The Heart of Austen

I read the book 'Austenland' some time ago and just watched the movie.  The book wasn't bad and the movie was ridiculously delightful, in a nerdy, over the top silly sort of way, perhaps a modern Northanger Abbey?  The plot centers around the thirty something Jane who is unlucky in love and dreams of finding a modern Mr. Darcy.  In her obsession with all things Austen, she seems to have developed a few unsettling habits hoping to approximate her beloved era as much as possible, perhaps to an unhealthy extreme.  She spends her minuscule fortune and in a last desperate leap at love, decides to spend a week living out her dream.  A nerdy little romance plays out, worthy of an Austen book in itself, and all is happily resolved.  It isn't classic literature or moving cinema, just a happy bit of fluff that pokes a bit of fun at the modern Austen craze and perhaps even modern civilization itself, but hardly the source of great philosophical realizations, or is it?

The movie is delightfully satiric when it comes to modern obsessions with all things Austen, especially the romanticization of her witty but cutting social commentaries.  It has succeeded as much as Miss Austen herself, whose books, while humorous, are full of social commentary on her times and humanity in general.  This little gem of a movie likewise reveals something we moderns so ofter overlook: the search for the real.  In a world wherein we feel compelled to create ourselves, to be unique yet all the same, to have no opinion not sanctioned by social approval, and to acknowledge nothing as Truth save that which is dearest to ourselves, this movie throws our shallow reality in our face as suddenly as being smacked with a glove.  Jane doesn't want Jane Austen or Mr. Darcy, she wants real, true, deep things, things that mean Something.

The success of Miss Austen is in her creation of real characters, not fluffy bits of nothing that fall in love and live happily ever after.  Her heroines are flawed, they suffer, they sin, they make mistakes, but they also learn and grow, just as real people should.  Or at least they would in a world that made any sense.  But our world, or rather our perception of it, doesn't make any sense.  We are as feckless, flighty, and vain as Lydia Bennet, Mrs. E, Lady Catherine, Isabella Thorpe, the Crawfords, Mr. Wickham, and dozens of other characters in the Austen canon: characters who do not grow, change, or improve, but rather distort reality to explain away their own discomforts and shortcomings.  We are now a world of such whining, bitter, discontent, and vacuous entities.  And like Miss Austen, 'Austenland' is determined to laugh in the face of the absurd and call us to better ourselves and our world thereby.  Bravo!

Someone gets it!

Most secular Christmas music annoys me, yes that Hippo song is cute the first time and who can begrudge Mommy stealing a kiss from Santa Clause, and everyone loves the upbeat feel of 'Sleigh Ride' and 'Carol of the Bells.'  And then there are the rather innocuous classics like 'Silver Bells' and 'White Christmas' and the kid favorites featuring Rudolph and Frosty, but aside from a few tried and true classics, most of the secular fluff that's come out in celebration of the season in the last century isn't worth the paper it's printed on.  I once endured a middle school choir concert wherein they rejoiced over snowmobiles and snowboarding, ugh!  And I'm not the only one, finally I can come out of the closet!  Find the confession here!

Outlandish Promises

I'm currently going through my extensive body of self-published stories: revising, editing, and the like.  It has been a long time since I've read 'The Serpent and the Unicorn,' and even longer since I wrote it.  I came across one particular storyline that truly made me wonder what I was thinking when I wrote THAT.  Could a person really act like that outside of a sappy, romantic tale?  Then I watched the third installment of the Horatio Hornblower series, the one where the title character and his men are captured by the Spanish and stuck in prison.  He strikes up a friendship with the local Don and together they watched a ship wreck itself on the reef.  This captured Englishman offers to go out and rescue the survivors, at much risk to himself, but the Don only stares at him and says it is too dangerous and only an excuse to escape.  The man promises to return and the Don relents.

After a harrowing rescue the little company is adrift at sea and picked up by the main character's ship.  It is a perfect escape!  Except for that dreadful promise.  But he goes back, his men as well, to fulfill his promise.  They were home free but they chose to return to chains and prison because of a promise.  I know this is a fictional tale but it is a relief to know I am not the only one with such fantastic storylines!  But then it is not such an outlandish tale, at least when you consider that grandest and most epic of all tales, the one the actually happens to be true.

For there was once a Father who made a promise, and though it cost Him the life of His Son, He did not hesitate to fulfill it though the world most certainly didn't deserve it.  This Christmas, remember that outlandish promise, fulfilled in the most unlikely of places two millennia ago, and remember that such love, honor, and sacrifice is never in vain!

"In dark places, when all other lights go out..."

Elijah is often remembered as one of the greatest Prophets of ancient Israel and the scene wherein he engages in a 'prophets' duel' with the prophets of Baal is one of my favorites in the entire Bible.  But I noticed something for the first time the other day.  Right after this gigantic spiritual high, the apex of his career, in the very next chapter he is on the run and has despaired of his very life, sitting down under a tree and waiting to die.  He's given up, he has no hope, no motivation, no joy.  Have you ever been there?  In that dark place wherein death looks cheerful by comparison?  It is a scary place to be.

And what happens?  Has God given up on the man who has given up on himself and the God who has worked many a mighty miracle through him and preserved his life through many long and difficult years?  Does he get his wish?  Nope!  Instead he is awakened by an angel and gets breakfast in bed, such as it is!  Then he's told to hie himself off to some lonely mountain, which he does, but instead of standing on the peak and trysting with God, Elijah sulks in the cave.  Then he's told to go anoint his successor and a couple replacement Kings, but he pretty much ignores that command as well.  But he's still spoken of in the New Testament as a great Prophet!  And he's not alone, there's a whole list of people with screwed up lives, failures, heretics, murderers, slackers...who are mentioned as heroes of the faith in places like Hebrews.  You read their stories, in all their ghastly glory, and then find God can still call them friends, can use them for great things!

When you are alone in that dark place, you are not alone.  No other human person understand what you are going through, but that does not mean you are not understood.  Whether you have just succeeded in spectacular fashion or feel like your life is over because of some mistake, you are no alone.  We are none of us so great or so wretched that we are beyond redemption or the reach of His love.  But we must choose to take His nail-pierced hand when He offers it; when that still, small voice whispers, will we listen?

Lazy blogging at its best!

Here's a nice little article on one of my favorite literary heroines and her approach to life in general and suffering in particular, well worth a look!

An Incomprehensible Classic?

I finally got a real (vs. a virtual one) of 'Pride and Prejudice,' and with it came a two page synopsis and analysis of what was to come.  Apparently Jane Austen writes entirely of marriage, according to the introduction, and then it goes on briefly trying to reconcile Miss Austen's writings with modern feminist thought, that certainly it was the stultification of her society that thus rendered her stories so abhorrent to modern thinking.  I'm glad I read the intro, for as often as I've read Austen or watched the various films, I never knew what she was trying to say!  Yes, you are detecting a heady dose of Austenian snark in that comment, whereas this writer gets it.  Austen writes about many things, including marriage, but one might as well say she writes of horses or whist by that theory.  Rather, her main topic is ever virtue or its lack.

But in a world where virtue and political correctness are synonymous, what should I expect?  Oh that she had lived to write a satire of our modern societal messiness!  Yet her works live on in popularity even 200 years later though many a modern much celebrated work of literature has flourished for a day and then been forgotten.  For though our technology and our cultural morals may change, at heart, man is ever the same creature.  This is why Miss Austen's works and writings like Ecclesiastes are still viable centuries after their publication.  My only fear is that there are far more Wickhams and Lydias in the world now than in Miss Austen's day, that the Darcys, Elizabeths, Bingleys, and Janes are all but extinct.  But that is like saying one should not have children because the world is such a dark and dangerous place: it has always been so.  The virtuous are rarities, even in Miss Austen's novels and history is a story of darkness for as far back as memory can reach.

And why should I be surprised that critics and academians and the literary elite misunderstand the works of Miss Austen?  Such too is an all too common failing of man: we see in a work only what we wish to see and hear only what we wish to hear.  We must either twist the meaning or dismiss as bunk anything that does not support our own goals or ideals.  But let he who has an ear, hear and he who has eyes to see, behold all that is good and right and true, to enjoy the delightful wit of Miss Austen, and to all who cannot, I am truly sorry for you.

When Joy Knocks

There's a monster in my house.  It upsets all my ideals of efficiency and order, save in the area of mayhem, which is carried out in a frighteningly efficient manner and with a smile to boot.  She's a strange creature, this Miss Joy, in a home occupied by two adult efficiency fiends and one junior member of the OCD squad.  We are all insecure and uptight and preoccupied, but nothing fazes the little monster.  She leans back and flops down, sometimes into midair, never caring if there is anything or anyone to catch her.  She shoves her way into your lap or arms, behind furniture and into starless closets, fearless.  You tell her 'no' and she smiles at you, makes some adorable little noise of indifferent acknowledgement and plunges in anyway.  All those neat and tidy milestones her brother nailed early, she could care less about, getting around to it when it pleases her; enjoying her food rather than worrying about learning the strange art of utensils or loving the joy of messiness when he would cry if any dirt whatsoever got on his rubber boots.

