Must. Write. Now.

So, for the last two months since I finished my second novel, I've been mostly taking a break from writing.

I've done some editing on a previous novel, and I've critiqued my partners' novels.

But as far as drafting original material, no. Nada.

I can tolerate life without writing for about four weeks. At six weeks, it becomes uncomfortable. At eight weeks, EEEEEAAAAARRRGGGGHH!

I'm jumping out of my skin. I feel itchy and crabby.

Here's the problem. Historical novels require research. This research means that I can't just dive into a new project--I have to do some foundational research first. But I also can't let the research bog me down and prevent me from starting.

I have a specific project in mind that is set sixty years after my last novel, in a vastly different place. I've done the preliminary research, but now I have to bite the bullet and draft a plot outline.

Painful.

I dislike drafting initial outlines, even though that's a necessary part of my very structured writing process.

Why? Because the initial outline is going to stink.

That's the way it goes. Initial outlines stink. As the manuscript begins to breathe and take on its own life, the plot becomes interesting and I revise the outline.

But oh, how I hate that initial stinky outline.

If I don't start writing, however, I'm going to look and act like a mad scientist in about two more weeks.

Time to get to work.

Quick and Easy Author Websites

If you would like to see how to put up a simple, inexpensive website for yourself in an hour, check out my new website:

www.rosslynelliott.com

This kind of template-based site is easy. Though it won't blow away any technically-savvy visitors, it parks some basic information at your domain name until you decide to build a more complicated site.

To build your own, go reserve a domain name at godaddy.com

Choose the package that includes SmartSpace hosting and Website Tonight.

I chose the cheapest version, which includes a website template and five pages for the site (the ones you see in my site's navigation bar). I think it costs about $5.00 a month, though I did all this stuff late at night and my memory is fuzzy. :-)

If you know enough to blog, you can figure out how to use this site builder!

Anyway

Most of you have probably heard the Paradoxical Commandments before, but I thought of them after reading Wendy's post about the perils of telling the truth.

I really need to put the Paradoxical Commandments on the wall next to my computer.

People are difficult. We are at times ungrateful, self-centered, self-pitying, and any other "self-" adjective that makes others miserable. I'm one of those people. We all are, ever since we walked with tears and shame out of that first lovely garden.

Unless we resolve to do it anyway, nothing good will ever happen. When I look back on my life, I want to know that I helped. I won't be thinking about how ungrateful Johnny was, or how so-and-so spread jealous gossip. I'll be treasuring my memories of how I made a difference.


The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith


People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.



And while I'm on the subject of being humane, Dawn Simon gave Inkhorn Blue the Humane Award. Thank you! Dawn is a writer of Young Adult fiction. She recently finaled in a contest and maintains an encouraging blog. Stop by and say hello, if you get a chance.

Full Many a Flower

Our dance classes assemble in our largest practice studio.

It's time to present the dances we've been learning for the past eight weeks.

Our beginning tap class presents. We have fun. Our dance is short and simple.

The Scottish dancers go next, accompanied by a real bagpiper.

Finally, the adult ballet class dances. This is clearly *not* the beginning-level class!

Many of them are quite good. As they dance, I think about these dancers, six women and one man. When they were younger, they must have danced all the time to retain such good technique as adults. Perhaps they were the featured soloists at their recitals. Perhaps they went even farther.

Even more impressive is the choreography. The choreographer chose a piece from a Japanese anime show. The music sounds like techno-classical. (No, not Hooked on Classics! Cool, not dorky. :-)

The dancers move like dolls, their bodies stiff. At one point, they all move forward together like automatons. Their heads twist stiffly to the right. They move forward again. Their heads twist to the left.

They break out into all kinds of cool leaps and pirouettes, not in unison, but in staggered rhythm across the stage.

On my way home, I reflect on the pleasure of witnessing a small command performance by these impressive talents in dancing and choreography. So often nowadays, we believe that talent isn't talent unless it is the best in the whole country. It's not enough to be a very good singer. You have to be perfect. You have to be better than everyone else. It's not enough to love dancing and move beautifully. You have to be in the New York City Ballet. At least, that's how some people think of it. If you haven't made it to the pro level by the time you're twenty-one, then why keep dancing?

