After reading Blue Like Jazz a few years ago, I became a fan of Donald Miller’s work. In that memoir he gives a humble and fresh perspective on the journey of faith. His experiences, struggles, and desires resonated with me as I wrestled with what my faith was all about. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years picks up Miller’s life story where his previous work left off. He has found himself stalled wondering what his life is becoming and as he is forced to 'edit his life' for a movie adaptation of Blue Like Jazz, he is awakened to the reality that his life, his story, is not worth telling; propelling him into a spiritual quest to begin living a good story. As I read this book, I too was faced with the boring reality that is my life but also with the vast potential my story possesses. I, like Miller, want to live a good story.
Miller exhibits masterful control of conversational language that draws the reader into his story, allowing them to participate not merely observe. This gift is the force behind Miller’s popularity and is what makes his work so convincing. Here in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Miller brings his audience along for a new spiritual quest, to find meaning and purpose in life. He is thrust into this journey when a couple of film-makers desire to turn his memoir into a movie. Miller is stunned to discover the amount of rewriting is needed to turn his best-selling book into a movie people will actually want to see. In the process of rewriting, Miller begins to explore the components of story and apply them to his life. He boils down a definition of story as “a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.” Miller contrasts our lives against this definition through the illustration of a man who really wants to buy a Volvo, so he saves up for three years and is finally able to buy a Volvo. Miller declares that if we saw a movie about this we say that this story “sucks" and thus maybe our lives suck too. He proposes that we change our desires for what we want. Miller’s quest takes him to seek reconciliation with his dad, to hike the Incan trail, to bike across America, but most importantly to start the Mentoring Project in efforts to connect fatherless boys with good male role-models in hopes of changing their lives. In this effort, Miller has found himself in the midst of a great story and the reader, myself included, is left wondering what our stories might look like.
This challenge to live a better story is the reward of this book. I felt a renewed passion to live, to fight for goodness and beauty, to see myself and my story in the context of the greatest story ever told, the gospel. I found it difficult to read of the spiritual awakening of another and not hunger for that same awakening. I too wanted to do the things I always dreamed of but the practicality of life choked to death. But like Miller, I wanted my story to be more than climbing mountains, even though that offers a wonderful backdrop to our stories. I wanted to bring goodness to my community, to the world. The way I see this unfolding in my life is multi-faceted. I want to plant a church and see the broken find wholeness in Christ. I want to labor in the effort of seeing my daughter grow into a woman of God, fully loved. I want to provide wheel-chair ramps for the disadvantaged and disabled people of the Denver metro area. I want to live a good story. Our stories have only begun, especially if we believe in eternity. But we only have a short time here on earth to make something beautiful, to honor God, to live good stories. So like Miller, we must ask ourselves, "what do we want? What conflict am I willing to overcome to get it?" And when we answer these honestly, we can then begin the quest of truly living.
Preach it! Good book. Good blog.
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