Torii is really kicking my butt right now.
When I started the story, I didn't know how I'd manage to write the parts where her actual memories come back. It turns out I can do it, but it's by sheer force of will and it requires major revisions along the way.
Every time I go to write, I want to write in a way that is running away from the story. In fact, that's how I had to first write it. I wrote a mere paragraph that described in very general terms what was happening, as if the characters weren't living the story.
I wrote: "For the next two days, Gilly was irritable and exhausted. She wouldn't sleep...." etc, etc.
A day later, I took the paragraph and stretched it out into two pages that showed what that looked and felt like. Now I'm through that scene, but there are several more to come and they are going to be coming faster and faster, until her memories reach her. They are already on the Indian subcontinent.
In the meantime, I'm getting more and more detailed about the second half of the story. The landscape of the Touzainanboku Mountains is growing more and more clear, with its cities, villages and roadways.
At some point, I will have to go back and rewrite a great deal of the first part of the story, to reflect my growing knowledge of the setting.
I am getting so excited about writing that part of the story. It's going to be fun. Aiko, the daughter of the O-minami daitoku, Yuudai, is going to be attending the same boarding school as Gilly. They are the same age, so they will be in the same class. Sometimes Gilly will spend her vacations with Aiko, at the O-minami shrine.
I'm pretty sure that I'm going to make the Abbey and the boarding school completely English, though the nuns and students will all have Japanese names, and customs. I like it, it feels whimsical to me. It will have English gardens, drawing rooms and Gothic arches, that sort of thing.
Gilly will stay with Tenshio's parents on the weekends. Their house will be just at the edge of terraced rice patties with the paths that wind along the high banks to the near by village. Tenshio's father is the retired village school teacher with a passion for Shogi, the Japanese version of Chess.
The village will have seasonal festivals that the school children will attend. Gilly will eventually take up archery, maybe or tennis. She will be given a bike for a birthday present one year, and ride that back and forth between the school and her home on the weekends.
Tenshio will walk down from the shrine once or twice a month and meet Gilly at the school, and walk with her to his family's house. He will still be the one that comes to consult with the Abbess over her progress in school, and will attend any school performances she may be a part of, or any sport meets.
This will be after her first year there, when he'll have to come more often, to convince her that he hasn't abandoned her there. (Despite this, I think she'll try running away in her first week.)
Tenshio will set all of this up, after thinking it through very carefully, once he learns that Gilly will not be passing back through to her home in the Ochuusin. He will continue as her guardian, but he will decide against having her live at the shrine with him. It's too isolated and lonely, even with a governess.
When she graduates, instead of a large extended family, she'll have Tenshio's mother and father, Lord Fushi, Lord T'ien-lung, Pidguyok and Captain Kaito all show up in the audience of the large hall of the Abbey. Actually, Lord T'ien-lung won't fit in the hall, come to think of it. He'll have to wait outside, his long body coiled in the courtyard.
That will be a very fun scene to write. I mean, what girl wouldn't want a dragon, a Fu dog, a talking husky and the guardian of the west wind all showing up for her graduation? I'm telling you what, I would love it. Clearly.
At some point, she must return to the Kagamihara. I can't decide if she gets sent there as part of an expedition, or if she gets taken. I think she has to get taken.
Here's why: (The rest of this blog is nothing but plot elements. And I haven't put it all together myself, yet.)
Tenshio's master, the former O-nishi daitoku, was killed by a corrupt deamon named Katashi, who has a stronghold somewhere on the continents of the Kagamihara. That's why Tenshio has his position at his relatively young age, after only eighty or so years of apprenticeship.
When Katashi makes a second attempt at the shrine, Tenshio drives him off. To escape Tenshio, Katashi throws himself into the Ochuusin, right next to Gilly's apple orchard. In the ensuring struggle, Gilly gets cut by Katashi's blade, which is really bladed light; deamons fight with chi that they manipulate by force of will.
Because Katashi is corrupt, so is his blade. Left untended, Gilly would have died from the wound. This is why Tenshio carries her into the spirit realm in the first place, planning to return her as soon as he cleaned the wound. This is also why Katashi escapes; Tenshio lets him go in order to tend to the child.
(This whole fight scene is the prologue of the story, by the way, and it's great, if I do say so myself.)
So anyway, Katashi decides he can't overthrow the wind shrines. He decides to turn his attention in another direction entirely; toward the underworld. It's rumored that there's a gate to the underworld in the Kagamihara, but its buried so deeply that no one will ever feel it or find it, unless they're called to pass through.
But Katashi knows that there are strong spiritual links between the spirit realm and the Ochuusin. In the Ochuusin, the underworld gate will cast a spiritual shadow, an aura. Once he finds the shadow, he'll mark the location, pass through the spirit realm, and beginning calling the gate open.
Conveniently, this will take as much time as it will take Gilly to grow up. (Ah, the neatness of story telling time lines!) In fact, around the time she's sixteen or seventeen, Katashi, having found the shadow of the underworld gate in the Mariana Trench, will pass through and begin preparations to call it forth.
This will upset the balance of the Kagamihara, which will in turn upset the daitoku mina. They won't be able to pinpoint just what's happening or where, because the effects will be diffused by the ocean waters. Besides, Katashi is subtle.
But strange, ominous things will be happening. One of them will be Katashi drawing all the Inga, the dark shadows, to him, to use their energy. This way he'll learn about Gilly; from her own Inga. That Inga will be nursing a grudge against Tenshio, for temporarily destroying him.
He will have called the gate to just under the bottom of the ocean where the tectonic plates overlap, in the Mariana Deep, only to discover that he needs a final and powerful sacrifice to burst the gate open- he'll need a living human sacrifice.
Naturally.
