Stories
It's been said that there are only half a dozen stories. The claim is that writers only recycle and reimagine the basic plotlines that have existed for hundreds of years.
Obviously, six is an arbitrary number. Still, I think it's important to remember that most stories do share a kind of creative DNA. Whether that DNA is labeled "quest," "metamorphosis," or "forbidden love," every story is a combination of utterly unique detail and shared structure.
It seems that stories have been a part of God's plan for his creation from the beginning. And I do mean the beginning: "And God said, 'Let there be light." The first storyteller. The first story.
He's been telling stories ever since.
I've found that I cannot comprehend my own life or the universe in which I live apart from stories. There are the big stories: creation, fall, redemption. There are stories within those stories, like the deliverance, wandering, and homecoming of the Hebrew people after slavery in Egypt.
And then there are the stories God is telling in every single human life.
Like those found in Scriptures, myths and novels, these human stories are beautifully unique in their details, but they too participate in the shared elements of story. Creation. Fall. Redemption. Romantic Pursuit and Love. Deliverance. Wandering. Homecoming.
I often wish I could smooth away all the complications in my life. I pray for God's blessing and hope he keeps tragedy at bay. But, I know that if my wishes always came true I would be left with a life that is no life at all. With a life that tells no story.
Which do you prefer: the blank page of a comfortable existence?
Or, a work of art?
Sacred Work
Yesterday was all about the space shuttle in our house. The littlest boy jumped up and down when he saw the rocket poised for takeoff on television. The older boy zoomed around the house with his own plastic space shuttle. The husband kept his eyes glued to the live feed from NASA.
The daughter and I watched them for a bit and then decided it was a good morning to replenish the refrigerator with a visit to Costco.
Later, as I carried warehouse shopping odds and ends from the car to the kitchen, I could hear from the television and the three boys on the couch that the shuttle was finally beginning its journey. I walked outside for another load and spied the southern stretch of sky where we've watched other shuttles speed away, chased by their fiery tails. Because of the low-lying clouds, we could only watch this historic takeoff on television. The husband and I are both glad that he took the time, months ago, to drive our two oldest down to a beach where they could feel the rumble of space flight deep in their bones.
Perhaps it was the tantalizing thought of "right there but unseen" that prompted my thoughts. I knew exactly where the shuttle's flight path arced over my neighborhood, but I couldn't see it. I wondered if God was watching. What did he think of it all?
I imagined his delight as his tiny yet magnificent creatures explored a little patch of space.
I've always given space exploration little value, both with my political self (I'd rather see tax dollars spent on teachers and healthcare) or my spiritual one (shouldn't more of that innovation and energy go to helping AIDS orphans?).
For a moment, I let go of my usual practical mindset and glimpsed the joy of our creator when he watches his people. Creation isn't comprised only of stars and trees and rivers. It is also everything we add to it with our minds and hands and hearts: our work, our play, our praise.
I won’t try to convince you that washing dishes is holy. It may be, but I’m afraid if I begin to argue that point I’ll find myself typing out bitter phrases like unending cycle of futility. It is summer, after all. My kids are at home and eating all day long, and I loaded and unloaded my dishwasher four times yesterday. I think some bitterness is understandable.
Still, I’ve begun to think that we sometimes needlessly complicate our lives by insisting on purpose and meaningfulness in all that we do. Surely that can lead to a whole lot of dissatisfaction. For the born-evangelist who spends his days trying to build a small business. For the one called to be a teacher who must spend more time mopping floors than instructing. And for me, who has a paper on the wall that says PhD but picks up stacks of academic journals only because the youngest needs a booster seat.
I’m sorry, but washing dishes will never seem meaningful to me, and yet, I think I can begin to understand how even this menial work contributes to some bigger, some more glorious creation. From the perspective of vast, unexplored space, the effort of this space shuttle flight also appears very, very small. Inconsequential, even. And it may be exactly that. But I don’t think we should measure our work by the weight of it or by its duration. There is a perspective that says the just-cooked meal and the space shuttle’s flight are both a blink of an eye.
I think we can take our cue from the mind of the maker. The one who made redwoods that live thousands of years is the same one who makes mayflies. He has given his effort to both. He isn’t a God who sifts his creation into worthy and unworthy, like a man sifting gold from rock. He’s a God who delights in more, more, more. Especially the small more of our own contribution.
“How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”
(Psalm 104: 24)
In Defense of Reading
I've had the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy sitting on my nightstand for six months. Both of my sisters told me that once I started I wouldn't be able to put it down. I believed them and so I saved it, and then I think I just forgot about it. I got used to seeing it there, unopened by my bed.
Feeling a little desperate for reading material, I grabbed it on my way to my daughter's swim meet yesterday. In between races, she played with friends, and I read. After the meet, my husband worked the early evening shift in our try-to-keep-the-two-year-old-in-bed night job, and I kept reading. I'm an early-to-bed girl, but by 10:30 I was calculating the cost/benefit ratio of staying up to read till the end.
It took an act of will, but I eventually went to bed. Instead, I let my kids watch two hours of cartoons after breakfast so I could finish.
It's been a while since I last fell head-over-heels into a great story. It made me think about reading as a kid (the most perfect, magical books will always be the books we first loved) and all the reading I've done since. A lifetime of words and stories. A lifetime of living other lives, of seeing the world through other eyes.
Growing up in a family of six, I was the only reader. These days my mother and sisters troll my shelves like the local library and even my Dad can't get enough of his Kindle, but, back then, I was the butt of many jokes. They couldn't really understand my insatiable appetite for books.
I think their favorite joke (at least, it's the one I remember hearing the most often) involved the fact that I read while at our Grandmother's west Texas farm. Thinking about that farm, I remember jumping hay bales and making mud pies in the barn, but I've no doubt I plowed through quite a few books during those visits too. My family loved to say, "Look at her! She'd rather read about a farm than enjoy one!"
I suppose there's some truth to what they said. I could read about the hardships of Laura Ingalls' long winter again and again, but I'd never want to live them. Still, I don't subscribe to the assumption implicit in this joke: that books give second-hand experience and thus lead to a second-hand, perhaps even a second-rate, life.
All this has recently come back to me because I've been reading my way through a stack of books on bee-keeping, chicken-raising, and other farm pursuits. Lately, my small Florida vegetable patch has seemed like nowhere near enough, and I've been dreaming about raising (at least a little) of our own food. I may be planted in the suburbs for now (no chicken coops allowed), but a girl can dream.
The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals may be a far cry from The Hunger Games, but, today, I'm feeling a little sorry for all the non-readers out there. Day-to-day, I may walk a fairly narrow path, but books like these have always set me in a wide-open place. Here, there's adventure. There’s heroism and triumph. There are even a few bees and laying hens. Just don't tell my community association. I'm sure their bylaws wouldn't approve.