story

Reclaiming Story for Christ?

Holly Ordway — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:18:32 -0700

As I have written before, in our modern Western culture we suffer from a disconnect between Reason and Imagination. Story, when it is rightly used in the service of Truth, can help to connect these two necessary elements into a healthy, God-focused whole.

However, reclaiming Story for the cause of Truth means more than just slapping a Christian label on the idea of storytelling. We must be clear about what Story is and how it relates to Truth.

Portions of the Christian church have wholeheartedly affirmed a postmodern understanding of Story. In this view, Christians have a wonderful story, one that brings meaning and joy and purpose to those who accept it, but it is a story that makes no claims about objective reality and objective Truth.

This movement has been reacting against extremes in both the secular and Christian world. On one hand, these Christians are reacting against the harsh extreme of scientism, which has no room for human spiritual needs. On the other, they are also reacting against the extreme of cold literalism in the church, which strips Scripture of its beauty and reduces our relationship with the living God to a set of detailed doctrinal principles to affirm and a legalistic code of behavior to follow. The postmodern reaction against these extremes is not surprising, and indeed in many ways the postmodern Christians serve as a canary in the coal mine: the Reason / Imagination split can't be ignored as something in secular culture alone.

The postmodern view of Story can be very appealing at first, but it fails because it does not connect Story to Truth. If our narratives are generated and sustained by our communities, eventually differences in beliefs will fragment those communities down to the individual: my truth, my story. Either we will be trapped in the particular story we happen to be in, or we will shop around for a story we like better. Ultimately the postmodern Christian view of Story disintegrates, because it acknowledges no transcendent Author of the story, and offers no way to determine if a given story is true.

Such a view is deadly, for it saps all the urgency to find the truth about spiritual matters. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life only for those who find that particular faith flavor appealing, then Buddhism or transcendental meditation or indulging in unlimited sex is equally valid for those who prefer those alternatives. Why pay attention to the Gospel if it is just one story among many?

Even in ordinary life, Story without Truth fails to satisfy. When I hear a story of my friend's life, I expect it to be true, that is, corresponding to the way things actually are. When I read a poem, I expect it to show me something true about the world, to illuminate some aspect of my experiences, or help me appreciate real beauty better. When I read a novel, I expect it to make sense, for it to add to my enjoyment of the world, or help me understand things better, even if those things are sad or terrible (since we live in a fallen world, much of what is true is rather painful to hear). Even a story read for pure escapism needs to have some connection to truth in character, setting, or plot (not necessarily all three!). Surrealist fiction does not make for good beach reading; adventure and romance stories do, because they connect with things that we do recognize as true, namely that people can have adventures and do fall in love.

On a day to day basis, we flourish when the stories we tell about ourselves, including our inner narratives, are true. The self-esteem movement attempted to help children live better, happier lives by telling them stories about their own greatness. But such stories were fabricated: kids were praised even when there were no objective grounds for praise. As a result, we have an entire generation of young people who have been trained in narcissism and brought up to believe that what matters is how they feel - the story they tell about themselves - not their actual accomplishments or character.

Simply telling oneself a new story is appealing. Americans are constantly reinventing themselves. It is good to have the freedom to make a course correction in life, but it is burdensome to think that one’s identity is one’s own responsibility. As a woman who grew up with no knowledge of God, coming to Christ at age 31, I have a keen personal awareness of the utter failure of any attempt to create my own meaningful narrative. As a woman now in my late 30s living out the Christian life in modern American culture, I am all too aware of the pressure to define myself according to other stories: workplace success, or physical beauty, or social conformity. These are powerful alternate stories, and a Christian "story" that is simply one more feel-good option among many does not stand up as a viable alternative.

We must reclaim and redeem Story, for the church and for the world to which we minister in the name of Christ. If Imagination gives us Story without Truth, and Reason gives us Truth without Story, what we need is Christ who is Truth in Story, the living Word.

Why Story Matters

Holly Ordway — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:09:53 -0700

Why do stories matter?

Ultimately, because of who we are - made in the image of God. Human beings possess the twin faculties of Reason and Imagination, both God-given, both essential for a right relationship with the world (and for a right understanding of one’s place in the world).

However, something has gone badly wrong in our culture. In a slow process that began with the Enlightenment and has continued to the present day, these faculties of Reason and Imagination have been separated, to the detriment of both.

