The Necessary Every Day Moments
To look at what is painful and hard and call for better
Writer’s Notebook: A glimpse inside my notes on writing well, stories I’m working on, and thoughts in my head on characters, plots, or story ideas. Freewriting and (mostly) unedited. It’s a peek behind the curtain of my writing life. If you want to read more, check out The Writer’s Notebook section of my page.
I firmly believe that much of what is important and vital in the Christian life happens in the everyday moments—in the daily disciplines and liturgies (whether formal or informal), in the in-the-moment decisions to pursue righteousness, in acts of sacrificial love of neighbor, in prayers breathed in quiet desperation. (Thomas H. McCall)
A quote from the Richard Foster book I am reading. Christian life happens in the every day – fingers on a keyboard, people making choices that pull us one way or another.
What am I ultimately pursuing? If at the end it is truth or love, goodness, or brings peace – it might be found in the midst of a story with sex, fits of anger, and envy – but isn’t that where life is? Can’t we look at judgment and silence and abuse and call for better?
To ponder all of that and then look at where I am. I think that is part of my displeasure (angst?) w/ TT1 is that I have played it safe. E. is not safe. I want her adventures to hit at unselfish love for others, patience, peace, truth (that has to be a consistent theme!!!) – Whatever is TRUE – about history, ourselves, the world around us, and our place in that!
Do I give up on J.+ M. altogether? I feel like I can’t tell one without the other. I can’t flush out who I’ve made E. to be – what if because of J. and losing it all she becomes more patient and peaceful vs. rash + judgmental? A Top Gun gal to some who can be rough around the edges and yet fights for what really happened?
That can be the tension – L. fell in love w/ her because she was kind and saw the best in people. But as she’s worked for DOD those things have been lost to cynicism and sarcasm. She sees it as a move towards freedom, shedding what her mother imposed on her. L. sees her losing herself. So because she can’t reconcile who she wants to be with who she was/is – she leans more into being “one of the guys” – but that’s not her either. I.’s approval is easier and requires less of her. L. sees a part of who she really is – passionate about the truth, kind, and searching for the underdog (go back to her forgeries class!). She can be sarcastic and gritty without being cynical and rejecting everything her parents gave her. But E. has to realize that for herself.
Maybe that’s why I can’t pick it up again. Maybe that’s why I am having such a hard time getting going.
Back to this prayer. It all comes back to this prayer from Lindsay Letters:
Start each day in quiet time and reflection, a Psalm, or this – something to prime the pump and give God the first thoughts of my creativity. Before I start in the AM, coming back after lunch. Put these on your desk. Bind them on your wrist and write them over the doors!
Also this liturgy by Douglas McKelvey.
A Liturgy for Writers of Fiction
FROM EVERY MOMENT HOLY
Writers: Lord, let me love this world into being
Leader: Even as you, in the infinite poetry of your thoughts and the inexhaustible joy of your love, spoke a universe into existence, into life, into the complex motion of its myriad particulars, so grant the grace that I might trace by my thoughts and words the echoes of some infinite pattern of your creation.
Take these my small offerings:
my pen, my paper, my words, my willingness to be still and present.
Fill my imagination.
Be to me both fire and wonder, inspiration and guide.
Take these my small offerings.
Take and multiply them into a story that might stir or salve, that might shape or strengthen, that might name hidden wounds or secret hopes, that might open hearts to your mysteries. May your Holy Spirit meet me in the process of creation, for even as you called into being all things from nothing, so would I now step into the nothingness of an empty page, trusting that your Spirit might be manifest in this act of faith and stewardship.
Lord, let me love this world into being,
and let me love each of the characters I create, even those who choose to harm, who choose their own pride, their own strength, their own glory above what is right and good and true; let me love even those who turn from righteousness, who eschew grace. May I allow them the dignity to become themselves within the world I have created, and may I not impose my own will upon these creations, but leave room for them to make real choices of consequence to themselves and others. May they have something like a breath of life in them, and not be the shriveled fruit of my own moralizing.
Shape me by these labors.
May I return from sojourning in this world of the imagined, made—by the long practice of empathy—more fit for acts of mercy and service in this true world of your creation.
Lord, let me love the reader, ever writing for their good,
writing words that might, in the employ of your Spirit, bring life and hope and conviction.
And when I have written lines that are but my own vain ramblings, or when I am too enamored of my own cleverness, grant me the humility and the courage to make the hard choices, to amputate my own ego. Reveal these deficiencies to me before I send my words out into the world, that I might not add to the noise. But if I do, may it please you by your grace to turn even my darkness to light so that even the fruits of my pride and insecurity would be redeemed for the good of your people and the furtherance of your kingdom and the glory of your name.
Lord, let me love this world into being
because you are the author of stories within stories within stories and of poetry within all of creation and you have made us lovers and stewards of this gift of story. We who live out our small stories within your greater story would also tell, by your grace, such stories as would somehow awaken hearts to wonder, to beauty, to truth, to love. It is in the name of Jesus that we ask this.
Lord, let me love this world into being
Oh Spirit of God, be active!
Lord, let me love this world into being.
Oh Spirit of God, breathe life!
Lord, let me love this world into being.
Oh Spirit of God, brood over the waters of my finite imagination!
Call new worlds and stories into being.
Oh Spirit of God, breathe life!
Copyright 2017 by Douglas Kaine McKelvey
Settling my mind on Him will enable me to pursue what is true, honorable and worthy of respect, right and confirmed by God’s word, pure and wholesome, lovely and brings peace, admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about such things (Phil 4:8). That does not negate what is hard in stories or means certain actions/choices become off limits. It means I approach those moments with care. They are not a plot point or something that happens randomly but with intentionality.
This is the only way I know to avoid plastic people and false happy endings.