Killing Time - A Murder/Suicide

If you kill enough time, you kill yourself, the saying goes.* But do you really kill time, or do you bank it? What, exactly, is history, and why do we fight so hard over it?

I still think that Tyrell's niece's memories, at some point, did become Rachael's, too. Those memories, blended with her true experience since incept become their own: an old story retold in new way. Rachael remembered piano lessons she never had.

Yet she could play.

*Troll saying. Don't think too hard about it.

Christocentric Vampiralooza II: La Shawn Barber Chimes In

I'm amazed how this announcement of an idea by an author has stirred such conversation.

La Shawn Barber chimes in.

Christocentric Vampiralooza: Sue Dent on Anne Rice

Sue Dent flips out spectacularly over at the Lost Genre Guild again. This time, about Anne Rice.

Man, every time humans start to bore me to tears, here comes Sue with a kleenex and ninja moves.

I never realized that Rice's rather dramatic conversion (on the literary side - on the personal/biographical side it was more progressive) did not have a massive impact on reading Christians at the time.

Funny, I first read Interview with A Vampire in my God-hating days, but still appreciated her work after He brought me to heel in brutal liberty. Then, years after my somewhat abrupt conversion, Rice came back around to the Jesus gypsy wagon.

I just assumed that one of the foremost supernatural writers of the day turning to her Lord, and, therefore, turning countless eyes toward Him was probably the Christian writing story of the decade. Apparently, Sue would beg to differ. It seems that all the important Christ-following outlets barely note the dramatic shift.

But then she starts listing as important Christ-following outlets as the CBA and ECPA and ASPCA and some other letters that confuse me/sound vaguely like late-seventies power synthesizer-driven rock groups. Then I get hungry for alphabet soup.

Just to be clear: Rice has not committed to a final Lestat-confronting-the-Redeemer book. She has only admitted that it would be possible, and that the concept intrigues her.

Have I now confounded you? Go to Anne's site to get the details. I'm going back to sleep. But, first, I need to satisfy my hankering for some ELO:



Darn you Sue Dent! Darn you to heck!

Character Creation: A Man in Third Heaven

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows) was caught up to the third heaven. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise and heard things too sacred to be put into words, things that a person is not permitted to speak. On behalf of such an individual I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except about my weaknesses.

Paul writes this to the Corinthians, almost as an aside.

"Oh, by the way, I know this guy who went to heaven. So, how's life going? Did you see the big game?"

This is a great example of introducing the supernatural to a story. Paul isn't writing fiction, but relaying a history, of course, but the principle he employs applies to storytelling.

Heaven is separate, real, experiential and unique, and Paul nails all four qualities in a short passage. Third heaven is a state wherein the witness was "caught up" (separate), either in the body or out of it (real), heard things too sacred for words (experiential), and whose experience was worthy of boasting (unique.)

Readers of the supernatural who have no real interest in spiritual things will be drawn to the realness and the experience, but have little thirst for separateness or uniqueness. Both Stephen King and Neil Gaiman are masters of the first two qualities. Their strange gods/heroes will have dirt under their nails, and can navigate a fistfight or a brothel with all too humen acumen. They have little use for separateness, for a uniqueness that might be considered pure or holy.

On the other hand, writers like Peretti have a hammer lock on the more subtle qualities. They get separateness. The understand uniqueness. Their strange gods/heroes may lack in a physical reality, but they are endowed with a special sort of clarity - a defined, clean isolation that should be unique to mythic figures.

Then, you've got the rare few who are able to bring forth all four effects into one good character. When a writer can do this, he (or she, although, I've got to admit, all you humans look the same to me) has achieved a glorious thing.

Shelley does it with Frankenstein's monster. C.S. Lewis accomplishes it several times, as does O'Connor (Lewis' best example can be found in the Unman Weston in Perelandra, and I'll just take a stab at O'Connor's iconic Misfit). Lee does it in Demon: A Memoir with Lucian and his ilk. Rice strangely achieves this in Interview with A Vampire and then "over-realizes" Lestat in the Vampire Lestat. Stoker does it with Count Dracula in the abstract.

Somehow, all four cylinders have to hit in rhythm. St. Paul does it here with ease. I haven't done it yet.