We accidentally, or rather providentially, named her Joy twice over, this little imp three years in the coming.  My nice prosaic girl name, which had resided in my imagination for well over a decade, was  cast aside in a moment, for that is quite literally all we had to consider the matter, for she came into our lives as abruptly and unannounced as ever she lives life now.  We got a call one evening, 'the call' as the adoption community puts it, that after three years of nothing, of waiting, of nearly despairing it would ever happen, it did.  We drove four hundred miles to a hospital to meet our new family member, of which we did not even know the sex.  We went into the room and met our little girl, and her mother had named her.  It wasn't the Name, agreed upon and cherished for so many years, it wasn't even on the List of other names I rather liked, but it was her, she could be nothing else.  We did ask to change the proposed middle name to Joy, to which the parents agreed, none of us knowing the meaning of the first name, which turned out to be Gaelic for Joy.  Our double portion of Joy.

And she is a Joy, sweet and happy and ridiculous and carefree and social and fun, tearing down the walls of our fear and care and worry as easily as she tears up the living room.  Teaching us what Joy is, what Trust is, what it means to live Fearlessly, how to enjoy the moment and play in the laundry; showing us what it means to be a Child of the Kingdom, not worrying about tomorrow but living in today.  It's a message our family desperately needs, and also our entire Western Society.  We are drifting into the dangerous waters of utilitarianism, wherein nothing is valuable unless it is useful.  The old, the young, the weak, the poor have no use and therefore no value in the eyes of Society, but it was to these very folk the long prophesied King came, not with an army or trumpets or a social media campaign or slick TV ads, but rather in the guise of a baby, born to the poorest of the poor in so socially awkward a manner as to endanger his mother's life and thereby His own, which might have been the kinder end, for He died in the most gruesome way imaginable, as the worst of criminals and traitors did.  But one cannot kill Joy!  Love triumphed over Death and the power of Darkness was broken, that the meek might verily inherit the earth.

Is it time for a disruption in your neat and tidy life?  If Joy knocks, will you open the door of your heart?  Once you let it in, you will never be the same, and that is a very good thing!

Food for Thought

Here's an interesting little piece for we westerners to read regarding real need and trusting in God's daily provision.  We fret about jobs, relationships, financial status, a home, a car, retirement, health care, a special trip...but Jesus talks about worrying about clothes and food, an un-guaranteed necessity in His day and for many around the world today, an experience many of us are quite unfamiliar with.

No better but no worse and certainly not forsaken

The Bible has been called many things by many people, but I believe the truest thing that can be said about it is that it is a letter from the heart of God to the heart of Man, a mirror if you will.  Today I got to read about Peter denying Jesus and David having an affair with Bathsheba and murdering her husband to cover it up, ugh!  The most interesting, and depressing, part was realizing that I am quite capable of doing either or both myself, so are you, and that guy over there and the lady next door...  The other section I read was in Hebrews talking about Jesus giving up everything to ransom just those sorts of people, a haunting echo of Luke's rendition of the Last Supper (which came along with Peter's denial).  We're all losers, liars, cheaters, arrogant fools, selfish, cowards, and in the right circumstances, even murderers and adulterers, and it is just that sort of wretch, everybody who has ever lived or ever will, that Jesus came to save.

That's why nobody liked Him, except the lowest of the low, you know: tax collectors, sinners, lepers, the poor, the lame, the blind, outcasts, nobodies.  The social elite hated how He kept pointing out their flaws and shortcomings, the wretched of the earth knew they were flawed and so did everybody else, but the higher-ups liked to pretend they were no such thing and it galled when someone didn't go along with their pretending.  In the age of Social Media, we really don't like that sort of thing either, spending hours maintaining the illusion of a perfect life/family/career, but underneath our photoshopped life, we are all as empty, lonely, and wretched as any man who ever lived.  But if we embrace that brokenness, we can also sigh in relief to realize we are all this way, it isn't just me, and there goes the fear and shame that kept us chained in darkness.  Even better than realizing the common depravity of mankind, is to realize we don't need to stay this way.  We are called to a higher path, to hie ourselves out of the murky gloom of evil and pride and selfishness, and follow the only One who knows the Way.  But first we must admit there is something wrong in the first place and then admit that we can't fix it ourselves, no matter how brightly we paint our Facebook life.  It is about as effective as whitewashing a tomb, pretty on the outside but full of dust, death, and decay.

To be human

What does it mean to be created in the image of God?  Tolkien was a huge proponent of what he called 'subcreators,' and I think he was on to something, as does this article.  Creativity and imagination are unique to mankind, yes elephants can paint, birds can weave nests, and dolphins play, but they do not create works with lasting or any meaning, much like modern art and literature.  Are we becoming less than human by saying our own works likewise only have the meaning the observer would give them?  Is that why we so boldly embrace the concept that animals are people and people are animals, for there is hardly a difference between them?  C.S. Lewis wrote of this very concept in his essay, 'Men Without Chests,' and modern society might do well to listen.

Detour!

I am minded of a scene in the live action version of 'Beauty and the Beast,' wherein Belle's father is trying to find the castle again and mulling over a certain tree, originally a lightning strike knocked it over, forcing him down a path he didn't want to take, but now it was again strangely upright.  How many times does lightning strike in our lives to force us down the path we should go but which we'd rather not tread?  This is not to say that every negative event in our lives is of this sort, we live in a fallen and broken world after all, evil and suffering are an innate part of our lives, but there are certain events seemingly hardwired into our story or at least sent to push us in the direction we must go, and in the end, they turn out to be a blessing, if not for us, then certainly for others.

A misplaced college application (on their side) prevented me from going to the school I was determined to attend, forcing me to go to another school that turned out to be exactly what I needed for many, many reasons.  I showed up for a tour and they had no idea who I was and it was well past the date required to qualify for financial aid; the other school had given me a very good scholarship, it was closer, and much, much smaller and very well respected in my field of interest.  So I went and it turned out to be an excellent choice.

I had a friend who was getting married and they were having a little celebration for the happy couple.  I didn't want to go, I was busy, socially awkward...I got kidnapped by another friend who wouldn't take no for an answer and met my future husband there.

I was engaged and ready to graduate from graduate school in a couple months.  I needed a job close to by future husband's place of employment.  I knew I should send out resumes to every business of that sort within an easy drive, but I was rather embarrassed and nervous to do just that.  Instead, I drove all over the countryside interviewing at half a dozen places which were hiring, none of which were even thinkable as options, but I thought I knew better!  Finally hitting a wall, I did what I should have from the first (thus saving myself much time, effort, and money!) and the next thing I knew there was a message on my answering machine wanting to do an interview at a place just half an hour from where my fiancé worked.

We were thinking about having kids, but recently I had started taking a particular medication for a genetic condition, the side effects of which prevented us from even thinking about biological children.  We immediately started the adoption process, bypassing all the pain and heartache and lost years of infertility that we otherwise would have gone through before doing just that.

I became something of a workaholic, I had a ton of student loans to pay back, my job required fifty plus hours a week, not including being on-call, and I had been raised to think that if I just worked hard enough someone might love me (it didn't work by the way).  It was difficult manual labor at all hours, often outdoors in dreadful weather (winter lasted a minimum of 6 months).  The aforementioned medication along with the stress of my job and childhood abuse triggered a nameless inflammatory disease.  I was sore all the time, everything hurt, I had no energy, even sleeping 10 hours a day, and I could hardly eat anything without it upsetting my gut, but still I pushed myself, determined to do what I thought was my duty, even if it killed me.  I was a zombie at home, no help to my husband and baby son.  Then my job went south, nine months later I was unemployed, living with my in-laws wondering what was next.  Three weeks later we were living in another state, I was a stay-at-home mom, and my husband was working full-time in his profession.  I got off the medication and my stress load dropped by 90%.  Bam!, I was a person again, while I'm still not free of my disease, I can at least function in daily life and I've never been happier.  We've since adopted again and I've been able to start healing emotionally from all the junk I lived through as a kid.

What sort of roadblocks have you run against that turned out to be blessings in disguise?

The Few, the Brave, the Eaters of Tripe?

We've all been there, having to endure a lecture or awkward question or skeptical attitude when facing someone who doesn't happen to agree with a situation we're in or a decision we've made.  Whether it is Great Aunt Mildred nagging you about your singleness at a family gathering or that annoying guy at work that still can't believe you vaccinate your kids or the neighbor that is convinced anyone who isn't a vegan is a cannibal or the nosy lady behind you in the checkout line interrogating you about the items in your cart.  It is uncomfortable and annoying and awkward, especially upon certain personal and sensitive topics, worse if there was one word to describe our fractured and insane  societal mentality of the day, it just might be Justification.

From our choice in cat litter to colleges, hairstyle to gender transition, we feel that everything must be weighed in the court of public opinion before embracing it, as if every busybody on social media or in the marketplace is suddenly an expert and a judge, all rolled into one.  We can't simply make a decision and stick with it, rather we hem and haw, make vague excuses and go with the flow, anything rather than to be found wanting in some aspect of social awareness.  We can only chew organic, free range, culturally approved gum.  We have to pretend to like whatever unpronounceable concoction the guy on TV recommends because obviously his taste is the only one that matters.  It's a phenomenon as old as humanity, though never has it been so readily available and publicly painful with the advent of social media and the 24-7 internet and TV services: the court of public opinion now never sleeps.  We have also all become experts in everything, thanks to our magical phones and the internet, so obviously we should have a say in everyone else's decisions, no matter how little we understand their circumstances or know them personally.

