I’m reading John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley and enjoying it much more than I planned. I planned to only not be bored by it, but now I’m inspired. He’s a thinker and a feeler, he’s observant, and he knows how to say what he’s thinking, feeling and observing. I guess that’s how he won Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, eh? And where do you learn to say things like:
“she emerged from the car with an explosive ooze.”
“The sky was the color of wet gray aluminum”
“a hunting coat…with a game pocket in the rear big enough to smuggle an Indian princess into a Y.M.C.A.”
I remember a hurricane when I was a kid in Connecticut, and the reaction of the adults that it was a big deal, and my mom slogging us thru the wind and rain to Barry’s house next door. Sometimes I’ve wondered what hurricane that was and if it really was a big deal. Then I’m reading the beginning of Travels and I realize it’s the hurricane that delayed the start of Steinbeck’s famous trip – Donna. Cool. I’m running thru the backyard to Barry’s house gripping my mama’s hand at the same time John Steinbeck is sixty miles away across Long Island Sound in Sag Harbor trying to save his boat and keep a tree from falling on Rocinante. Now I’m really hooked.
Anyway, he had no GPS, of course. He had to study maps and ask directions and get lost and stop and figure out where he was. But he knew where he was going. Today, we would just hit “recalculate.”
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I’ve been going somewhere in what you’ve been reading here over the last few weeks. It’s not been precise, but a meandering little journey making the case that God has made you to be a bigger influence than you may realize, big as in a blessing to your family, to your church, to others you know and meet, and to God. And that there can be an art to your influence, in addition to the usual way of seeing it as a science of education and formal training. You can see the basic outline HERE, and read more of the idea in the posts before and after that, but here’s the brief outline we’re following for a bit longer:
- Take responsibility for yourself and your influence
- Know the Bible
- Soak up the Bible’s attitude, approach, demeanor, patterns, principles
- Look at the world and people and see how it works and how people think
- Now take these growing insights into the Bible, people, and the world, and begin to merge them
This is the beginning of seeing not only the individual pieces, but how the pieces are related, and how that relates to you and those you meet. Some people call it wisdom. It's the beginning of seeing what things mean. It's the beginning of becoming more useful to people, your family and your church.
We’ve roamed thru #3 over the last few weeks. We’re starting #4. Steinbeck’s a master at this -- seeing how people think and how the world works. He’s in his truck, in the dark, in the rain, and he’s very lonely:
“I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and they were deadly. But no, that’s wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid.”
There. That’s where we are.
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