Down Payment on Your Soul

From 2 Corinthians 1:22-23 -- But it is God who establishes us together with you in Christ and who anointed us, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.

There are a few other epistles that mention the Holy Spirit providing a guarantee or a down payment on future promises, including eternal life.

I'm a greedy sort. Couldn't Paul have thrown in "90 Days Same as Cash?"



It is probably a good thing he didn't. I don't know that I'd survive living 90 minutes same as Cash.

A Writer's Plague: E.E. Knight's Formula for Madness

First three sentences.

That sounds about right.

Yes!

John met Yoko through one of her art shows. He recalled one of her exhibits. It was a step ladder with something very tiny on the ceiling.

John climbed the ladder and got really close to the tiny thing. It was a word. It said, "Yes."

Now, I'm not saying that one word was what caused John to fall in love with her, but I do think it was an incredible moment in his life, by his own account. Yes is an extremely powerful, emotional word.

We crave the "yes." While only one well-placed no can cast a net of disappointment, one yes can launch a rocket, and a million yesses will not overstuff you.

I wonder why we skip the yesses of Scripture so readily. I could list 70 pretty easily, I think given a decent concordance, from "Yes, and the Lord has forgiven your sin. You are not going to die." (2 Sa 12:13) to "Yes! God is great beyond our knowledge" (Job 36:26) to the "Yes! His loyal love endures" repeated in Psalm 118.

There are tons of yesses, but my favorite yes comes from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians:

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ...was not "Yes" and "No," but in him it has always been "Yes."

Puritans in Space

As the only surviving puritan troll on earth, I've been waiting for the culture to examine my existence in its literature, artwork or these newfangled talking motion pictures.



Nothing yet, so for now, I am kindred with Puritans in Outer Space!



[doffing cap and gently waving it in the direction of Toad House Happenings...]

Got Uplift?

The Christian life is transformational. When God bathes you in His Son's blood, its hard not to get emotional. Following Christ is also intellectual. It is physical, in that the Spirit's internal changing of His followers is made manifest in our actions, our love.

Yet, the soul can, and does, go dry. Mother Theresa allegedly admitted to 50 years of feeling nothing from Our Lord. Though there is a promise to buy us back from sin, there's no promise that the fount of freedom that the Spirit plants will grant us experiential joy.

The Christian life, however, does hold experiences that do surpass anything else attainable in this world. So, even though daily happiness isn't guaranteed, an otherworldly joy does blow right through a lot of the little personal floodgates we set up.

So, whether your well is dry, our you've got a joy you can't explain, let these words help raise you just a little higher:

The angels thank you
for the water.
You forgot
you gave it.

Christ crunched
Numbers in your skull
Multiplied your heartbeats
Extended your fingers for a starving darkhound to lick the salt
Lengthened your days to a sideways eight
while you slept.

Paul wrote a book about it in Code
and someone called it an
Epistle to the Romans.

It is your biography,
Like it or not. (but you like it)

Can the Damned Be Redeemed?

Tosca Lee points out a really fascinating complexity about the state of demonic salvation.

She quotes Augustine quoting the philosopher Plotinus* (and I quote Lee quoting them!):

"…that the very fact of man’s corporal mortality is due to the compassion of God, who would not have us kept for ever in the misery of this life. The wickedness of demons was not judged worthy of this compassion, and in the misery of their condition, with a soul subject to passions, they have not been granted the mortal body, which man had received, but an eternal body."

Plotinus is right. By association, so are St. Augustine and St. Tosca.

"Damned" isn't soft terminology. I think it is easier for those who have not faced a direct confrontation with evil to believe that it can be redeemed or reformed. It doesn't work like that. You don't purify Tianenman Square by celebrating the Olympics there: you only spoil the torch.

Keep in mind that demons, before demonhood, had been granted the one thing we really wish we had: immortal bodies. How many times have we thought that everything would be just fine if we only didn't have to deal with death in all its forms (breakdowns, breakups, breakouts, brokenness).

Well, so did the angels. But immortality turned out to be insufficient for a huge number of them.

So the demons are blessed with the one thing we covet: eternal existence. But it still isn't enough for them. They were built for community with God, but they used their immortality as a wedge against their own design!