On the one hand, Reason has been given free rein, and the pursuit of knowledge using our God-given intellect has become scientism and materialism, the idea that only those things that can be empirically measured and logically figured out can be considered “true” or “real.” In the world of science, truth is held to be only that which is measurable and testable. Intangible things like emotions and spiritual truths are decidedly second-class citizens. After all, souls can’t be detected with an MRI, and love can’t be weighed and measured!

This adulation of Reason without the counterbalance of Imagination leads to an inevitable diminishment of the vision of what it means to be human. Our culture is showing many signs of this part of the Reason / Imagination divide. For instance, in a culture that embraces “scientific” ways of thinking, it becomes difficult to justify spending any extra time or money in promoting the arts, or making buildings beautiful.

In older cities like Boston or Philadelphia, the public buildings from the 18th or 19th centuries – the town hall, the courthouse, the banks – have elegant, inspiring architecture. Contrast that to your local 20th century Department of Motor Vehicles.

More seriously, the fact that the human soul cannot be weighed, measured, or detected with scientific instruments has led to a creeping tendency to define human beings by what they can do, not by their innate dignity as men and women made in the image of God. The elderly and disabled, who cannot define themselves in terms of what they can accomplish, can very easily be considered a burden on society.

Narrowing the definition of truth to what Reason alone can determine makes it possible for people to design functional buildings that depress the soul, and for people to talk about the suitability of ending one’s life simply because one is old and tired.

With the use of Reason alone, it is too easy to make categorical distinctions; a person can be a statistic, not recognized as one of the human beings that the scientist or bureaucrat interacts with on a daily basis. It is Imagination that would reveal the truth: the true connection between the imago Dei, the image of God in human beings, and each individual, unique human being.

Yet in the broader culture, unchecked Imagination goes its own route to error. Ungrounded and undisciplined, a de-Christianized Imagination has not led to more beauty, but to less. When less is left to the imagination, storytelling becomes shallow and limited. In order to get some sort of response, art, literature, music, and film move toward the breaking of standards for the sake of destruction, and the rejection of limits of any kind.

Sexuality and violence, ever more of it, and ever more corrosive, become the norm for entertainment. In movies, we have gone from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho to the gore-fest of Saw III, with the same trend appearing in books. The popular young-adult series The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is full of graphic depictions of violent injuries and gruesome death. The high level of sexuality in books and film, including books for younger readers, has become so much the norm that one of the things that makes the Harry Potter series distinctive is its refreshing lack of explicit sexuality and its depiction of chaste dating behavior – in other words, J.K. Rowling is notable for holding to standards that were normal up to a few decades ago.

Criticism of these trends is muzzled, however, because all of these excesses are claimed to be for the sake of art or fun, with no “meaning” behind them whatsoever. “It’s just a book” or “It’s just a movie” are the most common retorts to any expressed concern about the ideas and behavior being presented (and implicitly promoted) in the media.

We need to recover the connection between Imagination and Truth. Without the recognition that our values are objectively grounded in the living God, and that our flourishing as whole human beings depends on a right relationship with Him, the imaginative impulse will lead us to destruction as surely as unchecked Reason.

But we are all storytellers, and the human need for story pops up wherever we look, even where we would not expect to find Story at all.

In the realm of unchecked Reason, skeptics tell just-so stories to explain every aspect of our lives in terms of biology and evolution.

In the realm of unchecked Imagination, celebrity culture allows people to participate in drama, and to have heroes and villains (if only for a fleeting moment).

Even when we’re completely wrong about the way the world works, with our lives completely out of touch with the living God, we are drawn to narrative, imagery, characters – story. Such is the power of storytelling. Rightly used, Story can help re-connect Reason and Imagination – and in so doing, help re-orient us toward Truth.

Saving America's Story

bo.white — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 10:26:11 -0700

Republicans seem to have no cohesive narrative and this seems obvious. Democrats are losing their cohesive narrative and again, this is almost a no-brainer. To anyone who is watching the news or paying attention to the rhetoric floating over the internet and across television screens, it’s rather difficult to understand what narrative thread will actually unify our country. Let me suggest that it’s because the new narrative thread isn’t one of unity, but one of division.

We must pause, though, prior to jumping into the 21^st century to consider the unifying narratives that have characterized our country and in fact, these narratives have come to form the core values of the United States. We pause to review the overarching stories, not for nostalgia’s sake, but because in a real sense, we’re in danger of losing them. If a country’s heritage could be on the endangered species list, maybe we’re close.

