Posts Tagged: Muriel Rukeyser

“Living the Story”


“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
—Muriel Rukeyser”

I ran across this quote from Muriel Rukeyser this morning, and was immediately filled with wonder.  Perhaps the atoms themselves are stories.

And then I thought, well, if God created all that is—with the huge exception of God’s own self—then the whole shebang is a story.

I looked around at my messy work/writing area with awe.  Every atom of the walls, of my desk, of the cobwebs I really ought to clean, all of these are stories.  I am a story, God’s story.  So are you.  So is everyone you meet today.  So is everyone you don’t meet today.  Everyone you like and everyone you don’t like.

The story has boring bits, or at least, bits that seem boring.  And yet, the story that our atoms are is filled with tragedy and triumph.  Sometimes it feels like a comedy.  At other times, it is more of a tragedy.  But always, it is a story.

And we are given, by the very God who also has a story, freedom to choose.  We are stories, living in stories, writing stories by the way we live.

The best stories include interesting characters, whose character grows or diminishes during the story.  There is a quest, there is danger, there are companions, there is failure, there is success.

God is writing a story.  God is also part of the story.  God allows us to write our own parts.  You are not a bunch of random atoms, even though it often seems so.  You are a story, and you are a writer.

Write well!

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