Theoretically, physically, God could redeem a demon, but His just and righteous -- and loving -- character dictates that he not redeem a demon.

I know you humans think you are smarter than He is. You think you are more loving than He is. You, given the omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence of the Lord, would devise a delightful means by which the whisperers of Auschwitz might find redemption, even if they don't want the redemption you offer.

Instead of casting them to outer darkness, you'd be better than our father Abraham, who would not even send a dead man to witness to five lost brothers. Instead of separating yourself from the absence of good, you people, in your infinite justice, would marry yourselves to it.

Oh, wait, you** already have.

Why do we have such compassion for the devil? Isn't a demon a sort of tarbaby for misplaced sympathy?

Sincerely,


St. Grumpy



*Plotinus' efforts, by the way, should rightly be seen as an attempt to clarify Plato. His philosophical influence stretched from neopagans of the day to Christians. It is also worth noting that his philosophy is as overtly hostile to gnosticism at the intellectual level as Christianity is at the spiritual.

**(we)

Powerful Words for Good Little Authors to Avoid at All Costs

CBA authors and pretenders to the throne: ever wonder exactly which word it was that got your manuscript sent back for revisions?

Wonder no more: Seven angels, three kids, one family has a behind the scenes look at the infamous CBA word committee.

[And to The Writer's Cafe Press, my hat is tipping your direction. I assure you it is an accident.]

Faeries Who Could Cut You - Rachel Marks Originals for Sale

Rachel Marks is selling some original artwork.

I love her urbanesque thrash-faeries. They look like real faeries that you see everyday, not the half-baked fruitloop stylized demi-angels that so many of you humans are into these days.

Rack and O-pinion Steering Me Wrong

Core beliefs lived out and publicly expressed?

What is this nonsense?

Don't these people know that opinions are for keeping to oneself and living quite contrary to without reflection?

This underscores the problem I have with modern humans. In the old days, I'd clamber through the woods, sniffing for Christian blood. When I caught wind of the little juicy buggers, they'd pray and fight (thus, the God and axe scars running down my face) as they went down.

Simple.

Today, however they get into a debate with me over my existence, telling me flat to my face that I don't exist, as if they don't believe in me! They feel my hot rancid breath* in their face, bear bruises from my battering, and insist that I'm not there.

The whole thing degenerates into a debate...a debate(!)...over things that neither my victim nor I believe for a minute. It is exhausting. I fall for it so frequently that I come home, more often than not, hungry, though I had easy spoils in my grasp not an hour before.

These humans, they entertain opinions. They do not hold them.

We beasts are forced, by our very nature, to live the beliefs we express (which is why we do not express them.) How did these humans figure out how to goof the system and invent duplicitousness?

Hrmph. The kicker is that they seem to miss fewer meals than I do.

*Yes, I've been reduced to Italian submarine sandwiches with onions, the people have been so elusive lately.

Pirates and Mr. Blue Sky on a Savage Winter Freya's* Day

I love the winter. Adore it. It meets my soul in a dark corner of a buried cavern and gives me a secret handshake.

But a little sunshine is acceptable. Especially when pirates are involved.



And you can't have sunshine without a little Mr. Blue Sky, courtesy of the Electric Light Orchestra. I'm keeping it Lazy Town, because I say so. Besides, Kirk Douglas always told me that I'm Sportacus.



Now, back to gristle mining with my scarred and bloody fists. In Christ...

*Or Frigga's. We Norse are not an accurate people.

My Moon. Mine Mine Mine.

A friend (yes, imaginary, naturally) reminded me today of airport strangeness.

I think the video for My Moon My Man (by Feist) provides an appropriate theme for travellers today:




You just know that somebody is going to stage this one in a real airport someday. Improv Anywhere, perhaps?

Jesus and Jazz

You know me.* I love music indiscriminately.

I have a real green thumb when it comes to music. If I touch a brass instrument my thumb turns green (greener). I can snap a piano in half by leaning on it with my portly elbow. When I sing in church, the choir rolls up like a scroll, and pewmates scatter like roaches. My most melodious musical performance came the time I vomited onto a banjo.

You get the picture.

But I love music, and if Jesus' resurrection had a soundtrack, I think it'd be jazz.

