And the Oscar goes to...

The boys and I had a marvelous spring break last week in Atlanta, and my parents were outstanding hosts. So much so, I got to read an entire book. Glorious.

My book of choice was A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by my pal, Donald Miller. He doesn't exactly know we are friends, but since I heard him speak at Catalyst a few years ago, I'm a proud member of his fan club. And this book did not disappoint. In fact, it was exactly what I needed to read right now.

In A Million Miles, Don (that's what he likes me to call him) is approached with writing a movie about his life, mostly taken from Blue Like Jazz, his best seller. The screenplay turns out to be much harder than he anticipated to write, so Miller spends months and months learning what makes a great story great. As the chapters unfold, the reader is essentially taking a trip with him as he starts to understand that his life really is a story, and we only have this one opportunity to make it worthy of being read, or watched, or imitated, or forgotten. He deals with some really old but significant baggage. He takes on some crazy challenges like riding his bike across America (literally). He finds love and loses love. And even though I'm never planning to ride a bike down the street much less to California, I was so inspired by the concept of creating a good story out of my life.

A few silent fist pump-worthy quotes (since I mostly read late at night):

He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree. (p. 198, reflecting upon Victor Frankl's biography)

Ah! I love that! What I want is so insignificant. It isn't about me at all. It IS about the bigger picture of what God is doing with His Kingdom right here and right now. I'm just one brush stroke in a giant masterpiece. I can chose to make the most of my opportunity to be pleasant and complimentary to the whole, or I can draw ridiculous attention to myself and thus give people the wrong impression of His work.

...I wish people who struggle against dark thoughts would risk their hopes on living a good story--by that I mean finding a team of people doing hard work for a noble cause, and joining them. I think they'd be surprised at how soon their sad thoughts would dissipate, if for no other reason than they didn't have time to think them anymore. There would be too much work to do, too many scenes to write. (p. 247)

And finally, this one punched me in the face.

A good storyteller doesn't just tell a better story, though. He invites other people into the story with him, giving them a better story too. (p. 236)

I really don't highlight this for the evangelistic implications, although I think we are responsible for that, too. I just want to live a life that means something--loving, giving, noticing, inspiring, conceding, protecting--but hopefully never just blending. I'm pretty sure there's just too much work to do for that.