What Would the World Miss Without Your Story?

 

One man could sail around the world and not hold a single reader with his memoir.  E.B. White could describe a row across Central Park Lake and hold a reader breathless. 

It’s not the events of your story.  It’s the story of your events—in you.

 

Scene One

Location: a party at a house by the harbor.

The conversation: it might go something like this.

 

One of the men turns to me—about my age, getting grey—we’ve been chatting boats.  “You’re the one who’s just published that memoir.”

“Yes.”

“You retired?”

“Yes.  I enjoyed doing the book.  Lot of work.  I suppose not everyone could do it.”

“You know, I’ve tried to write a memoir.  People say my life is amazing.  Can’t seem to make it into a book though.  I could use your advice.”

“You’ve sailed across the Atlantic, right?”

“Three crossings.  Once solo in a 28-foot sloop. France—Azores—Cape Verdes—then downwind to the Caribbean.” 

“So what’s the point of your memoir?”

He looks puzzled.  “I just said.”

“I don’t mean to be argumentative, but no, you didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve told me what happened, not what the point is.”

“People say I tell what happened very well.”

“I expect you do.  There’s a lot to tell about, in all that sailing.  I’m sure you’ve done a good job at what is not the job.”

He looks, perhaps, offended.  “What do you mean it’s not the job?”

“What I mean is you’ve begun the job—to tell the story—but that’s not the real job.  You’ve got your story so one event flows into the next event.  That’s good.”

“Thanks.” And then, “I think.”

“But the real job is harder.”

“Why?”

“Because the real job is answering my question—what’s the point?”

“Why can’t I just tell the story and be done?”

“Because no one wants to read a sequence of your events.  ”

 

Scene Two

 

“I don’t understand.  Why do I do this then?”

“What someone wants to read is what that person needs to read.”

“How am I supposed to know what that person needs to read?”

“One thing everyone needs to read is the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“About you, and about the point.”

“But the truth about me is what I wrote down already.” 

“No, it isn’t.  What you wrote down is a sequence of events, which you have ordered so they flow.  That’s not the truth.  That’s a sequence.  And nobody wants to read a sequence of your events.” 

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Tell the point.”

“What is the point?”

“Ah, that’s the big question, is it not?”

“Oh, come on.  We’re going around in circles.”  He steps aside and pours himself another drink.  I think he may have left the conversation, but he circles back.  “Anyway, the truth right now is that I hate my boat as much as I love her.  Maybe I’m too old.”

I pause then ask, “What’s the point of your life—let’s say of your nautical life—of this sequence you have written down?” 

“The point?  I’m just trying to tell my story here.  People say my life is amazing.  That’s what I’m trying to tell about.”

“You really want my advice?”

“Sure.”

“Write the sequence down, each chapter, just as it flows.  But then go back and write it again.  By the second or the third time you do that, a new conception of the story will emerge.  Your concept of your story will have matured.  That new concept is the point.” 

“Ah, that point thing….

“Yes.  That point thing leads to the truth about you.  The truth will be the reason why people need to read your book.  So they can have truth in their lives.  They need to have truth in their lives, and your book gives it to them.” 

He muses.  “It’ll take a lot of pages to write it again and again.”

“It takes a lot of days to cross the Atlantic.  What’s the point of doing that?  Just to get to the other side?”

“Yes—but really, no.”  He pauses.  “It’s being out there on the ocean and in tune with the ocean—for me, that’s in tune with God—and even more so when I'm alone.”   

“So that’s the truth you need to talk about.  Your focus needs to be on the truth, not on successive positions at noon.  People will read your book, if it contains the truth about you and about your soul, so they can have the truth in their lives.”

“But what do I do with this mass of paper?  By now, I’ve got maybe a thousand pages on my desk!”

 

                                                                    Scene Three

 

“Yes, you do have lots of pages.  Now cut every sentence from the thousand pages that is not about the point.”

“But what if I love those sentences now?”

“You will love them.  But your love is self-indulgent.  You’re in love with your love of your sentences.  Cut anyway.” 

“Not easy.”

“In the Caribbean, did you ever take on board a huge bunch of green bananas and hang them in the rigging and, when they ripened, need to eat them as fast as you possibly could before they rotted?”

“Yes.”

“What happened when they rotted?”

“Threw them overboard.”

“See?  Even though you loved them?”

