Out Walking

Festival of Faith & Writing (Day Three Addendum): The Importance of Beauty

The festival ended tonight in a fitting way, with Katherine Paterson's encouragement to create stories of beauty.  Paterson said that "The stories that a culture creates will shape the worldview of that culture."  She used Thomas Aquinas's definition of beauty as that which has integrity (simplicity), harmony (elegant symmetry), and brilliance (clarity).  She feels that we have confused beauty with moral aphorisms, made literature of value only in service of moral education.  The Bible, she said, is full of moral guidance but its theme is beauty. She read Genesis 1 and noted the "good" referred to by God is the beauty of what is made.  Rolo May said "Beauty is born in play."  She encouraged not to go home burdened by duty, but ready for play.

It was really a beautiful contrast to the opening conference address by Mary Gordon, a rather sad perspective that beauty (or stories) has little to do with making us better people.  Katherine Paterson would not agree.  She encouraged me.  I had the sense after all I heard today that writing was too much work, meaning too much toil; really, it's a playground, something to delight in.  Play hard, yes, but play.  Just play.

Festival of Faith & Writing (Day Three): Tools

Some people come to the Festival of Faith & Writing just to meet writers.  They don't write; they read.  They want to see the shape of the person who actually crafted the story.  I'm a little like that.  Today, Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy and, more recently, The Used World, which I read, was signing books in the campus store.  I like Haven's books, but I was too self-conscious to get in a line with 30 other women to get my book signed.  But I did get a look at her, and Zippy doesn't look like I thought!

Far from just listening to authors, today was a day of mechanics, of tools for writing.  A morning session on editing featuring writer Shauna Niequest and Zondervan editor Angela Scheff was humorous but of limited utility.  It was like the banter of two Valley girls.  Yet I did glean four important truths: write vocationally (set a time and do it); edit everything; find a structure (outline your book, even if you do it last); and never write and edit at the same time.

A literary agent, Chip McGregor, gave a very informative talk on developing a book proposal:  big idea, great writing, and a platform.  It was full of details, humorous anecdotes, and good tips.  Crucial: include a sample table of contents to show scope and sequence.

In the afternoon, I listened to Eric Taylor, a historian who wrote a book called The Last Duel, tell how he did historical research.  I figured it might be helpful to a project I'm working on.  It was.  He said that determining how much research was necessary was a continuous process, circular, as he would write some and then determine what he needed to know more about.  Later, he also discussed how to make historical narrative interesting, how to build suspense and create excitement.

But the best of the day for pure inspiration was Daniel Taylor, who told us how to find and tell our master stories, the stories that define who we are and tell us how to live.  He moved me to tears with a story he told about dancing with a girl who had polio when he was a kid, of how that moment defined how he came to view human beings as valuable.  I bought the book from which the story came, Letters to My Children, and had Daniel Taylor sign it.  I love that story.

And that is just about the end of the Festival of Faith & Writing for 2008.  Yes, there is a lecture by Katherine Peterson tonight called "Stories of Beauty," and I'm sure there will be insights from that, but I have reached saturation level.  It's time to do something.  It's time to write.  In the end, it is, after all, just work.

Festival of Faith & Writing: Day Two (An Earthquake)

I didn't exercise this morning, but I was awakened by an earthquake.  I didn't know it at the time of course, but I sleepily noted the time of 5:39 a.m. on my bedside clock, filed it away and rolled over and back to sleep, and later, finding out about the quake in southern Illinois, realized that I had been gently rocked awake by a readjusting earth.  It brought to mind one other time, in the late Sixties.  I was sitting with my family in our small country church at Wednesday night prayer meeting when the lights began shaking, the pews vibrating, and awe came over us.  I thought it was the rapture.  I thought it was our ticket home.  But not yet.