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

That's what Thomas Gray writes in "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." The 'flower' he describes is any talented rustic villager who never makes a name for himself in the world. His ability "wastes its sweetness on the desert air."

I have to disagree with Thomas Gray.

The whole world may not see your talent, but someone will.

Like that choreography I saw tonight, quality works of art lift people's spirits. They make us glad to be alive. The performing and visual arts are sophisticated forms of play. We work for years to become accomplished in our chosen art forms because the beauty of our work glorifies our Creator and brings pleasure to other people.

Out here in the desert air, I saw that flower blooming. Its sweetness was not wasted on me or on any of the others who saw it.

Have you seen a private performance or some other kind of art that was not created by a famous artist, but still lifted your spirits or moved you?

A Promise

After a long and eventful day, I sit down at my computer to blog.

My mind is blank. The scenes of the day are not providing me with bloggable material, for various reasons. (You know how it is, bloggers! Sometimes you just can't spill certain aspects of your personal business all over the pages of your blog.)

Fatigued, I bury my face in my hands and ask what I should say that will help someone.

Go get the Bible.

OK.

Without reflecting on it too much, I go to the shelf and retrieve my massive parallel traslation Bible, the closest at hand. I hold it in my lap and let it fall open at random.

Of course, it falls open to Isaiah, the halfway point. :-)

So here is the wonderful message for everyone out there...but who knows? Maybe for you, in particular.

Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you,
And therefore he waits on high to have compassion on you,
For the Lord is a God of justice;
How blessed are all those who long for Him.

O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will surely be gracious to you, at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you.
Although the Lord has given you the bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher.

Your ears will hear a word behind you, "This is the way, walk in it," whenever you turn to the right or the left.

And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, "Be gone!"

Then he will give you rain for the seed which you shall sow in the ground, and bread from the yield of the ground, and it will be rich and plenteous; on that day your livestock will graze in a roomy pasture.

Isaiah 30:18-23

Heartfelt Award

Angie at Notes from the Writing Chair gave my blog a Heartfelt Award on Friday. Thanks, Angie!

Angie has an intriguing profile which will tell you about her publications in speculative fiction (one of my favorite genres).

Have a peaceful Sunday, everyone.

Big

While reading Tabitha's post about her boxing, I remembered how I once felt while riding New York City subways or walking down dark streets at night.

More than anything, I wanted to be big. Six foot two, with corded biceps and huge shoulders.

I wanted to have the kind of warrior body that would inspire fear and respect in bad guys. I wanted them to step out of my path when they saw me coming down the sidewalk.

No workout regimen or steroid injection will ever make me big. I am small-boned. My husband calls me "Tiny," though I am a little above average height for a woman.

So in New York City, and in other situations in which I've faced challengers larger than myself (such as male high school students!), I've learned to become big in my mind.

The mind is mighty.

Ten years ago, I squared off against a six foot two basketball player across my desk. He leaned over and tried to intimidate me. I stood up and deliberately chose to believe with all my heart, against the facts, that I had the power to assert quiet but steely authority over this young man. The thought running through my head was something like, "Don't mess with me, dude, or I will mess with you."

He stepped back.

It seems laughable, doesn't it? A small, blonde woman eight inches shorter than this aggressive guy looks him in the eye, and he recognizes the stronger will and backs off.

Of course, it helped that he was sixteen, and I was twenty-six. And it helped slightly that I was a teacher and he a student. But any high school teacher can tell you that if a principal won't back up teachers, the students soon figure that out and run wild. I was working at a school in which the principal would not support teachers in disciplinary matters. Therefore, for all practical purposes, it was my will against the student's.

Because of my lifelong smallness, my favorite character in the Chronicles of Narnia is the valiant mouse Reepicheep.

Reepicheep has a big mind, despite his small stature, He doesn't limit himself to small deeds. Reepicheep knows that little people, too, can change the world.

When you're little, you know that you will never win a physical battle under your own power. When you're little, the only way to be big is to tap into forces larger than yourself.

The Right to Be Happy

I must give credit to Luke at Sonlight for bringing this item to my attention.

Jared Coleman, former leader of a small Christian house church, is now an agnostic. You can read the story of how he lost his faith here.