*Or you don't.

New Agent for Weird Writers

There's a new literary agent who just hit the ground, and she's taking submissions in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her name is Colleen Lindsay and here are her submission guidelines, if you happen to be looking for an agent.

Try to get her attention before everyone in the world knows about her and her slate is full.

Really Real Writing Advice that the Scientologists Don't Want You to Know

Stephen Granade gets to the brass tacks about the writing life.

Then proceeds to drive them into the flesh with a nuclear-powered hammer (the Sarcasto-8000, if I'm not mistaken.)*

I love the Live Granades. They are random AND purposeful, in a sort of straight-shootin' aimless way.

*Of course, it also gives my top-secret writing disinformation campaign an air of legitimacy that it lacked before.

Scott Jorgenson Update: Lommel Breaks His Silence!

I don't know if you've seen the latest issue of People (I haven't, but I'm sure it is a cover story) but world-famous actor and faucet blogger Tom Lommel has finally called off his silent feud with Fear of Girls co-star Scott Jorgenson. This should allow for pre-production to go ahead on Fear of Girls 3. [working title: FoG3 - d20 Revolutions]

Whew.

Green Light Believer

I'm not one to sizzle about sermons. A good sermon should speak, specifically, to the people being addressed. A good sermon will, primarily, give the listeners something to do, not something to talk about.

I've heard "good" sermons that gave me something to talk about, but I can't remember any of those. I've also heard sermons that taught me to pray, to fast, to witness, to serve, to be baptized, to change. I remember each one of those, because I'm still trying to live them today.

I have to say that the sermon on Sunday was both "good" and purposeful.*

To (brutally) sum up what was a work of beauty - the sermon demonstrated that if you've been waiting on direction from God, just recognize that He's already told you what you've asked Him for. When Gideon laid out the second fleece, he'd already received two convincing signs before that...and before that, had been told explicitly by God what to do. What we often use as a model (laying out a fleece, asking for a miracle/sign) for our relationship with God's will in our life is actually a model of what not to do!

God speaks in his Word. He speaks to his followers. Speaks, not "will speak," not "might speak."

Why do we ask for signs while God is talking to us? When my boss tells me to do something, I don't then ask for a sign!

That's the "thinky" part, the "good" sermon that tickles my ears, but what makes it great is that it changed me, too. That Sunday morning, I came to church something of a "Red Light" follower, waiting for clear direction from God to do anything. I left a "Green Light" Believer, and started doing things (witnessing, praying, writing), without signs or clarity, and figuring that IF what I do eventually becomes something that places me in opposition to God's will that...

...he'll give me a sign.

Until then, I'm going to approach the mission field sort of like the Monkees approach pirates. (It probably doesn't help if you change the lyrics slightly in your head, to "Green Light Believer." But now you are going to try, anyway.)



Poor mission field. Poor, poor mission field.

I hope this doesn't encourage my pastor to attempt less effective sermons on my account.

*At last check, the sermon wasn't yet up and available online. It will be soon here. Until then, you can catch up on a few previous lessons. Or not. What am I, your mother? (I'm not your mother, am I? Send paperwork if you think this might be the case, because I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that.)

Swords. Plowshares. Snowblowers.

As I hurled mounds of snow from the drive yesterday at dusk, and hacked at the small glacier near the gutter of the street, I noticed some glares of derision from the neighboring humans.

Each man stood behind a gasoline engine on wheels, tossing fountains of powder through the air like something from an Esther Williams movie.

I wondered, momentarally, if, when clearing paths through a foot of snow, creatures like me are not supposed to bleed. I've broken pickaxes on ice, and shattered spade handles. I've left red marks in the snow from ragged ice on flesh and salted the walks with sweat.

I use silly things, like axes to split wood, and sickles and scythes to cut grass. This is not a statement I make, not an offense I intend (because you can feel the offenses I intend. For days.)

Yet, I'm not like these humans with their wheeled, snow-eating wolves. I thought it maybe had to do with growing up on a farm, but I seem to recall that my household was outstripped technologically by most rural folks, too.

I think, if there is a right or wrong to be had in all of this, I may be in the right, for once. Sometimes, the best things are the hardest to understand and quite difficult to explain.