There's been a bit of rapture here in Grand Rapids, here at the Festival of Faith and Writing.  There's been the gentle nudge from God's hand, a tremulous awakening.  To what?  To the idea that I can actually write, might actually write something worth reading, that people do it all the time, and yet to the hard, cold truth that it's not sexy, not grand, but just plain hard work or, as Rob Bell said tonight, just "pure, undiluted slog."  It requires "constant, pragmatic attention" someone said.  I'd have to say that after 23 years of practice that being an attorney is a lot, lot easier than being a writer.  The only reason to do it is because you love words, or because there's something you have to say that you must say or you think you'll go crazy, or maybe something you just find so interesting that you have to think that maybe someone else should be interested in it as well.

This morning Mischa Berlinski, a journalist turned novelist, author of Fieldwork, told us a fascinating tale of a zombie in Haiti, an absolutely true story and one so compelling that he is writing about it.  Brian Doyle, in an engaging talk in which he made us deliberatively laugh as loud as we could and later sing Amazing Grace, whose "small, true stories" made us laugh and cry, drew us into the genre of the personal essayist, telling us that "there are an ocean of stories all around you."  You just have to listen.

Just before lunch, Yale historian Carlos Eire told us of his memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana, a story of his childhood in Cuba just before Castro came to power and just before and after the 14,000 children were airlifted out of Cuba to the United States.  He wrote for four months, unedited, from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00-3:00 a.m., and sometimes all night, until it was completed.  He is a soft-spoken man who never saw his father again after the airlift, who was seared by injustice but spoke of it with grace.  I bought his book.  He signed it.  It's like blood on the page.

After lunch we listening to a dialogue between two essayists, Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian, and Robert Finch, who wrote The Iambics of Newfoundland, a book I did read and admire but which I had a hard time staying awake for.  This was a different take on essaying than that of Brian Doyle, saying that it's not the place to tell your story (like memoir) but a place to communicate about a shared interest, that there is "a displacement of the personal in the service of the essay."  They said the essay is the antidote to the soundbyte; it cultivates the habit of mindfulness.  You write in essay not to tell about yourself but to tell about something you are interested in and think others must be too.  That all sounds too dispassionate to me.

Did I say that it was a beautiful, sunny day of 75 degrees here in Michigan?  We walked to the chapel talking about architecture, me from ignorance, Andy from knowledge.  We want to write a book on faith and architecture and place, or something like that, and we talk this way every now and then.  Maybe we'll do something about it one day but. . . I don't know, it's more fun to talk about doing it.

In the chapel is a special service of music by the Calvin College concert choir, Capella, singing the words of poets, interspersed with the readings of poets.  I think they were burning incense for the experience.  Could that be? Or was it just the overwrought perfume of the woman in front of me?  Never mind.  It was effective.  The voices were amazing, the poems musical though not often immediately accessible (except for George Herbert), and the visual images projected on the screens useful for contemplation.

In the evening we drove out to the mega Sunshine Community Church for a lecture by Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, a Canadian from Quebec, a uber-secular place.  Martel wrote his novel in India about a character who seemed to be Hindu, Muslim, and Christian.  He moved from being a believer in reason alone to being fascinated by faith, and yet we concluded that it was an immature faith, one that could say things like "how could all these Hindus be wrong?"  and "the word 'truth' should not be used when referring to things that are not empirically verifiable."  You have to hope that he will grow in his understanding of the important, exclusive claims of faith in Christ and not forever live in some kind of syncretistic limbo.

At 9:15 I begin listening to a very engaging Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis, a pastor of the emerging church.  By this time my tank is full and I slip out, realizing that I can't hold another thought.  But this I took out, a quote from Theolonius Monk: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." 

Enough talk about writing.  Just do it.  Just write something.  Feel the quake?  Feel that gentle nudge?  My surface is being realigned.