He attemps to pass through to the Ochuusin, but he won't be able to. He'll have poured so much of his own energy into the opening of the gate that he'll be tied to the spirit realm. This leaves him no option but to take the one living human in the entire spirit realm.
Naturally.
So, sometime after she graduates, Gilly will be taken by force into the Kagamihara.
I have no idea what that's going to look like; it's too far ahead in the story. There are several questions I don't yet know how to answer, such as:
Will they pass very quickly over the Kagamihara, or will it be a long, arduous journey like the first time?
If she's taken to the Mariana Deep, how will he keep her alive long enough to sacrifice her? She'll drown long before she gets deep enough for the water pressure to crush her. Sorcery? (Ah, the convenience of magic in a fantasy novel!) Will her piece of chi keep her alive?
Maybe the ocean itself will keep her alive, having some deep seated sense of what is happening, and some prescience about what will happen and wanting to destroy the deamon who is polluting its waters.
Mmm. I like that. I'm probably going to go with that.
How far behind them will Tenshio be? If Tenshio can't swim, (and he can't) how does he go after her? Or does he? Does she rise to the surface on her own? Maybe a large whale swallows her, like Jonah, and carries her to the surface, to spit her out.
Yes, actually, that's cool. The ocean spirit could take the form of a large whale, capturing her and bringing her back to the surface. Then Tenshio can either be waiting there, or find her there, depending on how quickly he comes.
Or, or...! The ocean spirit could take the form of a serpent- you know, the classic sea dragon. Lord T'ien-lung's watery counterpart. Mmm. Symmetry... so irresistible.
I don't know. But when I get closer, I'll know.
The whole thing is somewhat in flux, actually. I can't tell what will be the very end, but I think part of the end will be her spirit releasing the chi. I have in mind certain things that could trigger this release, but I haven't decided yet.
Then the very end could be her traveling to the Ochuusin to see her parents, either in their actual dreams, or in waking life. I don't know.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
July 28th
I'm still playing with my blog background, as you can see.
I am exhausted! And I get so caught up in feverish research that I don't end up spending any time on my creative writing.
So, I'm going to pick one agent a week and work on the submission for one hour in the morning and then put it away. The next day I'll get it out and work on it for another hour, etc, etc.
The next Monday I'll send it out. When I get the rejection letter, the process begins again.
That way this whole process won't consume all my time and brain cells.
Oh, by the way, this is Keith's contribution to the search for the perfect query letter:
"I wrote a f-ing book. Read it."
Giggle. See, that's why he's the platoon sergeant and I'm the writer.
Mini excerpt:
“I will tell you about the stars,” Pidguyok said immediately, “those cold and beautiful lights. Did you know that the stars are actually fish? In the sky, there are entire galaxies of worlds, just as there are fish in the sea. And they swim through the night sky, each in their own way, upon their own path.
“And they sing as they swim. They are the sirens of the sky, singing in their intricate languages and like the voices of the whales, their songs roll out through the great distances between them, so that they all sing in harmony. That way, even when they travel a solitary path, they know that they are not alone in the sky.”
I am exhausted! And I get so caught up in feverish research that I don't end up spending any time on my creative writing.
So, I'm going to pick one agent a week and work on the submission for one hour in the morning and then put it away. The next day I'll get it out and work on it for another hour, etc, etc.
The next Monday I'll send it out. When I get the rejection letter, the process begins again.
That way this whole process won't consume all my time and brain cells.
Oh, by the way, this is Keith's contribution to the search for the perfect query letter:
"I wrote a f-ing book. Read it."
Giggle. See, that's why he's the platoon sergeant and I'm the writer.
Mini excerpt:
“I will tell you about the stars,” Pidguyok said immediately, “those cold and beautiful lights. Did you know that the stars are actually fish? In the sky, there are entire galaxies of worlds, just as there are fish in the sea. And they swim through the night sky, each in their own way, upon their own path.
“And they sing as they swim. They are the sirens of the sky, singing in their intricate languages and like the voices of the whales, their songs roll out through the great distances between them, so that they all sing in harmony. That way, even when they travel a solitary path, they know that they are not alone in the sky.”
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
July 27th
Well, I got my first rejection letter yesterday. Or, e-mail, I should say.
And then I got my period.
Awesome.
Actually, it wasn't that bad. I mean, I wasn't curled up on the floor, sobbing and wailing, "Why? Why, God?" or anything.
I actually looked at myself in the mirror and grinned, because, by god, I did it. I started, and now I've got the standard rejection letter to prove it. I'm in the club, a club that has had many an august member.
I did find myself having a mini crisis of purpose, though this was triggered not so much by the rejection letter, as by the subsequent two or three hours of Internet researching of query letters, literary agents, and the publishing industry in general.
When I started writing, I remember saying something on my blog about how I should be picking a target audience and then write for that audience, but that I was not doing that.
Well, now I'm beginning to see how much more difficult it will be because of that choice. Publishing is a business with a shrinking market base. They must publish works that will make them a profit margin.
My writing fits nowhere. It would be a complete gamble for someone to pick up my work. My first novel is a romantic fantasy. It's not urban fantasy, steampunk, high fantasy, erotic fantasy or dark fantasy. It's just romantic fantasy. I don't see too many agents wanting submissions of that type of work.
My current novel is even more difficult to typecast. What is it? Is it high fantasy, with its world building, epic journey and light vs. dark themes? Not really. It's dark, but it's not a horror story. It explores human psychology, but it's not a psychological thriller. It uses a great deal of humor, but it is not a comic fantasy. It describes how love changes and enriches our lives, but it is not romantic love.
There's no question I want to be published. In terms of Torii, I want it to speak to a specific audience; others who have been down the same healing journey that I have. In terms of Ceallach, I just want to entertain.