Sometimes, like love against the odds, the right thing can't be looked up in a book.

But it has something to do with this axe or that shovel. It has something to do with the notion of pounding a plowshare into a sword being more than a metaphor. How can the man who no longer holds a spear feel the joy of turning it into a pruning hook?

So here's a reminder: pick up a hammer and hit something.

Whose Image Do You See?

I got a whacky "prayer rug" in the mail from a cult the other day. I was supposed to stare at the face of Jesus emblazoned on the purplish 11x17 paper until his closed eyes opened, pray about something, and then open a sealed prophecy. After that, I was supposed to send the "rug" back to the church/cult/business venture for someone else to benefit from. It was an elaborate, though obvious religious shell game of some sort.

The mailer was impressive in several ways. First, that it found me at all: the mailman apparently would almost rather die than get close enough to my cave to toss mail in my general direction. Second, the envelope was stuffed with various and sundry materials, seemingly printed with no regard for standard typographics. Every other word was capitalized. Every third word was underlined. It was a full-fontal assault.* Third, by way of building confidence in the reader, the cult emphasized that it was a "57-year old church" in no less than four places throughout the cover letter. Because, apparently, once a church passes the 56-year mark, it carries an air of legitimacy that is above reproach.

It goes without saying that I have a begrudging alliance with other trolls. We are rarer than you might think. Internet trolls (you know, the kind who post to message boards and blogs with completely off-topic, irrelevant and always annoying materials or sales pitches) are beloved here. I "feed the trolls" because I understand that it isn't "humane" to starve them of the attention they desire.

I respond to spam, because I know that the criminals who perpetuate it on the world are really, at heart, just lonely people in need of, not just my mailing address, social security number and bank accounts, but my unconditional love, too. Real humans get short shrift around here, but autoreply devices? Those trolls are gold in my book.

But cults who figure out ways to get an actual, postage-paid, semi-personal letter in the form of a veiled test of my devotion to our Lord have evolved to a new plane of existence. They are King Trolls, OgreLords, the Ghasts of Hopetown.

I acknowledged their literature fondly as it found its way to my garbage heap of honor.

But I'll give them this credit: the spooky "prayer rug" caused me to consider not only an image of Christ, but the "image of God."

I considered this more later when reading Matthew 22. When the pharisees ask Jesus about paying taxes, He asks them to identify a coin.

Jesus said to them, “Whose image is this, and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” He said to them, “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22...something. Sorry. I'm doing my standard rush. Go read it for yourself. You do have a bible, don't you?)

I've always read this to mean, simply: pay your taxes, but don't withhold from God, and I don't think that is a wrong lesson to draw.

But this time, the term "image" stuck in my head.

The image of Caesar is on the coin, denoting Caesar's authority over the coin. But the way Jesus worded his response, it also begs the question: where is the image of God?

On us.

God's image, like Soylent Green, is people. God's image is not on a coin, but on human beings. I may be misreading this, but is Jesus accusing the pharisees of blocking people from receiving God's love and authority? Is it possible that Jesus says to us "Render unto Caesar this stupid coin, but render unto God His precious people?"

I'm going to think about this more.

Do you think I need to ask forgiveness for comparing His children to Soylent Green?

*No, I didn't not spell "full-frontal" wrong. I meant what I spelled.

Frozen People - Art for Everyone (Even You)

The hard truth about art, even really, really good art, is that it is fleeting. It takes incredible work to get any project from concept to completion, and the first thing that happens (if it gets seen at all) is the critics rip it down. The second thing is that it then is forgotten.

Certainly, great art transcends, but I'm no great artist.* So, for us regular mooks, making really, really good art instead is probably the center of the target. But, sometimes, if you keep at it long enough, the art gets you instead...it transcends...it becomes great on its own.

I think Improv Everywhere unleashed great art at Grand Central Station recently. For five minutes, 200+ regular citizens froze in place, to the shock of onlookers everywhere. It achieved beauty, the ethereal, tension and ecstasy.

I wish I could have been there, and I can only hope that this fleeting five minutes of art becomes legend. I hope art text books 200 years from know refer to the "frozen people of '08" in their chapters on early 21st art.



Truly, to God be the glory. I can only imagine that this work delighted Him.

*Yet.