Festival of Faith and Writing: Day One

Never, ever, ever again will I take the 6:00 AM flight.  This morning my friend Andy and I left for three days at Calvin College's Festival of Faith & Writing, a bi-annual fest for readers and writers of literary fiction in Grand Rapids.  I've always wanted to go to this eclectic gathering, but flying out at 6:00 AM is ridiculous.  I set my alarm for 4:00.  However, my body deemed it wise to wake me at 3:00.  I suffered the effects of my foolishness all day --- and yet it was a good day.

Grand Rapids turned out to be surprisingly warm.  By the time we arrived at registration, I had shed my coat and was wishing I had brought shorts.  It was sunny and warm at nearly 70 degrees.  Over 1900 people are registered for this conference.  Looking over the crowd, it was abundantly clear I was among writers and bookish folk.  Many wore glasses.  They looked studious.  Many looked like the folks you meet in used book stores.  They probably smell like old books, speak in flowing prose, and can wax eloquently on contemporary writers such as Updike, Chabon, and Strout, their latest book names bandied about like familiar friends.  I felt somewhat at home among people who love words.

The opening session was by Mary Gordon.  It was not an upbeat start.  Gordon is obviously not a Christian, at least does not profess to be, and is somewhat conflicted about her Catholic upbringing.  The best she could admit to was not faith but "hope in the possibility of possibilities."  She took issue with John Gardiner's view that good fiction makes us more moral people, and yet she admitted that good writing may help us become more compassionate as we grow more attentive to the people and world around us, realizing some of its complexity.

Later in the day, I attended a humorous and yet instructive seminar by David Athey, author of the forthcoming Danny Gospel, about the lessons he learned from writing his book.  It took him 18 years.  He became fascinated with the idea of the "holy fool," the believer who is almost (or perhaps is) mad in his belief.  In the end, I was awed by the amount of revising he did, literally ripping up his work at times to try and get at what needed to be said.  I was struck by his sense that this was the book that God had called him to write, no matter what, and the persevering nature of his quest.  I bought the book, had him sign it, and told him he gave me hope and faith.

Then I attended a dialogue with Davis Bunn and Francine Rivers, both enormously successful writers, Bunn in the genre of the thriller novel, Rivers in the retelling of biblical narratives.  Both have written for the Christian market and mainstream market and discussed the differences.  Bunn said that his goal in writing for the mainstream market was to bridge the gap --- to bring Christian truth to the nonbeliever without any preachiness.  Rivers is, in contrast, firmly rooted in the Christian market, but I found her purpose more message-laden (and thus suspect) I really liked her emphasis on being rooted in scripture and guided by the Holy Spirit, as well as how all her stories begin with a question she has about faith.  There's hope for the Christian novelist!

Finally, the main lecture Thursday night was by Michael Chabon, author of The Yiddish Policeman's Union.  Chabon is an articulate Jewish writer, funny, witty, and thoughtful.  I really identified with his sense of exile, of not having a homeland.  Whereas Chabon created a homeland of his imagination, as Christians we are exiles seeking our homeland in heaven.  Andy and I mused on what the language of heaven would be --- Yiddish?

We skipped the poetry slam, the movie, and the late night discussion.  We opted for sleep.  We'll discuss the language of heaven later --- or not.

On the Edge of Memory: A Short Conversation

"She's not too pretty.  And she's so old."

"Mama, how old is old?  You're 80."

"I'm talking about feeble, so ditsy you don't even know your own mother.  That's what I mean.  I'm not old like Velma is, Jeanine.  I know who my mother is.  I know who you are.  Old is like. . . like him."  She pointed to her husband, rocked back in the recliner watching football, oblivious to our conversation.

"He's 79, Mama, younger than you."

"Well, if he's so all-fired young he oughta get outa that chair and do something.  Don't you think?

I didn't answer.  It wouldn't make any difference anyway.

"What day is it, Jeanine?"

"Wednesday, Mama."

"Don't I have my Bible study group today?"

"No, that's Tuesday, Mama.  You went yesterday."

"I don't think so.  I don't remember going yesterday."

"I took you, Mama."

"Oh, yeah.  I guess so.  They took my license away, you know.  I don't understand why they did that."