I'm fascinated by his story for two reasons.

Firstly, he says that he woke up one day and realized that his life would not change in any practical way if God did not exist.

Yes, if you have compartmentalized God to the tiny areas of your life that aren't already full, as Jared freely admits, then your life will not change in any practical way by eliminating God completely. So go ahead, Jared, lose your faith. Because guess what? If it made no practical difference in your life, it made no practical difference in anyone else's life either.

Secondly, he also acknowledges that he stopped reading the Bible, and even better, that he adopted a widespread cultural belief that will destroy anyone's faith in about two seconds.

JARED: I believe that people have a right to be happy. I was floored. I never imagined that I would feel that way. Still, I was happy to be able to be honest with myself and to know that I was not getting my sense of morality or ethics from the Bible.

Really? We have a right to be happy? Is that the same right that entitles people to spend money they don't have? To kill their spouses because they are getting in the way of their happiness?

BWA-HA-HA!

I don't usually laugh at statements of life philosophy, but "we have a right to be happy" is one of the more ludicrous ones.

Let's see how often the universe agrees with you on your right to be happy.

Just curious, Jared: do you have more of a right to happiness than the average person in Rwanda? And, if not, then do you have a responsibility to try to give some of your happiness to them, since happiness is a human right? Or is it just tough luck that you happen to be born rich and free and more capable of securing your "happiness" than the average child prostitute in the slums of India?

Only in a country as wealthy and safe as ours can people believe that a philosophy of personal happiness is a valid substitute for God.

It's enough to inspire me to write a satire about what happens to all these "I have a right to be happy" people when times start to get really tough.

What I hope is that most of them will come to their senses and find true joy that doesn't change, no matter how bad things get. "Happiness" is illusory. Joy is real.

Real

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.



"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Margery Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit

Eyes That See

Towards the end of my agnostic decade, I left New York City and went back to live in the South.

One of my friends there took me to her Pentecostal church.

The kindness of the women at that church staggered me.

When they spoke to me, they saw me. They weren't greeting me out of a sense of duty. They looked at me very closely and with love, understanding me as a separate person arriving at their doorstep with a full history. Each of them saw me as a person just as substantial and three-dimensional as herself.

One of them placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and said with compassion: "There's just something about you...I don't know what it is, but it touches me."

I think this perceptive woman was referring to my spiritual brokenness, which at that point in my life was probably visible to her. I did not try to hide it--I had no one to impress.

It was a shock to be seen after years of living in New York, where people don't see each other even when they are standing shoulder to shoulder on the subway.

When I recall those lovely Pentecostal women, however, I realize that most of us don't really see each other, whether we live in New York City or in the suburban southwest.

When I greet visitors at church and they greet me, at times the social walls are almost palpable. They act exactly as they would if they were being introduced to any other stranger: polished, guarded, and very, very careful not to say anything personal. They could be at any cocktail party or country club. They don't really see other people in their broken humanity; instead, for whatever reason, they're in autopilot mode.

Isn't this a shame?

Wouldn't it be so much better if more churches showed an obvious difference between us and the unfeeling world as soon as people walked through the door?

If more of us saw other people with loving hearts and the desire to understand them, as those Pentecostal women once truly saw me?

Remembering their kindness has inspired me. My prayer is that I will truly see other people when I look at them.

Temple of Water

I should be in a cheerful mood tonight. Today was a good day with no unforeseen hitches, and we also may have figured out how to solve a minor but chronic problem.

But I'm not in a cheerful mood. I feel a little down.

And it's all because I am sleep-deprived.

I stayed up much later than usual last night working on a project.

As a result, though my mind tells me I should feel happy, my body rebels. The mysterious sleep-deprivation chemicals flood my brain and throw me off balance.

Our bodies are our spiritual portals. My every thought and feeling must filter through this sac of water supported by bones and cartilage.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?...Therefore honor God with your body."

Does it ever seem odd to you that God made his temples of such weak stuff? That we can be knocked off our emotional centers by something as inconsequential as a few hours of missed sleep?

It would make more sense if the temples of the Spirit looked like Terminator robots: bright silver, self-healing, unstoppable.

Nope. We're soft and we squish easily. We leak red fluid from our skin and water from our eyes.

