor allowed them to focus on democracy? Even that can be too melodramatic though, because I can forget that the person I pass by on the street has a story. Once I was talking to people who lived on the streets of Harrisburg. I heard them weave their tales. One woman told her told her story with a poise and wisdom that awed me.

We can be enamored with the stories of the famous storytellers in our society: people like actors, athletes, anchors and politicians. We are storytelling creatures, after all. Yet, there are stories all around us that can be told in first person. That makes me realize that perhaps the stories untold to my eyes are not entirely untold. Slaves and surfs and commoners and everyone else may have told their stories around a campfire or to a friend. And before writing, there was oral history that carried them on.

For my friend Andi who wrote The Slaves Have Names, stories were hard to find, so she imagined for us what they may have been. It’s hard to imagine, but it’s those stories that help us empathize. Maybe we can even find a piece of ourselves in someone else’s story. I don’t know most of your stories, but we all have them, and they are part of what connects us with each other. They are part of who we are.

Among his first thoughts: Every part of man is affected by sin, this includes both imagination and reason. At the same time, while peoples’ rational minds are fallen, the “Bible uses reason and logic all over the place.” He then expounds on the value of reason to know God, since God does talk about himself uses propositional reason. While admitting that he was too focused on reason, he doesn’t then focus too much on imagination. They are both important, and both necessary.

He gives a brief history of modernity and it’s effect on Biblical interpretation. He also gives a number of Biblical examples of figurative language and of the arts. I may highlight some of these in future posts. Here’s some of his thoughts on literalism:

In my fear of becoming “liberal,” and in my overemphasis on the rational, I discovered that I had been interpreting the Bible in a way that is was not intended to be interpreted. Literalism has become a code word for reducing Biblical language to raw physical description or rational timeless truths, rather than allowing the imaginative poetic language of a Jew situated within the ancient Middle East. Yes, there is much in the Bible that is historical realism, much that is literally true, but it is mixed in with so much imagery, hyperbole and symbol that I simply can no longer claim to read the Bible literally. Instead, Iv’e come to read the Book “literarily.”

I highly recommend the book if you have any interest in imagination’s place in the Christian life.

A girl in northern Iraq ran toward a bunker with her father. A Japanese photographer was capturing this unfolding drama on the front lines of the war, and he followed the girl with his camera until she was safely behind the bunker. But as he put his camera down, he noticed a look of horror on her face.

She realized that as she was running away from the bullets, she had stepped on a flower.

Before anyone could say or do anything to stop her, she let go of her father’s hand, and she ran back to the flower, knelt down, and she tried, in vain, to restore the flower by holding it up in her little hands.

As she tried to resurrect beauty, a cruel stray bullet pieced her body.

She fell, crumpling on top of the flower.

He goes on to ask the question: Would we give our lives for beauty?

If the story and question piqued your interest at all, I suggest reading the whole commencement address, as I don’t feel I can really summarize it.

The initial story made me pause, then I read it again, and again. It’s sad, but there’s something beautiful about the idea of trying to restore a flower, and it’s poetic to die trying, though there’s no rational way the tradeoff is worth it. But, as Fujimura says, there is something genuine in pursuing beauty in a world of violence and discord. He says so much more though.

“This girl, by turning back toward the path of danger, rather than running into safety, graduated. She graduated from the horror-stricken world full of bullet holes. She graduated toward beauty and sacrifice.”

“Thus, through the bullet holes, through the wounds of our ‘Ground Zero’ conditions, God chooses to shine his light.  The wounds represents not just our Fallen conditions, but the possibility toward the Generative.”

It’s the questions that make me think. Will beauty save the world? Would I give my life for beauty? God created the world and said it was good, a word that in other verses is translated as beautiful. God died for his fallen created people and restored them, but died in the process (then rose in glory).

I wouldn’t have valued a fallen flower. I was raised in a land of rain, not desert. I doubt I’d even notice. Sometimes I notice things, many times I don’t, and I don’t know what I’d think if bullets were shot at me. I recognize what I think is beautiful, but there is much I miss. There is so much beauty I don’t take the time to see, so much beauty I don’t know is beautiful. It was an Amish man in the city by the name of Freeman Miller who once told a class I was in that he came to love cities because they were full of God’s most beautiful creation: people.

I’m not sure what Dostoevsky meant by “Beauty will save the world.” But I really like that he said it.

While there are differences in culture and time, it’s amazing how many theological and life questions read the same. Some passages I’ve read are not much different than what I might read, or write, on a blog.

I’ve read lots of Christian books by modern writers over the years, but there’s something special about connecting with words from over 1600 years ago.

Poorly written novels—no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters—are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying. Now a statement like this creates problems. An individual may be highly edified by a sorry novel because he doesn’t know any better. We have plenty of examples in this world of poor things being used for good purposes. God can make any indifferent thing, as well as evil itself, an instrument for good; but I submit that to do this is the business of God and not of any human being. (O’Connor, 174)

In context, in this essay from Mystery and Manners, O’Connor is talking about Catholic writers and what they choose to write about and how they choose to portray reality. She makes the point that portraying real people accurately may mean writing about behavior that is non-edifying. She then questions how some well-meaning Catholic writers may write unbelievable stories for a given agenda, and thus try to reflect God with untruth. She then makes the statement above.