But why do we feel the need to justify everything?  Why do we feel the need to do the popular thing rather than what is right or what we personally prefer?  We want to fit in, feel comfortable, feel accepted, not stick out except in those socially acceptable ways that mark our individuality, say the breed of our dog or the color of our hat or the maker of our shoes.  And we wonder why our lives are dull, colorless, and void of meaning!  How could it be different when we are all sheep, except some have green hats and others have pink?  Oh for a little uniqueness!  As Screwtape so nicely put it, "I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions."  Now there is a man firm in his faith, or at least in his digestion!

Are we willing to stand against the flow, step out of the crowd, go against the grain?  It is the only way to be unique, to be an individual, to be remembered, but it may well be in infamy and disgust, yet are we willing to pay such a price to be truly ourselves? 

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

Lost in the Dark of Enlightenment

When I consider how my light is spent, 

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

And that one Talent which is death to hide 

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

My true account, lest he returning chide; 

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” 

I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need 

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: 

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

~Sonnet 19: John Milton~

I ran across this poem while reading an article on living with a chronic disease.  I never learned much about poetry in school, my English teachers (or more likely the overseers of the curriculum) thought a heavy emphasis on Modern Lit and Higher Criticism were of much more benefit to our mental development; it must have worked because everybody on social media now has an opinion about everything and each and every one of them is right and Heaven help you if you think to tell them otherwise.  I guess from that vantage point, this poem can mean exactly what you want it to, but then what is the point of writing, poetry, stories, or anything at all?  If I'm just discovering something I already know, of what benefit is that to me or anyone else?  But if I take it as a meditation by Milton on his recently acquired blindness and what that means for the work he intended to do for God's glory, it might actually mean something after all.

But then this is also the age wherein we tell God who/what He/She/They is or is not and what said deity will do for us including the when and the how.  And when that doesn't happen, we simply declare God irrelevant, if not a fairy tale, and move on with our more enlightened lives.  Do we even have the mental capacity to understand a poem like this?  I did google the poem and came across the wikipedia entry, which had nothing under 'meaning' except to mention the Talent mentioned was referencing the Biblical parable of the Talents, not Milton's ruined tap-dancing career.  Wikipedia hardly ever shies away from explaining everything else, but here we have perhaps one of the most famous sonnets from a renowned poet and yet there is silence?  I am hoping their silence only means they do not wish to give students an easy answer for their poetry homework, but I fear it is simply more higher criticism: they can't give a meaning because only you can do that because their meaning wouldn't be right for you and therefore it would be wrong, or at least grievously insensitive to you the reader.  What about Milton?

The poor man has lost his sight and now an entire civilization is losing its mind!  He wrote this sonnet for a reason and that reason is lost upon modern readers.  We who can tell poets what their poetry really means and God who He is and expect Him to take us seriously: the pot telling the potter who to be!  Milton suffered a mild case of hubris, thinking he could do anything great for God that God could not do for Himself or one of His thousands of other servants couldn't do better, sighted or not.  We treat God as the servant and think Him blind when He fails to do our bidding.  Creatures of dust believing the ancient lie that 'ye can be gods!'  But today we don't even question it, rather we question a master poet and tell him what he means.  Though blind, Milton could truly see, we are the ones who grope in darkness and know it not.  

Happily ever after!

It is true folks, it isn't just a fairy tale, well I guess it is, but it's a true fairy tale!  Here is a most excellent description.

Unwitting Guest Blogger #128572

Here's an encouraging little write up on a well loved author, enjoy!

No free lunches, then or now

The Prosperity Gospel (believe it to receive it, name it to claim it, you just need more faith, Jesus died so you could have a new jet...) is the modern day variant of all those folks some two millennia before who followed Jesus around because He could conjure wine out of water and feed 5000 with a little boy's lunch.  They liked the food and the miracles and the inspirational sayings and the way He humbled those with power and money and seemed to exalt the 'common man,' the 99% of the day, little understanding that He wasn't just addressing the rich and powerful but everyone.  He insulted a large portion of his followers one day and most of them drifted away after one of His more controversial speeches and even the apostles fled in terror one dark night in a garden, leaving Him utterly alone.

The modern evangelical movement claims Jesus's death on the cross is a free gift to any who would receive it, but that isn't exactly true.  Yes, it costs nothing, but then again, it costs everything.  It isn't a door prize or an eternal life insurance policy, it's a commitment, a radical lifestyle change, a drastic change of heart.  We are 'new creations,' we must 'die to self,' we must 'hate father and mother,' we must 'lose our life' to save it, we must not be offended by the cross though we become offensive to everyone else because of it.  It isn't an easy little prayer and then you get on with your life, except now you have 'the joy, joy, joy down in your heart,' it's a life sentence of sorrow, misunderstanding, embarrassment, humility, and gentleness.  You give up everything you want, and like Jesus in the garden, you pray, 'not my will, but Thine be done.'  You lay it all on the alter, some of it you might get to take back, but some you won't.

It's crazy, it's insane, at least to human sensibilities, but for all the promised trouble and discomfort, there's far more behind the curtain, once we willingly let it be ripped away, than we can even imagine.  'His yoke is easy and His burden light.'  We're going to have trouble in this world regardless, and though completely alien to how we think the world should work or how our life should be, it is extremely comforting (and very difficult) to trust one's fate to the Author thereof.  It's free, but it isn't; it's impossible but it's easy: the great paradox of life!  So will we be stalwart soldiers confident in our Heavenly Commander through the darkest hells of this war called life or will we flee at the first sign of discomfort like reluctant picnickers before an impending shower?  I once saw a billboard advertising recruitment for the Marines, it said 'we take commitments not applications,' and I couldn't word it better!

Humble beginnings

I struggle, I really do, with all those passages in the Bible about a Heavenly Father.  It's not that I see fathers as bad in general (though mine was particularly wretched) or that I see God through a tainted lens because of my experience, rather it is that I just don't know how to relate to earthly parents, let alone a Heavenly one.  When you'd rather go hungry than ask your mother for lunch money because you are terrified of her reaction, it really isn't that easy to jump to 'ask and it will be given.'  I know in my head that it is ridiculous, but most of the time my heart and instincts are those of an abused and neglected child who doesn't belong to anyone or anywhere, who nobody wants and the only parental attention it knows is anger or fear.  Then to hear Jesus say, that we as (evil) earthly parents withhold nothing good from our own children, how much more so will God bless His children.

I used to envy the kids in foster care, at least they got their basic needs met without fear and they didn't necessarily have to feel as a kid ought towards his biological parents to those caring for them.  But there are other passages, besides those portraying a Heavenly Father.  We also see that we are spiritual orphans, lost sheep, wayward children...messed up, broken, wretched.  Now to that I can relate, and still, He would call me child, ME, who knows father and mother yet had neither, me, who hated herself for all those years because her parents wouldn't or couldn't.  Me, the nameless, the overlooked, the poor in spirit.  I get to inherit the earth?!  It's a regular fairytale, written before the foundations of the earth were laid.  Where do you think they got the idea in the first place?  I guess I'd better get used to living in a fairytale then, now where did I leave that tiara?

Psychobabble and the soul

I've written before of the futility of the self-esteem movement, how encouraging kids to feel great about themselves just because they are innately great is ridiculous.  Either they know innately it is a lie and can't force themselves to smile on the outside while they're dying on the inside or they believe the rhetoric and decide they shouldn't have to work for anything in life, never make mistakes, and sue anyone who says otherwise: neither is an ideal or intended outcome.  I came across an article somewhere during my interweb peregrinations that had a much better idea: self-compassion.  Instead of telling myself I'm great because, well, I am (anyone else remember a ridiculous movie called 'You Can Do It Duffy Moon?') instead you treat yourself as a person, like any other person, deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with respect and kindness and dignity.  Instead of making up reasons why you are great the way you are, you just look at yourself like you should look at everyone else: a flawed, broken but beautiful mess.  There's room for failure and abuse and mistakes and brokenness and bad hair days and losing a soccer game and not liking onions and being afraid of spiders.  You can be human and unashamed.

I struggled mightily with 'self-esteem' growing up.  I just couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.  I was an A student, never got in trouble, never talked back, had a job and was in everything (well, everything that didn't involve athletics) and excelled at it all, but I was still miserable and lonely.  Self-esteem just rang hollow.  Who cares how great of a person I supposedly am if I can't even like myself, let alone anyone else even thinking of liking me?  I had all the success a kid my age could hope to attain but it didn't help me feel better about myself, it maybe even made me feel worse. At least if I was a loser I'd have a reason to despise myself but I was left to wonder what congenital social defect estranged me from the rest of humanity.  It was 30 years later before I discovered my 'normal' childhood was a toxic wasteland riddled with emotional abuse, neglect, and manipulation.  My own parents couldn't be bothered to love me, I internalized that and turned it back on myself as self-loathing.  Self-esteem was a wet band-aide on a severed femoral artery.

