"A lot of thoughts come up here, night and day, but there's no post office- Now there are some things we all know but we don't take'm out and look at'm very often. We know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars- everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always letting go of that fact. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."
-Stage Manager, Thornton Wilder's Our Town
I am in the midst of a long love affair with words. I began reading when I was very little, and have spent thousands upon thousands of hours in the company of authors and the people and places they make come to life through their words. In college, I began to realize that I not only loved printed words, but spoken words as well. And sung words, for that matter. My deep love of worship music and choral music was not only connected to the musical sounds produced, but the texts that connected the sounds with meaning. For the first time in my life, I stopped following along in my Bible during the reading of a sermon text, and just listened. Memorizing song texts for recitals and concerts became something of a treat rather than a chore, and through long rehearsals and concert tours, I learned that as I spent time with different texts, they became a part of who I am. Reading something once results in decent comprehension for me. Speaking something myself can almost cement something in my memory (which is why my parents received so many mini-lectures on global history and Spanish when I was in high school). Have something read to me, time and time again, is life-transforming. This is why the liturgy at Colbert Presbyterian gives me the chills. Why I want to cry when I heard the words "The gifts of God for us, the people of God." Why I cherish the time Jerry Sittser spent reading us The Horse and His Boy and The Silver Chair at Tall Timber, and why I keep listening to the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre productions of all the stories in the Chronicles of Narnia. This is why I look for opportunities to steep myself in the words of the people around me.
As I reflect on this run of Our Town, I find myself thinking that I'm so thankful to have had the opportunity to really live with the text- to get inside Wilder's head and try to understand the words I heard over and over again throughout the last six weeks. I'm finding little bits of life in these words. These words are showing up in bits of my life. At some point this week, I found myself missing the feeling of creating meaning, and started looking for something new to lose myself in. Something that would offer life. Oh wait. There's an option readily available. And in fact, it's something that has been prescribed for the very thing I am seeking. This feels cheesy to me, and I'm not sure why, but as Thornton Wilder wrote for Emily to say, "I have to tell the truth and shame the devil," so I'll just toss out the idea that maybe I should be creating meaning with texts in the Bible. Just a thought. If time and energy given to something man-made has had this effect in my life, imagine the possibilities with something God-breathed? This is one of those things that "all the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years" and it turns out, that I'm just not that great of a listener.
"As always, when I do something that people have been doing for thousands of years, like reading the Bible or fasting or set prayer times, at first I think I've stumbled upon something very significant, and that I should try to tell a lot of people about this new, wonderful thing. And then just a second later, I realize that there's nothing new about it, and that the reason people have been doing it for thousands of years is because it matters, because it does something inside of the people who do it. It's not a new practice or the next big idea. it's an enduring way of living that has been shaping and reshaping people for years. When I fasted and prayed on a set rhythm, I felt like I was part of something old and durable. I felt humble, one more set of footprints on a dusty well-worn path, discovering something new that's not new at all, and I was thankful."
-Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet
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