Embrace Whimsy

Hello my friends!
[Disclaimer: this is too long]

Guess what I'm doing RIGHT NOW? I am rewarding myself for being responsible all week! Well, truth be told, I never made my desired bedtime, but I busted my butt and did two huge projects for school during my first week of training. Anyway, I could do more now, but my brain feels like scrambled eggs so I've decided to take the night off...mentally.  I am currently wrapped up in a blanket in my hammock on the back porch with just a fall Yankee candle and the lanterns strung up along the screen windows. Not to mention, when I walked in to my cubey yesterday, I discovered that my boss had gotten there early (I'm usually the first) and left us all a Halloween goody bag! Complete with wine! (So that is also in the mix) Pretty great, huh?

Anyway, I could tell you about work but there's not much to say except that I am now spending ALL DAY in a room with 6 other trainees, counting on coffee and outlandish day dreams to keep me upright through the endless string of legal jargon, awkward silences, and social work horror stories.  I will say this, I am very thankful for this training because it feels like a safe bubble where I can't ruin anyone's life...yet.  I'm learning a lot and I love learning.  Also, there's this guy in there named Surge (he goes by more names than I can count on one hand because no one can say it right). He's from Belarus and has a beautiful accent and dresses like a Turk.  He's a chain smoker with a sweet smile and whenever he comes back from his smoking breaks and sits down next to me I take a deep breath (like a creep) because the smell with his pointy shoes reminds me of Turkish men. Isn't that ironic? Whoever thought I would be nastalgic over ANY of those things...especially cigarette smoke and Turkish men.

So that's that. This past weekend a group of us went to our friend Chip's river house and it was freakin' amazing. I thought that's what I was going to blog about but it turns out I'm not in the mood.

Instead, I'm in the mood to share about this book I read a bit ago. It's called a Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller.   He wrote another book, Blue Like Jazz, and I was obsessed with it my freshmen year of college.  It was basically a series of short stories about his college experience, musings on spirituality, the Church, etc.  I wouldn't say he's the most gifted writer in the world but I like the way he expresses his thoughts and I'm also pretty ok with his self-deprecating humor. 

Recently, Blue Like Jazz was made into a movie and a group of us got together to watch it after it went to Redbox (which was relatively quickly).  Some of us had read the book and some had not. Those who had, were a little on the annoyed side because virtually the only thing the book and the movie had in common was the title.  Maybe that's an exaggeration...but it's almost not. My nose was out of joint about it but my friend Jayce had read the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years which Don Miller wrote about what it was like turning his life into a movie.  Jayce said it was great.

Side note: Jayce is a smart guy. He's kind and well-rounded and not one to jump down your throat about his opinions (or anything really). Obviously, he didn't jump down my throat in this instance but was very adamant about this other book of Don's and that it gave the adaption a lot of integrity.  He said he got a lot out of it and even teared up a few times (I hope that's public knowledge, Jayce...if it wasn't...it is now.)  If he felt that strongly about it, I was interested in looking into it. 

So he loaned it to me...and I devoured it.  I mean really devoured it.  It was nothing revolutionary or complex but merely about the elements of story and how that related to God (in Don's life at least).  In a nut shell, some producers approach Don about making Blue Like Jazz into a movie and once he agrees they start dissecting the book in order to make it into a viewable movie.  When basically everything is being changed, it forces Don to ask, "what's wrong with the real Don?" "Why is my life so uninteresting to view?"  He learns about the components of a good story...memorable scenes...inciting incidents...etc.  He reflects on how he rarely relates to God as a storyteller even though that is what He is.  I could go on and on about it but instead I just put in the excerpts that were my favorite. (I'm also putting them in a different color so you can skip them quickly if you aren't interested).   Normally, I just underline this stuff but since it's Jayce's book, I thought maybe he wouldn't want it returned to him with all my underlines and smiley faces.

“I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy.  When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it.  Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.  We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.”

“If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story.  The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don’t want to to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breath and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.”

“The real Voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and the profane.  It’s not an agitated Voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts. The Voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom that says, Hold your tongue; don’t talk about that person that way; I want to show you the sunset; look and see how short life is and how your troubles are not worth worrying about”

“The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is “Do not fear.” It’s in there over two hundred times.  That means a couple of things, if you think about it.  It means we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn’t let fear boss us around…fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.”

“The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than if we’d showed up at the ending an easier way. It made me think about the hard lives so many people have had, the sacrifices they’ve endured, and how those people will see heaven differently from those of us who have had easier lives.”

“He thought about it and said he didn’t think we should be afraid to embrace whimsy.  I asked him what he meant by whimsy and he struggled to define it.  He said it’s that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.”

“I realized how much of our lives are spent trying to avoid conflict.  Half the commercials on television are selling us something that will make life easier.  Part of me wonders if our stories aren’t being stolen by the easy life.”

“If you ask me, we make too much of worldly love.  I like it as a metaphor, but making too much of love is like trying not to be where a tree falls in the forest so you can hear it.  It’s like chasing a leprechaun.”

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.  And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you’d be  surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions.  And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you’d be surprised how much you like spending time with God.”