Self-compassion is a skill I desperately need to learn.  It's sort of a reverse 'golden rule,' doing unto myself as I do unto others; to treat myself with all the respect, compassion, patience, gentleness, etc. that I know they deserve but have somehow never realized that I do too, merely for the sake of being human.  It's not that I'm great and wonderful and amazing simply for being me, that's a load of manure, but rather as a person I have every right to be treated as one, most especially by myself.

There's a vehicle sitting in my garage, a sensible, budget friendly, reliable vehicle, but I'm still boggled that it is there.  Our ancient sedan died a few weeks ago on a trip back to my home state and we had quite the adventure getting home (thankfully no hitchhiking was involved!) but we needed to replace the family vehicle (our other option being an even more geriatric sedan) if we ever hoped to leave town again.  So I spent a couple weeks in full-time car search mode finding the right vehicle for our family needs and budget.  We test drove a couple and found one we liked and as the price was right we wrote the check (which is apparently weird, as the salesperson kept talking about financing) but we escaped without interest.  Now it is in the garage and I feel kind of surreal about it.  I've never had a car this nice before (nice being a relative term mind you!) and it scares me.  I'm the person who buys her clothes at the thrift store but waits until they have an 'all you can fit in a bag for $1' sale.

Self-esteem would say finance the expensive and flashy sports car because you deserve it just for being you.  Self-Loathing says you shouldn't be driving anything newer than 1983, if then!  Self-compassion says your family needs a reliable vehicle that will hopefully last a very long time, you've done your homework, it is a sensible choice and it fits your budget, relax and enjoy it for once.  Yes, I am trying very hard to have fun with the idea rather than feeling guilty about it.  The ironic thing is it isn't like I stole the thing or the money with which we purchased it.  But then when you were never good enough to deserve new socks as a child, a car is a really big deal!  I'm still struggling with the whole sock thing...and now this!

Fantasy Apocalypse?

I don't think it is so much in vogue with my generation, but with my parents' generation it was all the rage.  Like avid college sports fans and their bracketing or the speculation of fantasy football addicts, so it was with that generation and the End of the World.  Don't get me wrong, it is a fascinating topic to everybody (especially environmental enthusiasts) but I think you take it a little far when you are scouring the Prophetic literature looking for clues as to the identity of the Antichrist.  There's a whole subculture of Armageddonists (none of whom agree with one another) and it's gotten so that they can't see the forest for the trees.  Just like the addled disciples of Jesus's time who were baffled that He didn't throw down Rome and free the Jewish state once and for all, so too are many in the End Times camp: they are in danger of losing their faith when events don't play out like they expect.  My favorite example was a man who thought he had found the mathematical key to unlocking the Scriptures (he even wrote a book) and that by taking the verse, 'a day is like a thousand years...' he could then interpret all the mentions of Prophetic time with a little math and a pocket calculator.

The so-called apocalyptic literature (comprising the Book of Revelation, parts of Ezekiel and Daniel, along with parts of the other Prophets and even a smattering of the Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels) is quite a fascinating read and I believe the original sci-fi/fantasy literature, what with dragons and beasts and wheels within wheels and eyes and explosions and stuff, very exciting.  The only problem is we don't know what the future stuff means, so instead we make stuff up and proclaim it as Truth even more heartily than we do the actual Gospel.  The only thing we know for certain is:

1. Jesus has promised to come back.
2. The World will blow up.

Anything beyond that and we are truly entering the realm of speculation and fantasy.  Just like the excited masses who threw palm branches at the feet of the much anticipated Messiah's donkey and shouted for joy at His coming only to cry out in anger for His blood a mere week later when He didn't show Himself to be the military conqueror they had convinced themselves to anticipate, we should take the hint and approach the subject with humility so that we too do not lose our faith.  But what is our faith in?  Him or our own theories?  That would be certainty number three: what comes of those who have heard the Word but reject it, distort it, or ignore it?

God has a bigger plan in all of this, far bigger than we mere mortals can ever contrive or imagine, just  as He did at Christ's first coming.  He didn't send His own Son to free a certain nation but rather for the sake of the whole world and every person who had been or was yet to be.  We are small minded, myopic beggars plotting out each step in a war older than creation itself and then responding with the wrath of thwarted generals when our prognostications differ from someone else's.  We need to heed the verse that says:

"For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see."  

That's straight out of Revelation and a far more useful exercise than plotting exactly which modern world leader just might be the Antichrist.  'He who has an ear, let him hear!'

On ideas too big for words

There are stories and then there are Stories.  You've met them: a book that you initially dislike because it's too big for you and you resent the confusion, frustration, and feeling of inferiority it inspires, but then in later years, after you've grown a bit and been humbled far more, you pick it up again and suddenly you can't put it down.  'That Hideous Strength' and 'The Man Who Was Thursday' are a couple of mine and now I can add 'The Once and Future King' to that list.  Story has always been the vehicle whereby ideas are best conveyed to an often skeptical or hostile audience; they are the common parlance of the human soul, moving beyond borders, cultures, races, languages, and even time itself.  The best of them delve into the very heart of the conundrum of what it means to be human: what is the meaning and purpose of life, what is the best way to live, how ought we to interact with others, what truly matters?  This is what makes a great book: that in its heart it contains an idea too big for words; that it addresses some kernel of truth regarding the human condition that we are forced to mull over from a radically new perspective.

Much of modern literary criticism seems to circle the drain of 'what do I think the author is saying,' wherein we put our thoughts in the author's head and thereby negate all need or use for literature at all.  Why write books or tell stories if they all mean the same thing (or nothing at all) anyway?  If not that, then we discover the most celebrated works of the day are those that pander to the political and social elite of the moment, lauding as brilliance what is unfortunately mere propaganda.  I just saw an article on the evils of reading 'Little House on the Prairie' and its unfortunate and insensitive treatment of issues which have obsessed our culture for the last month or three, certainly an excellent reason to leave off reading what long has been considered a classic.  Who then is safe?  We have seen countless leaders in art, literature, music, politics, sports and acting thrown down because they said, wrote, or did something that is now considered politically incorrect thirty years prior when everyone was doing the exact same thing.

Is that why all the modern movies are sequels, prequels, spin-offs, or remakes?  Nothing is sacred and nothing is safe, save to spew out plotless tales peopled with insipid characters that mean nothing, that is merely 'a sound and a fury.'  Perhaps Shakespeare said it best:

"She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word. 

— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing."

~ Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)~

Did he know he was writing about modern literary trends when he penned those immortal words?  Probably not, perhaps he was commenting upon such trends found in his own day.  For man has not changed, merely his means of telling stories.  People used to listen to their grandmother tell old tales by the fireside, now we watch movies, but man himself has not changed in the least.  Will we embrace the difficult stories, tackle the impossible books, look in the mirror of classic literature or will we take the easy road, worn deep into ruts by countless lazy feet, that leads to nowhere?

A state of practical disbelief

"Unicorns don't care if you believe in them any more than you care if they believe in you."

I ran across this quote as a kid sorting through my sister's 'Magic the Gathering' card game and thought it was kind of cool and for some strange reason it has stuck with me through the years though I have forgotten many far more important things.  Personally, I do believe in unicorns and fairies (not in a biological sense mind you, but certainly in a philosophical sense, whatever that means) but I don't believe in atheists.  Yes, you read that right, I don't believe in atheists (this is where an atheist falls down dead and can only be revived by clapping...or was that fairies?...I suppose the atheists out there would only roll their eyes at me and get on with their dull and tedious lives in which no wonder dwells).  Now don't get me wrong, I am fully aware that there are people out there who proclaim they do not believe in any superior being/force or anything supernatural but that is not an atheist, an atheist is theoretically someone who does not have a god, but that is impossible, because we, as humans, are wired to worship something be it a God, a philosophy, a cause, an ideal, a physical object, a pet, a person, or ourselves.  There are no atheists, we all worship something, the only question is what?

In the neighboring state, football is a religion.  There is a museum dedicated to Spam (the canned meat product).  There are people who 'marry' themselves.  Some choose to worship science or evolution or the cosmos instead of a Creator.  Some see saving the planet or the animals or the rainforest or whatever as their purpose for being.  We all have a religion, most of it just doesn't happen in church or mosque.  Some of us proclaim a particular creed but live an entirely different way.  The Pharisees in Jesus's day are a good example, proclaiming to be the most fervent followers of the Hebrew God yet lusting after power and wealth far more than they ever concerned themselves with what God actually wanted in a follower.  I love the example of them tithing their spices but neglecting the most basic tenets of the faith.  We all worship something, regardless of what we think or say we believe, what do we actually believe?  What do our thoughts and actions and words reveal about where our hearts truly lie?  We are none of us atheists, but are we living as we truly wish to live, and if not, what can we do to change that?

