Uncategorized

By the age of twelve I can remember imagining that my life was a movie.  Sometimes I would take several cuts of a simple course of events like jumping down from my bunk bed, moving around a chair, swooping a binder off of the desk, spinning and then opening the door until I did it just right.  Then I would click off the camera in my head and think, “that was a good shot.”

Besides making me crazy, this sort of imagination created in me a sense of life as story.  Still, I think this is really the only sort of life there is.

Read moreStory is the Only Way to Live

I doubt it is a coincidence that many of the best written contributions from the Christian tradition have been mystics.  Christian mystics have, after all, always advocated for the deep and innate need of man to know the heart of God.  And as Henri Nouwen (a recently deceased contemplative who impacted many, to say the least) so aptly put it, “To know the heart of God, is to know God.”

So what, you might add.  Well, even the broadest Christian tradition holds to the tenet that human kind was made in God’s image.  In my own round about thinking this would indicate that someone who knows the heart of God, or knows God, would understand humankind extremely well.  (An aside:  Even if you held that God was a construct of humans, knowing this construct would still inform you mightily about the nature and motivations of the humans that devised it.)

Read morethe role of mystics in writing