But I can't get past this one thought about my body, the temple made mostly of water.

It's living water.

That is who we are, each of us a sac of living water. That is how God walked the earth: as Living Water.

I Want Candy!

Tonight I'm in wide-eyed hunting mode, struck by a fierce candy-craving.

It's all my fault for eating the last gumdrop fruit slice earlier this evening.

If you don't eat sugar, you don't get sugar cravings. I know this well enough. But that fruit slice was so cherrylicious, sugar-frosted, and lonely sitting by itself in its plastic box.

There is no other candy left in the house. I've resorted to salt and vinegar potato chips.

My family of origin lived in England for three formative years of my life. At the age of twelve, I saw a daily parade of British Crunchie candy bars, Aeros, Fruit and Nuts, Maltesers, and gummy coke bottles. I didn't eat it every day, but I eyed it in the kiosk as I traveled by train to school with a horde of other uniformed schoolchildren.

American candy doesn't hold the same allure for me.

I like Sour Patch Kids. I like Twizzlers, though I wonder what happens to them once they disappear down my gullet. They don't really seem to be made of an edible substance.

American chocolate is just OK, to me. A Reese's Peanut Butter Cup will never win a cage match against a Terry's Chocolate Orange, dark. (drool)

Let's hear it! What are your favorite candies?

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

This short poem by Robert Frost has always been one of my favorites. It pops into my head every now and then, when my heart receives an unexpected change of mood.

On the quiet day when the poet passes under the tree, he is preoccupied with his regrets, involuntarily reliving dark events in his mind. A whirring of wings sends freezing powder down his neck, inside the collar of his coat. He flinches. Perhaps he is angry, wondering for a moment what new challenge the world has thrown his way.

He looks up to see the crow, its bright eye glinting, shuffling its claws through the line of snow that glazes the branch of the hemlock. It unfurls its wings with a quick motion, sending more snow cascading down onto the man's head.

With a muttered oath, he brushes at the snow, frantic to remove it from his hair before it can melt and leave him wet and cold. His gloved hands bat ineffectually at his head.

His movements slow, then halt. He chuckles. He laughs. His head tilts back. He looks up at the crow once more, then walks on, his step swinging freely, his mouth curving upwards.



I have my own hemlock, the dark shadow that looms over me, the poisonous whisper that slips into my mind when I'm off guard.

But I also receive the dust of snow, the unexpected renewing and cleansing, the call out of the darkness of my own thoughts.

"Look!" says the dust of snow. "Look how silly you are, with your whispering voices and your mood. This is a hemlock tree, it's true, but see how I cover it and soften it. See how even a rough-voiced crow can carry me on its wings! See how the hemlock tree stands trapped in its own roots, while I am everywhere. You have only to walk away from the hemlock, and on into the snowy brightness of the day."

And I say, yes, I am very stupid. And I laugh.

The Myth of Self-Belief

G.K. Chesterton tells a prosperous publisher why he should not praise persons who "believe in themselves":

"You of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy; he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in the back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. ...Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness."

*******************************************************************

Someone once told me that a truly intelligent person never assumes that she is the smartest person in the room. Never.

The more educated we are, the more we should realize how little we know.

Keeping the balance between healthy (incomplete) self-confidence and delusional pride is tricky. For several years after college, I was so underconfident that I couldn't set any goals without shooting myself down. I was so perfectionistic that I couldn't finish writing projects because I would become so discouraged by their flaws.

As time went by, I was able to remind myself of the skills I had worked for years to build. I learned to silence the negative voice of my perfectionism with mottos like: "Success is 10 percent inspiration, 90 percent perspiration," and "80 percent of success is just showing up."

It's not wrong to know you are good at something--that's a part of healthy self-confidence. It's not even wrong to say you are good at something, though women have often been taught to deny their gifts.

But, even in my strongest areas, if I were to think that I myself am infallible in that field, or always right, well, that's just foolish. And as Chesterton says, it's a weakness.

Have you ever struggled with the balance between underconfidence and overconfidence?

Journal of the Plague Year

This morning, I found myself inexplicably fatigued. I mean, wiped out. The muscles in my back were sore, not in that good "I just had a workout" way, but in a "toxic stuff is marching through my body" way.