Joy in the pursuit

It's been a year since our daughter quite literally appeared out of nowhere and we were parents overnight.  After we adopted our son, I said never again, only to repent of my hastiness and try the whole thing over again, and this time it was nearly three years of waiting and we were about to give up for good, when BAM!, there she was.  I've spent eight years at some stage of waiting in the adoption process, but with the finalization of our daughter's adoption a few months ago, we are done for good (unless something really weird happens), and it feels really odd, to tell you the truth.

The waiting was extremely difficult at times, time seemed to drag by whenever you stopped to wonder if the phone would ever ring.  Your heart ached with a longing impossible to describe.  Your life felt like it was on hold, that you were 'person interrupted,' as if things just paused there until something or nothing happened.  But there was something taunting, intoxicating, exciting in it too.  Every day might be The Day, every phone call might be The Call, what would happen, how would it go, what would it be like?  A million unanswered questions dancing in tantalizing fascination just beyond reach.  Amid all the heart-rending ache and dread and ennui there was this exciting, mysterious inexplicable Hope.  Then it happens and you have a rush of euphoria, joy, and excitement, and then things settle back down to 'life as usual.'

You've felt it, or something like it, be it waiting to find out if you got into that school or you won the raffle or you got the job or if you've ever saved up for a house or a car or a big trip or if you've waited for him to pop the question or are waiting to fall in love or get pregnant or whatever.  It's the same rush that drives people to gamble and stay up until three in the morning because they just have to finish the book.  And then you finish the book, now what?  Here's an article that gives each of us thrill junkies an eternal hope, no matter how many books or weddings or adoptions you've look forward to, there's something even bigger, and far better, in the wings.

Love vs. Fear

'Perfect Love casts out fear"

It's one of those sayings you've always heard and acknowledged as true but somehow, inside your head or deep in your heart or somewhere in your soul, you have never realized the truth of the matter.  There is no room for fear in the presence of Perfect Love.  That being said, all our mortal loves are certainly imperfect, no matter how sublime, so don't freak out if a little fear sneaks into your relationships every now and again, it's part of our fallen and broken reality.  I grew up with the opposite however: Perfect Fear casts out love.  I've spent all these years trying to understand Love, knowing what it was on paper but never in practice.  I don't know what it means to be loved unconditionally, no matter what you do (or don't) or who you are (or aren't), at least as a parent should love a child.  At my house, fear was the rule rather than the exception.

Today I burned the biscuits I was making for lunch and then I went and burned the eggs too (I've never burned eggs before!).  Enter panic mode (probably an anxiety attack).  At my house you got in trouble when things were perfect, when things were bad...well, we won't go there.  So now I'm all grown up with a home and family of my own.  I understand that kids make mistakes and are well, kids, and I love them anyway and don't punish them for accidents and carelessness but somehow I can't apply that to myself.  I don't understand that it's okay to make mistakes, that the important people in my life won't quit loving because I screwed up.  I'm programmed that nobody loves me when things are going great, how much less when anything goes wrong?  Fear was a way of life, so much so that I didn't even know it was an issue; it was just how things were, it was normal.

But you know what?  I didn't get into trouble, nobody quit loving me, and while lunch was not as I had planned it, it was okay and now we can laugh about it.  We never laughed or even smiled at my house.  We never celebrated anything.  You never heard 'good job' or 'I'm proud of you.'  Hugs didn't happen.  I'm changing all that and it's wonderful, except I need to learn to apply it to myself as well as to everybody else.  What am I afraid of?  Old ghosts?  I know in my head that things are okay, but my heart is still skeptical at times, but it's warming to the idea.  Perfect Love, how do I even begin to wrap my mind around that idea if imperfect love is a stretch for my feeble imagination?  And it's for me, and you!

The price of a sparrow

If you've ever read the reviews for anything online (products, businesses, services, even people!) it can be a rather morbidly amusing experience and certainly make you question what kind of a world we live in where people actually think (and post in a public forum!) things like that?  Giving a product a one star review because it didn't do what you thought it should (but wasn't designed to do) is rather presumptuous, highlighting the 'me-centric attitude' held by many Westerners, who don't even realize their folly.  X should do Y because I think it should and the world revolves around me and my merest whims so therefore if X does not do Y, it must be flawed (not my logic)!  Here's a little article that stands that assumption on its head, a refreshing, terrifying (in a good way), and much needed wake-up call to many of us!

Nomads and Exiles

Abraham was a chronic traveler, never laying claim to any permanent habitation during his long life.  The Children of Israel were likewise nomads when they fled Egypt.  Eventually the ancient nation of Israel was conquered by various other nations and its people scattered across the whole face of the world.  Jesus proclaims He has nowhere to lay his head.  The epistles tell us that all who follow after Him are likewise nomads, pilgrims, strangers in every country of the world.  This is excellent news!  At least for those who feel this world is not quite right, that something has gone dreadfully wrong, that no matter how perfect your circumstances things still aren't perfect, for those who have every physical need met yet are still discontent.  Silly creatures that we are, we try to fill that gap with things or people or experiences or hobbies or various pursuits but nothing quite satisfies.

We just returned from a two week trip back to see family and friends, and while it was a wonderful time, I came back exhausted and very happy to be home.  I think the main reason people go away is so that they can appreciate what they left behind.  Are you looking forward to going Home, to finding that place you've always sought but could never quite find?  After your wearisome earthly journey, do you know how to finally go Home?  We need only follow the One who has gone ahead to prepare a place, just for us!

Of pronouns and theses

We have to be living in a satirical movie right?  I keep reading articles or watching news clips/interviews that I'm certain must be humorous takes on actual events, perhaps derived from such august sources as 'The Onion' or 'The Babylon Bee,' but no, they are real!  How people can think and say or carefully consider such ideas with a straight face is beyond me.  I just finished reading an article in the alumni magazine from my alma mater and I can't decide whether to laugh aloud or weep in despair, my college was a little, how shall I put this, edgy?, back in the late '90's, so you can probably imagine how it has devolved since then.  It was a serious article featuring a person whose preferred pronoun was plural and a project they were working on for the 'pronounedly confused' or whatever the politically correct jargon is for folk who don't like he/she.  As a writer I would love a gender neutral singular pronoun but that is beside the point, this person refers to themselves(?) in the plural tense.  For a bit there I thought I had slipped into one of those sci-fi novels where a certain alien species is part of a hive mind or multiple minds occupy a single organism, etc!  This is really getting weird.  Am I the only person on the planet that finds this trend more than a little disturbing?

Where do you draw the line?  What is normal, healthy, acceptable and what is dangerous, unhealthy, unacceptable?  Is anorexia okay because the individual identifies as a fat person no matter their actual weight?  Is a person with multiple personality disorder a murderous fiend if one or more personalities are banished/suppressed if treatment is sought?  What's next?  If biological gender can be considered contentious and mutable, what other natural 'laws' will we also feel free to flout in our search for meaning, importance, and significance?  How does law and order exist at all in a world where everything is dependent on feelings?  What if my feelings contradict yours, whose should get predominance?  How do we know what reality is?  Whose reality is real?  What is a person?  What is not a person?  Does a person have rights?  Where do they come from?  Who can take them away or grant them?  Does the individual or the crowd have more rights?  Which is right?  Is anything wrong?

It's a very slippery slope into philosophical chaos and not much further into social unrest.  What do you cling to when nobody believes anything or everything?  But these aren't new questions, men (yes, in the old fashioned sense meaning humankind inclusively no matter your favored pronoun) have been asking them since the dawn of time; we've just applied them to things no one was ever silly enough to question before (sort of like most Ph.D. theses).  And the answer is always the same, no matter what age of the world you find yourself in: a paradox, an enigma, foolishness.  'For the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men.'  And I'm right, this reality is a spoof, a parody, a distortion of what is actually real, and one day we will wake up and find it all an absurd, horrid dream and our real lives will begin in a world we cannot even begin to fathom, but we must become fools, at least in the eyes of the world, if ever we hope to get there.

An advocate

Our son just started Kindergarten this year and it has been rather eye-opening, or rather a reawakening to the things that are most important in the eyes of the prevailing culture.  For five years he's been at home and according to those prevailing standards, I've failed miserably as a mother.  He couldn't say the alphabet or tie his shoes or count beyond 12 when he started.  I've had calls from the speech pathologist because he occasionally uses the wrong pronoun (Heaven help us!).  He's been screened twice and they thought he should stay home another year.  But I sent him anyway, epic failure that they predicted.  He can now read, count to 100, does basic math and a hundred other things I didn't learn until much later in the process.  They misjudged him and his abilities, they based their decisions on what they could measure on a test or observe in five minutes of observation, it isn't their fault, it's the result of the system they use, but what would have happened to my little son if I hadn't been there to insist that he didn't fit in the box they wanted to put him in?  He needed an advocate, someone to have his back, someone who understands and loves him and acts in his best interests.