First, though, let’s celebrate the 18^th century and its focus on Declaration as the overarching story. Our founding fathers, our colonial leaders, and framers of the Constitution all made a series of declarations to set the U.S. apart from England and Europe. What was declared? Embedded in the early narrative of the United States were three primary Declarations: independence, ingenuity, and industry. In other words, our country’s earliest story included our desire for freedom, our desire for economic growth, and our desire for creative expressions of both. Our 18^th century story is one forged in two revolutions: the celebration of industrial independence. In the 18^th century, we realized the potential to manufacture our own wealth as well as mold a fragile nation around principles that were rarely seen in practice.

Like any young nation, though, rapid growth tested the narrative of Declaration. Would the young America affirm its new story or deny it in favor of class and race division? As the Civil War ended, we found that a new chapter in the American narrative added to the first. We added Emancipation to the already potent and powerful idea of Declaration. With this new chapter of our narrative unfolding, our country defined itself not only be its understanding of independence and industry, but truly saw itself in the face of its immigrants. One could quite easily say that undergirding the narratives of Declaration and Emancipation was the open arms of Immigration. The American story is firmly rooted in principles found in documents where our freedoms are declared; the American story is also firmly rooted in the practice of liberating those who have come to our shores looking for those very ideas on our streets and in our homes. The American narrative seemed to build upon each defining trait: from Declaration to Emancipation to further encourage Immigration.

This story picked up momentum despite internal setbacks and together we united to endure the Great Depression and two World Wars. As the American story marched into the 20^th century, our soldiers returned from fighting in Germany and Japan to usher in not only a baby boom, but to add Globalization to the American story. For the first time, our ideas or our Declarations, our ongoing testing of the ideas through Civil rights and the ongoing evolution of Emancipation, were suddenly being taken overseas to countries much older than our own. Yet, something amazing happened when the Soviet Union fell in 1989—the American story became not only prominent on the world stage, but for an unprecedented period of time, the American narrative was actually welcomed and admired on the world’s stage.

Perhaps, this culminated in a French newspaper after September 11, 2001, where the solidarity rang out with these words, “today, we’re all Americans.” And up until March 2003, the American story marched on to greater acceptance and our Declarations were admired, our Emancipations envied, our Immigration increased, and our participation in Globalization set the U.S. apart as a world power.

So, where are we now? What part of the story is unfolding before our eyes? Let me suggest that it’s also unprecedented, particularly on a grand scale. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and in particular, since the economic collapse of 2007 and 2008, the United States is no longer talking about Declaration or Emancipation. The celebration of Immigration has turned into a hotly contested debate with no end in sight and Globalization now invites China and India to dream capitalist dreams. Our narrative seems to no longer be progressing at all, rather we’ve entered in to the undesirable chapter of Polarization.

We are no longer moving the story forward, rather we seem to be tearing it to pieces. The world is still watching, yes, but no longer admiring the progress of timeless principles, rather it’s the Polarization of a people who seem to be losing their way. I still believe there’s a happy ending to the American story, but only if we quickly rewrite a new chapter as quickly as we can: One that builds upon our Declaration and Emancipation and one that celebrates Immigration that participates in Globalization. If we don’t recapture our story, we may, like a bad marriage, give in to the pressures of Polarization and simply file papers with the words ‘irreconcilable differences,’ at the top.

-bo

Fighting Indifference, pt. 1

bo.white — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:00:00 -0700

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them,”

George Bernard Shaw

The gunman stood at the window looking out over the crowded streets below. Bobby paused from typing and surveyed the situation. Could he make a break for the door? What happens if he refuses to type? Maybe, he would simply charge and tackle the man, sending him crashing through the window to the street below. Something akin to an action hero would certainly do the trick. Then again, there was that gun. Knives are considered rather personal, guns seems so cold and impersonal. A sniper can shoot a complete stranger from a great distance and still remain seated at that great distance. Stabbings, though, happen at close range amongst people who can know each other. Guns seem to prevent struggles. In that case, so do bombs, missiles, torpedoes, and nuclear weapons. When a rather large bomb is dropped, there is nothing really personal about it; it simply means that people will die. We have simply become too efficient at hurting each other.

“You want out of here, don’t you?” said the gunman.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

Neither man moved and to Bobby’s surprise, the gunman never even looked over at him.

“You’re not going to let me leave, are you?” said Bobby.

The gunman shook his head and said nothing.

“Why me, then? Why make me do this?” asked Bobby.

“Because you are a good typist and I need my story written down. If I was on the ten o’clock news, I would be remembered for a day or two. CNN may run a special on me if I was really famous. But, if my life were written down, then another generation may possibly understand.”

