What does the story of your life say about you? Does it speak of heroic journeys into new and exciting lands of achievement and growth? Or is it an angry and repetitive diatribe against the vagaries of a wantonly malicious universe? Does it sing with finely crafted phrasing and uplifting themes? Or is it plodding, dreary and full of errors, omissions and clichs? Some people feel their destiny to be carved in stone. I believe that our lives are an ongoing exercise in creative writing and as such it is always possible to cease following the storyline that we have been using to illustrate our lives with up to this point, open to a fresh page and start anew. In fact, the Universe itself does this every moment of every day, continually reinventing itself and setting up the storyline for the next moment to come. I refer to this eternal and ongoing process as divine authorship. In the original definition of the phrase, divine authorship referred to spiritual or religious books, writings or other communications that came directly from God (such as the Ten Commandments or the handwriting on the wall in the Christian religion) or works inspired directly from such communications (such as the Koran of Islam, which Muslims hold to be Mohammad's direct transcription of his visions from Allah). But through an extension of that thought, it becomes obvious that the Universe itself, and everything in it, is a direct result of this divine penmanship and that we, who have been given the slightest spark of divine ability to create, also have a hand in this story-boarding of the Universe. There are, of course, whole libraries of interwoven threads that make up the totality of divine authorship, but here are the two main aspects that relate to us, specifically, as authors of our own lives: What God has written into our personal book of life before our birth: This is the basic first draft of our story, complete with our initial cast of characters, circumstances, gifts and burdens. Although this sets the tone for the story to come, it by no means limits it or prevents change. What we, as children of God through divine guidance or through lack of it choose to add to this rough outline: We can choose to simply "flesh it out," following along the pre-set path with little deviation from the bare bones. We can choose to add unsavory characters to it, write in scenes of unnecessary strife and dither away our page-count following dead-end plots and dissonant sub-themes such as martyrdom and victimhood. Or we can decide to go all out, pursuing every possibility and exploring every option fearlessly and with faith in the original Outliner, to try and squeeze every last ounce of potential out of what was originally given to us. It is through this latter form of divine authorship that we can truly recreate our lives in whatever manner we so desire and though them, so too the world we live in. Of course, the words come easier for some than for others. For the unfortunate or the unfocused, life may eventually begin to resemble nothing so much as a pile of angrily crumpled pages full of false starts, scratch-outs and meandering themes, while luckier individuals seem to have just the right words fall into place precisely as their pen glides forward to write them. But each of us, should we choose to take pen and ink firmly in hand, can work at our craft with determination and commitment, with the guidance and love of the Creator at our backs and the intent to follow our highest calling in our hearts, until there is literally no limit to the story we create for ourselves. The Army had a commercial at one time during which they asked whether or not anybody would want to read the book of your life. But in truth, there is a far more important question at stake: When you pass on into your afterlife, will your life's tale make the heavenly "best seller" list, showing how one person overcame adversity, fear and indifference to make the best use the gift God so generously gave to them? Or will it simply end up on the public service racks as a cautionary tale about the tragedy of unlimited potential gone to waste? Through the gift of divine authorship, we can each seek individual instruction and assistance from the Original Author in rewriting, tweaking and polishing the manuscript of our lives until were happy with the results. But its final form, the ending of which none of us has the ability to foresee, will ultimately be reviewed by the most important and luckily for us, the most loving critic of all. Don't disappoint your readership. Pick up your pen and make something of your life. |