A lot of us don't have that advocate, someone who sees us for who we are rather than what we can do, someone who wants what is best for us and does the hard thing because it is best for us.  That's real love, hard love, not the mushy romantic stuff we see on TV or the 'give them what they want and do everything to make them happy' mentality that is much of modern grand-parenting.  But it's hard, it's hard on me and it's hard on my kids.  It would be so much easier to just go with the flow and do the easy thing and be nice and not ruffle feathers and make sure he's happy, or at least thinks he is.  That's what the grandparents do and the kids have a great time, but once they leave, everything falls apart.  They're tired, crabby, selfish, bored, and unreasonable; I really don't like who they turn into after such a visit: think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide!  But you see it in many of the kids in my son's class, for whatever reason be it a broken family or lax parenting, many of those kids do great on the test but their lives are falling apart before they've even begun.  Then they grow up and life gets tough and nothing goes their way and they self destruct.  All because someone wouldn't or couldn't do the hard things.

Life isn't easy, happiness is a fleeting feeling, all of us struggle with loneliness, futility, and pain at some point if not all the time.  But we aren't alone.  There is Someone who loves us enough to do the hard things, He did the Hardest Thing, for the people who least deserved it.  No matter what our earthly parents were like, we have a Heavenly Father who is willing to do the hard things, who loves us enough to insist upon it.  But we don't like it, we want everything to be easy and happy and carefree, but that isn't how life works, He loves us too much to let us destroy ourselves thus.  Just as we initially resented our parents' efforts and our kids resist ours, so too do we call Him officious, judgmental, and the like, but like all good parents, He presses on through the protests, tantrums, and rages and waits patiently on the porch for His erring children to finally decide they've had enough and do the sensible thing and come Home.

The common parlance of modern tribalism

As the traditional concept of family crumbles and more and more folks find themselves adrift and alone in the world, trying to navigate the complicated waters of modern thoughts on gender, family, and relationships, we as social creatures must belong and have relationships and social support, therefore we have formed little clumps of society based around common interests or lifestyles be it extreme sports, anime, or small dogs.  What once were clubs and social organizations have become a substitute family, but much like the cliques in the public school lunch room, how does the nerd table communicate with the football players without getting their faces smashed?  How does the local tea cup poodle enthusiast speak to the RPG guy in the next apartment over when her life is tied up in her dog and his online life is more full and exciting than his real one?  Is there a language to span these impossible boundaries?  A common tongue that all men understand?

It once might have been music, but music has become as isolating and clique-creating as any other hobby, pursuit, or art in recent decades.  What some people consider music would be considered noise by others and vice versa, we cannot even reasonably agree on the definition of what is and is not music let alone use it as a universal language.  That leaves story.  We all live a story, even if it is a dull or depressing one.  And we all want to have that story understood by and told to others.  We all love a story, in whatever format, though sometimes we disagree on the medium we all agree that we love a well told tale.  The RPG guy hopes to create his own story through the games he plays and the poodle lady tries to create significance and meaning by adding a character to her own tale.  Different mediums, same struggle, hopes, and fears.

Jesus knew this full well, while our society is a mishmash of varying interests and associated 'tribes' and one is free to take up quilting or forego leopard geckos at any moment, in His day, you were pretty much stuck in the class into which you were born and you did not even touch or talk to anyone in a higher situation than your own, let alone aspire to join them while all the higher-ups spent most of their time looking down in derision on those they considered beneath them.  You had the untouchables: lepers, tax collectors, Samaritans...  You had the wretched: the poor and disabled.  You had the Romans.  Then you had the important people: the learned, the rich, the religious authorities.  How could He reach them all when they wouldn't want to be in the same room together?  He told stories.  He broke down the barriers with a common language, enchanted them all, and drew some from every walk of life into His Kingdom where there are no such boundaries, just a vast crowd of unique children sitting enthralled at the feet of their Father listening to yet another vivid tale in His marvelous voice.

It's why we like movies, TV shows, video games, books...whatever our social structure or interests or language or culture, we have never moved beyond our love of stories.  So the next time you find someone's behavior, taste, or lifestyle incomprehensible, maybe take a moment to listen to their story and maybe it will touch your own!

An old tale revisited

I like this article on the famous scene between Martha and Mary, it is an interesting take on a lesson that has become almost trite.  Millennials are infamous for their search for 'work-life balance,' rebelling against the workaholism of their parents' generation, but at least from this brief biblical sketch, that attitude has been around way longer than the American Dream.  Maybe a new look at this old tale will save us from the fruitless search of 'looking for love in all the wrong places'; we won't find fulfillment in our work or our leisure unless we look for it in the right place.

The cure for self-esteem!

I've always hated the 'self-esteem' movement, I'm guessing it started sometime in the late '80's/early '90's and has been a vital part of public education and discourse ever since.  I remember sitting in a ridiculous class called 'Skills for Adolescents' ands staring blankly at a blue spruce out the window, wondering what it all meant and why, what was the point of this class?  Tell people they are good because they feel that way about themselves, really?  Even my juvenile mind could pierce that vapid farce but they dedicated a whole class to it.  Why not teach me to balance a checkbook, run a spreadsheet, or change the oil in a car: those are actual skills that are useful, not this vague fuzzy feeling of groundless happiness they wished to engender in my fertile young mind.  I think what I resented the most was that they treated me like an idiot: just think it and it will be so!  I might be young but I wasn't stupid, even my five year old knows that life isn't happy just because you think it is!  We don't need to deal with the neglect and abuse at home, the broken family, the emotional damage of countless years of heartache and fear and manipulation, we'll just paint the exterior a pretty color and everything will be just peachy...if you like white-washed tombs that's a great idea!  I needed something real, something that would actually fix the root of the problem, not just 'the power of positive thinking.'

Twenty years later I'm still dealing with the fallout (of my life, not that class!).  The hardest thing for me to do is love myself, consider myself worth caring for.  Apparently all those self-esteem courses weren't the answer.  But this article is.  Too bad I couldn't read it through, show it to the guidance counselor, and have a study hall instead of all those wasted hours!

Strange bedfellows indeed!

I thought I knew what I was getting into, truly I did.  I read the reviews and prepared myself for something that just might be a little disturbing.  I purposely left my six year old son at home, thinking it would be a little much for him.  It was a little much, but it wasn't the movie that was the problem!  I knew there were supposed to be some very intense scenes but not in the previews!  Having grown up with abuse, I knew this film might trigger old memories and from what I had read, I thought it might contain things a little too scary for a small son to watch.  The film itself was excellent, very sad and heart wrenching at times, but there were touches of humor, an upbeat pace, and a never fading hope that kept it from getting too dark.  It was realistic, the acting was excellent, and I was very happy, even the purportedly intense scenes were nothing as dark as I had anticipated.  Still not something for a young kid but certainly okay for older ones.  Overall, I was very impressed with 'I Can Only Imagine,' and while the song is not one of my favorites (it's one of those they played until you wanted to chuck the radio out the window, certainly not the song's fault, but you could learn to despise anything played that much; they did the same thing to a Natalie Grant song a decade back, beautiful song but it was ALL they played for about six months).

This had to be the worst pairing of film/preview that I have ever seen.  A serious Christian movie about abuse and redemption and beauty and hope paired with a movie about animated garden gnomes recruiting a famous fictional detective where every other scene was a potty humor joke and the main feature was a grossly obese male gnome clad only in what appeared to be suspenders and a thong dancing the night away.  It was that last scene that was the most disturbing part of the whole ordeal.  Go see 'I Can Only Imagine,' if you haven't yet, a most excellent and moving story, but please, hold the gnomes!

Another Unwitting Guest

I love it when I find someone who unwittingly writes a thesis for this blog!  Enjoy the article here.

The search is over!

We have all been searching, since the very dawn of man, every human heart has sought the answer to this riddle called life, some call it home or joy or purpose or meaning or happiness or fulfillment, whatever its name it is the answer to life, the universe, and everything (and it isn't 42).  That's what this blog is all about and I think someone has finally found it, here!

NOW!

Is everything instant these days?  I remember the first giddy days of dial-up internet (and rotary phones!) and how cool it was to be 'online.'  It was actually a thing to walk across campus to check your email in some distant computer lab at strange hours of the night (you know, like 10:30).  It was pretty phenomenal when they actually got internet in the dorms my senior year.  Now everyone has the internet in their pocket!  As much good as technology has done us, it also comes at a price.  This insistence on instant internet now applies to pretty much everything, including but not limited to relationships, health issues, food, shopping, investing...you name it, we want it now, and not just now, but done our way.  We all think we should have an opinion on everything (even things we know nothing about) and that our opinion should matter and not only matter but it should be enacted NOW.

Obviously that doesn't work very well because with 7 billion people on the planet that means there are seven billion differing opinions on everything.  So whose opinion do we enact?  And since it needs to be NOW, we can't possibly consider what the possible repercussions might be, you can see how this can get messy, fast!  Imagine ordering a pizza for 7 people (another common college phenomenon), do you think any of them will agree on anything?  Not going to happen, let alone trying to get a billion times as many people to agree on something as simple as lunch, how much less so on more important things?  Now that's what I call a mess!  But then we aren't called to solve such problems, at least not on our own.  We need only worry about the six other people in the room and their pizza preferences, or whatever our current situation may be.