There are a lot of ideas that could be unpacked from that. She alludes to standards of literature and what makes a good novel in her statement about a person ‘not knowing any better’ than to like a sorry novel. There are concepts of conveying truth in fiction and of being believable that writers and literature types talk about. The idea I want to focus on has to do with grace.

Having gone to a Christian liberal arts college, I’ve been a part of lots of discussions about Christians and the quality of our work, whether art, writing, or even jobs. I like these questions and think they are good ones to ask. I think quality does matter, not just intent. However, just because a Christian (or Catholic, or whatever) produces poor art doesn’t mean God can’t use it, or that He won’t use it.

I used to listen exclusively to Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), otherwise known as music primarily produced for a Christian audience. Oh, I know, lots talk about using it for evangelistic purposes, but it’s Christians who primarily buy and listen to it. In the years I listened to it, The quality of the songs (as I don’t believe in separating lyric from music, they both make up a whole) has improved over time, but the songs were never considered as good as a whole compared to the mainstream music industry. I heard a number of Christians speak disdainfully about the quality of the CCM over the years. Still, I’ve seen God use it to his glory.

I’ve had times where I wasn’t particularly focused on God but He used my petty efforts to positively affect people’s lives for Him . I’ve seen prayerful efforts fall flat. Maybe they were to His glory to and I was too upset to see it or be affected by His grace. Sometimes we are just too expectant of the result based on our efforts. Sometimes we are too judgmental of others based on what we think of the quality or content of their work.

Having the word Jesus in a song doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, but we should be equally humble about our masterpieces and how we view trite work, because God’s grace extends to us all, and He will use whatever He chooses to glorify Himself. Standards of quality are useful to have, and I think lovingly challenging one another towards excellence is also important, but part of the wonder of God is that He is God, and we are not, and so our standards and our formulas aren’t much in light of eternity.

I need to remember that God’s grace is at work around me and in me, and God will work through all of our efforts, and then I need to extend that grace. I’m thankful to Flannery O’Connor for the reminder.

I cannot live in a world where everything is predetermined, an ant world in which there is no element of choice. I do believe that we all have a share in the writing of our own story… Sometimes the very impetus of overcoming obstacles results in a surge of creativity. It is in our responses that we are given the gift of helping God write our story. (L’Engle, 192)

I find Madeleine L’Engle really insightful, and in looking at my collection of notes from Walking on Water, that quote seemed a good one to start the year with. A lot of people enjoyed Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, where Miller muses about thinking about his life as a story and what kind of story he wants it to be. I liked the idea of thinking of my life as story. I’ve read some books about fiction writing since then, and will be starting a fiction writing class next week. Stories are on my mind.

I chose a path last year that made my own story more interesting to me. I moved to Southeast Asia for an indefinite amount of time. I met some fascinating people who have amazing stories. I applied to grad schools and got accepted, though I ended up not going. I took multiple classes. Though it wasn’t part of the original plot, I went to India and Western Europe. I also read a book on optimism, one that thoroughly changed my perspective of life for the better.

There were obstacles. There always are. Some I enjoyed overcoming. Others blindsided me. Some of my own expectations hit a wall. My plan A, which included pursuing a Masters in International Human Rights at DU, crashed to the ground, leaving me wondering what was to be. Lots of traveling left me exhausted for months. And while mostly feeling up, I’ve had a few moments of frustration and doubt the last 5 months in the states.

Despite those moments, and the challenges still to be faced, I feel like the protagonist (me) has grown quite a bit on this journey, and that overcoming obstacles has helped me to feel like more is possible. I don’t know where the story is going though. I used to struggle more with this ‘hope’ thing. Now, I’m more at peace with realizing that I don’t know the future, and that good things can happen. Like, I don’t know if I will ever get married. I’d like to, but not to just anyone. Earlier in life, I would get down about it, almost in a despairing fashion. Now, I am hopeful that it could happen. It may not, but it can. I’d like to embrace that a lot of good things can happen in my life story, and in the stories of people around me. I wish you all hope in the coming year, and that your stories may be full of life.

With any hobby I try to pursue, there are those moments when I ask myself why I am pursuing it. Sometimes, motivation is far away. I find it easy to write, like I am right now. I enjoy it for its own sake. I expect that I’ll continue to dabble in paint and pastels, but there is the question of What?

As I’ve been writing this post, I starting pondering the idea of trying to paint scenes from fiction books. That might be an interesting exercise, though I’d still like to hone my skills more. What I think I want to do is to go outdoors or to different places, and to try to capture a scene. I like the idea of Impressionism, but I also would like to paint a scene I find interesting. Looking at a photograph, even my own, just isn’t the same. It being winter here, painting outdoors would be a bit challenging, so I might wait till spring when I can more easily be immersed in a scene.

I’m curious what motivates other people to paint or draw. Why do you do it?