"You had an accident, Mama."

"I don't remember any accident.  I never had a speeding ticket in my life.  I just don't understand it.  I can't drive and yet half the fools out on the road drive worse than I ever did.  That's not right. . . Get my reading glasses, will you Jeanine?"  She picked up the TV Guide. "What day is it Jeanine?"

"Wednesday, Mama."

"Be quiet and turn the TV to Channel 6.  Magnum PI is on.  I like Magnum PI.  One of the only decent things on TV.  Don't worry --- he's asleep.  Look at him over there, drooling on himself.  He'll never miss the game."

We watched TV for awhile, the volume deafening, my mother mouthing the words of Magnum, leaning forward in her chair at rapt attention, slumping back only when the commercial came on.

She shook her head.  "That Velma, she's gettin' old and feeble, you know.  Probably even forgot who her Mama is."

"I know Mama, I know.  It happens."

What Buechner Gives Us

For many years I've been an unabashed fan of pastor, teacher, and writer Frederick Beuchner.  Sometimes I even find that things I have written are stylistically like what he writes.  I'd like to think so, but the fact is he is simply an inspiration for me and his writing is something I aspire to.

I was pleased recently to discover that a Frederick Buechner Institute has been founded at King College In Bristol, Tennessee, the initial Director being former Calvin College professor Dale Brown.  A number of years ago Brown wrote a book entitled Of Faith and Fiction: Twelve American Writers Talk About Their Vision and Work, interviewing writers like Doris Betts, Garrison Keillor, Walter Wangerin, Clyde Edgerton, and, of course Frederick Buechner, and his survey of Buechner's fiction,  The Book of Buechner: A Journey Through His Writings, has just been released.  Although the Institute has only begun its work, already it has posted various articles, sermons, and essays by Buechner, as well as a video of Buechner reading three of his sermons at National Cathedral in 2006.  It's the only time I have ever seen a video of him.

If you have never read Buechner, I suggest for fiction that you begin with Godric, his Pulitzer prize winning novel of a very human and yet godly Irish monk.  For memoir, I suggest The Sacred Journey, particularly the first few pages.  I love Buechner's earthy and yet spiritually-charged writing, his attention to the world around him, and his great mining of memory for meaning.  Reading his memoirs is an education in paying attention to your life and, really, seeing Providence at work.  Theologically, he is imprecise; although I believe him largely orthodox in his mere Christianity, he would not consider himself an evangelical, and his opinions on homosexuality would cause a stir in conservative Christian circles (and also illustrate the squishy nature of his theology).  That aside, there's no one quite like Buechner.

I believe what he says is true: "There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, al the more compellingly and hauntingly."  So that's what he has taught me --- to look for God in every memory, every face, every tree and field and place. . . to listen to my life and the life of the world.  For that I'll always be thankful.

The Matter of Why Space Matters

God loves matter, which is why he made lots of it (God must love space even more.) 

(Cornelius Plantinga, in Engaging God's World)

When Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were hurtling through space toward the moon in Apollo 11, they had no idea what they were hurtling  through.  We still don't.  At least we don't know much. In fact, my cats may know just as much for all I know.

I think of space as emptiness, as the absence of things, or matter, and yet scientists say that's not really the case.  As I understand them, outer space is not completely empty (that is, a perfect vacuum) but contains a low density of particles, predominantly hydrogen plasma, as well as electromagnetic radiation, dark matter and dark energy --- mostly the latter two "dark" twins, except we really don't know what they are or if they're really there (kind of like imaginary playmates).  For instance, dark matter is said to be a mysterious substance which scientists think accounts for most of the mass in the universe but that is invisible to current instruments.  We don't really know for sure that it's there, and yet this stuff we can't see accounts for 96% of the universe.  But you know scientists; they positively live to postulate.

