Jesse Koepke

I like to ask God questions.

Not big, heavy questions, like “Why is there suffering?”, or “Should I walk through Door A or Door B?”, or “What is your calling for my life?” Those questions are good to ask, and I have definitely asked them (and will certainly continue to ask them). But those aren’t the questions I’m talking about.

The questions I’m talking about, the ones I like to ask Daddy when it’s just me and Him hanging out on the front porch after a cool evening run, are simple ones. Ones like, “What’s your favorite color? Do you like sunrises or sunsets better? Were you barefoot when you walked in the garden of Eden? If it’s a nice day out and you’re just hanging out, do you like shoes or sandals? What’s your favorite kind of ice cream? Can you find the north star? Because I can’t. I always thought you found the Big Dipper and then followed the handle out, but that star doesn’t seem to stay in the north. Do you like climbing trees? Did you design trees specifically to be climbed? There’s no reason they have to be so tall and sturdy – except to hold the weight of someone standing on the branches. Do you like low-cut or ankle socks? What’s your favorite kind of music? What is your favorite kind of bird? What fish did you create and think, ‘Boy this one’s really going to send them for a loop!’? Do you like prairies or mountains? Do you like to swim in rivers or lakes? Do you like camping?”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard an answer for one of those questions, but that’s not the point. I like asking them because when I do, I feel so close to Daddy. I feel like we’re friends, and I imagine He really likes to be asked those things, because it’s me wanting to know His heart.

Hopefully, when I get to hang out with Him in person some day, we’ll go on a walk and I’ll ask Him all of these questions. And then I’ll give Him a big hug, because I can.

Oh, and the best part is that when I walked into the house to write this, my roommate was playing John Mark McMillan’s song, “How He Loves Us”.

I love you too, Daddy : )

In Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott writes, “… what it means for us, for writers, is that we need to align ourselves with the river of the story, the river of the unconscious, of memory and sensibility, of our characters’ lives, which can then pour through us, the straw” (121).

First, Lamott says that the origin of the story is within ourselves, and in order to find it we have to sit back and get the voices out of our head and listen to our subconscious, to the characters themselves, and find out what they are saying. She recognizes the problems that all writers (and probably most creative artists) have with the diligence needed to create, and the problems artists have of self-esteem and confidence and the voices that tell us we can’t do anything right.

It’s all true. BUT, she gives the wrong answer.

Her answer is to “try to calm down, get quiet, breathe, and listen. Squint at the screen in your head…” (113). Look inward, listen to the characters, and go with whatever they say, even in if it doesn’t make sense. Let the characters speak instead of you directing them like puppets.

The problem I have is this: we can’t look to ourselves and rely on OUR strength. We have to look to God. God is our foundation, not me quieting my inner voices. She talks about getting jealous about other writers who are successful and of coping with rejected manuscripts, but all the answers are ones that involve me and me only. But I will fail. GOD must be my rock. When I feel like I can’t produce and others are doing better and liked better and are successful with lots of money, I don’t run to my happy place and sit quietly until I turn down the voices. I run to God and find my worth in him. I don’t (or can’t) write to find my worth; it’s only found in him, and in the truth that he loves me and I love him, which means I am successful. Thus, I write, not the other way around.

It’s about having the right rock to stand on. You get depressed and jealous and lack inspiration, and all of the weight rests on YOU to fix it.

But I turn to God. And he’s a much more solid rock than I am.

To give Lamott credit, what she says about diligence and perseverance is right on. I need to be faithful to stay at the plow and do the work and sow into what I want to create. BUT my strength to do so is not found in me.

Thank the Lord for that : )

Wow, two days in a row. What’s happening to me?!

I finished a chapter in Bird by Bird today called “A Moral Point of View”. Anne Lamott talks about the importance of having a moral center that you care about in your writing. “The core, ethical concepts in which you most passionately believe are the language in which you are writing” (pg. 103, 1995 First Anchor Books Edition). She talks about needing to believe in what you’re writing, about how if “you lose interest or faith… along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately” (103). She says, “Telling these truths is your job. You have nothing else to tell us” (103).

“As we live, we begin to discover what helps in life and what hurts, and our characters act this out dramatically. This is moral material… We like certain characters because they are good or decent – they internalize some decency in the world that makes them able to take a risk or make a sacrifice for someone else. They let us see that there is in fact some sort of moral compass still at work here, and that we, too, could travel by this compass if we so choose” (105).

She hitting the nail on the head! But she’s also fundamentally wrong. We are called to tell the truth. Anything else is just hay and stubble. What Lamott doesn’t recognize is that there is ONE source of truth, and that is what – or rather, Who – we need to tell.

She seems to believe in God and go to church, but her faith is a very relativistic one, a faith that doesn’t hold true to the Bible. Because of this, Truth has no absolute center, but instead is simply what truth is to you. Because of this all of us can write about the things we believe in and call them truth, and our writings are validated by our passionate believing.

So close, yet so far…. I can (and often do, most likely) passionately believe a lie, but that does not make it true. What is true cannot originate in a flawed vessel; we as humans cannot create absolute truth. Only a perfect being could create Truth, and that being is God. Therefore, as a writer who’s agreed job it is to tell the truth and pass on things that I’ve learned, I must find my moral point of view in the Origin of morality, the Creator of truth, the One who fashioned right and wrong from nothing. The Lord did not base his laws, his standards of right and wrong, of what is holy and unholy, on someone else’s system. Before God decided what Good is and what Wrong is, there was no such thing. He did not take the good ideas of other philosophers and make the ultimate Morality. HE is morality, HE is truth, and if I desire to share truth with others I must first find HIM.

