Writing to Change the World

How do you know when you’re on the right track? When you pick up a book, how do you know you’re supposed to read it? I have been slowly moving into the attic and turning it into my space. (Asher thinks it’s his too, so I have to leave room for him.) Yesterday, I brought up a two shelf bookcase Nelson made for me a few years back and put some of my writing books on its shelves. One of the books is Mary Pipher’s Writing to Change the World, An Inspiring guide for transforming the World With Words.

Two weeks ago, I hung out my grant writing shingle and called it Nexus Funding Solutions. I chose Nexus because it is a synonym for connection. The past couple days I have been working on my speaking/teaching ministry and chose the name Zugos Ministries because yoke is a synonym for connection and one of the verses that has been greatly impactful upon my life is Matthew 11:29 where Jesus invites his followers to take his yoke and learn of him. Today I pick up Pipher’s book and the first chapter is titled ‘Writing to Connect.’

But before I could get to the first chapter I got stuck in the introduction. Here’s some of what she wrote:
-Language is weaponized when it is used to objectify , depersonalize, dehumanize, to create and “other.” Once a person is labeled as “not like us,” the rules for civilized behavior no longer apply. (p. 4)
-I am not interested in weapons, whether words or guns. I want to be part of the rescue team for our tired, overcrowded planet. (p. 5)
-Once we have a label that doesn’t fit us, we can ignore the humanity of the labeled. Part of our responsibility as writers is to tell stories that make such erasures impossible. (p. 6)
-Good writing facilitates the making of connections in a way that inspires openheartedness, thinking, talking, and action. (p. 7)
-Stories are the most basic tool for connecting us to one another. Research shows that storytelling not only engages all the senses, it triggers activity on both the left and the right sides of the brain. People attend, remember, and are transformed by stories, which are meaning-filled units of ideas, the verbal equivalent of mother’s milk. (p. 11)

I’m supposed to be reading this book. Already I love it, but I can see it will not be an easy read. Already, it is requiring me to think and to feel. At several points in the introduction I choked up and got teary. This is profound stuff for me. For as long as I can remember I have felt disconnected and have spent my life trying to connect with others and to make them feel connected. The painful and destructive effects of this are that there have been people who took advantage of that and who drew me into unhealthy relationships. I did things seeking to be loved and to demonstrate love that were neither loving nor lovely. I have no pride about this and carry deep scars. Fortunately, I have emerged from the darkness and pain no less intense in my desire for connections, but wiser and healthier about my boundaries.

One of those relationships put me on the wrong side of the law and I now carry a label that results in immediate judgment and disdain. I really struggle against this because what I did is not who I am, but unless you know me you will never know that if you get the label first.

I was sitting here thinking about this and thinking about what I had just read and I started wondering about what I could write that would change the world. I began thinking about the people I’ve had the opportunity to work with over the past couple years. People, who like me, meet with barriers daily because of poor choices they made. Some of the choices involved illegal activity, some dropped out of school and have been stuck in meaningless jobs fighting a meaningless existence, and some have looked for love in empty relationships creating babies all along the way. Very few of these folks read books.

The more I thought about this the angrier I got. The anger was a churning in my gut that left me feeling nauseous. However you want to label these folks, they reside below the bottom rung of the ladder. They feel hopeless and helpless. They don’t see much reason to try because the other shoe will be dropping momentarily and any good they might experience will only too quickly be jerked away. They dream of winning the lottery because they can’t find a job that’ll help them get out of their rut. They’ve long forgotten what it feels like to be healthy and part of that is because they smoke and drink so much to take the sting off the discouragement and frustration. Read? They can barely sit through a sitcom. Nothing entertains. Nothing encourages. Nothing changes.

Now that’s not the part that makes my gut hurt. The part that makes my gut hurts is that there is an attitude and mindset in our part of the world that likes things like that. Lots of people make money off the misery of the below the rung folk. Jobs would be lost if folks actually began to climb up the ladder. Health care. Pharmaceuticals. Social service systems. Ministries. Businesses looking for cheap, desperate laborers. And on and on. That’s what makes me sick.

I have sat in groups and talked one-on-one with people about this. They feel desperate. They would really like life to be different, but they don’t believe it ever will be. They don’t trust. They don’t trust people, agencies, or programs. And don’t get them started on what they feel about God.
How do we get the message to them? Connect with them? Help them out of hopelessness?

A quick internet search of just the word connections presents the pressing concerns of those around us: flight connections; dating connections; business connections; internet connections. Yahoo alone listed 763,000,000,000 possible links. We have an insatiable need to connect, but seem completely unable to reach beyond ourselves to make it.

This is the right time for this book and me.