Current discussion: Learning to and letting yourself be creative and artistic.
Yeah, I’m a bit behind schedule, because of a month of traveling and then a month of being sick. Well, I’m back on schedule with today and tomorrow’s posts. Yippee!
The books I’ve been reading are all memoirs. And good ones to boot. I thought I’d give you a list with links so you could check them out and then I have some thoughts about the memoir book pile as a whole.
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller
Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd
Called Out of Darkness by Anne Rice
Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes
Reaching for God by Eileen Mitson
When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd
Quite a pile. It was a very good exercise to immerse me into memoir. As a result, I have a working outline of a memoir-esque manuscript. And the pressure is on! Not on my writing, but on my ability to be authentic. I have to tell the truth. I have never actually stared at that so intensely before. I think as Christians we might be conditioned (at least I was) to speak in overly glowing terms about life rather than to be authentic. Being real is tough in our modern Christian culture. We’ve ghetto-ized ourselves into a corner. If we say it doesn’t work, the world can say Christianity is false, but if we continue with this claim that our form of Christianity works, we risk losing our own souls.
Whoa, that was deep. I loved reading these (some for the first time, some for the second time, some for the seventh time, hello, Annie Lamott!) and after I finished each book, I felt this intense satisfaction fill my heart. I see God working in lives in every single one of these books. My experience may be completely different and my understanding of life may be completely different, but I see growth in these lives. The power of a living God is so evident, from Don Miller’s experiences on the campus of Reed College with their “confession” booth, to Anne Rice’s starkly clear memories of her childhood Catholic parish, to Sue Monk Kidd’s yearning to find out how to be human.
Christians get lost just like anyone else. Our searching isn’t to doubt what we believe but to gently poke and prod to find out if we are human, if we still feel, if we still know. Jesus saves. But He doesn’t turn us into perfect saints. We’ll spend our lives seeking humanness, even as we look skyward.
I thoroughly enjoyed the immersion into these lives. I challenge everyone to gather a pile of memoirs (these are just a smattering of what’s out there) and just read one after the other. You’ll find it brings a clarity with which you look at your own life.
And that’s what it is all about.