The journey of a writer is not to some inner place where passionate conviction lies. The journey of a writer is a journey of discover into the heart of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

A verse that has become a focus for me as a writer is Matthew 13:52, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out his treasure what is new and what is old.”

The role of a writer, of a storyteller, is to search the depths of the heart of God and bring out of that treasury revelations that are new to the world, and also things that the world has known and would call old, but were unrealized to have originated in the heart of God.

“Lord! Train me to be a scribe for the kingdom of heaven! Show me your ways; teach me your paths! I want to know your heart!”

I figured out a melody on the piano earlier tonight, and then jotted down a few lyrics.

I tried so hard / to find you in the storm / to hear your voice / in the heat of the flame. I searched and I searched / spinning endlessly in the wind / but nothing, nothing / was in the air. / And then you came / riding on the whisper….

At first it was meant to be a song about trusting God and a mirror of what Elijah encountered on the mountainside, when God was not in the earthquake, or the fire, or the storm, but in the whisper. But as I played it more, and figured out some sweet chords for the last couple of lines, it seemed way more epic than just that….

The line “and then you came, riding on the whisper” seems to grab me somehow… epic…. I think it’s… He came riding in a whisper, but He’ll come again riding on the wings of a shout.

And so I wrote this:

—

At the end of the age, the armies of men gathered together, their forces arrayed in the west, seeking to save their man-made Eden. They gloated and boasted of their might, proclaimed their mighty deeds to one another, and the clammer of their spears and shields was loud.

But then… a rumble in the east. A glow against the horizon. A tremor went through the ranks, and all voices fell still….

Over the ridge burst a great man astride a mighty white horse. Upon his thigh was written Faithful and True, and forth from his mouth came a sharp and two-edged sword. He came with the thunder of hooves, and behind him rushed the hosts of heaven, clad in white, their voices lifted high with praise for the King over all kings.

And He came! He came on the wings of a shout, a shout like the roar of many waters! The ground trembled and the armies of men quailed. They turned to run, but before the sword of the Bridegroom there was no retreat. With a shout that split the heavens and clove the Mount Olives in two He came on, a torrent unstoppable, a majesty undeniable, a mastery unquestionable, a reign undefiable.

—

Oh man! I need to keep… something… I just can’t grasp it…. The epicness of that moment! When the Bridegroom, the King of Glory, rides to meet the forces of men in THE climactic battle of the age! Does it get any more epic than that? And being like one telling the story afterward to those who didn’t see it, to children, “And then HE came! HE, the one we had all been waiting for! He broke onto the scene, riding on the wings of His shout that split the heavens, a might incontestable, a glory inescapable!” Oh! I can hear the music playing! The build of the drums to the breaking lose of glory and majesty and praise to the throne of the King! Oh! Let me play it! Let the ecstasy of high praise to the King on His day of victory consume me! For He is coming on the clouds, clothed in majesty, surrounded by the hosts of heaven. At long last we will see Him in full glory, unshielded, unhidden, as the Son of Man was only once seen during his time on earth. “Bow! All you who live and move and breathe! For the King of Glory is come! Open up you gates! Fling wide you ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in!”

Oh… to fascinated by the Man, the Son of God….

I’m currently reading a book given to me by a friend called Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott. It’s about writing, and mostly about persistence and diligence. The process of writing a story, from short to novel, is arduous (oh yeah, big word), and it’s easy to be enthusiastic about a great idea but then sit down and feel all of that excitement drain away into the blank empty of the page. I’ve suffered from this for years with screenplays; I have great ideas (I think, at least), but when I sit down to write them, I type a few words and then give up.

But I think the main theme of Lamott’s book is to persevere. Take the writing process little by little, rather than the whole steak all at once. That’s where the title Bird By Bird comes from. Lamott’s brother had to write a school paper once about birds, but waited till the night before to write. Their father found him sitting at the table surrounded by piles of books and staring aimlessly at all the information. “Just take it bird by bird, son,” the dad said. Bird by bird. Little by little. The farmer doesn’t plow all of his acres of fields all at once. He takes it one furrow, one line at a time. “It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work”, says Lamott.

It brings me to a curious position. She said faith. All this talk about persistence brings up a longing in my heart to walk faithfully with God. In this simple act of writing, my lack of diligence and faithfulness is revealed in stark clarity. A prayer that stays with me is asking for the fruits of the Holy Spirit, that faithfulness and self-control would grow in me.

It plays on two levels. One is being faithful to the ideas and stories Daddy has planted in me, and the other is in the broader scope of life to walk faithful with God himself in relationship. “Grow in me the fruits of faithfulness and self-control, Lord!” It’s not a brilliant revelation, but I’ve realized that it’s easier to consume than it is to create. But as Lamott says, it’s a matter of persistence and hard work, of going back and back again, day after day, just being faithful in the simple, smallest ways that I can. Just write a paragraph a day. Just half a page of screenplay. Like the widow who sold oil so that her son wouldn’t be taken away. As long as she had pots to fill, the oil kept coming.

I want to be one who faithfully fills the pots God brings to me.