Skip to main content

phone book

I just finished an online spiritual formation course. The final assignment was a creative project based on some concepts we studied over the last 4 weeks. Usually, ideas line up in my brain and eagerly pepper me with scenarios for possible projects. But this week, much to my dismay, everything was silent.

On Saturday, I tried to put some ideas down on paper, but after three attempts to come up with something creative (all of them whined about the fact that I was uninspired), I stopped. What do you do when you lack inspiration? Everything seems deflated and limp, void of life. Words fall flat - monotone and without meaning. Music becomes mechanical. I abandoned another idea mid-sentence and scribbled two words beneath the mess: phone book.

My lack of inspiration was reminding me of a saying. When something does not hold our interest, we say that it is about as exciting as reading the phone book. On the other hand, it is also said of someone who has great charisma that they can read the phone book and hold people's attention. And then I realised that a phone book, a book full of the names of real live people, is actually very exciting. Each name represents a living, breathing, human being on this planet. If I met them, I would likely find them engaging, interesting, and want to hear their story. No matter what their situation in life, they would also be carrying the image of God: that attractive, energising element of his glorious spirit. The whole earth is filled with God's glory, and that includes Jim, Lisa, Roger, and Nancy.

I woke up the next day and the idea was still there. So was some excitement about it, and the seeds of some practical ideas as to how to put it together. I also realised that being inspired is not just a feeling. Nor is it the ability to fill a bucket full of creative ideas time after time. It is having the breath of God in me, the life of God pulsing deep inside my soul. And that is as constant as he is, not as fickle as my emotions or thoughts.

Here, then, is my attempt to read the phone book. All photos are taken from my personal collection. I trust that my friends and the random strangers pictured here will not mind lending their faces for a brief second to show the glory of God. Big thanks to Dean who did his magic on the audio engineering side of things.

Big white phone books are no longer printed, so I got creative and accessed a few other lists, most of them online. The names used include all the children our church sponsors in South Africa, some employees at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC, a few of my neighbours in Montreal whose last names start with "D," and pretty much the entire rundown of services and businesses in a small town in Botswana (Maun) found under the letter "R."

The whole earth is indeed so much more glorious than I am able to see. Open my eyes, God. Let me see your glory today. In all things great and small.

Comments

Shelley said…
I can't get any sound! boo hoo...as far as I can tell the problem isn't on my end...I just watched that amazing 10 year old on america's got talent to check my headphones. and they work, and she was amazing...but I want to hear yours!
Matte Downey said…
hmmm. sound works fine on my computer. maybe make sure the sound is up on the bottom control panel of the video and that nothing else is muted?
Matte Downey said…
oh, and btw, there is silence for the first 17 seconds. :-)

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim

soul refrigerator

I went grocery shopping yesterday and came home with three bags of food. After I unpacked them all, this is what my fridge looked like: really empty. How does that happen? How can I feel so full and ready for any food emergency one moment, and after one quick glance, realise that I have nothing, really? Today is one of those days in my soul as well. I woke up with gratitude and fullness in my heart, ready to take on this day and all the wonderful opportunities that it presented. Then I caught a brief glance of some emptiness in my life and bam - my buoyancy was compromised. For the past few hours I have been treading water, trying to keep my head in a positive space, bobbing in and out of disappointment, and catching myself whining with pathetic indignity at the cement blocks of other people's stupidity that are tangled around my ankles. When I am staring at the empty refrigerator of my soul, these are my thoughts. Where do I go from here? Perhaps I should slam that refrigerator