Someone Much Bigger And Greater Than You Is With You

A while back, I interviewed Donald Miller about the journey behind the Blue Like Jazz movie.

A lot of the conversation was quirky and awkward . . . which I would happily blame on Don except that I’m pretty sure my idiosyncrasies strangled any normalcy from the call the moment I said hello.

It just so happened Don phoned just as I pulled up to a strange, remote lakeside cabin I had never been to. Literally the phone rang the second my wheels touched the gravel of the driveway.

I stalled with a clever series of “ums” and “ahs”, as my eyes searched the cabin for a house number. I was sure some combination of lumberjacks and riflemen were even then preparing to come barreling out to gun me down for trespassing.

(I am pathologically directionally challenged, which is not a good trait when you’re circling the lonely, hunter-infested backwoods of Michigan.)

As I was trying to solve the mystery of my surroundings, a figure appeared in front of my car and began banging on my windshield. I couldn’t tell if Don could hear this.

The pounding was both a surprise and a relief. The racket-maker was a friend of mine, one of three writers who would be reclusing themselves away at this cabin to–at the very least–hynotically stare at Microsoft Word and possibly, if things went well, to write.

For the clear minded, the fact that Donald Miller of Blue Like Jazz fame was calling at the kick off to a writing retreat might seem celebratory…even providential.

But rather than syphon off some writing greatness over the cell waves, I fumbled around long and deep enough, mumbling aimlessly about powering up my laptop and being at a cabin, that Don graciously offered to let me call him back once I got settled.

When I did call Don back, the interview was pretty forthright–nothing too unexpected. We talked about how the Blue Like Jazz movie initially got off the ground, how it almost got nixed along the way, how it found fresh life in a Kickstarter campaign . . . all of which were fascinating story points, though it was not the first time I’d heard them.

But then after the interview, as Don politely talked to me about some blog posts I’d written for his site, I admitted that aspiring toward great story (whether it be in writing or in living life) is remarkably difficult. Many of my friends are like me–writers, dreamers, humanitarians, entrepreneurs–and reality is, the world doesn’t necessarily line up to applaud us. Wealthy people don’t throw piles of cash at the feet of our dreams.  How do we tell (and live) an important, shareable story without having an affair with the market and commercializing our souls?

This could’ve been the awkward climax to an awkward interview, but for whatever reason, even if I don’t look at my notes, it  is the only part of the conversation I remember.

“When we hired a company to raise capital for Blue Like Jazz, we started treating the story like a business. And it didn’t work. It was a long, grueling path to nothing. I had to sit there and write a blog announcing the whole thing was going nowhere. We had failed.”

Don paused.

“It wasn’t until that moment, when we found our hearts again, when we got really honest and vulnerable and admitted we needed help, that people showed up. It was like truth sucked them to our side.”

Nobody is gonna get it perfect, he told me. We’re all going to walk a little bit on both sides of the line.

But…

“But your voice matters.”

Your voice matters.

Don spoke these three words like he had just discovered them graffiti-d on the window of the tour bus he was riding in and was immediately convinced of their truth.

“Someone much bigger and greater than you is with you.” He said, “We tend to shirk ownership of that reality. But that matters. So have an impact.”

And there it was: the secret to masterful storytelling and a well-lived life and I didn’t even have to buy a book to get it.

As we sit behind our laptops,

As we map out plans,

Write to do lists,

Sketch out timelines,

As pens glide across paper and fingers coast across touch screens,

Donating our lives to the struggle to bend important ideas into worthy expression,

A sacred force compels us forward, pleading with our monotonous brains, coaxing our sleepy souls to tell bigger stories and to tell them about that bit of “greater” that is in us.

And it is in that kind of telling–that honest, pure unwrenching and loosing from ourselves–that we finally tell the stories that matter.