A few years ago I decided that I was going to stop beating myself up about Not Being A Writer and learn to love being a storyteller. On the whole that’s gone quite well, except that now and then I do actually think of something I’d like to say – and it’s become too easy to dismiss those thoughts because, after all, I’m not trying to be a writer any more.
William Stafford advises poets in Writing the Australian Crawl – when your work doesn’t meet your own standards, lower your standards. Seems like a plan to me. I’m going to try to write about what I’m thinking and reading, for my own edification…unliterary and unorganized thoughts…in short, a blog.
What I’m thinking today – the Revised Common Lectionary readings from the Hebrew scriptures for this winter look like a dim sum cart. A dab of this, a piece of that. I don’t know how to deal with this as a biblical storyteller. I like to work with big, demanding chunks of text. The word for the day: DISMAY.
2 Comments
September 17, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Stumbled on your website and then your blog (one of those great sidetrips Google sends you on.) I am very impressed by your work–love the new verse for “I Sing a Song” (although I can’t quite get the rhythm to fit humming it at my desk.) and the Christmas stuff looks great–can’t wait to show it to my wife who coordinates drama at our little United Methodist Church.
In addition, I work at a Franciscan college and the Franciscans are big on storytelling, it seems, so I’m getting into that. Finally as a social scientist passionately concerned about global justice, I applaud your support of the MDGs.
Sorry for the length, but I really was impressed by your work! Hope I can hear you at some point.
September 17, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Chris, when you are telling me how much you like my site, feel free to go on as long as you want! Thank you for writing -
call me up and I’ll sing you the extra verse – Pamela