In general, I want the validation. I want to know that my writing is that good. I don't think this desire is either egotistical or insecure of me. It's just the natural progression of being a writer- after a while, you want to test your writing, even if its just a toe in the water.
However, as much as I genuinely want to be published, I do not wish to write with that as my only goal. I don't want to craft an entire story just because I think that story is the one that will sell. That just doesn't seem worth doing, to me.
And that is what all the advice boils down to: write for the industry. Craft your story to sell, craft your query to sell your story, craft a platform and hire an agent to sell yourself.
I've been blogging about this for a while now. It's because I'm really wrestling with it. On the one hand, I see how that advice is practical and how it would work, eventually. And doesn't being a professional writer mean following some, if not all, of that advice?
I don't know yet. I suspect that a large part of this journey will be wrestling with those questions, as I gather experience and perspective.
Here's what I do know. I won't write something that isn't authentic to myself. If it never sells, it never sells. However, I would like to continue learning how best to present my writing, and I would like my writing itself, my creative process, to continue to grow and deepen.
To that end, I am rewriting my query letter- I've got a better idea of how to open it and I've since learned that I don't need the formal structure that I gave it.
Also, I'm going to restructure the beginning of Ceallach. I'm going to absorb the prologue into the main body of the story, so that it opens with a hook, instead of descriptive narrative. It will still be exactly the same language, nothing will be cut. It will be simply rearranged to that it grabs a person (or agent) right off the bat.
Then, as I was looking up how long it took Madeleine L'Engle to be published (I vaguely remember that she wasn't published until she was in her forties), I came across this quote:
“The vocation of the story teller is not to worry about the expectations of the world, but to bear the pain of redemption.” - Madeleine L’Engle
Weighty, but fascinating. And oddly to the point, when it comes to Torii.
And then I got my period.
Awesome.
Actually, it wasn't that bad. I mean, I wasn't curled up on the floor, sobbing and wailing, "Why? Why, God?" or anything.
I actually looked at myself in the mirror and grinned, because, by god, I did it. I started, and now I've got the standard rejection letter to prove it. I'm in the club, a club that has had many an august member.
I did find myself having a mini crisis of purpose, though this was triggered not so much by the rejection letter, as by the subsequent two or three hours of Internet researching of query letters, literary agents, and the publishing industry in general.
When I started writing, I remember saying something on my blog about how I should be picking a target audience and then write for that audience, but that I was not doing that.
Well, now I'm beginning to see how much more difficult it will be because of that choice. Publishing is a business with a shrinking market base. They must publish works that will make them a profit margin.
My writing fits nowhere. It would be a complete gamble for someone to pick up my work. My first novel is a romantic fantasy. It's not urban fantasy, steampunk, high fantasy, erotic fantasy or dark fantasy. It's just romantic fantasy. I don't see too many agents wanting submissions of that type of work.
My current novel is even more difficult to typecast. What is it? Is it high fantasy, with its world building, epic journey and light vs. dark themes? Not really. It's dark, but it's not a horror story. It explores human psychology, but it's not a psychological thriller. It uses a great deal of humor, but it is not a comic fantasy. It describes how love changes and enriches our lives, but it is not romantic love.
There's no question I want to be published. In terms of Torii, I want it to speak to a specific audience; others who have been down the same healing journey that I have. In terms of Ceallach, I just want to entertain.
In general, I want the validation. I want to know that my writing is that good. I don't think this desire is either egotistical or insecure of me. It's just the natural progression of being a writer- after a while, you want to test your writing, even if its just a toe in the water.
However, as much as I genuinely want to be published, I do not wish to write with that as my only goal. I don't want to craft an entire story just because I think that story is the one that will sell. That just doesn't seem worth doing, to me.
And that is what all the advice boils down to: write for the industry. Craft your story to sell, craft your query to sell your story, craft a platform and hire an agent to sell yourself.
I've been blogging about this for a while now. It's because I'm really wrestling with it. On the one hand, I see how that advice is practical and how it would work, eventually. And doesn't being a professional writer mean following some, if not all, of that advice?
I don't know yet. I suspect that a large part of this journey will be wrestling with those questions, as I gather experience and perspective.
Here's what I do know. I won't write something that isn't authentic to myself. If it never sells, it never sells. However, I would like to continue learning how best to present my writing, and I would like my writing itself, my creative process, to continue to grow and deepen.
To that end, I am rewriting my query letter- I've got a better idea of how to open it and I've since learned that I don't need the formal structure that I gave it.
Also, I'm going to restructure the beginning of Ceallach. I'm going to absorb the prologue into the main body of the story, so that it opens with a hook, instead of descriptive narrative. It will still be exactly the same language, nothing will be cut. It will be simply rearranged to that it grabs a person (or agent) right off the bat.
Then, as I was looking up how long it took Madeleine L'Engle to be published (I vaguely remember that she wasn't published until she was in her forties), I came across this quote:
“The vocation of the story teller is not to worry about the expectations of the world, but to bear the pain of redemption.” - Madeleine L’Engle
Weighty, but fascinating. And oddly to the point, when it comes to Torii.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
July 26th
It's hard to believe that August is less than a week away.
I've enjoyed my Georgia summer immensely so far, though it did nearly give Keith and I a heart attach when Georgia Power Company doubled their electricity rates without notice.
We thought the meter must have gotten struck by lightning. Sadly, no.
Keith is enrolled in a military school that is outrageously difficult. I glanced over his shoulder at his work and my head spun. It's all math, and firing angles and positions and I don't even know what.
All but five students in the entire building, not just Keith's class, have so far failed at least one test. There seems to be about two tests per day. If you fail once, you can retake it the next day, as well as taking the regular tests for that day. If you fail again, you're out of the school.
A lot of people have failed out of the school. Keith was up at three thirty this morning, to study. He didn't even watch TV last night. He came home, sat at the table, and studied.
