CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
So, you have a conflict, a problem. You don’t know how to solve it. Just tell yourself a story about someone who does know how.
My friends, Tony and Charlie, recently read both my novels. It was sort of a command performance. It’s time for me to get rid of unnecessary stuff, including extra copies of my books, that I have kept around in case someone wanted one. So I gave them copies of An Ordinary Man, a Western, set in the Custer era, and Vets, an action/adventure novel, set in the Iraqistan era, with the proviso that they did not have to read them or keep them, but they did have to take them.
But before donating them for the Hoosier Hills Food Bank’s annual book sale, they did read them.
Charlie said, “It’s amazing how you managed to be totally into such very different eras, so realistic in each.” Tony observed, “That may be because the main character in each bears a remarkable resemblance to the author.”
Well, yes! In part, that’s just necessary writing technique. “Write what you know,” experienced authors always tell us. So, my MC [author abbreviation for main character] knows a lot of the same stuff that I know. It’s just easier, although I marvel at authors like Richard Powers who seem to know everything about anything, so their characters do, too. Research--so that your characters can know stuff you don’t already know yourself--takes a lot of work. I like research, but I really just want to tell myself a story that will help with a “D” I can’t figure out.
The D stands for Decision. Every story has ABCD: Action, Background, Conflict, Decision. When I go to bed and review my life for that day, I see my Ds that did not deal effectively with the Cs. So, I tell myself a story about someone who, even though perhaps like me, is able to make the right D to resolve that C, unlike my real self. I make up a fictional character who is like the real character God wants me to be.
All my stories, except those I have picked up from others, are about a better version of myself. Otherwise, how would I learn how to deal better with the problems I face? “How will they hear without a preacher?” the Apostle, Paul, asks in Romans 10:14. Well, we won’t hear very well at all, unless that preacher is a story-teller, who tells a tale of people who are just like us, but who, unlike us, know how to make the right Decisions for the Conflicts, the conflicts between good and evil, greed and sacrifice, love and lust, in whatever ways—great or small--that they gob-smack us. You can be a better you when you tell yourself a story about someone who is already a better you.
I did a lot of counseling with children, not because I had education for it, but because people knew I liked children, and because I was inexpensive, meaning free. So, parents brought kids to me, and said, “This kid is not making good Ds about their Cs.” So, I would tell the child the A part of a story, and ask them to tell the B part. That led right into the C. It was surprisingly easy then for them to supply the D. I’m pretty sure it worked, because in the stories I tell myself about those children now, they are slaying the dragons instead of being eaten by them.
Anyway, if you’re not satisfied with your story, or mine, just tell a better one. Two days ago was my birthday. To celebrate, I told myself a story of a man who walks a straight line, and remembers why he went to the kitchen, and who can get up off the floor whenever he wants to…
John Robert McFarland
Today is the birthday of
our gay “son.” Happy Birthday, Randy!
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