Archive - January, 2010

Book Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

January 29, 2010 in Reviews with 3 Comments

This post is part of Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze program. Have a blog? Like free books? Check this out.

I know this is so four months ago, but I just got a copy. Imagine my delight when I logged in to BookSneeze and found A Million Miles in a Thousand Years available for the taking. Jumped on it.

I have to confess, for starters, that I have not read Blue Like Jazz. I know that makes me less of a Christian, but I just haven’t gotten to it. Nevertheless, I’ve heard so much about it that I got excited about Don’s latest.

The book sat on my table for a couple of very busy days. When I finally grabbed it I thought, “I’ll just read the first chapter while the dryer finishes.” Ya right. Three sittings in twenty-four hours, and I closed the back cover and stared at the ceiling trying to grasp what I’d just experienced.

At first, Miller’s latest reminded me so much of Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl that as I read, I felt sorry for N. D. Wilson – who it seemed had essentially written the same book and gotten duped because he hadn’t first written Blue Like Jazz. The themes of both books are similar, but both are amazing in their own rights.

The subtitle to A Million Miles is, “What I learned while editing my life.” A pair of producers contact Miller about making a film based on Blue Like Jazz. The story has to be edited, we find out, because you can’t throw a book on a screen and expect it to work. Through A Million Miles, Miller learns the art of story-telling and discovers that his real life isn’t that interesting.

So he embarks on a couple of “practice stories.” Finding the father he never knew (or cared to), and hiking the Inca “Excruciating” Trail in Peru. A kayaking trip he didn’t want to take introduced him to one of the most fascinating men on the planet. Then, he realizes his story is good, but not worthy of an Academy Award. What makes a story (a life) epic?

His new producer friend explains that taking a story from good (where a character overcomes some conflict to get something) to epic changes two things: the risk and the reward. The character in a good epic story has to risk his very life (or close to it) and his goal has to be selfless.

So Miller starts The Mentoring Project through a strange encounter with a man in the Pacific Northwest who had recently purchased East Texas, and he rides a bicycle across the country to raise money for wells in Africa.

Along the way I laughed and cried and was forced to take a big step back to look at the story my life is telling. Miller is an unspeakably gifted writer, and the story of editing his life will change yours if you let it.

Quotes after the jump. Continue Reading…

I’m the protagonist … in a carnival scene

January 27, 2010 in Discipleship with 1 Comment

(I’m in the middle of leaking my slightly blown mind on the interwebs. It started here, and got more interesting here.)

Feeling like my eyes were open a little wider than usual for a couple weeks, I grabbed Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl off the shelf to re-read. Wilson agrees with me, and he writes this metaphor much better than I do. And now, don’t worry, you are the main character,

“Step outside your front door and look at today’s stage. Speak. God will reply. … He will parade His art. He will give you a scene, a setting for the day. He will give you conflict to overcome, opportunities for your character to grow or fail.”

If inspiration doesn’t work, he aims a couple pages later to provoke,

“Who are you? What kind of novel are you in? What is the conflict? If you were reading a story, watching an omniscient (really) narrator describe you, your innermost thoughts, your insecurities, and all your desires, would you have any trouble at all giving your character counsel? Would it be oh-so-difficult to tell when that character was motivated from selfishness or pride? Would you love to see that story written? …

“… Trot out your thoughts, every last one, no matter how tiny, no matter how fleeting, no matter how awful or pornographic. Project them on a screen for the viewing public. We’d have you pegged in a heartbeat – just as you’d be able to peg us … Are you a whining fusser? Do you complain about the weather? …

“We are always on stage. We are always in a novel, and even when no other characters are around, the art continues. The Triune audience watches.”

It’s easy to be a good extra, a positive turn in someone’s story. You only have a minute in the scene, and all you really have to do is smile or let someone in traffic ahead of you or be patient and gracious with the waitress who messes up your lunch. When no one else is around, it’s harder to be a good protagonist.

The day I re-read this bit of Notes, I dropped the vacuum cleaner bag I was changing and dumped much of it on the floor I had just vacuumed. I felt my jaw clench and suddenly remembered the stage. “Am I,” I wondered, “the character who gets upset over the little things, or am I the character who can laugh at herself, and at irony, and get on with the day?”

Which one are you?

I’m really just an extra

January 26, 2010 in Discipleship with 1 Comment

God’s been blowing my mind a bit lately. Yesterday was the beginning. Here’s what came next:

I was at a grocery store a couple weeks later, and as I watched people pushing carts down the isles the Holy Spirit began to illuminate them one at a time and say, “She thinks she’s the main character in her life.” “He thinks he’s the protagonist in his story.”

Just like I do about my life, and you do about yours. It’s natural because stories written with an omniscient author are either first or third person. It’s either a character telling the story and the reader knows his thoughts (first person omniscient), or it’s a narrator outside the story and the reader knows some or all of the characters’ thoughts (third person omniscient). You are not outside of your story, and you know what you’re thinking, so you become the first-person narrator. It’s unavoidable.

The point of the grocery store illustration was not to say, “Isn’t that silly? God’s the main character and they just don’t know it.” It was more like, “You thought you were the main character in this scene, but so does she. And so does he. Who is right?”

How often does it really occur to us that we’re the extras in someone else’s story? In the story of that woman with the toddler in her shopping cart, I’m a one-use extra who just makes this scene a little more realistic. Here’s fifty bucks, make your one and only exit.

We think we’re the protagonists. And in a way we are. But you are the protagonist once a day, and an extra lost somewhere in the bottom of the credits hundreds of times each day. So if we’re going by the numbers, statistically speaking, you’re more of an extra than the hero.

This isn’t supposed to be depressing. It’s supposed to be blowing a little bit of your mind. How often do we really think outside of ourselves?

You could think of it in terms of frames too. Say each second is one frame. In a given minute, you are the protagonist for 60 frames. But say during that same minute you’re driving. And say there are a car ahead of you and a car behind you for the duration of the minute. That’s two stories in which you are a nameless extra for 60 frames. Sixty frames of hero; 120 frames of Guy In Car. You’re still more of an extra.

This is not to belittle your existence. You are still the main character in one potentially amazing story, but we’ll get to that later. I think before you can be a good main character you have to be a good extra.

Here’s the point: Think outside of yourself today; what kind of extra will you be?

Sometimes you’re a faceless head, way in the back, and you just can’t do anything about it. But if you’re an extra with a face, your own line in the credits (Woman in Line, instead of one of a thousand names listed as Shoppers), and maybe even a line of dialogue – what kind of extra will you be?

Will you be a positive turn in someone’s story or a negative one?

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