He is focused.
I looked over at him last night, sitting with his sock feet drawn up under the dining room chair, his heavy shoulders hunched forward, absently munching on his sandwich as he studied, and I felt so much love for him. He's not studying for the grades or the awards; he's studying because passing this school represents a door opening for our future.
"This is our life," he told me soberly.
I feel kind of frivolous, with my lovely long days and my freedom from obligation. Pretty much, if I pay the bills on time, cook dinner and wash his PTs, I'm good. Lately, I've been stepping up my game though, so I can do my part. I'm not sure how helpful polished furniture is, but it's polished.
I finally worked on Torii a little bit last night. It drew me back in. I had put that story aside in order to do a quick, anxiety based line edit of Ceallach, initiated by the sending of the query letter.
Also, I realized that if I switch the view option to "reader," it tricks my brain into thinking that it has never read those words before.
My brain is all "Hey! What have we here? It's new stuff! Exciting!"
And then I can catch all kinds of small mistakes, like verb tenses and tangled sentence structure and bad flow.
A good friend dropped me a line yesterday to point out that what I had actually been saying, in my last post, was that I had the chest of drawers necessary to try and get my work published.
Oops.
Clearly there's a world of difference between bedroom furniture and man parts in reality, but in word form, just one vowel distinguishes them.
The pitfalls that face the unsuspecting and amateur writer are legion.
I've enjoyed my Georgia summer immensely so far, though it did nearly give Keith and I a heart attach when Georgia Power Company doubled their electricity rates without notice.
We thought the meter must have gotten struck by lightning. Sadly, no.
Keith is enrolled in a military school that is outrageously difficult. I glanced over his shoulder at his work and my head spun. It's all math, and firing angles and positions and I don't even know what.
All but five students in the entire building, not just Keith's class, have so far failed at least one test. There seems to be about two tests per day. If you fail once, you can retake it the next day, as well as taking the regular tests for that day. If you fail again, you're out of the school.
A lot of people have failed out of the school. Keith was up at three thirty this morning, to study. He didn't even watch TV last night. He came home, sat at the table, and studied.
He is focused.
I looked over at him last night, sitting with his sock feet drawn up under the dining room chair, his heavy shoulders hunched forward, absently munching on his sandwich as he studied, and I felt so much love for him. He's not studying for the grades or the awards; he's studying because passing this school represents a door opening for our future.
"This is our life," he told me soberly.
I feel kind of frivolous, with my lovely long days and my freedom from obligation. Pretty much, if I pay the bills on time, cook dinner and wash his PTs, I'm good. Lately, I've been stepping up my game though, so I can do my part. I'm not sure how helpful polished furniture is, but it's polished.
I finally worked on Torii a little bit last night. It drew me back in. I had put that story aside in order to do a quick, anxiety based line edit of Ceallach, initiated by the sending of the query letter.
Also, I realized that if I switch the view option to "reader," it tricks my brain into thinking that it has never read those words before.
My brain is all "Hey! What have we here? It's new stuff! Exciting!"
And then I can catch all kinds of small mistakes, like verb tenses and tangled sentence structure and bad flow.
A good friend dropped me a line yesterday to point out that what I had actually been saying, in my last post, was that I had the chest of drawers necessary to try and get my work published.
Oops.
Clearly there's a world of difference between bedroom furniture and man parts in reality, but in word form, just one vowel distinguishes them.
The pitfalls that face the unsuspecting and amateur writer are legion.
Monday, July 25, 2011
July 25 Excerpt
Excerpt:
That evening, as the light died in the sky, the luminous fish began their ascent to the surface of the ocean to feed. Countless numbers of them rose silently up through the layers of light, from the inky black to just under the surface, where the phosphorescence from their bodies glowed under the waves.
It was as though the ocean breathed; as though, during the twilight it slowly exhaled, pushing its luminous, living breath up and then held it all night long, only to inhale before dawn, drawing its light back down into the hidden depths of its body.
Tenshio sat at the table in the main salon, papers and maps spread out over the table top, a wide bottomed mug set toward the middle of the table. It was hot down below, and his face and hands glistened under the lamp light. The hatches were open, but the air was so still that it was almost oppressive.
Gilly, bored and restless after a long, hot day below deck, climbed up onto the wooden bench that encircled the table and pressed up against Tenshio’s arm.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking down at the scattered papers.
“These papers explain to me what the next part of our journey will look like,” Tenshio explained. He drew a map toward them. “Do you recognize this?”
“Mm hm,” nodded Gilly. “That’s my world.”
“Yes,” Tenshio said. “This is the flat earth, as cartographers in your world sometimes draw it, in order to capture it on a flat piece of paper. However, the Kagamihara actually is flat, so this map is accurate.”
“What’s at the edge?”
“The Touzainanboku Mountains ring the edge.”
“What’s past that?”
“The sky.”
“Can you fall into the sky?” Gilly asked, looking up at his calm face.
“No.”
“What’s out there, in the stars?"
“I do not know.”
“Are the stars your business?”
“My business?” he asked, startled. “No, though they assist me in my business. My business, if you wish to call it that, is to guard the O-nishikaze shrine, most importantly, and to overlook the western portion of the Kagamihara, to be sure that it operates within its prescribed balance.”
“What’s that mean?"
Tenshio blinked down at her in wonder. “I had forgotten,” he said slowly. “I had forgotten that you did not know these basic things.”
“Well?” asked Gilly, inching closer. She stood on her knees so she could see the large map, with its blue seas and multicolored continents more closely.
Tenshio drew himself up and assumed the role of a teacher. His voice, nearly always quiet and evenly pitched, became almost melodious as he began speaking.