“Understand what? What is there to understand about a gun to one’s head?”

“If I didn’t have this pointed at you, would you remember me? Would you care about my life?”

The gunman paused and wiped a tear from his eye. Again, the gun knocked against the window pane high above a crowded street. No one below heard the sound of the gun tapping the glass.

“You started this story, why can’t you finish it?” said Bobby.

“Because…I don’t know how it will end? I don’t know how my life is going to end and so I need someone else to write, while I figure some things out.”

“And if I don’t write?”

“Then, I guess we know how your life will end.”

“That seems fair.”

The gunman walked over to where Bobby was sitting. He checked the gun, saw that it was loaded, and then cocked it, ready to fire whenever he pulled the trigger. Bobby said nothing.

“You see, it isn’t about being fair, it’s about having a point. Does your life have a point? I used to go to church, you know, but couldn’t understand why so many people could sing on Sunday and scream out complaints on Monday. Now, I am sitting here with you and I have a vision of a life story that no one will be able to put down.”

“You don’t know where this is going, though?”

“No. But, I do know that this is kind of exciting, huh? This beats sitting around letting people tell you what to do. This beats a suburban existence where no one knows their neighbor. This beats the city where everyone is afraid of their neighbor. Here it’s just you and me. There’s something meaningful in just a single, purposeful relationship, don’t you think?”

“This isn’t a relationship.”

Suddenly, the gunman rose to his feet and began pacing around the room tapping the gun against the wall and then the glass. He began breathing heavily and sighing deeply. After several trips around the room, he stopped and put the gun to his own chest. Vincent Van Gogh did the exact same thing with a revolver at the age of 37 and two days later he died. Decades later he’s admired as an artistic genius. No, the world isn’t fair.

On this day, though, the man forcing a writer to write, threatening him with the weapon was no artist nor was he going to be well known. He might as well have been John Doe. He could be sitting next to you at school or behind you on Sunday morning. He could have greeted you a hundred times, but you kept walking. He’s created in the image of God, as the Bible says, but his image never stuck in your brain. And the pain of anonymity is killing him.

“I used to go to church,” whispered the gunman. “When you write this down, tell them I used to go to church.”

Meet Yves

Carrie Nye — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 23:01:45 -0700

While I sleep at night, a war rages on in Congo. When I rise from my desk at work to grab a drink of water, men, women and children are thirsty in Congo. While I sit in traffic on my daily commute, Congolese children sit and wait in hiding, hoping the merciless rebels pass them by.

Congo is special to me. I was in the country in 2003. I met the locals. I ate the food. I poorly attemped to speak the language. I met beautiful children. Congo is in great need. The Congolese have suffered for generations. It's time for the country called "the heart of darkness" to experience the light of Christ.

An organization called Fallen Whistles is working hard to help those of not in Congo not forget the world's most deadliest and violent war going on right now in Eastern Congo. Stories are a powerful tool in bridging the gap between the not so personal and the personal. Congo and the Congolese people are worth becoming personal. Their lives are too valuable for the world to continue to turn away to such devastation.

Check out what one Congolese war survivor is doing with his story in this video. I encourage you to check them out if they hit up your city on this tour.

I believe God is angry at the horror taken place in Congo. I believe prayer is powerful and evil does not stand a chance when the prayers of the saints make their way to the precious ears of the God of justice.

"Prayer is our most formidable weapon, the thing which makes all else we do efficient." (E. M. Bounds)

www.twitter.com/fallingwhistles!

Catalyst Comes to a Close

Carrie Nye — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:03:38 -0700

What do you get when you bring together gum walls, skinny jeans, confetti, creepy mustache's on twenty-something’s, poetry, comedy, rock music, hipsters, rap music, any and all music really, Tenley from last seasons The Bachelor, time travel, 6 roach coaches and powerful speakers like Eugene Cho, Kay Warren, Mark Driscoll, Wes Stafford and Donald Miller, just to name a few?

Catalyst West Coast.

The two-day leadership conference came to a close yesterday afternoon as Andy Stanley taught leadership to the 3400 leaders present. He made comment like, "As leaders, you should be making as few decisions as possible" and "Only do what you can do." He also said "Leadership is about getting things done through other people."

Earlier in the day, Wess Stafford of Compassion International said, "I'm convinced the prayer of a child in poverty or in abuse is the most powerful force." Just before making that statement, he said something that really struck me. He said, "We may not be committing the sin of endangering a child, but we are committing the sin of omission by allowing a child to be endangered."

