Millions of Pictures

My nephew Chris and his wife Torri go to a really wonderful church here in our town. They have four great children, Amy, little Torri, Trent and Jackie. One of the things I love about their church is that they have a ministry to the deaf. Watching the interpreters signing the whole service to the deaf is a very beautiful thing.

Amy, little Torri, Trent and Jackie are home schooled. One day a week a large group of home schooled children in our town all meet at a local church where the home schooling moms teach classes like at a regular school. Almost all of these home schooled children are scholastically ahead of the children in the public schools. It is an awesome way of learning.

At their church, the lady in charge of the deaf ministry, Obie, decided to teach a class in American Sign Language (ASL) to any of the church members who wanted to learn.  Obie is a very intense teacher, wanting her students to really learn a lot. Having a great desire to learn ASL, Amy and little Torri took the class and worked at it very hard. Amy even started teaching ASL to at the once a week home schooling sessions they attend. The students love it.

Last week the people who took the ASL class at church had their graduation ceremony. My sister, Diane, and I were able to go to it. We watched as each of the graduating students got up one by one and performed. They each had to interpret The Lord’s Prayer, one chapter of their choice from the book of Psalms in the Bible, and two songs that are sung at their church. We found out that to be a good interpreter you must also have a very expressive face. Every wave of the hand or facial expression has to actually set a mood. Each movement literally paints a picture of the word. It all makes sense when you know the meaning of the moves. As they interpreted, another student read out loud so the audience could follow the sign language. By the end of the ceremony, my sister and I were amazed how many ASL words we had learned. 

This experience got me to thinking about writing. As writers we are not just telling stories, we are painting pictures. There is an expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. I suppose that is true, but on the other hand, words can be worth millions of pictures. You might be asking yourself what in the world does she mean by that. Well, let me explain.

Think about this. As you were reading about the graduation ceremony I just described, did you imagine the ceremony in your mind? I dare say you did. Granted there aren’t a million people reading my blog, but many of you are writers and have people reading your words. Most of us won’t have a million readers following our work, but together we could have many millions of readers.

One of the great things, and perhaps the best thing, about reading is that as the writer’s words unfold you are forming a picture, actually a sort of movie, in your mind.

If you and I were to read the same writing, we would probably form similar pictures in our minds. However, since our surroundings and experiences in life are different, the pictures we formed would be slightly different also.  

Think about that for a moment. If one hundred of you wrote and published a book, and each of you had ten thousand people read it, between you, you would have painted one million pictures. How many artists who paint their pictures with oils, acrylics, or pencils can say that?

The power of the pen is far greater than any other type of creativity, in my opinion. Like no other medium, when you write not only do you get to be creative, but you help and allow your readers to be creative also.

How cool is that? So, what are you waiting for? Get to writing and start the creative juices flowing in minds all over the world.

If you are interested in finding out about my book, “The Adventures of Little Chrisamee – Creation”, a story about creation through the eyes of a little angel, please feel free to contact me. My email address is jbates@littlechrisamee.com.