“I have told you that in the Kagamihara, the spiritual energy of human actions are made manifest. The actions that are corrupt manifest as Inga, the dark shadows. The actions that are honest manifest themselves as the Tenrei, the light keepers. The Inga keep their form on the Kagamihara until either the instigator of those actions repents, or until the victim releases the injury. The Tenrei are ephemeral and quickly dissolve into the air, becoming chi. The chi are what makes up the sun, the moon, and the stars of the Kagamihara, and add to its light and health.”
“The chi are what I ate,” Gilly added, informatively. This was to cover for the fact that she had pretty much understood nothing else of what Tenshio had just said.
“In a manner of speaking,” Tenshio agreeably allowed.
That evening, as the light died in the sky, the luminous fish began their ascent to the surface of the ocean to feed. Countless numbers of them rose silently up through the layers of light, from the inky black to just under the surface, where the phosphorescence from their bodies glowed under the waves.
It was as though the ocean breathed; as though, during the twilight it slowly exhaled, pushing its luminous, living breath up and then held it all night long, only to inhale before dawn, drawing its light back down into the hidden depths of its body.
Tenshio sat at the table in the main salon, papers and maps spread out over the table top, a wide bottomed mug set toward the middle of the table. It was hot down below, and his face and hands glistened under the lamp light. The hatches were open, but the air was so still that it was almost oppressive.
Gilly, bored and restless after a long, hot day below deck, climbed up onto the wooden bench that encircled the table and pressed up against Tenshio’s arm.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking down at the scattered papers.
“These papers explain to me what the next part of our journey will look like,” Tenshio explained. He drew a map toward them. “Do you recognize this?”
“Mm hm,” nodded Gilly. “That’s my world.”
“Yes,” Tenshio said. “This is the flat earth, as cartographers in your world sometimes draw it, in order to capture it on a flat piece of paper. However, the Kagamihara actually is flat, so this map is accurate.”
“What’s at the edge?”
“The Touzainanboku Mountains ring the edge.”
“What’s past that?”
“The sky.”
“Can you fall into the sky?” Gilly asked, looking up at his calm face.
“No.”
“What’s out there, in the stars?"
“I do not know.”
“Are the stars your business?”
“My business?” he asked, startled. “No, though they assist me in my business. My business, if you wish to call it that, is to guard the O-nishikaze shrine, most importantly, and to overlook the western portion of the Kagamihara, to be sure that it operates within its prescribed balance.”
“What’s that mean?"
Tenshio blinked down at her in wonder. “I had forgotten,” he said slowly. “I had forgotten that you did not know these basic things.”
“Well?” asked Gilly, inching closer. She stood on her knees so she could see the large map, with its blue seas and multicolored continents more closely.
Tenshio drew himself up and assumed the role of a teacher. His voice, nearly always quiet and evenly pitched, became almost melodious as he began speaking.
“I have told you that in the Kagamihara, the spiritual energy of human actions are made manifest. The actions that are corrupt manifest as Inga, the dark shadows. The actions that are honest manifest themselves as the Tenrei, the light keepers. The Inga keep their form on the Kagamihara until either the instigator of those actions repents, or until the victim releases the injury. The Tenrei are ephemeral and quickly dissolve into the air, becoming chi. The chi are what makes up the sun, the moon, and the stars of the Kagamihara, and add to its light and health.”
“The chi are what I ate,” Gilly added, informatively. This was to cover for the fact that she had pretty much understood nothing else of what Tenshio had just said.
“In a manner of speaking,” Tenshio agreeably allowed.
July 25th
Well, I just sent off my first query letter. No doubt, it will be one of many, but it was a massive step for me to take.
I can't believe I've gotten here. I can't believe I wrote a novel, and that I have the cohones to begin trying to sell it to the publishing world.
I had to call my mom, I was so terrified, as I read and reread my query letter. I was so terrified I couldn't hit the send button.
Oddly enough, at that moment, I was terrified about being accepted. If I am, that creates an entirely new dynamic in my life.
I had to close my eyes and put my head down on the edge of my desk. "Dear God, no matter where this journey takes me, please come with me," I prayed. "Into Thy hands, Thee I adore, Thy will be done."
Then I hit the button.
Now I'm going to go work out for like, two or three hours, just to burn off the worst of the anxiety attack. And I have banned myself from rereading the letter. It's out of my hands now.
I can't believe I've gotten here. I can't believe I wrote a novel, and that I have the cohones to begin trying to sell it to the publishing world.
I had to call my mom, I was so terrified, as I read and reread my query letter. I was so terrified I couldn't hit the send button.
Oddly enough, at that moment, I was terrified about being accepted. If I am, that creates an entirely new dynamic in my life.
I had to close my eyes and put my head down on the edge of my desk. "Dear God, no matter where this journey takes me, please come with me," I prayed. "Into Thy hands, Thee I adore, Thy will be done."
Then I hit the button.
Now I'm going to go work out for like, two or three hours, just to burn off the worst of the anxiety attack. And I have banned myself from rereading the letter. It's out of my hands now.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
July 24th, Excerpt
Excerpt: (This is the last half of that part that turned me inside out to write.)
Gilly took Plum Blossom and ground her sewn face into the deck.
“You hateful girl,” she said. “You nasty, hateful girl. God will punish you. Do you want to go into the sea? Do you want me to throw you overboard?” She lifted the doll, holding it tightly by its cotton neck and shook it. “I will. I will throw you overboard to the sharks, to the squid, to the monsters of the deep, if you don’t straighten up and obey.”
With a nervous, high pitched whine, Pidguyok sank onto his belly on the deck beside her, the whites showing around his pale blue eyes.
“Um…” he cleared his throat. “What has the little rag doll done, exactly?”
Gilly looked up at him, startled, her own eyes wide. “She’s been a bad girl,” Gilly explained.