But enough of that.  I think of space more in the sense of spaciousness, an openness filling the yawning gaps between good solid things like trees, stars, and people.  There's a lot of it around.  God made it, so he must love it (says Plantinga), and given how much of it there is, he must love it a lot.

God does love space --- the sparseness of it, the roominess of it, the solitude of it, the wonder of it, the silence of it, and the noise of it.  And so should we, or so do we, but for sin's curse.  Because of sin, some of us can't abide being alone in the solitude of space. Agoraphobics, those who fear open places, hide in their rooms, undone by the expanse of space and place.  And some of us, like nettling bureaucrats, rush to fill every interstice of human experience with a regulation, rule, or command --- legalists to the core who can't abide the inevitable space in our codifications of appropriate behavior.  And yet it was not to be this way.

Our distant ancestor, Job, marveled at the emptiness of space, wondering that "he spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing," (Job 26:7) and later concluding that "these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him!" (26:14).  The Psalmist kicks back on the grass outside Jerusalem and wonders aloud: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" (Ps. 8:3-4).  Part of what he considers in those heavens is the juxtaposition of visible objects like stars with the vast spaciousness of space, the separation of what is from what is not.  Kant said space is relationship, a way to order our experience of reality; Newton, that it was absolute, a part of reality.  I think it's both.  Sitting in my office, I enjoy space as something real I can move around in and also the sense of space as a juxtaposition of the empty with definite objects like walls and desks and windows.

I love space.  When I open Scripture to the Creation account of Genesis 1-3, I'm thankful for the vast spaciousness of the Word that made it all.  Behind the words "God made" lies a rich and infinite domain of interpretation, of room for human exploration.  And when I hear the reassuring words of "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path," (Ps 119:105), I'm glad the Word is the lamp and not the path, that I have a sure guide but a vast landscape through which to find my way.  That's space. That's the kind of space God gives us.

Leaving the space of outer space and the vastness of the landscape of life, I'm thankful for the simple yet profound space of a poem.  No one better illustrates the fulsome nature of space with poetic verse than the spare poetry of William Carlos Williams:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

(The Red Wheelbarrow).  Writing about the poem in Understanding Poetry, poet Robery Penn Warren said that "[r]eading this poem is like peering at an ordinary object through a pin prick in a piece of cardboard. The fact that the tiny hole arbitrarily frames the object endows it with an exciting freshness that seems to hover on the verge of revelation."  In other words, more is said by what is unsaid than by what is said. 

And consider the short story, the poor stepchild of the literary world.  (Evidence: The Atlantic Monthly, which published short stories by our finest writers for 150 years, abruptly stopped publishing stories in 2005.)  A story like Flannery O'Connor's "The Geranium," which touches in a concrete way on racism, radiates outward into the unknown.  Who was Old Dudley?  What was his early life like?  What will happen to him?  We don't know.  We can imagine.  We can place this snapshot of life in a greater context we supply -- in space.

We may not know if space is matter, but we know it matters.  If we love it, like God does, if we wonder at it and relish its existence, life will open.  We won't be afraid, but free.

Waves can't break without rocks that dissolve into sand
We can't dance without seasons upon which to stand
Eden is a state of rhythm like the sea
Is a timeless change

Turn your eyes to the world where we all sit and dream
Busy dreaming ourselves and each other into being
Dreaming is a state of death, can't you see?
We must live through who we are

If we can sing with the wind song
Chant with thunder
Play upon the lightning
Melodies of wonder
Into wonder life will open

We are children of the river we have named "existence"
Undercurrent and surface pass in the same tense
Nothing is confined except what's in your mind
Every footstep must be true

If we can sing with the wind song
Chant with thunder
Play upon the lightning
Melodies of wonder
Into wonder life will open

(Bruce Cockburn, "Life Will Open," from Sunwheel Dance, 1971)