I still don't know if I'm contracting the flu or not. I'm hoping this delayed onset means: a) I'm not getting it, and there's some other reason for my toxic symptoms; or b) my heroic body is fighting it off, my white blood cells rushing over mountainous organs and muscles like Gandalf's army beating down legions of orcs at the end of Lord of the Rings. :-)

I though I would cheer up by reminding myself of how good we have it, in 2009. Whenever the news media attempts to portray the challenges of our time as the most difficult of any in history, I scoff.

Compare our panic over the swine flu to a real pandemic.

Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722, is a fictionalized account of the Great Plague in London in 1666. It reads like a nonfiction work, however, as Defoe cites official statistics and reports the events of the plague year in a detached, objective fashion.

I can't even quote many of his narrator's most interesting descriptions of London's citizens as the plague progressed. This is, after all, a civilized blog and I want you to feel safe coming here. But Defoe's novel is a great historical read, and you can download it for free at Project Gutenberg. Just Google it and download the plaintext version. Then have fun skimming!

Here's a fairly tame morsel:

Many consciences were awakened; many hard hearts
melted into tears; many a penitent confession was made of crimes long
concealed. It would wound the soul of any Christian to have heard the
dying groans of many a despairing creature, and none durst come near to
comfort them. Many a robbery, many a murder, was then confessed aloud,
and nobody surviving to record the accounts of it. People might be
heard, even into the streets as we passed along, calling upon God for
mercy through Jesus Christ, and saying, 'I have been a thief, 'I have
been an adulterer', 'I have been a murderer', and the like, and none
durst stop to make the least inquiry into such things or to administer
comfort to the poor creatures that in the anguish both of soul and body
thus cried out.

Some of the ministers did visit the sick at first
and for a little while, but it was not to be done. It would have been
present death to have gone into some houses. The very buriers of the
dead, who were the hardenedest creatures in town, were sometimes beaten
back and so terrified that they durst not go into houses where the whole
families were swept away together, and where the circumstances were more
particularly horrible, as some were...


So, would reading Journal of the Plague Year cheer you up, or am I the only odd bird who finds comfort in reminders that other times in history were far worse than our own?

Or can you recommend other pieces of historical writing that remind you how comfortable life is in 2009?

Everybody Point to the Narcissist!

Did you hear about a Texas Tech coach who banned Twitter for his entire football team?

He claimed his ban was because "Twitter is for narcissists," though the ban was actually prompted by a player who tweeted that his coach was "late for his own meeting."

Texas Tech Coach

I don't use Twitter, myself, because I'm troubled by the way it works in our culture. Even so, I do not believe that Twitter is for narcissists.

Can some people be narcissistic on Twitter or Facebook or blogs or any other social media? Certainly. Here's a study that talks about that:

Social media is for narcissists

My theory is that much of the vanity in social media crops up among teens and twenty-somethings, whom our culture encourages toward endemic youthful self-absorption. I know this because I was pretty self-absorbed in my teens and early twenties! Like me, many of these young people will grow out of it as they take a few hard knocks and develop more compassion for others.

My personal experience with blogs and Facebook, however, hasn't shown me widespread narcissism. Most of my friends are in their thirties or older. They use social media to communicate with old friends and to build relationships with others.

Some of us use social media entrepreneurially. Writers, for example, hear repeatedly from every expert in the business that we will now be responsible for marketing our own work. We're told that when we submit our novel proposals, we'd better show that we have a web presence.

Are all entrepreneurs narcissists? I don't think so. Most writers I know don't enjoy self-promotion, but they do it because their occupation now requires it.

Personally, I enjoy blogging and reading other people's blogs. It's an opportunity to get past the small talk that dominates most of our daily lives. It's a window of intimacy, not narcissism. My blogging friends and I encourage one another with our posts, and we find companionship because of our similar interests.

I don't really love the "promotion" part. I don't like posting links to my blog on Facebook. I'm aware that my Facebook friends who are not part of the writing community may not realize that blog promotion is an occupational requirement for mainstream fiction writers. There may be some assumption that I'm self-promoting. But I hope that most of my real friends know the difference between professional promotion and personal narcissism.