“But, um… what did she do wrong, exactly? Did she steal someone else’s hoard of seal bones? Or...maybe she peed on someone else’s territory? Lord knows, that can happen. Not to say that I, the elevated one, have had any experience whatsoever with any of those trespasses... ahem…”
“I don’t know,” Gilly replied, confused, and then started as the shadow of Tenshio fell over her. She looked up at him, blinking against the early morning sunlight.
“No experience at all?” Tenshio asked Pidguyok lightly. The daitoku settled himself with animal grace upon the deck, legs crossed and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Well…” drawled Pidguyok, his eyes twinkling. “Oh, alright, damn it, yes, that might have been me, a time or two.” He put his snout down and blinking his heavily lashed and brilliant eyes. “How was I to know it was someone else’s stash of bones? It’s not so far fetched to think that a bunch of seals might have just all up and died in one spot, and then got covered up by the elements, just waiting for me to come along and discover their deliciousness…”
His long pink tongue curled up; he licked his jowls and then settled his head back down on the deck, his eyes half closed.
“Gilly, you and I must talk,” said Tenshio kindly.
Gilly’s heart sunk into dread. Her head fell forward toward the deck, Plum Blossom now forgotten at her feet. Gilly’s hands drew themselves back up toward her chest, fingers entwined.
The phrase tolled in Gilly’s head like somber bells, warning of damage to come. She knew what was expected of her. Her part was to remain dumb, to remain porous. It was her part to remain tightly focused upon the drone of the words, to the exclusion of all else.
Tenshio watched her closely; he saw her body language. A mute despair seemed to emanate from her limp spine and from the pale skin at the nape of her neck, where the dark hair parted with wisps that fell flatly to either side.
“Gilly,” he said, quietly, “you are not a bad girl. Something bad happened to you. What happened to you does not have the power to turn you into a bad girl. The person who hurt you carries all the shame and all the evil and all the darkness of those deeds. You do not have carry it, because it does not belong to you.”
A shiver went down her spine and she clasped her hands up tighter under her chin. She knew she must confess. “There is bad in me,” she said. “The dead girl is.”
“I know,” said Tenshio. “But I see that little girl in a different way, Gilly. That little girl is not evil, and she is not dead. She lives inside of you because she is a part of you. This part of you knew that if you constantly remembered those dark memories, the knowledge would hurt you beyond repair. So this part of you, she kept those memories locked tightly away from you.
“This hidden girl, this part of you, cannot keep these secrets any longer, because in the Kagamihara, the hidden things are brought forth. Your secrets are being drawn forth by the world we are in, and you must eventually face them.
“But you are not alone. I am a witness to these things. I will be beside you at each step, Gilly, and I will help you carry this load. I am not ashamed of you. I am not afraid of your secrets. Whatever you face in this world, we will face it together.”
Gilly sat in the midst of her own internal earthquake. She almost hated Tenshio, for making her hope for so much, for destroying her well laid and cemented foundations. There would be no recovery if she fell from the heights that Tenshio was pulling her up toward.
She sat hunched up in the sun, distressed and at a loss. She took several deep breaths, each time attempting to speak, but at the last minute, unable to give voice to her thoughts.
With trembling fingers, she reached for Plum Blossom and shook some of the grit and dried salt off her. Tears trickled down Gilly's face.
“I got her dirty,” Gilly said in small, tear choked voice.
“We’ll give her a bath. It will come off,” Tenshio reassured her calmly.
“I’m sorry,” Gilly breathed.
“For getting her dirty?” Tenshio inquired gently. He leaned toward her, but did not touch her.
Gilly nodded. “I was mean to her.”
“She still loves you- look at her face,” Tenshio said, pointing to it. “She’s a very understanding doll.”
Gilly gave a little sob and clutched the doll up close her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cried brokenly. “I won’t put you in the water. I never will.”
Tenshio put his face against the top of Gilly’s head. “I love you, Gilly,” he said quietly. “I am glad that we met. Now, you must go back below deck and dress for the day, and eat your breakfast.”
"Yes, sir," Gilly breathed.
Gilly took Plum Blossom and ground her sewn face into the deck.
“You hateful girl,” she said. “You nasty, hateful girl. God will punish you. Do you want to go into the sea? Do you want me to throw you overboard?” She lifted the doll, holding it tightly by its cotton neck and shook it. “I will. I will throw you overboard to the sharks, to the squid, to the monsters of the deep, if you don’t straighten up and obey.”
With a nervous, high pitched whine, Pidguyok sank onto his belly on the deck beside her, the whites showing around his pale blue eyes.
“Um…” he cleared his throat. “What has the little rag doll done, exactly?”
Gilly looked up at him, startled, her own eyes wide. “She’s been a bad girl,” Gilly explained.
“But, um… what did she do wrong, exactly? Did she steal someone else’s hoard of seal bones? Or...maybe she peed on someone else’s territory? Lord knows, that can happen. Not to say that I, the elevated one, have had any experience whatsoever with any of those trespasses... ahem…”
“I don’t know,” Gilly replied, confused, and then started as the shadow of Tenshio fell over her. She looked up at him, blinking against the early morning sunlight.
“No experience at all?” Tenshio asked Pidguyok lightly. The daitoku settled himself with animal grace upon the deck, legs crossed and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Well…” drawled Pidguyok, his eyes twinkling. “Oh, alright, damn it, yes, that might have been me, a time or two.” He put his snout down and blinking his heavily lashed and brilliant eyes. “How was I to know it was someone else’s stash of bones? It’s not so far fetched to think that a bunch of seals might have just all up and died in one spot, and then got covered up by the elements, just waiting for me to come along and discover their deliciousness…”
His long pink tongue curled up; he licked his jowls and then settled his head back down on the deck, his eyes half closed.
“Gilly, you and I must talk,” said Tenshio kindly.
