the final cut

I will first preface this by saying I am about to go to sleep, but my mind is spinning. So read at your own risk :-)

I’ve mentioned a lot lately this whole idea of our live as narrative. This theme first presented itself in early December through some interesting doors that swung wide open in my life (I hope to share more on this at some point) ; then it popped up again at our Elevate planning meeting, and since then I’ve been trying to sort through it. I didn’t get a chance, as I had hoped, to read any of Allender’s “to be told” while at LTC (I had a hard time finding time to eat and sleep :-) but did get to read a bit before and some today. Ironically, I just finished watching a movie with this "life as story" theme. My mom was up this weekend and today was the first day I really got to spend with her. We all ordered pizza and rented “The Final Cut”. What an interesting movie. It’s basically about a guy whose job is “the Cutter”. His task is to take the video footage from a chip that’s implanted in our brains and make “rememorials” to be shown at our funerals. In other words, every memory you have is recorded and someone gets to sit down after you die and edit it into a short version, preserving the memories the deceased loved ones want to remember, the rest of the memories are destroyed. I won’t give anything away, but it’s worth seeing (and not near as cheesy as I just made it sound). It’s got Robin Williams (he such a great dramatic actor), Mira Sorvino, and Jim Cavezel. So this whole idea of our lives as story keeps popping up. Actually, I’m starting to think that this theme is somehow tied to our shift in culture from modernism to postmodernism. Let’s take a very “postmodern” trend like blogging for instance. In essence, it’s the author, presenting the narrative of their lives, in their own words, their own terms, so a greater community can at the very least, be entertained, or hopefully, learn from it. It’s me sharing my story, my world, my viewpoint, with you. This seems to be a very big theme in our shift into postmodernism. We are not islands unto ourselves, each doing our own thing, delivering monologue after monologue, but part of a larger scene, in which we are all improving off each other and our Creator. Our story not only effects others story, but our story effects how others perceive their own stories. But what if when you read my blog you didn’t just get my “version” of my story, but THE version of my story? OK…now I ventured into the “what the heck did he just say” part of my brain I often visit after too much caffeine and not enough sleep :-)
I’ll leave you with a quote from “to be told” pg. 121. He’s talking about our present story and what it means.

~ Do I embrace, take care of, and have gratitude for my current situation?
~ Do I take responsibility for the world that has been both given to me and created by me?
~ Do I bring my story and mission to bear in my present?

…Most of us feel outnumbered and outgunned by our current situation. We want to be freed from our problems so that we can get on with our pleasures. But God has a different plan. He wants our problems to serve as the context for knowing him and living out the story he invited us to write for his glory. This means the present is not meant primarily to be resolved, or even learned from, but to be written in a way that allows us to reveal God to others and to let him reveal himself to us.

Read that last sentence again…