WRIITNG IN THE MARGINS: How Do We Want To Live?

Good morning, ladies, and welcome back to Cafe Nudge. I'm already on my second cup of English breakfast (with soy milk). I'm not fully functional until this point, know what I mean?

I've been immersing myself in your novelettes -- uh, comments -- and I'm loving the depth and the honesty. I think maybe without even realizing it we've revealed tons about ourselves and the way we live. And about what we want:

    * deeper relationships, especially with other Christians

    * meaningful careers

    * an efficient way to get it all done

I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, wow, at 62 I have all those things (okay, maybe not so much the third one because I've discovered you CAN'T 'get it all done' ...). And yet a yearning is still there. That deep longing for something even deeper. You get what I'm saying?

That came to me about a year ago when my beloved agent and friend-like-a-brother was facing a brain cancer prognosis of two months left here with us. I got to spend three days with him and his wife (also a close friend), and it was one of the most profound experiences of my life. There was such openness and honesty and genuine expression of emotion, because what was the point in anything else at that point? Throughout those three days a  clear thought kept sweeping through my mind and dusting everything else out:

I want to live the way Lee Hough is dying.

It occured to me then, and has stayed with me ever since, that THAT is the real issue, the ultimate question: how do we want to live?

It has helped me - a person who can use fifty words when five would actually do the job -- to have that succinct way of expressing it. I want to live the way Lee Hough died. Can you do that? Can you use twenty-five words or less -- or a metaphor or simile -- or an image for the way you truly want to live?

Maybe a page from The Merciful Scar will help. This is a trial run for something I'm hoping will become a regular part of our blog-time -- a thing called Writing In the Margins. I'll provide a page from one of my books (yeah, please forgive the shameless product promotion ... my own stuff is what I know) and ask you to comment on whatever you would write in the margins if you were studying the book for more than what's-gonna-happen-next. You could think of it as what would I underline? I have no idea if this is going to work, but let's give it a shot, yeah?

 A little backstory for those who haven't read The Merciful Scar (and why the Sam Hill haven't you?). 

    * Kirsten (the narrator) has  self-injured for years and has accidentally cut her wrist deep enough to make doctors believe she's suicidal

* Her only real choice for treatment is with a former Anglican nun named Frankie who owns a sheep ranch. Go figure.

* The parts in italics are Kirsten's inner voice, what she refers to as the Nudnik.

Here we go:

 

 

  So .... share with us your brief image for how you want to live. And tell us what you would write in the margins, about your own life.

(And if this technique totally doesn't work for you, let me know that too. I'm already trying to figure out a way to make it easier to read ...)

Blessings, my friends --

 

Nancy