this is what happens when i think out loud
this is going to be ramblish. all over the map, lemme tell you, cause that's where my mind is.
words and i have a strange relationship...they intimidate me sometimes. they evade me, they confuse me, they have a way of shifting & sliding just out of reach when i am in very deep feeling or thought. i literally run out. which is odd if you've ever met me, i have that southern girl capapbility to talk non-stop about things i'm passionate about! i lose them. but there are times where they leap in and form themselves to the exact shape of my ideas. rare, but lovely moments.
i love them in other people's hands. {sometimes} i hate when they're clumsily used or misused, when they're fake or artificial. a well-written book is a treasure to me, whether the plot is slow or fast, smooth or rough, fiction or non-fiction...the words matter. the phrasing matters. and my favorite kind is true. not true meaning "literal" or "reality" or "actual facts that happened". true as in...oh dear. this is hard to explain. the kind of "true" that earnest hemingway meant when he said "always start with a true sentence " fiction can be true. non fiction can be true. fiction can also be fake. non-fiction can have an air of contrived to it.
i think it's the ideas that shape the words. word choice is so important-a good story can be lost in horrid writing. but the ideas must be true. an author has to believe what he's saying, if he expects others to. and a story that is true, with beauty and tragedy and light and dark and all this mingling...if it is rich enough, the words themselves aren't as important. a beautiful truth can rise above less than perfect words.
that's all. thats why i love rick bragg. he's a real southern boy, he grew up rough & fought hard. he's not a polished perfect writer--and i love it. he doesn't always say polite things or politically correct things. i don't always agree with him and i'm sure we'd disagree on biblical truth. but what he says is just .true. it rings with realness. i can taste, smell, hear what he describes and i have no doubt that i've put myself in a place where i'm experiencing what he did as near as a reader can. i'm grateful he doesn't sugar coat the south or himself. i'm grateful he is honest. or at least, writes as if he is.
i want to be true. i want to be real. i want to ring honestly.
i'd like to have a story worth telling. i want my life to paint the gospel--instead of me just reciting the gospel. which i know is a story THE most beautiful, the most grand, the truest of true, more real than any reality we experience i'm not saying i want a story to tell better than the gospel-that is not possible! but i want my life to be worth the telling. i want my life to have so much of this sparkling light about it that even if the words are bare or simple or all clumsily bunched up; the story shines through. i don't want to measure the meaning of my life by it's look of "success". i don't want to value it according to the specific details. as if my story is more valuable if it's lived in Russia vs America, if it's single vs married. i want to find God's thread of story in mine. remembering that "my" story is actually a chapter in His Great Story.
words and i have a strange relationship...they intimidate me sometimes. they evade me, they confuse me, they have a way of shifting & sliding just out of reach when i am in very deep feeling or thought. i literally run out. which is odd if you've ever met me, i have that southern girl capapbility to talk non-stop about things i'm passionate about! i lose them. but there are times where they leap in and form themselves to the exact shape of my ideas. rare, but lovely moments.
i love them in other people's hands. {sometimes} i hate when they're clumsily used or misused, when they're fake or artificial. a well-written book is a treasure to me, whether the plot is slow or fast, smooth or rough, fiction or non-fiction...the words matter. the phrasing matters. and my favorite kind is true. not true meaning "literal" or "reality" or "actual facts that happened". true as in...oh dear. this is hard to explain. the kind of "true" that earnest hemingway meant when he said "always start with a true sentence " fiction can be true. non fiction can be true. fiction can also be fake. non-fiction can have an air of contrived to it.
i think it's the ideas that shape the words. word choice is so important-a good story can be lost in horrid writing. but the ideas must be true. an author has to believe what he's saying, if he expects others to. and a story that is true, with beauty and tragedy and light and dark and all this mingling...if it is rich enough, the words themselves aren't as important. a beautiful truth can rise above less than perfect words.
that's all. thats why i love rick bragg. he's a real southern boy, he grew up rough & fought hard. he's not a polished perfect writer--and i love it. he doesn't always say polite things or politically correct things. i don't always agree with him and i'm sure we'd disagree on biblical truth. but what he says is just .true. it rings with realness. i can taste, smell, hear what he describes and i have no doubt that i've put myself in a place where i'm experiencing what he did as near as a reader can. i'm grateful he doesn't sugar coat the south or himself. i'm grateful he is honest. or at least, writes as if he is.
i want to be true. i want to be real. i want to ring honestly.
i'd like to have a story worth telling. i want my life to paint the gospel--instead of me just reciting the gospel. which i know is a story THE most beautiful, the most grand, the truest of true, more real than any reality we experience i'm not saying i want a story to tell better than the gospel-that is not possible! but i want my life to be worth the telling. i want my life to have so much of this sparkling light about it that even if the words are bare or simple or all clumsily bunched up; the story shines through. i don't want to measure the meaning of my life by it's look of "success". i don't want to value it according to the specific details. as if my story is more valuable if it's lived in Russia vs America, if it's single vs married. i want to find God's thread of story in mine. remembering that "my" story is actually a chapter in His Great Story.
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