“Even though.”  He smiles.  “Okay, I cut.”

“That’s what you’ll do if you want someone else to read your story.”

“I thought I wanted that.”

“Don’t back away now.  Now people will read your story—and will value it—because now you are telling the truth.”

“Anything else?”

“Just go through and make every paragraph a pleasure to read—vivid, humorous, whatever it takes to make each paragraph a pleasure to read.”

He rolls his eyes.  “Then am I done?”

“Oh, sure,” I smile. “Then you’re done.” 

We shake hands. 

As he turns away, I say, “But when an editor gets a hold of it, and you’ll have three or four more rewrites yet to do.”

Copyright, Dikkon Eberhart, 2015

A Book in the Hand

Exciting—soon, I’ll receive my finished book; I’ll hold it in my hand!

The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told will be on bookstore shelves in June, but I get it first.  Yay! 

The last time I was this excited to hold a new book of mine was many, many years ago, when my second novel, Paradise, was about to come off the press.  I was a young man then and believed that Paradise would be for me what The Sun Also Rises was for Hemingway. 

Of course, Hemingway was dead when Paradise came out.  I regretted not meeting him through my poet father.  Though Dad had encountered Hemingway at literary events, he told me he would not have crossed the road to shake his hand.  Dad considered the man a popinjay.

Nevertheless, Dad understood my regret, so he took me over to meet Hadley Hemingway, the man’s Paris wife.  An afternoon spent with her satisfied my desire to be cloaked—however lightly—in the robe of the Lost Generation. 

The last time I was this excited to hold a new book of mine, therefore, was when I believed I was writing as a literary competitor, partly, because I was young, as a competitor to my dad, partly, because I was young, as a competitor to that other of my literary heroes. 

This time, now, it is different.  I am older—a lot older.  I have achieved some successes of my own outside of the literary world.  I am a husband of nearly forty years (though I am still a “work in progress,” being drafted ever more finely—with careful re-writes—to glorify the Lord); I am the father of four; I was for many years a productive, relationship-based salesman in the marketplace of the law. 

My memoir project began on Dad’s 100^th birthday, when I watched him accept the congratulations of scores of admirers, and when I realized that my wife’s and my grandchildren—not yet born—would not understand the full context of their great-grandfather’s centenary event unless I wrote down the funny stories and the poignant stories and the redemptive stories for them to read later. 

So I did. 

Those of you who write know that writing is a difficult process of trying, ever more precisely, to get the work done correctly.  This applies to fiction, to non-fiction, to memoir, to any serious word-smithing endeavor. 

While placing words on paper, the work takes on its own life.  It generates its own requirement of correctness, which supersedes the correctness that the writer had understood at the beginning as the level of correctness toward which to strive.  That initial level of correctness was a standard only of the writer’s.  That level had not yet attained the higher and tighter level required by the words themselves. 

The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told contains funny and poignant stories of my growing up in a literary family.  Our droppers-in were probably famous but their fame meant nothing to me since they were just people verbally glittering around Dad and Mom. 

As for the redemptive story, my tale becomes more complicated when I sought to find a standing place of my own—read the book. 

 

                                                            ***

Of course, everyone should buy and read my book.  Of course, not everyone will do so. 

But if you are one who does buy my book, you will discover in my book just where all of these events were leading, and you will discover why I was moved by the greatest story ever told. 

Meanwhile, soon, I will have my book in my hand. 

I’ll hold onto it for you, until you can get your own copy, in June. 

 

 

 

Copyright, Dikkon Eberhart, 2015

 

 

 

Dare to Find

Perhaps you are a religious seeker, unaffiliated, or, if affiliated, unconvinced.  Perhaps what happened to my wife and to me will interest you. 

 

Like us, figuratively, you’ve been hiking a long dry road.  You are caked with dust and sweat.  Perhaps you are sore of knee and low on water.  Me, when we were in our desert of discontent, I had no idea where our next water should come from, we were so parched. 

 

Here’s what happened. 

 

We came upon a religious river, and now we are on its other side.  Over here, it is a green and pleasant land.  It is satisfying over here—difficult, too. 

 

If you believe that you have been called to set out into the unknown, then, I say, stick with it, sore and dry as you may be.  Up ahead—just around the next bend—you’ll find a river flowing past. 

 

Turn aside.  Slip off your pack.  Crick your back.  Walk a step or two. 

