Bell - How to be here: a guide to creating a life worth living

Contents

I once had an idea for a book.

Id never written a book.

I was a pastor at the time and Id been giving sermons week after week and I noticed that certain ideas and stories seemed to connect with people in a unique way. I began to see themes and threads and wondered whether I could bring them together to make something people would read and pass along to their friends. I already had a job, so I figured the only way to write a book was to hire a stenographerthe person who sits in a courtroom and records everything that is said during a trialand speak the book out loud in one sitting while he typed what I said.

So thats what I did. I stood there in a room and I spoke the book out loud while KevinTheStenographer typed away. It took an entire day.

And it was awful. Seriouslyit was so bad.

There was a moment in the middle of the afternoon when I was talking and suddenly I realized that I wasnt even listening to what I was saying. I had somehow managed to stop paying attention to myself.

A few days later Kevin sent me the typed manuscript of what Id said and I started reading it, but it was like a mild form of torture. It just didnt work.

It was my words, but it wasnt me, if that makes sense.

All of which led me to the shocking realization that if I was going to write a book, I was going to have to actually write a book.

Which sounds obvious, but at the time it was a revelation.

I remember sitting down at my desk, opening up a new word-processing document, and staring at that blank page with that blinking line in the upper left-hand corner. I wasnt prepared for how intimidating it would be. Other people are writersactual, you know, authors. And there are lots of them, many who have been doing it for years.

I thought about Christopher Moores book about Biff
the thirteenth disciple
and Annie Dillards line about physics labs
and everything Nick Hornby has ever written
and Dorothy Sayerss words about Trinitarian
creativity
and anything by Dave Eggers....

I was now going to try and do that? The blinking line on that blank page kept blinking, like it was taunting me.

Theres a reason its called a cursor.

We all have a blinking line.

Your blinking line is whatever sits in front of you waiting to be brought into existence.

Its the book

or day

or job

or business

or family

or mission

or class

or plan

or cause

or meeting

or task

or project

or challenge

or phone call

or life that is waiting for you to bring it into being.

An Unfinished World

Do you see your life as something you create?

Or do you see your life as something that is happening to you?

The blinking line raises a compelling question:

What are we here for?

For many people, the world is already created. Its a fixed, static realityset in place, previously established, done. Or to say it another way: finished. Which usually leads to the question: Whats the point of any of this?

But when were facing the blinking line and we talk about bringing something new into existence, were expressing a different view of the world, one in which the world is unfinished.

Theres an ancient poem about this unfinished world we call home. In this poem there are stars and fish and earth and birds and animals and oceans, and theyre all in the endless process of becoming. Its not just a tree, its a tree that produces fruit that contains seeds that will eventually grow new trees that will produce new fruit that contains more seeds to make more new trees. Its a world exploding with life and beauty and complexity and diversity, all of it making more, becoming and evolving in such a way that tomorrow will be different from today because its all headed somewhere. Nothing is set in stone or static here; the whole thing is in motion, flush with vitality and pulsing with creative energy. (This poem, by the way, is the first chapter of the Bible, in case any of this is starting to sound familiar.)

And then, right there in the middle of all of this unfinished creation, the poet tells us about a man and a woman. The mans name is Adam, which means The Human in the original Hebrew language. Its not a common name like you and I have, its more like a generic description. Same with the woman, whose name is Eve, which means Source of Life or Mother of the Living.

They find themselves in the midst of this big, beautiful, exotic, heartbreaking, mysterious, endlessly becoming, unfinished world and theyre essentially told,

Do something with it!

Make something!

Take it somewhere!

Enjoy it!

The poet wants us to know that God is looking for partners, people to help co-create the world. To turn this story into a debate about whether or not Adam and Eve were real people or to read this poem as a science textbook is to miss the provocative, pointed, loaded questions that the poem asks:

What will Adam and Eve do with this extraordinary opportunity?

What kind of world will they help make?

Where will they take it?

What will they do with all this creative power theyve been given?

Its a poem about them, but it asks questions about all of us:

What will we make of our lives?

What will we do with our energies?

What kind of world will we create?

Which leads to the penetrating question for every one of usincluding you:

What will you do with your blinking line?

Ex Nihilo-ness

You create your life.

You get to shape it, form it, steer it, make it into something. And you have way more power to do this than you realize.

What you do with your life is fundamentally creative work. The kind of life you lead, what you do with your time, how you spend your energiesits all part of how you create your life.

All work is ultimately creative work because all of us are taking part in the ongoing creation of the world.

Theres a great Latin phrase that helps me make sense of the wonder and weirdness of creating a life. Ex nihilo means out of nothing. I love this phrase because you didnt used to be here. And I wasnt here either. We didnt used to be here. And then we were here. We were conceived, we were birthed, we arrived.

Out of nothing came... us.

You.

Me.

All of us.

All of it.

There is an ex nihilo-ness to everything, and that includes each of us.

Who of us can make sense of our own existence?

Have you ever heard an answer to the question How did we get here? that even remotely satisfied your curiosity? (Is this why kids shudder when they think of their parents having sex? Because we get here through some very mysterious and unpredictable biological phenomena involving swimming and winning?... Our very origins are shrouded in strangeness. You and I are here, but we were almost not here.)

My friend Carlton writes and produces television shows and sometimes I watch his shows and Ill say to him, How did you come up with that? Where did that come from? Well be laughing and Ill say, What is going on inside your head that you can make this stuff up?