 “I like those scenes in the Bible where God stops people and asks them to build an altar.  You’d think He was making them do that for Himself, but I don’t think God really gets much from looking at a pile of rocks.  Instead, I think God wanted his people to build altars for their sake, something that would help them remember something they could look back on and remember the time when they were rescued, or they were given grace.

“When we look back on our lives, what we will remember are the crazy things we did, the times we worked to make a day stand out….a good story has memorable scenes, and so does a good life….we have to force ourselves to create these scenes.  We have to get up off the couch and turn the television off, we have to blow up the inner-tubes and head to the river.  We have to write the poem and deliver it in person.  We have to pull the car off the road and hike to the top of the hill.  WE have to put on our suits, we have to dance at weddings.  We have to make altars.”

This might sound silly, but it really changed the way I interacted with God. "When you stop expecting God to end all of your troubles you'd be surprised how much you like spending time with God."  Life since graduation has been a strange season. I would characterize it mostly by uncertainty, doubt, and growing pains.  In the several months of a roller-coaster job search and shifting family dynamics, I questioned God's provision so fiercely sometimes I'm certain I must have looked ABSURD from God's point of view- much like the children I used to supervise in visits who threw all out FITS when their parent didn't give them what they wanted.  We would encourage the parents in standing their ground, validating the fact that sometimes the best way to love their child is by not giving them their own way.  Apparently, I hold God to different standards...despite the fact comparing God to my visitation parents is basically laughable  (lessss be reeeeeal).  

I wanted to call him unjust, not a master story teller (mentioned above).  I wanted Him to make my amazing story take place and I didn't want to participate in it until it looked the way I wanted it to. Tsk tsk.  

I love this: “He thought about it and said he didn’t think we should be afraid to embrace whimsy.  I asked him what he meant by whimsy and he struggled to define it.  He said it’s that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.”

I didn't want to take this caseworking job because I knew it would be hard and terrifying. I barked up the wrong trees for months until I was taken to a place of total hopelessness which soon translated into a desire to FINALLY relinquish control.  Mostly, I think God needed to strip me of my arrogance to see the worth of a job such as this, to see Him in it. They called me the day after I faxed my resume and now I get to show up to a job every morning that couldn't inspire more peace or terror into me at once...my favorite :)

My other favorite favorite part was when he talks about building altars.  Don talks about how when God had people build altars in the Bible it wasn't just because He wanted tons of altars to Himself, but it was a way for people to REMEMBER what happened there...to bookmark a significant experience and honor it.

I love that last quote: 

“When we look back on our lives, what we will remember are the crazy things we did, the times we worked to make a day stand out….a good story has memorable scenes, and so does a good life….we have to force ourselves to create these scenes.  We have to get up off the couch and turn the television off, we have to blow up the inner-tubes and head to the river.  We have to write the poem and deliver it in person.  We have to pull the car off the road and hike to the top of the hill.  WE have to put on our suits, we have to dance at weddings.  We have to make altars.”

I've been trying to make a conscious effort to be an active participant in my own life.  To "create the memorable scenes" by taking the opportunities for them which God places all around.  I think once I graduated I was kind of discouraged by my newfound inability to define my own life.  For 16 years I was a student...I thrived in that structure. My identity was in doing well and doing it regularly.  Not fumbling through strings of days that were headed...where?  Without structure I felt really lost, aimless. But God was so faithful in showing me how He's in the drudgery of every day life and there's so many opportunities to feel full without feeling certain.  When I think of scenes that made me feel full the last several months, I see a picture show.

I see Lindy and I riding through a chilly Paris morning on the top of a double decker eating the best pastries I've ever had in my life and I can smell the perfume we each bought as momentos that we still wear everyday since we've been back.

I see a staring contest for my dear friend Rae's birthday. It was filled with a unique silliness, watering eyes, and lots of laughter among amicable strangers.

I see Chip trying to teach me how to drive a stick in the Marshall's parking lot while Debrah says encouraging things from that back on their last official night in St. Augustine.

I see some of my favorite people in the world dispersed along a riverside slope lit by a sunset as I slowly drew my phone around to snap a panoramic picture of us all...only to discover Zach at the end, standing with his shirt off and a pleased look on his face at my surprise.  I see us all laughing.

I see Lindy and I hanging off a golf cart as my parents spontaneously drive us to a local bar late at night and LITERALLY the only light on the island is the stars.  I see us laughing and driving a drunk stranger home later that night, nuzzling my neck and telling me how good I smell.

I see Tori, Lindy, Stephen and I sharing two bottles of wine and dancing in front of the Photo Booth on my Mac, laughing ourselves silly at the chipmunk setting...for HOURS.

I am so grateful for these scenes and thankful for God loving me enough to soften my heart so that I might enjoy them...to see them for what they are. Treasures. Gifts. Little promises that it's all going somewhere, I just don't know where yet...and not knowing doesn't make these things less beautiful.

I gotta tell you...I've been a lot more joyful in the last couple months. 

Thanks for the book loan, Jayce :)

Thanks for the Grace, God.

Wishing you all good stories,

Caitlin