The Saturday Stoke #35
Listen to The Saturday Stoke
Today I want us to take a few minutes to think about the power of words. How do we use them? What good are they?
But even more than words, I want us to think about where we find words.
We find words on a page. Before the internet—yes, I know, can we even think that far back to the dark ages?—the almighty page ruled. People read real books they held in their hands. I feel like I have to tell my twelve-year-old daughter, Lyric, that there actually was a time in the not so distant past in which Instagram and iPhones did not exist. And it was a beautiful world!
But I digress. So, words on a page. The time before the internet. Real books.
Now let’s go one step further. When you break down a book, you get a bunch of pages glued together between two hardy pieces of cardboard: a hardbound book. Before a writer makes her mark on the page, the page is bare.
The empty page. For some people, an empty page is hell on earth. They can’t stand it. The empty page intimidates because it’s on you, the writer, to make the mark on the page. And please, let it be good. Let it be compelling, right?
The almighty page! Full of death or possibility. Which will it be?
Writers have been filling empty pages for a long time. Have you ever thought about what makes the act of writing words down on paper that is powerful? We’ve been doing it now for millennia.
Before books, scribes wrote on scrolls made from the hide of an animal. Then scrolls made out of paper. Some experts ascribe the explosion of the codex, which is the Roman word for “book,” to the early church writers. The codex, unlike scrolls, was convenient to travel with. Think about it, you could just throw your codex in your pack and off you went, able to record your daily life in a kind of early travelers journal.
Can you see Jesus’ band of vagabond travelers sitting at night by the fire discussing what Jesus taught that day, and taking notes, writing out the dialog in their traveler’s journal?
C.S. Lewis considered the invention and perfection of the codex as one of the chief accomplishments of the Dark Ages, almost as important as the printing press itself.
Printing was developed in China in the third century using woodblocks. And the technology was developed into movable type in the early eleventh century.
Then a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg developed the printing press around 1440. It was the Renaissance that brought about the age of mass communication.
And then Al Gore created the internet and we all know the rest is ancient history—literally.
Think about how far we’ve come since the printing press. Now we print with the click of a button and the message is sent around the globe in mere seconds!
Writers in today’s world possess the amazing potential to have their messages magnified to incalculable audiences. Think of the responsibility! And yet, how easily and frequently writers abuse this responsibility and privilege.
Today words are typed on screens and sent like lightning into the ether. And sadly, we’re quicker to write and publish than we are to think and consider. We’ve cheapened words, and choked the page. We use both for our own selfish purposes.
What does a page containing words do—what do we use it for? Since history could be chronicled, we have used words on pages to tell stories, make peace, incite war, announce a feast or festival or wedding. Leaders have used words on the page for selfish reasons, to propagandize and coerce, to inspire, to tell the truth, to tell lies, to manipulate, to encourage.
In our day, truth with a capital “T” finds itself under assault due to the abuse of lies on the page. Some seek to retell history through the use of the page, still others seek to inspire with the hope of something not of this world. Sure, it’s not necessarily a real page anymore—now, it’s a glowing rectangle in your hand. But every person now possesses the ability to fill the empty page with words.
What about you? What if I handed you a piece of paper. Nothing on it, just the white from the page ... what would you write.
“But Tim,” you say. “I am no writer. I can’t stand looking at a blank page. It makes me feel uneasy. It stresses me out. You get what I’m saying, right?”
“Ah yes,” I reply. “The blank page does possess a certain intimidating power, as I’ve said—quite right. But what if we flipped the stress on its head and looked at it from a different angle. What if instead of pressure we saw possibility?
What if I told you that you and I were given a new piece of paper each day? And that each day affords us the opportunity to write the lines of our lives upon it.
Imagine it. Each day you have the chance to write your own chronicle, and tell the world the story of your life. What story would you tell? What story are telling?
I want you to do something for me. Grab an old journal or legal pad and rip out a blank page. Or go snag a piece of printing paper from your office. Set it before you and stare at it for a minute. And then, before you begin shaking from a panic attack, remind yourself of this truth:
Today starts brand new. Like this page it contains no lines. But it waits for ME, not anyone else, to fill it up with all that I will think about today and all that I will do.
And what’s more, I hold infinite possibility in my hands. I hold the full potential of hope.
What will my chronicle say. What story will the world read?
And if viewing each day as possessing infinite possibility wasn’t enough, think about our Editor-in-Chief, our foremost poet, our Nobel Prize-Winning writer of all life, God himself. Ages ago he stared at a blank page and penned the masterpiece of the cosmos. His thesis? Love. His supporting cast of characters? You and me.
He filled the page and is still filling the page with the power of our lives—the ones we live each day. And each day he presents you and I with a new page of our own. And says to us,
“Go, write something extraordinary with your life. Forget about yesterday’s mishaps, forget that you messed up at work. Forget that you blew it with your kids,” he says. “Forget that you botched that project at work. Forget that you got looked over for the promotion.
“Today you get another page. And, like my love, it’s new every morning. And it’s new for you—not for anyone else, just you. Like a blank page, my love possesses the hope of all that could be. And like my love, your life possesses the hope of all that could be. Now, get out there and write your adventure and change the world.
Stay stoked my friends.