Gilly’s heart sunk into dread. Her head fell forward toward the deck, Plum Blossom now forgotten at her feet. Gilly’s hands drew themselves back up toward her chest, fingers entwined.
The phrase tolled in Gilly’s head like somber bells, warning of damage to come. She knew what was expected of her. Her part was to remain dumb, to remain porous. It was her part to remain tightly focused upon the drone of the words, to the exclusion of all else.
Tenshio watched her closely; he saw her body language. A mute despair seemed to emanate from her limp spine and from the pale skin at the nape of her neck, where the dark hair parted with wisps that fell flatly to either side.
“Gilly,” he said, quietly, “you are not a bad girl. Something bad happened to you. What happened to you does not have the power to turn you into a bad girl. The person who hurt you carries all the shame and all the evil and all the darkness of those deeds. You do not have carry it, because it does not belong to you.”
A shiver went down her spine and she clasped her hands up tighter under her chin. She knew she must confess. “There is bad in me,” she said. “The dead girl is.”
“I know,” said Tenshio. “But I see that little girl in a different way, Gilly. That little girl is not evil, and she is not dead. She lives inside of you because she is a part of you. This part of you knew that if you constantly remembered those dark memories, the knowledge would hurt you beyond repair. So this part of you, she kept those memories locked tightly away from you.
“This hidden girl, this part of you, cannot keep these secrets any longer, because in the Kagamihara, the hidden things are brought forth. Your secrets are being drawn forth by the world we are in, and you must eventually face them.
“But you are not alone. I am a witness to these things. I will be beside you at each step, Gilly, and I will help you carry this load. I am not ashamed of you. I am not afraid of your secrets. Whatever you face in this world, we will face it together.”
Gilly sat in the midst of her own internal earthquake. She almost hated Tenshio, for making her hope for so much, for destroying her well laid and cemented foundations. There would be no recovery if she fell from the heights that Tenshio was pulling her up toward.
She sat hunched up in the sun, distressed and at a loss. She took several deep breaths, each time attempting to speak, but at the last minute, unable to give voice to her thoughts.
With trembling fingers, she reached for Plum Blossom and shook some of the grit and dried salt off her. Tears trickled down Gilly's face.
“I got her dirty,” Gilly said in small, tear choked voice.
“We’ll give her a bath. It will come off,” Tenshio reassured her calmly.
“I’m sorry,” Gilly breathed.
“For getting her dirty?” Tenshio inquired gently. He leaned toward her, but did not touch her.
Gilly nodded. “I was mean to her.”
“She still loves you- look at her face,” Tenshio said, pointing to it. “She’s a very understanding doll.”
Gilly gave a little sob and clutched the doll up close her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cried brokenly. “I won’t put you in the water. I never will.”
Tenshio put his face against the top of Gilly’s head. “I love you, Gilly,” he said quietly. “I am glad that we met. Now, you must go back below deck and dress for the day, and eat your breakfast.”
"Yes, sir," Gilly breathed.
July 24th
Haha!
Someone arrived on my blog by searching for: "her flat tire tv films."
Oh my.
I found this new website called Recovering Grace. (I hope the link works.) The first thing I saw was this article on how the teachings of emotional purity cause damage to a person's ability to have a healthy relationship.
Oh my goodness. I wanted to shout out loud as I was reading it. "Yes, yes, yes!" I wanted to shout. The first two points just... I can't even say how deeply they resonated with me.
The first is that the teaching causes shame. Hell, yes, it does. Because you can't ever be pure enough, because you're asked to control your emotions, and who can do that? Even if you never talk to the guy, or hardly look at the guy, still, you think about the guy, right? And that's bad, that's shameful, that's impure.
And you wrestle with your guilt about this at night, trying to guard your heart, trying to deny your God given emotions, trying to shut down your own emotional health in order to "guard your heart," as though your heart were a physical territory, and not the very spring from which your emotions flow out.
And you end up nearly killing your ability to feel and respond. You end up feeling perpetual shame over not being good enough, not being pure enough, because emotional purity is a moving target. You can never, ever get there. Never. You are never pure enough.
Their second point was that this teaches results in pride. Hell yes, it does. What, you may say- Can a person be both ashamed and full of pride? Oh, very easily, let me tell you. It's just like breathing in and out.
The more secretly ashamed of yourself you are in the inside, the more pride you can take over your outward perfection. Oh, I've been there, looking down at girls because they sat next to the boys on the bench in the gym.
Oh, you think I'm joking, but I am deadly serious; I was disdainful of them. I was proud that I was above that sort of thing, proud that I never wore shorts, only culottes, proud that I never cut my hair, proud that I never engaged a boy in conversation, proud, proud, proud of all these meaningless, surface accomplishments.
I could add all these things up, these things that visibly demonstrated my purity, and I could feel better about myself by seeing how many people couldn't reach my level. When other people experienced emotional upheaval, I looked down at them. I thought, "That is what you get by playing with fire, that is what you get when you compromise."
I had no mercy, not for other people, and least of all for myself. Oh my lord, I was so unlovable. Thank God Jesus had mercy on me, thank God He loved me even when I couldn't love myself, or even Him.
It was such a massive, massive key to understanding life when I realized that the way I judged myself was the way I judged other people, and unless I could forgive myself, I would continue to be hard hearted and secretly satisfied when other people stumbled and fell, in the same way that I rubbed my own failures in my face- "See! See, you stupid girl! This is what you get for failing! For giving up! For rebelling!"
Phew.
I remember seeing the extent of my pride once. It was really random. I was standing in the driveway, on the way to the car to go somewhere with my family. All of a sudden, I realized how stiff with pride I was.
It was as though I was completely caged within it, like an internal suit of armor that had rusted into place. I was dense with it, like rotten fruit cake.