Whether I like every promotional aspect of writerhood or not, I've gotta do it. Accordingly, I try to focus on the positive part of promotion, which for me is the opportunity to get to know a lot of people and learn more about their life stories and their perspectives on writing and faith. That is rewarding. That is meaningful.

What do you think about this narcissism business?

** I should also clarify that I am using the word "narcissism" in its popular sense of "vain and self-absorbed," as it was used by the Texas Tech coach. Clinical narcissistic personality disorder is a different matter.

We Have a Winner!

The winner of the $30 Amazon gift certificate is:

Susan of Warm Chocolate Milk!

Her number, 37, was the first to pop out of the random number generator.

Thanks for participating in the follower exchange, Susan! I'm looking forward to keeping up with your blog and the other new blogs I discovered. This was fun.

The great thing about Amazon gift certificates is that they can be sent by email. I believe you have an email address listed on your blog, so I'll send it there unless I hear otherwise from you.

Night in the Southwest

We walk across the street to our neighbors' home and share dinner.

Afterwards, we sit around a cast iron fire pit and toast marshmallows on coat hangers. The darkness brings out the orange in the fire as the pinon wood pops, and clusters of sparks float up on the drafts.

I lean my head back and let my eyes adjust to the clear blackness overhead. The whiter sparks of stars map themselves in ancient patterns across the sky.

It's always this way here. Night after night, the stars come out by the thousands, some bright as a trail of lights on a Christmas tree, others dim and distant, drawing us out to the mystery at the limits of our vision.

It hardly ever rains. Clouds flee the crispness of the desert air, making our skies an astronomer's paradise.

I sit in the chair, warmed by the fire and the presence of my friends.

Once upon a time, these skies would have been an astrologer's paradise as well. Cygnus the Swan wings its way west, Pegasus tosses its mane and arches its neck.

Desert plains have borne the footprints of astrologers for two thousand years.

Three astrologer-kings once saw a star bright with holiness and predicted that the birth of a child would shake history to its core.

What would they see in our stars?

Vigil

I'm sure I have plenty of company tonight as I keep watch over my daughter. Moms across America are watching their children with eagle eyes at the slightest sign of illness.

Are we hypervigilant? Maybe.

My daughter has had a sore throat off and on for three days, but no fever at all.

As a result, I have not taken her to the doctor; instead, I've just monitored her constantly for fever.

Tonight, I looked in the back of her throat and did not like what I saw. Infection. Not terrible, but definitely there.

But still no fever.

I called the nurse for advice. The nurse said I would need to call for an appointment first thing in the morning, because even without fever, obvious infection needs to be checked out.

My daughter went to sleep around 9 p.m., and then I kept watch.

A new symptom appeared: drooling and excessive salivation in her sleep. The nurse had asked me about this symptom earlier, but I had answered in the negative as my daughter wasn't salivating like crazy at that time.

Her breathing sounded raspy. I woke the poor girl up so I could shine a flashlight in her throat. At the sight of her swollen tonsils, visions of blocked airways danced in my head.

Can anyone relate to this?

I know my husband is right. I am overreacting. But a little voice also reminds me: What about the times when you were the only one who realized she was sick? When you took her to the doctor and he confirmed that your intuition was right on, despite the subtlety of the symptoms?

Of course, I pray as I sit here by her bed, unwilling to sleep just yet.

I pray for her, but I also pray that my heart will absorb the truth that is already in my head: I am not in control.

If my daughter should contract some freaky, dangerous form of throat infection, against all odds (and yes, I know I am being ridiculous), I am not in control of the outcome, no matter how careful my vigil.

It's easy to mistake fear for intuition. Sometimes I have to school it with logic.

How could she be dangerously sick without a fever? What are the odds of this incredibly rare thing occurring?

With those thoughts, I calm sufficiently to consider sleep.

When my husband said these things earlier, I could not listen. Only when I focused my OWN thoughts to the discipline of logic did some calm arrive.

That's how it is, sometimes. Control of one's thoughts requires an inner struggle, and no one else can step into my head and do the work for me.

The Difficult Questions

Trey Sullins, a local children's minister, presented a few weeks ago at a seminar I attended.

Trey believes that spiritual education must equip us to handle the most difficult questions life can hurl at us. Those questions arrive early for many of our children, and we do them a disservice if we teach them only a watered-down version of faith that can't hold up under trial.