Erwin McManus talked about how Solomon got it wrong when he said "there is nothing new under the sun." Erwin said "God created us for originality; not just effectiveness. Everything God does is new. He is constantly creating the new. Only in the new do we find the beautiful. Live lives of story and meaning and create new beauty."

The speakers were all great. The music was awesome. The crowd was very enthusiastic. Some of the highlights for me were hearing Andy Stanley, Wess Stafford and Mark Droscoll. Comedian Michael Jr. was a definite highlight. In fact, you'll want to pick up his documentary Comedy: The Road Less Traveled this fall. The documentary follows Michael Jr. as he tours the nation bringing comedy to Skid Row, drug rehabilitation homes and prisons.

I hope you've enjoyed hearing a bit about the conference and reading a handful of the quotes that I've taken away from the speakers over the past few days. It was pretty cool to be there.

The Legacy of Storytellers: Quiet Leaders of Every Generation

bo.white — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:51:07 -0800

(here is part 4 of 5 on leadership in an interconnected world. This particular post is an excerpt of a longer study I have done on storytellers as heroes and the ones who shape our identity and ideals)

In a world increasingly interconnected by visual media and web technology, emerging personalities and heroic personas will often arise in the midst of stories told that withstand the test of time. We are saturated with information, what remains in our minds amidst the onslaught of email, web pages, scrolling television updates, film clips, and advertisements will be personas that we not only resonate with, but who reveals the longings deep within that shape us all. Understanding that “in a world of networks, individuals, companies, communities, consumers, activist groups, and governments all have the power to be shapers,”[1] two artists have emerged above the rest in the cinema and theatre respectively. William Shakespeare continues to be the standard by which theatre is judged hundreds of years after his death, while the films of Steven Spielberg have so captivated our culture, that he is the single biggest money making filmmaker in history. The pervasive use of English as an international language has not only served to disseminate the works of each artist, but also helped each to shape the way people see the world.

Since our own identity as English speaking people can be verbally attributed to Shakespeare and at least in part, if not more, visually attributed to Spielberg[2] (who reframed our fears of swimming as well as our curiosity in alien life forms) we do well to remember that our identities are “formed in relation to other identities,”[3] and if our political context is changing, so will our perception of the heroic.

W.E.B Dubois, reflecting upon what a black person should do with their freedom, said that new independence ushered in an era “which must mean a time of intense ethical ferment, of religious heart-searching, and intellectual unrest.”[4] And quite possibly, we are living in such times of ‘intellectual unrest,’ when the heroic is being redefined by a new nationalism and a new interpretation of our nation at the same time. Yet, we as a culture must also understand that Spielberg’s images and stories are here to stay and now serve as reference points not only in cultural literacy, but also in our own identity and personal exploration. “Few among us are qualified to testify as to whether God is dead, or alive, or wandering somewhere in exile….Some authors are indeed dead, but not William Shakespeare.”[5] And no actor will feel accomplished in the modern era without at least a working knowledge of Shakespeare. Our identity as film goers includes a literacy of Spielberg and our identity as English speaking people includes a literacy of Shakespeare.

Spielberg and Shakespeare, though, are not simply linked artistically in terms of influence, but it’s in their own search for the heroic, that also links them to one another as well as to you and to me. In Shakespeare’s The Life of Henry the Fifth, the King makes his famous battle cry speech at Agincourt, calling us to the heroic journey by imploring that “he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart,”[6] but we will not leave, we will press on in search of ourselves in the hope that quite possibly, other people will recall “our names, familiar…as household words,”[7] remembered as significant. Finding meaning, honor, and significance is worth fighting for and worthy of our own internal and external scars.

Maybe it’s no surprise then, that Spielberg’s most acclaimed visual production outside of the cinema borrows from King Henry’s call to arms at Agincourt where “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers,”[8] are remembered by the next generation, not because we found ‘rest’ intellectually, but because we fought side by side for what we thought was right. And in doing so, became heroic.[9]

Today, in the midst of an information age and unprecedented technological opportunities, the political context isn’t as clear domestically and the murkiness breeds a hesitant heroism that is in search of itself. We are at war, but are not sure who we are heroically rescuing and therefore, Shakespeare not only provides a refuge, but also Spielberg allows us to escape, at least until we can find some more solid footing. In the absence of a mission as clear as Saving Private Ryan, we may simply be left trying to save ourselves with trusted friends, bands of brothers, who remind us of clearer days. In our ongoing search for heroism in the 21st century, stories do shape us.