Much easier, or so you say, except for the NOW phenomenon.  Susie just broke up with her boyfriend of five years.  Megan just had a miscarriage.  Marvin's father is dying of cancer.  Jon never met his father...who wants pepperoni?  Jon's a vegan.  Megan is gluten free.  Marvin can't have tomatoes.  Tim wants to know if it's organic...  We can't order a pizza, let alone fix all the problems festering beneath the surface just in this room, let alone the world, but somehow we feel we MUST fix it all and NOW!  But life isn't like that, at least real life.  Maybe some of those 'sim-life' games or social media sites create that sort of reality, where you just delete it or change it or log-off if you don't like something.  But real life is messy and slow, so are real relationships.  You can't just log on to some app, swipe a few times and come across the world's best boyfriend and bam, you have romance for life, NOW.  Nope, that ideal man was once nothing but a dream, then a baby, then a grubby little boy with scuffed up knees, then an acne prone teenager...a real relationship will take more than a few texts to establish and even more to maintain.  There will be dark nights and long days along with the laughs and the good times and the smiling social media pictures.

But we don't like slow or messy or imperfect or flawed.  Pain, misery, grief, suffering are abhorrent to us, that's why we like online realities, for online such things can be minimized, ignored, deleted, reinvented in our own image.  But facing adversity is how we live, learn, grow, mature.  No wonder we live in an age of forty-something adolescents!  Neverland is not found 'second star to the left and straight on till morning,' rather it is called Facebook or Instagram or a thousand other online forums and communities wherein our avatars live and move and have their being while our souls languish and die in a reality we do our very best to ignore.  As wonderful as technology is, sometimes I'm not sure it is worth the price our society, culture, and relationships and each of us as individuals must pay to indulge in it.  But it isn't likely to change, at least on a cultural level, anytime soon so we must each deal with it individually.  Here's hoping that each of our lives is deeper, brighter, broader, and more vivid than our online persona!

There and back again LXVI (The Best Title Ever!)

But I think Tolkien had an excellent point in choosing it, for all proper journeys and adventures must surely lead us Home, whether that is the place wherefrom we set out or a destination we go in search of.  It is the whole point of life, finding this place, this Home, and it is the reason such tales are the very definition of Story: someone setting out in search of something they lack or to thwart some evil that threatens everything they love.  Is that not the story of your own life, whether successful or not?  You leave Home (or home) to go and establish your own or find it for the first time or perhaps to prepare yourself to continue what you will inherit from another.  It's what we are all looking for and hoping to find, strangely thinking popularity, money, or power will somehow give it us.  But as the old Proverb says, 'better a meal of vegetables where love is than feasting with strife.'  Just look at celebrity culture, they are some of the least happy people on the planet; why then would we want to emulate them?

I've finally slogged through the 'Hobbit' movies again and that seems to be the whole point of the tale, at least once you weed out the 2-3 hours of pointless orc thrashing that does little to nothing to advance the plot and try and forget the expulsion of the Necromancer which while certainly an interesting story, had little to do with this one, and also the epic battle of Five Armies, which really should not have been all that epic!  If you can weed out all the extra clutter, there are several scenes to wrench the heart strings and remind us of what is truly important.  There's the scene with the greed obsessed Thorin confronting Bilbo, thinking he has the arcenstone (which he does) but finds him fiddling with an acorn instead and they talk for a moment of gardens and trees and the comforts of home.  Then you have the several scenes in which Bard is valiantly defending his children and people, seeing what no one else can: the gold and dragon mean nothing in the end, only the people that are hurt or helped; you really do pity Alfrid as he runs off in woman's garb clutching his beloved gold to his chest.  And then there is the whole idea of the dwarves setting off to reclaim their wasted homeland, which gets lost somewhere in the middle third of the second movie.  I won't even get into the whole elf subplot, that really gets strange and is quite beyond my comprehension!

The heart is there, if you can find it, and it could have been a lovely movie all about finding home and what's important in life...but it wasn't, we'll have to leave that to the next generation, Sam and Frodo do a good job so therein I'll be content.  What about you?  Is your story an action packed, meaningless mess?  Do you need to choose, like Thorin, what is truly important?  What can you do to take a step closer to finding Home, be it There or Back Again?

There and Back Again, Again and an unintended moral

Either wisely or unwisely, I have been slowly revisiting 'The Hobbit' movies.  I've survived a second viewing on the first two and the third is waiting.  The frustrating thing about them is they have so much potential!  The actors, scenery, music, budget...all very much in favor of the director.  And while the source material isn't my favorite of Tolkien's get, it is a decent little story.  Perhaps that is the key: little.  This version of the movie is too epic for its own good.  'The Lord of the Rings' is the epic of the saga, this is just a little adventure, not even a footnote in the great happenings of that world, save for the finding of the Ring, but they have tried to cram too much in, even for a three part epic.  It is supposed to be an adventure, not a rollercoaster ride, but they travel at lightning speed to fit everything in (most of which is not vital to the story or even in the book).  And while you can eventually learn to filter out the needless junk and find the gem of the story lurking somewhere in the chaos, it is very tiring, like being on the journey yourself.

Is our modern life like that?  Each of us is living a story, certainly, some as epic and grand and important as 'Lord of the Rings' but most of us are more of the scale of 'The Hobbit,' interesting and important in its own right, but hardly worth mentioning on the grand scale of the universe, but I think we try and cram in countless needless things, perhaps cool and intriguing in theory, but in the end they just jumble up the story, confuse the plot, and tire the characters without adding anything.  That's what a good editor is for: they cut out the unimportant clutter, be it a movie or book.  Take a look at the busyness that is your own life and consider what a good editor might do?  What would they hack away, that you might have life, and that more abundantly?  Maybe it's time we each took a hint from this overstuffed movie and apply it to our hectic lives!

Unwitting Guest Blogger Episode VIII

Why do I love stories?  Because they remind me that we're in one and no matter how dark or disappointing the current chapter, we've hardly begun to delve into the book, as this article so aptly points out, enjoy!

The Great Game of Life

Our culture loves games, many moderns prefer the brightly colored incessantly needy phone apps, but let us not forget the entire subculture of 'gamers,' from the old-school dice and books of the RPG crowd to the original Zelda and Mario games on the ancient forebears of today's astonishingly vivid and realistic gaming systems.  Why do we love them so?  The same reason we love stories, because they are stories we can lose ourselves in, to feel productive and significant, to make discoveries and find social interaction, real or fictional.  As humans, we crave significance, meaning, and relationship, we demand a world that makes sense and one in which we can make a difference, have adventures, and dream.  That is why the games so easily suck us in, providing a pleasant alternative to the grim realities of our lonely, tedious, and grief filled world.

But what does it all mean in the end?  The game is nothing, no matter your score or triumphs, if the machine breaks, the memory is corrupted, or there is no power to run it, it all comes to naught.  But so do many feel about life in general, so why not wile away the lonely hours in virtual fascination, if wile we must?  If pleasure is the only solace and meaning in life, by all means, succor yourself as best you can!  How dreadful, this worldview that all of life means nothing, is nothing, results in nothing, came from nothing and to nothing it will go.  While the words spoken on Ash Wednesday are grim, 'from dust you are and to dust you will return,' at least dust is something, was something, can be used for something again (enriching soil, growing plants...), whereas Nothing is and ever will be Nothing.

But thankfully we need not believe the folly of the more enlightened materialists and resign ourselves to a brief span of years before pointless oblivion.  Even the smallest child seems to know life means something, even those games and stories that fascinate us so seem to understand that life means something, else how could they delight us into wasting countless hours in pointless pursuit?  Life is a game, a great big, sometimes terrible game, no matter how dull, how lonely, how insignificant it might seem at the moment.  It has a point, it has rules, it is enthralling, and anyone can win!  Certainly a brighter prospect than endlessly tapping brightly colored squares on our phones and then Nothing.

The original Easter Fool's Day

People are excited that this year Easter and April Fool's Day coincide, but has it not always been so?  For Paul tells us in I Corinthians 1:18-31:

"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”"

Elsewhere we discover that His disciples are perplexed, confused, and in complete disbelief while the elders bribe the guards to hush up the conspiracy and Mary thinks He's the gardener!  What a wonderfully confused mess!  The impossible has happened and no one quite knows what to do with it, a perplexity that still troubles the world to this very day, for those same confused individuals eventually go on to be accused of 'turning the world upside down,' and so it is to this day.  So what are you going to do with it?  Happy April Fools! 

Why do the people sing?

There's a catchy song in the musical version of 'Les Miserables' that asks if you can hear the people sing, lately I've been wondering why the people sing?  In the musical, besides for the bawdy and uncouth 'Master of the House,' most of the singing reflects the title of the show: the miserable.  The people sing because they are dying, thwarted in love, left to rot in chains, denied justice, are cold and hungry, are overlooked and lonely, or have watched their dreams wither and die.  But despite the overwhelming darkness, evil, injustice, and misery, there is a theme of redemption, hope, and love undying that runs through the whole saga like a lifeline, giving meaning to their despair and comfort in their angst; their songs and prayers do not go unheard nor unanswered.  While watching the cast interviews on the 'extras' of the movie version of the musical, no one was untouched by the story, and they couldn't say enough good things of how 'Occupy Wall Street' and 'Lee's Miserables' were just such touching examples of the barricade scene and its high but crushed hopes of oppressed humanity.