Beyond Passable Writing

When I was 10 years old, at most, I was a card-carrying member of the Science Fiction Book Club.  Those days I seemed to read all the time, at least in this genre of fiction --- greats like Ray Bradbury, Robert Henlein, and Issac Asimov were a steady diet.  There was a floral pattern set of soft chairs in my mother's living room (still there but much faded now) in which I would recline, sometimes for as much as four or five hours at a stretch, ignoring calls for dinner, deep into other worlds, dreamily lazing my way through long afternoons.  When I finally put the books down --- because, finally, my mother could not be ignored, or bedtime was nigh, or a friend came calling --- I sometimes couldn't wrench myself from the imaginary world and into this world.  I didn't hear what people said to me sometimes.  Or I walked around for a half hour or so feeling profoundly alienated, voices sounding strange to me, muffled, and the houses and streets pale and mundane, a great let down after where I had been.  Sometime around then I happened to read Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, a tale of a twelve-year old boy's coming to life one summer, discovering the wonder of the world around him.  I was disappointed it was not science fiction, and yet reading it I knew I had stumbled on something grand.  And perhaps it was a part of my own coming alive.

After that, I don't remember reading fiction again, that is, merely for my own pleasure and not as an assignment, until I read a series of Christian novels by Bodie Thoene sometime after higher education.  They were entertaining and certainly passable writing, but looking back at them, I realize that they were not great literature.  I read them because I found them in a Christian bookstore, the same place I found much of the music I listened to at the time.  The message music and message books I trafficked in at the time seemed like sanitized versions of other popular novels.  Thoene's historical fiction reminded me of James Michener's heavily-researched historical fiction, for example.  I didn't really know good literature from bad literature.  But the books in the Christian bookstore seemed safe.  There were no sex scenes and not a trace of profanity.  Furthermore, they had neat resolutions --- perhaps a conversion, a reconciliation, or a new understanding of and reliance on God.  They were not bad, but they were not good enough, not nearly good enough.  So, with few exceptions, I stopped reading Christian lit and took up with better literature by pagans and Catholics and theologically suspect Christians, people like Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Frederick Buechner, and J.R.R. Tolkien (who I read, enjoyed, and really didn't understand back in high school).  I can't settle for merely passable writing any longer when there are greats to be read, masters of storytelling, authors who capture the human story in their fiction.

I am reminded of this because of the excellent article by Donald T. Williams in the most recent Touchstone Magazine entitled Writers Cramped.  His question is where are the evangelical Christian writers who are of the caliber of T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, C.S. Lewis, or Flannery O'Connor, just to name a few.  O'Connor provides the substance of his analysis of their absence, in her observation that "[t]he sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate human reality" and her conclusion that "[y]our beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing."  As Williams notes, when this distinction is not understood, "Christian fiction becomes mere religious propaganda."  O'Connor was nourished by a worldview which was orthodox and true and which informed all she wrote, by a church that recognized and appreciated her vocation as an artist, and by the sense of mystery that the sacramental focus of Catholicism provided and which carried forward into the mysteries that writers explore.

Williams concludes with a challenge for evangelicals to recover biblical emphases that nurture the arts and artists:

Our failure to encourage our people to apply doctrine to the realities of life; our failure to include in our theology the whole counsel of the God who called Bezalel and Oholiab and gifted them as artists; and our pragmatism, an uncritical reflection of American culture rather than a biblical mandate, with our mystery-impoverished worship tradition are all simple failure to be what we claim to be, faithful to Scripture.  They could be changed without threatening any of the doctrinal emphases that we think we have been right about.

Next time I visit my mother I may take along a copy of Dandelion Wine, sink my middle-aged body in that seemingly shrunken chair, and remember what it was like to be twelve, so I can better remember what it's like to be 49, to be human, to have a sense of wonder at life.  I'm done with passable writing; I want the best, I want the ones who can truly see.

Where Stories Live

"There's something delicious about writing the first words of a story.  You can never quite tell where they'll take you.  Mine took me here."  (Beatrix Potter, in the movie, Miss Potter)

These first words spoken by Beatrix Potter in the opening scenes of the movie of her life, Miss Potter, so aptly sum up the excitement of telling a story, of not knowing the end in the beginning.  That's part of the joy of writing, the sense of discovery along the way.

