Once

I fell in love with this movie over the weekend. It's a story about all of us, in a way. The characters are musicians living in the tension between what real life looks like and what they hope might happen someday. But all of us do that. It made me think about how silly I am sometimes, heading out into my day as if I know what will happen, as if my plan is an outline circumstances are required to follow.

And yet...on any given day, something can happen that changes everything else. It's wonderful, and terrifying. And what strikes me most about this is how even after something remarkable & unexpected happens, I still try to forecast what will come next, adapting my planning to encompass this new aspect of reality, barely pausing to marvel or mourn at the wonder of it all and how much we just don't understand.

It was poignant to watch this movie after teaching an all-day class on memoir writing, meeting interesting people from all over who were looking at their stories--the unexpected twists, turns, reversals, disappointments, surprises--through the lens of hindsight, tentatively certain (because that's exactly what feels like) that what they've experienced fits in to the larger narrative. And it does. The trick is capturing that tentative certainty in writing, and to help others hope.

Then Sunday at church, the pastor said, When we live a good story, we reveal the beauty of God in a way nothing else can. That's what I want to spend this week thinking about, and believing :)