Good Stories

This morning I finally got round to listening to a CD called Story by The Sout Project. I was sent this CD about 2 months ago but instead of listening to it I took it on a journey. A journey from the post office, to my desk, to my home, to my bedroom, back to work, back to home and finally to the CD player in my car where I finally listened to it on my way to work.

I don't know if I would have paid too much attention to it if it wasn't for the fact that it starts off with a reading, "...Everything can change, if we learn and live a new story... " I was driving when I heard it so I didn't actually stop but I did pay attention. You see I've been thinking a lot about life as a story lately mostly thanks to Donald Miller. I read his book A million miles in a Thousand years, just before Christmas. It's a book about good stories, it's a book about telling good stories with our lives, about how nobody makes a movie of someone waking up, eating, going to work and sleeping. I didn't love the book the way I loved Blue Like Jazz but it did leave me feeling I want to live a good story.

The idea of story came up again yesterday while driving back home after the holidays. My boyfriend mentioned he'd read Donald Miller's blog about New Years resolutions. According to my boyfriend Donald Miller suggested that instead of writing Resolutions, we should write stories. So instead of saying, "I want to lose weight" say "I want to climb Mount Hood" and then visualise yourself looking mean and lean at the top. This struck me because I write goals every year. I don't call them resolutions, I've just discovered if I write down what I want to do that year I'm more likely to get my honours, run 21km or learn french then if I don't. I sat there trying to figure out how to turn those goals into stories, how to turn my day-to-day life into something more than goals, into something with more meaning.

I was thinking about stories when I put The Sout Project into the CD player so the line about stories changing everything struck me. Up until this point when I'd thought of stories I'd really only thought of them in relationship to myself. Am I living a good story? What kind of story am I writing with my life? The CD made me think about the greater ramifications of living a good story not just for myself but for my family, for the church, for the world. Life isn't about me, it's not about me living a good story, because even a good story, is still just a story, if it doesn't step off the page and live in flesh and blood. Which means meeting other characters and sometimes allowing them to take you, or taking them, in directions you might not have otherwise gone.  

I think The Sout Project said it well: "Why does the world not change? Why do we keep by living by destructive stories?...Everything can change if we learn and live a new story..." May 2010 be full of good stories for each of you.