The need [for story] is not for the total consolation of narcotic fantasy–our own will performed in airless triumph–but for the credible news that our lives proceed in order toward a pattern which, if tragic here and now, is ultimately pleasing in the mind of a god who sees a totality and at last enacts His will. We crave nothing less than perfect story; and while we chatter or listen all our lives in a din of  craving–jokes, anecdotes, novels, dreams, films, plays, songs, half the words of our days–we are satisfied only by the one short tale we feel to be true: History is the will of a just god who knows us.                 

–Reynolds Price

“Open My Hands”

Sara Groves

I believe in a blessing I don’t understand
I’ve seen rain fall on wicked and the just
Rain is no measure of his faithfulness
He withholds no good thing from us
No good thing from us, no good thing from us

I believe in a peace that flows deeper than pain
That broken find healing in love
Pain is no measure of his faithfulness
He withholds no good thing from us
No good thing from us, no good thing from us

I will open my hands, will open my heart
I will open my hands, will open my heart
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes
To all that You have for me

I believe in a fountain that will never dry
Though I’ve thirsted and didn’t have enough
Thirst is no measure of his faithfulness
He withholds no good thing from us
No good thing from us, no good thing from us

I will open my hands, will open my heart
I will open my hands, will open my heart
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes
To all that You have for me

No good thing from us
No good thing from us
He withholds no good thing from us

I will open my hands, will open my heart
I will open my hands, will open my heart
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes
To all that You have for me

The sheer volume of text-based information on the internet astounds me. Blogs, e-zines, e-books, print magazines with an online presence, online news sites, and more. As I research potential markets for freelance writing efforts, I often emerge from the digital world with google-eyes (having nothing to do with Google.com, although it is my search engine of choice). Overwhelmed is the word that comes to mind. In one sense, it’s exciting and encouraging to know there are so many possible venues for writers. It isn’t as if we’re all submitting stories to the same magazine, with one chance in a million of getting a “yes.” In another sense, it’s discouraging to spend hours sifting through information, feeling at last like I’ve learned a few things but lost precious hours of life in the process. (Isn’t it always that way with the internet, though? It’s the great time-stealer of our age.)

But yes, the volume. The vastness. Am I ready to plunge into it strategically? If not, I’ll probably drown in a sea of words and undeveloped ideas.

So I want to live, honestly and truly. To “live my life inspired” and to “look for the holy in the commonplace.”

Spending my time sleep walking
Moving my mouth but not saying a thing
Hoping the changes would take by working their way from the outside in
I was in love with an idea
Preoccupied with how a life should appear
Spending my time at the surface repairing the holes in the shiny veneer

There are so many ways to hide
There are so many ways not to feel
There are so many ways to deny what is real

And I just showed up for my own life
And I’m standing here taking it in and it sure looks bright

I’m going to live my life inspired
Look for the holy in the commonplace
Open the windows and feel all that’s honest and real until I’m truly amazed
I’m going to feel all my emotions
I’m going to look you in the eyes
I’m going to listen and hear until it’s finally clear and it changes our lives

There are so many ways to hide
There are so many ways not to feel
There are so many ways to deny what is real

And I just showed up for my own life
And I’m standing here taking it in and it sure looks bright

Oh the glory of God is man fully alive.

–Sara Groves

It is also shocking, in the most sarcastic of senses, that I am delighting in the chance to heavily underline my own copy of this excellent book. Here are some extracts (that makes me sound like Mary Bennet, but Mr. Lewis is a far cry from Fordyce):

If you are Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are wrong all through. . . . If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. . . . But of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic – there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.

[People who believe God is beyond good and evil] would say that the wiser you become the less you would want to call anything good or bad, and the more clearly you would see that everything is good in one way and bad in another, and that nothing could have been different. . . If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, “If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God.” The Christian replies, “Don’t talk damned nonsense.” For Christianity is a fighting religion.

My argument against God [as an athiest] was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

And one more from the next chapter:

Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.

Later in the Revelation, there is an ingenious reinforcement of this perception of time as the antichrist is described in a parody of the grammatical name: “it was and is not and is to come” (Rev. 17:8). The antichrist is defined by a past (he was) and a future (will be here, parestai), but as having no present at all. The antichrist is never here and now, there is no existence. He conjures with items out of the past and suggestions about the future but never deals with what is, for there is no is, no present. In the present, antichrist is sheer fraud. But everything that God is and everything that God has been is present, immediate, invading the here and now. Nothing is remote, either in the distant past or in the far-flung future. In God, past and future impinge, constantly, on the present.

Amen.

Even if this one is a hoax, I have decided it would be fun to see a real mirage someday. (Much better than seeing a tornado.)

We live in a noisy world. We are yelled at, promoted, called. Everyone has an urgent message for us. We are surrounded with noise: telephone, radio, television, stereo. Messages are amplified deafeningly. The world is a mob in which everyone is talking at once and no one is willing or able to listen. But God listens. He not only speaks to us, he listens to us. His listening to us is an even greater marvel than his speaking to us. It is rare to find anyone who listens carefully and thoroughly. It is rare to find our stammering understood, our clumsy speech deciphered, our garbled syntax unraveled, sorted out and heard–every syllable attended to, every nuance comprehended. Our minds are taken seriously. Our feelings are taken seriously. When it happens we know that what we say and feel are immensely important. We acquire dignity. We never know how well we think or speak until we find someone who listens to us.

Persons in love often describe the distinguishing feature of their new relationship in some such words as, “for the first time in my life I can say everything I feel and think.” This is not because they have added new words to their vocabulary or because they have taken speech lessons. It is because they have met someone who listens. True speaking is made possible when there is true listening. What good are words without a listener?

Silence in heaven for about half an hour: God listens. Everything we say, every groan, every murmur, every stammering attempt at prayer: all this is listened to. All heaven quiets down. The loud angel voices, the piercing trumpet messages, the thundering throne songs are stilled while God listens. “Hush, hush, whisper who dares? Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.” The prayers of the faithful must be heard: the spontaneous hallelujahs, the solemn amens, the desperate “Why hast thou forsaken me?” the agonized “Take this cup from me,” the tempered “Nevertheless not my will but your will,” the faithfully spoken “Our Father who art in heaven,” the joyful “Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created.” All the psalms, said or sung for centuries in voices boisterous, subdued, angry, and serene are now heard–heard personally, carefully, accurately. God silences the elders and the angels. Not one of our words is lost in a wind tunnel of gossip or drowned in a cataract of the world’s noise. “The distinctive feature of early Christian prayer is the certainty of being heard.” We are listened to. We realize dignity. Dramatic changes take place in these moments of silence. The world rights itself. We perceive reality from the vantage point of God’s saving work and not from the morass of desperate muddle. We acquire hope.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,

Success in circuit lies,

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth’s superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased

With explanation kind,

The truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind.

–Emily Dickinson