Trey told us about a summer program focused on the theme that God always loves us, but there are days on which He does not choose to protect us.

A powerful illustration of this principle centered on the story of Stephen, stoned to death by an angry mob in the streets.

In order to free up their throwing arms, the mob laid their coats at the feet of a young man nearby. His name was Saul.

Even in God's unfailing compassion, He did not protect Stephen from evil on that day, because a larger plan was unfolding.

Trey asked the kids whether what Saul witnessed on that day would have stayed in his mind for a long time. They said yes.

Perhaps images of that murder of a gentle man flashed on Saul's blind retinas when he lay prone on the road to Damascus. How often did Saul think of Stephen's last words of forgiveness, as Saul sat in his blindness and neither ate nor drank for three days?

On the days when God chooses not to protect us, it's hard not to rant or sob: "How can THIS work for good?"

But as Trey so concisely reminded us, it's always good. We just can't always see it.

I don't remember the ages of the children Trey taught this difficult lesson, but after listening to him speak, I know I'd trust my own child to his judgment and his loving spirit.

Hard questions unanswered can blow a child's faith right over a cliff.

Hard questions faced squarely will give a child iron handholds and footholds on the rock.

I'm grateful for those dedicated teachers like Trey, with such selfless love for children.

Do you know one? Tell me about a great teacher. So often, their efforts go unrecognized, but they mean everything to the children who pass through their care.

Love, God

I just received my monthly issue of Christianity Today.

Chuck Colson and Catherine Larson contribute a fascinating short piece about the recent spate of high-profile atheists who have begun to hear the padding paws of the Hound of Heaven.

The article is worth reading, if you can track it down. (I tried to find a link, but there's none detectable on the Christianity Today website.)

After citing a couple of atheists who have renounced atheism (Antony Flew and A.N. Wilson), Colson and Larson write:

Likewise, Matthew Parris, another well-known British atheist, made the mistake of visiting Christian aid workers in Malawi, where he saw the power of the gospel transforming them and others. Concerned with what he saw, he wrote that it "confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God."

Parris has not yet come over to the theistic side, but we can always hope. :-)

Some of the recent atheist converts cite phenomena such as language and music that they cannot explain from an atheistic worldview.

It all reminds me of Sunshine Mama's recent question: how are nonbelievers trying to deny the wonders of the world, these days?

As Colson and Larson write, Christianity is a reasonable faith. Many deep-thinking people come to Christianity because in the end, they believe it is the logical worldview to hold. They find faith through reason, not in spite of it.

Others find faith written in what earlier generations called the Book of Nature: the mysteries of math, of music, the beauty of mountains and the sound of wind.

Still others find it written in the inexplicable love of an aid worker in Malawi.

All good books in our world--scriptural, natural, and mortal--bear the same signature.

Which of these books is speaking to you today?

Dancing with Words

I love my tap class.

Though I'm no brilliant hoofer, I've danced enough to know the huge difference between rehearsing and dancing.

In rehearsal, everyone looks the same. We're all trying to learn the moves, and doing our best to ape the teacher's technique.

When people really dance, they all look different. Each person's body is knit together in a unique way, and those differences in shape, strength, and size cause each dancer's motion to take on a certain character.

Gene Kelly, for example, was well known for his masculine style of dance. Broad-shouldered and deep-chested, he did not look like a typical dancer. His gifts in choreography allowed him to design dances that showcased his unique way of moving.

When I look around our tap class, I notice the various ways people move.

One may be still at the rehearsal-only stage. She is acquiring skills and growing acccustomed to the way her body works. She can't yet dance, but that's OK. One day she will.

Another has more dance in her background. She is small and perfectly balanced. When she dances, she is very composed and always precise.

A third woman is taller and has the gift of strength in her back--I can see it just by watching her. As a result, her posture is great and she conveys a regal dignity. Physically, she's the Nancy Kerrigan of our class.

In our tap class tonight, our fifth lesson of the autumn, I realized that thus far, I've been worrying too much about making myself move like Mr. Leonard.

I'm not going to move like him. He's a man. He has no hips. :-)

When I move, I need to move like me.