Stories have influence and storytellers can create a common language for us all if we would listen.

-bo

[1] Thomas L. Friedman: The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Anchor Books, New York City, 2000, p. 206.
[2] “At the end of the 20th century, LIFE magazine named Spielberg the most influential person of his generation.” See also www.kennedy-center.org
[3] Kathryn Woodward (ed): Identity and Difference. Sage Publications, London, 1997; p. 35.
[4] W.E.B. Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk. Bantam Books, first published in 1903, 1989 edition; p. 142.
[5] W.E.B. Dubois, p. 6.
[6] William Shakespeare: Life of King Henry the Fifth, Act 4, scene 2.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] See Spielberg’s produced mini-series ‘Band of Brothers’ and the ‘Greatest Generation’ by Tom Brokaw for further reference.

Chesterton Keeps Me From Going Crazy

bo.white — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:22:25 -0800

A business consultant once told me about 'crazymaking' cultures. She observed several corporations that posted their vision and mission on the wall, but it had little do with daily life in the company. People were rallied around things at the big sales meetings and management retreats that simply had nothing to do with the true day to day operations. What this leads to is a 'crazymaking' culture. Sometimes I feel like I am completely losing my mind as I listen to various 'pep rallies' around certain camps or issues. Maybe we live in a 'crazymaking' culture all the time?

Chesterton rescues me when he writes in his book The Everlasting Man that: "the sanity of the world was restored and the soul of man offered salvation by something which indeed satisfy the two warring tendencies of the past; which had never been satisfied in full and most certainly never satisfied together. It met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story...."

Stories that lead us to love linked with stories that lead us to truth are the stories that will rescue us from any crazymaking culture. If your culture is causing you to love less and lie more, either run away from it or fight against it. But, don't let the romance in your soul or the truth you seek be squashed by a crazymaking culture. And let Chesterton help you if you're stuck.

-bo

First Reactions to Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Cara Davis — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:23:53 -0700

The quote I have posted on my Conversant Life profile reads: "[True happiness] is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." (Helen Keller) ... I thought it was just a nice quote to post on my profile, until I read Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Now I know it's painfully true.

Let me preface this short musing about Don's new book by saying I never read Blue Like Jazz. I'll admit it. So many other people had (or it seemed like it) that book become part of the cultural consciousness for Christians. Whether you had read it or not, you knew what it was about, and how it articulated an entire worldview for an entire generation. I tried to read one of his other books after that, but couldn't get into it.

Miller himself says his life (and writing) stalled after writing Blue Like Jazz. A Million Miles ... is about the journey he took to restart it. I finished the book in one sitting tonight. At first I thought it was a poor man's "Adaptation" (the movie) -- yet another example of a Christian taking something that exists in culture and putting a religious spin on it. I kept reading and got proven wrong, way wrong. And I'm glad I was.

While the writing is about writing (a screenplay based on Blue Like Jazz), it's just a technique that serves as a springboard into the telling of Miller's story itself. Miller masterfully teaches about the concept of story while moving you along his own. This account of living more intentionally – living on purpose and for a purpose – is powerfully convicting. And the dozens of smaller stories his contains supports the idea that we were made for so much more.

I dog-eared dozens of pages starting with 115 to nearly the last one. I twittered that the book is remarkably inspiring, and that I wanted to "enter my story" after having read it. But I think it would be more appropriate to say I want to start living a better story than I have heretofore.

I realize that my own journey of finding focus has been all about this. My life has lacked essential elements of a compelling story because I too often seek pleasure, comfort and self-gratification, when sacrifice and pain are the essential dark shades needed in every work of art. As Miller writes, "It wasn't necessary to win for the story to be great, it was only necessary to sacrifice everything."

It makes me think of others who are telling similar stories, weaving similar textures into their own narratives. I think of singer/songwriter Sara Groves, who values the "long defeat," the defiance of hope in the face of insurmountable odds. “I can't just fight when I think I'll win,” she says. Or John Evans, a lay minister in my church who visits the local jail each week, teaching and preaching to inmates, and praying with them. And Charysse, a friend of mine's sister, who has been fighting a brain tumor for years with courage and hope, for the sake of her little boys – a woman who's been through hell and says she wouldn't have it any other way.

There's something to this concept of conflict being essential to our stories. If you want to know more about it, Miller's book is a great place to start. As for me, I've got some writing (and living) to do ...