I have read that some successful novelists map it all out in the beginning --- the characters, the background, the conflict or point of tension, and the resolution (conclusion).  I'm sure it works, but how boring it seems.  I haven't written a novel, yet, but I'd much prefer to begin someplace, perhaps with a character in a particular scene, and see where it goes.  You can never quite tell where they'll take you.  Characters take on a life of their own and seem to propel a story.  It's not that you never look ahead, as you must see something of what is coming in order to write, but maybe you only see the next step and not the whole life.  After all, a writer is creator, not Creator; not omniscient nor omnipotent.  And characters are free, aren't they, to be who they are?

I'm struggling with this now.  I began a story just this way several months ago.  There's Henry, and Babette, each of whom I'm following and whose lives have not yet intersected.  I stopped writing because I'm not sure I know who they are, or at least I don't sufficiently know who they are.  I have some sense that they will meet, but how, and when?  Do I just begin again, going day by day and seeing what happens?  Do I plan it out?  A little of both?

Perhaps it isn't either/or but both/and.  I think of our own lives under God's rule: "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps" (Pr. 16:9).  Like us, characters live and have free will in their story, and yet the writer is sovereign and has a purpose that will prevail, incorporating all their plans into his one plan.  Or maybe its like Paul said, that we are to "continue to work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in [us] to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:12-13).  Characters have a life of their own, and yet they are forever guided by our good purpose; all their diversions can be worked into that good purpose, in the end.

There's tension in any writing.  That's where stories live.  I just want to get to the point where I can say Mine took me here.

(Please Don't Stop Me, I'm) Metaphorming

"With similes, our delight comes from the containment of seeing only the images given us by the poet and no others. . . ; [w]ith metaphor, we range farther." (Suzanne Clark, in The Roar On the Other Side)

Scripture is full of metaphors. Jesus says he is the door, the good shepherd, the light, the cornerstone, and so on, enough to confound any literalist on Scripture! In fact, there are more metaphors than similes: the gospel is not fenced in but runs wild, uncontained. We ask how is he the good shepherd, how is he the door, and our minds run free with the associations, bounded only by other portions of Scripture as impressed on our hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit.

I am a blade of grass, you a grain of sand among many, and yet we are stars that shine, a little lower than the angels -- friends of God. The same door that opens to the Kingdom of God, the one that bears such a positve image in our minds of a welcoming knock, an invitaton to come in, will one day slam tightly shut and bar the way to those who reject God. But who slams it? The ones who reject God.

Clark says that "[t]he ability to make associations, to think in metaphors and similes, is evidence of God's image in us. We think analogically, instinctively, because that is who we are. We read of God as Father, and associations with earthly fathers spring to mind. We say God is good and must immediately associate the abstraction of that word with, say, a father's love, a selfless person like Mother Teresa or Aunt Flora on your father's side once removed who never, never thinks of herself. Or maybe even the faithful, loving dog who always returns though neglected and mistreated by his master. That word "good" is unfenced, set free, encompassing everything that is the antithesis of bad.

There's another thing she notes about such imaginative language: "Imaginative language --- poetry --- trains the mind in faith. For what is faith but divine realities we can only imagine, 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' (Heb. 11:1)." I never thought of it that way. Metaphorming --- the ability to make associations between things --- is essential to a growing faith, a realization of the richness and otherworldly and fulsome character of the Good News.

Suzanne again:

"When Jesus proclaims, 'I am the Bread of life,' he removes all our fences of seeing. He is entirely bread --- nourishing, flavorful, essential. Rising and resurrection are in the loaf, too. It is bread enough for the whole world, and of this Bread we must eat or perish. 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.' (John 6:53). Is this metaphor? Is this not mystery? Let us keep silent."