In tonight's class, we rehearsed our combo several times. I saw in the mirror that my body finally remembered what it felt like to DANCE. And when that happened, I looked different. My body relaxed so it could show the joy of motion as it appears through my own odd assortment of physical strengths and weaknesses.

I love to watch dancers show their unique ways of moving.

I love to see writers show their unique ways of writing. I love to see a writer's work move past the rehearsal stage and into the dance.

When that happens, fiction reminds us that it's not all about craft. Sometimes, it's about art.

When I use the dread word "art," I don't mean it in an exclusive, highbrow way. I've read lots of popular fiction that was artistic and joyful. Hey, I write popular fiction. If I didn't think it could be artistically satisfying, I wouldn't do it.

Does anyone have any nominations for popular fiction that you think transcends the workmanlike "craft" of consumable fiction and moves into a more artistic realm? You don't even have to say why, though I'd love to hear that too! J. K. Rowling, for example, is not a poetic stylist, but I think the first two Harry Potter novels have artistic merit because of her explosive creativity.

I'll name a couple more I like:

C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower nautical adventures, for characterization
Khalid Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, for characterization and setting

How about you?

Ben Franklin's Virtues: Humility

Humility:

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

An admirable desire on Ben Franklin's part.

Ben had a mostly secular admiration for Jesus, of the "Jesus was just a very good man" variety. Despite this worldview, he understands that there is no greater example of humility than Christ.

Here's an excerpt from a letter Ben wrote to Ezra Stiles:

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...." (Carl Van Doren. Benjamin Franklin. New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 777.)

You can see that Ben was not a Christian, by most definitions.

I can't resist pointing out the words I've boldfaced.

Ben states that he has doubts as to Christ's divinity, having never studied it.

I don't think anything more need be said. :-) Is there any other subject but religion in which otherwise intelligent people will so enthusiastically admit holding uninformed opinions?

NB: The last few days have featured pre-scheduled posts because I had an out-of-town houseguest. I will be back to respond to comments and make the round of everyone's blogs this afternoon!

Ben Franklin's Virtues: Tranquility

Tranquility:

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Despite my struggles with emotional moderation, I do pretty well with tranquility, by Ben's definition.

Trifles and common or unavoidable accidents don't ruffle my feathers.

If we let little things rob us of our composure, we will have very few peaceful moments in life. Something or another is always going slightly wrong.

Moms get a lot of practice in this virtue. Today my daughter got green paint all over the card table and on the light switch in the bathroom as she tried to wash her hands. No big deal.

The engine light is on in our van. Fixing the ECR valve will cost money. That's the way it goes! No point in fretting--cars will have problems.

A stranger is rude to me in traffic. Oh well. I can choose to get bent out of shape, or I can choose to remain tranquil because his action really has nothing to do with me.

Have you recently maintained your tranquility in the face of unexpected setbacks or annoyances?

Ben Franklin's Virtues: Cleanliness

Cleanliness:

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

I pause for a moment to honor the fact that in Ben Franklin's time, bathtubs did not exist.

LOL! Time for a slightly lighter virtue.

We can pat our society on the back for advancing to a point where, compared to colonial folk, we are ALL models of cleanliness.

Pigs do not trot in and out of our dwellings. Under ordinary circumstances, our homes are free of animal poop.

Gentlemen no longer cover the floors with tobacco-spittle.

We bathe.

We wash our clothes after wearing them only once. This would have been almost impossible in Ben's time, working with washboards and primitive forms of soap.

Many of us wear deodorant that prevents us from developing even one day's worth of body odor.

We brush our teeth. With toothpaste. Every day. Most of us do not have a mouthful of rotting teeth to perfume the air around us.

Compared to Ben's friends, we are preternaturally clean.

So, here's our frivolous question of the day. Let's say that for some bizarre reason, you have to choose for all humanity to cease one form of cleanliness.

1) Never wash our clothes again, and own only two outfits, as in colonial times.
2) Never take a bath again.
3) Never brush our teeth again.
4) Never clean our homes again. That means no cleaning. None. No cleaning toilets, no cleaning food spills in the kitchen, etc., etc. Any form of soil in the home must stay. I'll still allow you the removal of garbage if you choose this option.

What is your terrible choice? :-)