Poster Series: Storytelling

I’m a fan, curator, and promoter of Beautiful Ideas. I’ve begun to encapsulate many of them in posters that I envision hanging in the offices and “war rooms” of the people and organizations that share my convictions.Storytellers have a problem.  We dream too much, and seem to have a smaller box of crayolas than we need.   Now, on one hand, I have my morose clinically depressed artist friends- they see the injustices, the conspiracies and the overwhelming weight of life as we know it.  On the other hand, I have some happy-go-lucky sentimental church friends, you know, the ones who pass on the emails.

If either group sits to write a novel, short story or even an iPad app, they FAIL to create a compelling experience by  self-indulgently ignoring the other half of our human experience.   Yes humans invented ice cream, vacations, air conditioning, and city parks.  We also invented prostitution, murder, torture, and fraud.  At the end of the day, the “human experience”  – the “human condition”  is BOTH realities.  Our heroes have weaknesses: wine, women, broken homes, addictions.  Our villans have pet dogs and grandmothers.    I read once that Che Guevara was a fanatical baseball fan. He and his men (when they weren’t waging a civil war) had a league.

Our Christian story– the story of God interacting with his people– BEGINS with our dark and evil selves.  When we lessen our depravity, we reduce the beauty of His redemption.  Likewise, when we lessen the darkness in our stories, our characters lose depth.  With no shadows, there is no perspective, and worst of all, you cannot recognize the infinite brightness of the sun.

We weaken our ideas and God’s transcendence when we deny the existence of real evil in our creations.

 

 

 

Sweeten the deal: The poster itself is available for $10 + shipping via Etsy.  However, If you subscribe via email in the next 7 days, I’ll email you the pdf for free.