Hope in Unlikely Places

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter, and since it's Good Friday, I wanted to share an Easter photo I found in a shoebox full of black and white Kodak prints during a recent family reunion.

These lovelies are my sweet sisters and this photo was apparently taken on Easter morning (otherwise, I doubt the bunnies would still be in tact). I find the composition of this photo interesting in an almost Tim Burton-esque way. Their solemn faces, the sepia tones, the dust-bowl look of the place, and the fact that they're sitting in a dirt field with their Easter baskets so far from the house intrigues me. They are large, the house is small. The crazy thing is that this was not taken in the dustbowl but in a verdant, oak-covered stretch of Maryland where the humidity will curl your hair on a summer's morning and you can practically smell the breeze off the bay. The festive bunnies against the stark surroundings could suggest a contrast between extravagance and want, or for hope found in unlikely places. Luckily, their (our) experience fell somewhere comfortably in-between extravagance and want, and hope was not a stranger in our home.

It's the kind of thing that could spark a great story idea - or at least a creative caption. It wouldn't be the first photo to jumpstart a novel. Ideas, anyone?

I so appreciated Patti's post from Monday on 'Standing on the Shoulders' of women writers who paved the way for others. I remember discussing Anne Bradstreet in my American Literature class. Born in England in the early 1600s, she lived a hard life in one of the first Puritan colonies, was a mother of eight, the wife of a governor and considered to be the first American poet. Her writing, which was accomplished in the late hours after all her work was done and family was asleep (sound familiar?) was by necessity kept private and not intended for publication. One of her best friends was banished from her community for airing her personal views. Anne's brother-in-law secretly copied her book of poetry and had it published without her knowledge. She later wrote a poem about how it felt to see it in print and the changes she wished she could have made (again, familiar?).
I leave you with a look into her deeply spiritual life:

By Night when Others Soundly Slept

By night when others soundly slept And hath at once both ease and Rest, My waking eyes were open kept And so to lie I found it best. I sought him whom my Soul did Love, With tears I sought him earnestly. He bow'd his ear down from Above. In vain I did not seek or cry. My hungry Soul he fill'd with Good; He in his Bottle put my tears, My smarting wounds washt in his blood, And banisht thence my Doubts and fears. What to my Saviour shall I give Who freely hath done this for me? I'll serve him here whilst I shall live And Loue him to Eternity.

The Good Friday Blind Spot

"Could not a book with just a masterful sliver of God in it carry the fullness of His message to the mind [. . .]?" Latayne asked on Wednesday.

My biggest mistakes as a writer have happened in the moments after I decided

I knew the whole story. When I thought I understood where the story must go and why. In those moments I relaxed into cliched phrases, pat answers, short cuts, and the easy way out. When I believed I knew what the story was "about", it was as if I had set a pot on the stove and simmered the contents to reduction. And in the dense mix there was no longer room for characters to speak and act their own truth. There was only slavish devotion to the singular point of my positive message. My desire to impart truth strangled the art of story, drained the mystery out of faith, and delivered a stillborn idea.

I'm learning to approach my writing with fear and trembling. I am a writer with faith, but I do not know the fullness of His mystery. Jesus came to earth, but I have no idea what it is like for God to slip into skin which sweats and burns and callouses. He was betrayed, but what is it to look into the eyes of the man who will sell you yet love him so intensely you will die for him? Jesus sweated blood in Gethsemane, but what is it like to teeter on the edge of spiritual and physical no-man's-land, to forge with your life a trail no one has walked before?

I'm learning to stop fooling myself into believing the life of faith is easily explained. That is can be summed up with a happy ending. That victory looks anything like we think it must.

I'm learning that the moment I believe I know the whole story - novel, or faith - is the moment I need to repent, and go a different way. The way where victory is not easily recognized, where success looks like losing your life, and the happy ending is no longer the point. I must abandon my pot of reductionist ideas, and embrace the vast wilderness of a love that costs us everything.

Let us get so lost as writers, as people, that we are willing to be led through the wilderness.

We at Novel Matters wish you a blessed Easter.