I feel kind of like a hippie.
I've been sitting in a coffee shop all afternoon, drinking black/chocolate/mint tea (yum!), and writing. If you could see me, you would notice that I look quite hippie-esque too - wearing a big baggy sweater and jeans with holes. I've been listening to music from Elizabethtown and Parenthood (one of my favorite TV shows with the BEST soundtrack). I've made acquaintances with the local indie-rockers and internet commuters.
This is a great place to write. There's local art on the walls and kids with tattoos who dish out coffee and tea while they study for tomorrows tests. It's a dream.
The one sobering thing is the temperature outside - it is freezing.
I realize that many of you hear me say, on occasion, or boast, rather, how warm it is in Texas, how wonderful it is and how much it must suck to be up north in the snow.
I am eating my words. Metaphorically speaking. Although, I am hungry, now that I think about it...
It's so cold. I have on tights under my jeans. I left the snowy tundra so I wouldn't have to make extreme wardrobe decisions like this. Fail.
Sitting in this coffee shop makes me happy. It inspires me. I feel like perhaps, somehow, I'm united across time and space with great writers who sat, just like me, trying desperately to make their fingers keep up with their brains - and their words paint the picture they so intensely wanted the world to see and understand. I found this prayer the other day for writers...there's a line in it that goes like this:
"But most of all, Lord, help me to know the Truth, so my fiction is more honest than actuality and reaches the depths of my reader's soul."
I like this line. It makes me feel like when I pray the words, and try to get out what is inside of me, that greatness is possible. Even more than that, that there is a universal story. There IS a universal story (the story of salvation) and it's woven through each of our hearts uniting us to something and SOMEONE greater than ourselves. The TRUTH in the prayer is that story. A truly good story strikes a chord in the hearts of the readers, calling out to them that which is undeniable.
Take for example "Redeeming Love" by Francine Rivers. Here's a story that I push on anyone and everyone I can. I do that because the universal story is apparent in it. Love (not the ooey-gooey form, but the real substantial "makes-you-willing-to-do-anything-because-it-comes-from-God" kind) drives it. Granted, it is a very faithfilled story, but the Truth is there and the author isn't afraid to run from it. She embraces it.
Love is universal. It is necessary because it is God. (Sweet baby Jesus, somebody keeps opening an closing the front door of this place, letting the frigid air in. Brr...you're on my list.) It is what drives us individually and is what drives a good story.
I was reminiscing earlier about an adventure I had to take on my own once. A friend of mine reminded me that she too had to take a trip like that. And you know what, Love drove the whole way. It was fantastic! It was scary as hell but at the heart of it all, it was good. Plain and simple. And isn't that what a good story should be, too? Scary as hell but GOOD?
Love is that way, I suppose. It's vulnerable. It's open. It makes the impossible possible. It gets you out of yourself and into Someone bigger than you. It makes you become who you are meant to be, and sometimes who you've been hiding from all along. I don't know if any of this makes much sense to you, but any good story must have Love, not just the ooey gooey kind. It's gotta be real.
The realness makes the Love go. It's truth and it's honest. It reaches the depths. It beckons. It encourages. It makes you real. In the story "The Velveteen Rabbit", I can remember this line where somebody says "Once you've been made real, you can't be made un-real again." I think this real-truth-honest-deep-beckonging-Love does it all.
May all your stories be driven by Love and may they show your readers the Light of Hope, Love and Truth. Love is a light and it illuminates the story within.
Peace,
Today's Hippie
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