 

Feel that breeze?

 

It’s good, isn’t it, to strip off your boots and your hot, damp socks.  Dip your toes in the river and then wade out deeper.  Wade until the water is above your knees, until the current presses against you, and until the water’s coldness shortens your breath.  Wade farther still, to where the sand melts under your feet, and to where you need to make swimming motions in the air with your arms in order to keep yourself in balance.     

 

Stop there. 

 

Shall you plunge? 

 

My wife and I stood just exactly where you are standing right now. 

 

We—we, all of us—we all of us stand right there, do we not? 

 

Often we stand right there in our lives, and we wonder, shall we plunge? 

 

 

                                                            ***

 

Here’s what you’ll need to make it to the opposite shore.   

 

You’ll need more than thinking to make it across.  Brain power won’t cut it.  You’ll need to go beyond that marvelous brain of yours.  You’ll need to do what the Israelites did at the edge of the deep Red Sea.  You’ll need to tap into your heart and your soul.  You’ll need to get out of God’s face and stop yelling at him—“The Egyptians are coming!  The Egyptians are coming!”—and, prayerfully, to give him time to perform His miracle for you. 

 

You will need to dare. 

 

You will need to dare.   

 

Here’s the fundamental story, and the fundamental promise of the ages—if you dare, then there is Someone on the other shore who will leap to bring you in.  

 

           

                                                                        ***   

 

Friends and family were curious when my wife and I crossed to the other side—Judaism to Christianity, law to grace, caterpillar to butterfly, in Shakespearian terms, Acts One, Two, Three, and Four to Act Five. 

 

We did our best to answer their questions, and, satisfied, some have cast speculative glances at the river themselves, thinking long thoughts. 

 

There were those among our friends and family whom we worried might be alarmed for us at our crossing to the other side, or who might be angry that we adopted a new country when oughtn’t it to have been enough to keep a deprecated or a moderated religion, at least for comfort’s sake, as some of them may have done?

 

Indeed, what was striking to us in most of these encounters is the genuine kindness and curiosity with which almost all of our friends and relations blessed our conversions.  This surprise ought to be taken as good news by any other seekers, similarly anxious.     

 

We remain grateful for the solicitude shown to us about a theological convulsion over which we had little control.

 

                                                            ***

 

 At the moment of our conversions, my wife and I were relieved of wandering.  We were relieved of contemporary anxiety.  We were relieved of our culture’s famous loneliness and narcissism.

 

We were relieved, not of sin, but of the compulsion to sin. 

 

Most deeply, though, we were relieved of the horrid and the fearsome existential burden that it might be only we ourselves—we negligent and stumbling humans—who are the purpose of it all.

 

For if it should have turned out, in the end, that only we negligent and stumbling humans are the purpose of the universe, then…. 

 

Well, then…

 

Well, then, it is very cold out there. 

 

The stars are very strange. 

 

Guttural grunts tiger the night. 

 

And the powerless will be—as they always have been—devoured by the powerful…yum, yum.    

 

But it is not so.

 

THE UNIVERSE IS NOT ABOUT US.

 

That’s what Channa and I were relieved to find out, thank God.    

 

 

                                                         ***

 

This thing that happened to my wife and to me is an actual, real, true thing.  It happened right here, right now.  It is not a metaphor.  It is not an intellectual caprice.  It arose neither from a crochet nor from a mood.  

 

We didn’t control it.  When it came upon us, instead we gave in to it. 

 

The thing that happened to us is a thing that has happened to legions of humans, down the ages, and, having happened to us, it changed us as it changed them. 

 

We are different now.  We inhabit the other shore. 

 

Skeptics today have invented nothing new.  

 

God’s creation and purpose has been on display before a world of skeptical skepticism since God’s glory, itself, began. 

 

Skeptics today are the worshippers of the Roman Emperor of old, who found themselves astounded by Christianity and by its calling to succor the insignificant, the poor, the downtrodden, the ill, the widows, the slaves, the children. 

 

Skeptics today are the go-along-to-get-along worshippers of the Emperor of old and of the State long ago, who were nevertheless abashed—when they could bring themselves to notice it—at the lyricism with which the martyrs met the lions. 

 

Skeptics today are the worshippers of the Emperor of old, who, upon encountering this new concept of a transcendent, a universal, and a redemptive God, were compelled to climb up into His lap, and to punch Him in the nose. 