I found it vastly amusing, but also rather horrifying that they all missed the point entirely.  Lee's Miserables?  Disheartened Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War (they were the pro-slavery side, by the way!).  Occupy Wall Street?  A now forgotten uprising of dissatisfied hipsters, really?  The barricade scene was a plot point, not the whole point of the story!  The theme is redemption and hope not born of this world, not a celebration of the crushed but immortal dreams of humanity.  The people sing because they hope, know, want, need, desire something beyond the mere human cruelty and indifference all around them, they are prayers set to music, not because they think someone will hear their song and have mercy but because they are expressing the deepest longings, yearnings, and needs of the human heart and the answer does not lie within the purview of our fellow men, if it did, we should have already established a utopia somewhere or somewhen upon this mortal earth, but that Kingdom has not yet and will never arise, at least without a change of management.

The other day I ran across a 'song list for PTSD' and curious, I followed the link and was given 32 secular songs that are supposed to help you make it through your darkest night.  I was depressed just reading the list so I'm not sure how it is supposed to help you in the midst of a traumatic attack of your darkest nightmares made real, ugh!  Why do the people sing?  This was a list of 32 famous songs spanning decades of musical invention but there was nary a hint of hope or light amongst them.  You can sing about being happy, but why are you happy?  If the nihilistic nightmare of modern culture is real, why are you singing?  If all comes from nothing and to nothing it will go, if you will die and everything you were and did means nothing, why are you singing?  Children will sing when they are excited or happy, they enjoy many a mindless and nonsensical ditty, but those are not the songs I question: they are mere nonsense and fun and quite at home in a pointless universe.  But why do Men sing, grown adults whose minds are troubled or whose hearts are moved by some grandiose feeling of joy or horror?

Our modern popular music seems nothing more than those childish ditties turned to darkness, infant joys turned to ash by an indifferent and pleasure seeking world; 'Master of the House' is our only anthem though sung in a million variations.  Like our philosophy, there is nothing behind our music, it has no heart, it means nothing and to nothing it shall return.  But we need not go tuneless through the twilit world, for there is real music, songs that mean something and connect us to a larger world, a world beyond our own, where there is One who hears, and like the benighted folk of the musical, when we have no more tears or words or hope, only a dismal song in the night, He has promised joy in the morning.  Unless we miss the point entirely, like the cast of the movie, and mistake one short act for the entire show.  Why do you sing?  What is your inspiration?

Amen!

Time for another unwitting guest blogger, find a most excellent article here!

Modern Mystics

I ran across this interesting article, and though I haven't read the books reviewed by the author, I find myself agreeing with him that the view of Heaven espoused in said books is far too small, a mere paradisiacal reimagining of what we currently know.  I can understand secular culture, such as 'The Far Side' comic strip with its middle aged, chubby, spectacle wearing heavenly citizens with stubby wings, ill fitting robes, and shabby halos, seeing the afterlife as dull and tedious in the proposed lack of evil and conflict, a necessary ingredient (in our meager understanding) in all great stories, but to have that same view from a theoretically Bible literate believer is ridiculous.  How can you read Daniel, Ezekiel, or Revelation and walk away thinking there will be no drama, no glory, no wonder, no story?  How can you read the final chapters of Job and still think you know anything at all about this mortal earth and its functioning, let alone of what comes after?  The Apostle Paul saw Something, Something so tremendous he wasn't allowed to speak of it and was given some grievous affliction to keep him humble, lest his secret knowledge drive him to pride and away from the very wonders he had seen.

True, we don't know much about the hereafter, only hints and teasing glimpses, promises we can barely understand.  But can you truly believe that He who made sunsets and platypuses and all the horrifically beautiful creatures of the deepest depths of the sea, the Inventor of music and light and stars would have so drab a throne room or so dull a court?  If Earth is but the footstool, can you image the throne?  The Psalmist envies the swallows nesting in the crevices of the ancient temple, but can our destiny truly be so blasé?  I think not.

I was probably seven when I looked over at the distant high school and wondered what the older students did during recess with no swings or slides, little understanding that there would come a day when I too would not think the once exciting playground a necessary part of life.  It is a similar line of thought that drives such myopic visions of Heaven.  Like that child, we cannot yet comprehend what it is and is not, we can't wrap our finite minds around it.  Instead of contenting ourselves with these childish visions, rather let us listen to those whose vision is not so stunted and small: the mystics, the poets, the storytellers, the bards, those who though full grown, can still see through the eyes of childlike wonder and try, however imperfectly, to pass those visions on to us.

C.S. Lewis is a personal favorite, 'Perelandria,' 'The Last Battle,' and 'The Great Divorce,' give us little hints and snippets, ideas of what could be, might be, might have been, or at least asks us to take off our mortal blinders and consider things bigger than our own experience.

J.R.R. Tolkien mixes glorious visions of wondrous histories, realms beyond the present perishing world, and echoes of greater beauty and purpose into his prosaic world of war and grim quests, death and despair, much like our own.

G.K. Chesterton is the ultimate child of the Kingdom, his inexorable sense of humor and the ridiculous makes whatever he is writing about, be it chalk or cheese, a joy to read.  His impishness dashes past our jaded guard and straight to the heart, where the Truth he mirthfully revels in both awakens and astonishes.

L.M. Montgomery's stories never stray into the realm of fantasy or fairy tales, but her heroines often find themselves drifting off into whimsical sunsets and October fields, seeing the brief glimpses of heavenly glory that occasionally shine through into our own world and the Great Truths that likewise shine into our own rather mundane lives.

George MacDonald is a man who has seen things, strange and wonderful, as puzzling and fantastic and beautiful as the heavenly visions of Ezekiel or John.

These are a few of my favorites, but I'm sure there are countless others.  After reading their works, I have a very hard time accepting a small view of eternity.  I think it is far more akin to trying to explain graduate school to a preschooler: they just don't understand or care!  It is not Heaven that is too small, rather it is our mind's ability to comprehend it.  John, the author of Revelation, noted that the world itself could ill contain all the books that might have been written of Jesus and His works whilst He walked among us, a mere thirty years or so of earthly existence, how much less everything beyond space and time, eternity, Heaven, the Godhead and all it has wrought?  Small indeed!

Sage advice from a modern philosopher

'To write one must first suffer,' 

~(or something like that), Garfield the Cat~

Yes, this week's inspirational quote comes from a fat, lazy, lasagna horking feline of the cartoon variety, but hey, one scavenges a muse where one must!  There's a reason this cartoon franchise has been popular for nearly four decades: he's a hilarious philosopher in animated fur, dare I say as witty and good-naturedly snarky as Miss Austen herself, though in a format far more suitable to modern minds (Heaven help us!).   However you feel about the source, I think this sagacious line drawing has an excellent point.  Have you ever read something by someone who has never actually struggled with anything in life?  I'm convinced those are the sorts of people that write modern children's books, a literary class so vapid I'd feel bad lining my mouse cage with most of it (that is not to say there are not excellent children's authors out there, but most of the stuff churned out by the educational presses is only palatable to the people who printed it, least of all to the kids who should be reading it).  There is a popular vocal artist in a music genre I've given up as hopeless in recent decades but I can never remember her name, I call her 'whiny teenager girl' and most people seem to know immediately to whom I'm referring, but at the beginning of her career, her greatest laments and struggles were those common to twelve year olds and she wrote scads of songs about them and it drove me up a wall.

There's nothing wrong with writing about what you know (indeed, a trait more people should exercise!) or writing music for a particular segment of society (twelve year olds for example) but when they play identical song after song after song and then repeat it over and over and over, so all you hear all day (if you work somewhere that plays only a certain radio station day in and day out) is whiny teenager girl lamenting her lovelorn anguish and how it isn't ever going to get any better at the ripe old age of thirteen, well, you understand where the term 'postal' might come from, even the most gentle and docile of temperaments must have their breaking point!  She had not (and happily so) suffered much at that age and her music shows it, but why someone chose to make her famous and play her songs everywhere for the rest of eternity is beyond me, unless those children's book producers have now invaded the music scene, disturbing thought indeed!  True art, of whatever form or format or genre, comes from the heart, and the more that heart has seen, loved, grieved, and suffered, the more moving is that art.  Albeit suffering does not equate with talent (or perhaps taste?) as Picasso obviously suffered greatly, and though famous and renowned, I still feel like most of his masterpieces were filched from a seven year old's art case, but that's just me, perhaps I have no eye for that sort of art any more than I have an ear for music made for teenie boppers.

I've observed this in my own case, when writing (for good or ill), I always feel like my muse waxes hottest when I'm struggling with something significant, either present or past.  And then there are those days that are bright and sunny and happy and I really can't write a coherent sentence, let alone a decent composition of any sort.  Is it that those who have suffered have a greater understanding of our humanity, mortality, and the greater things beyond, or is it that they are driven to create as an outlet for their grief?  Perhaps it is some combination of the two?  If only we could find someone to write a nice little thesis on this theory, but as doctoral theses are far from works of art, no matter your discipline, that might be disaster indeed!