 

“You are not the boss of me!” they shouted at Him—and they shout at Him today.  

 

Goodness, what a tantrum. 

 

I’m sorry, but God’s purpose is. 

 

Be our time A.D. 100 or A.D. 2000, God’s purpose can’t be gotten rid of. 

 

 

                                                            ***

 

Seeker, be bold! 

 

Dare!

 

Plunge!

 

            There is—indeed—Someone on the other shore who will leap to bring you in. 




Copyright, Dikkon Eberhart, 2015

So You Want to Write a Book....

I applaud you. 

Sit down and write five pages each day for two months.  You’ll have a book that is 300 pages long.  

As it happens, my new memoir is about 300 pages long, too.  However—different from you—writing my book took ten years!

When you are done with your two-month book—if that is the time it takes you to write it—then I am happy about you as a person.  I am happy because evidently you are a person who has a very strong sense of three things.  The first thing is where your book came from inside you.  The second thing is where your book was each day, while you pushed it along.  And, third and most important, is where your book was going to end up.

Impressive.

                                                         

***

However long it takes, one day, your book will be done.   

Or anyway you’ll think that it is done. 

Because it had better be done. 

Because you really, seriously need it to be done. 

You really, seriously need it to be done because—if you are me and have taken ten years to finish your book—your brain will hurt as my brain hurt when I was done.  My brain hurt with a hurt that couldn’t be smoothed over by two fingers of bourbon and a night’s hard sleep.  My brain hurt because, having re-read my book five times since it was done, I could not tell whether it is any good or not. 

 

                                                          ***

So what did I do when my book was done and my brain hurt me?  I got out of Dodge. 

My wife Channa, my son Sam, and I got out of Dodge by going to Orlando, where it was cold during February, and then by going to Roanoke, where it was cold during the rest of February and most of March. 

Cold as it was, in Roanoke we had two grandchildren—we had Sam’s niece and nephew.  Cold as it was, we had a modest condo for a month, where, as we thought it, we would have nothing to do.

 

                                                          ***

In reality, though—not really nothing to do. 

As for Channa, she had two commercial real estate rent study reports about which to sign off—after all, we needed to make money in order to get out of Dodge. 

As for Sam, he had movies to watch again and again, and then, when we all went out to restaurants, he had shrimp and pasta dishes to find on each menu. 

As for me, my job was to adventure in social media, in order to make myself cyber visible and cyber friendly.    

                                                         

***

While we were still in Maine, back before we got out of Dodge, I dreamed of the sunny south. 

In the sunny south—as I dreamed it—I should sit under a palm tree and delight in pure study.  I would not create anything.  Even the smallest act of creating made my brain hurt.  Instead of creating—as I dreamed it—I would absorb that which had already been created. 

I would make a holy study of God and of His intentionality.  I would take up a study of the evangelical doctrine of sola scriptura—the assertion that in Scripture alone, and not in ecclesiastical tradition, papal or otherwise, is the truth of God revealed. 

I would neither argue anything nor create anything.  I would absorb, is all.  I would gaze upon that which is pure and upon that which, being pure, is sufficient. 

Perhaps I would gaze with the same intensity as that beachcombing, rusticating, French painter, Paul Gauguin, when he gazed, in the 1890s, on the maidens of the far South Sea.  Those same maidens were the ones he used as icons while he wondered on his canvas Where Do We Come From?  What Are We?  Where Are We Going?  

 

                                                          ***

It has been more than thirty years since I finished writing a book.  That last one was my second novel, Paradise.  One third of the subsequent thirty years I spent writing draft, after draft, after draft, of this new book, my memoir.  I wrote hard enough finally to figure out what the book is about.  The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told is about the same three questions which Gauguin painted. 

I knew where I came from—where I came from is described in the book, funny stories and all.  I knew where I had been during those thirty years since Paradise was published—figuring out how to make a living and raising a family, fully described, funny stories and all. 

As for the third question—where are we going?—that question is the crux of memoir.    

 

                                                          ***

Regarding your book—indeed you may finish your book in two months.  I hope you do, proving you know the answer to these three vital theological questions. 

Write it down, my friend. 

Write it down and tell us about it.  We need to know. 

 

 

Copyright - Dikkon Eberhart - 2015