It terrified me. I knew pride was a sin, and here I was, just dominated by it, almost defined by it, as though it were a stiff necked pride that held me up instead of an actual skeleton.
I begged God to take it away.
It's fascinating, it's breathtaking, the way Christ works in our lives. It boggles my human mind.
The article goes on to conclude that the teaching decieves us into thinking we are "safe."
"1 + 1= 2. Emotional purity + Biblical courtship = Godly marriage. But life doesn’t work that way. You can do everything “right” and your life can still go wrong. You can do everything “wrong” and still be blessed. Rain falls on the good and evil. Time and chance happen to them all. People who follow the courtship formula still get divorced. Or stuck in terrible marriages. Courtship is not the assurance of a good marriage. Life is too complicated for that. Love involves vulnerability. When you choose to love, you are choosing to accept risking a broken heart. No formula can protect you. Life involves risk. Following God involves risk. He is not a “safe” God. But He is good.
I don’t think God likes formulas, because formulas run contrary to faith. Formula says, “I will follow a God that I’ve put neatly in a box, and He will give me the desired results.” Faith says, “I will follow You even when I can’t see where I’m going, even when the world is collapsing around me.” Formula says, “I will not risk. I will be in control of my future.” Faith says “I will risk everything. I will trust Him whom I cannot see, surrender what I cannot control anyway.” Formula is the assurance of things planned for, the conviction of things seen. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). But we are afraid. So we control instead of trust. We don’t take a step unless we can see where we’re going. We build neat little formulas and say “THIS will keep me safe!” Then we blame God when our puny formulas fail."
Oh my goodness. So true.
Anyway, I had a whole other blog planned, but I just had to get that off my chest. Maybe I'll post the other blog tomorrow, when I send off my query letter.
Gulp.
Someone arrived on my blog by searching for: "her flat tire tv films."
Oh my.
I found this new website called Recovering Grace. (I hope the link works.) The first thing I saw was this article on how the teachings of emotional purity cause damage to a person's ability to have a healthy relationship.
Oh my goodness. I wanted to shout out loud as I was reading it. "Yes, yes, yes!" I wanted to shout. The first two points just... I can't even say how deeply they resonated with me.
The first is that the teaching causes shame. Hell, yes, it does. Because you can't ever be pure enough, because you're asked to control your emotions, and who can do that? Even if you never talk to the guy, or hardly look at the guy, still, you think about the guy, right? And that's bad, that's shameful, that's impure.
And you wrestle with your guilt about this at night, trying to guard your heart, trying to deny your God given emotions, trying to shut down your own emotional health in order to "guard your heart," as though your heart were a physical territory, and not the very spring from which your emotions flow out.
And you end up nearly killing your ability to feel and respond. You end up feeling perpetual shame over not being good enough, not being pure enough, because emotional purity is a moving target. You can never, ever get there. Never. You are never pure enough.
Their second point was that this teaches results in pride. Hell yes, it does. What, you may say- Can a person be both ashamed and full of pride? Oh, very easily, let me tell you. It's just like breathing in and out.
The more secretly ashamed of yourself you are in the inside, the more pride you can take over your outward perfection. Oh, I've been there, looking down at girls because they sat next to the boys on the bench in the gym.
Oh, you think I'm joking, but I am deadly serious; I was disdainful of them. I was proud that I was above that sort of thing, proud that I never wore shorts, only culottes, proud that I never cut my hair, proud that I never engaged a boy in conversation, proud, proud, proud of all these meaningless, surface accomplishments.
I could add all these things up, these things that visibly demonstrated my purity, and I could feel better about myself by seeing how many people couldn't reach my level. When other people experienced emotional upheaval, I looked down at them. I thought, "That is what you get by playing with fire, that is what you get when you compromise."
I had no mercy, not for other people, and least of all for myself. Oh my lord, I was so unlovable. Thank God Jesus had mercy on me, thank God He loved me even when I couldn't love myself, or even Him.
It was such a massive, massive key to understanding life when I realized that the way I judged myself was the way I judged other people, and unless I could forgive myself, I would continue to be hard hearted and secretly satisfied when other people stumbled and fell, in the same way that I rubbed my own failures in my face- "See! See, you stupid girl! This is what you get for failing! For giving up! For rebelling!"
Phew.
I remember seeing the extent of my pride once. It was really random. I was standing in the driveway, on the way to the car to go somewhere with my family. All of a sudden, I realized how stiff with pride I was.
It was as though I was completely caged within it, like an internal suit of armor that had rusted into place. I was dense with it, like rotten fruit cake.
It terrified me. I knew pride was a sin, and here I was, just dominated by it, almost defined by it, as though it were a stiff necked pride that held me up instead of an actual skeleton.
I begged God to take it away.
It's fascinating, it's breathtaking, the way Christ works in our lives. It boggles my human mind.
The article goes on to conclude that the teaching decieves us into thinking we are "safe."
"1 + 1= 2. Emotional purity + Biblical courtship = Godly marriage. But life doesn’t work that way. You can do everything “right” and your life can still go wrong. You can do everything “wrong” and still be blessed. Rain falls on the good and evil. Time and chance happen to them all. People who follow the courtship formula still get divorced. Or stuck in terrible marriages. Courtship is not the assurance of a good marriage. Life is too complicated for that. Love involves vulnerability. When you choose to love, you are choosing to accept risking a broken heart. No formula can protect you. Life involves risk. Following God involves risk. He is not a “safe” God. But He is good.
I don’t think God likes formulas, because formulas run contrary to faith. Formula says, “I will follow a God that I’ve put neatly in a box, and He will give me the desired results.” Faith says, “I will follow You even when I can’t see where I’m going, even when the world is collapsing around me.” Formula says, “I will not risk. I will be in control of my future.” Faith says “I will risk everything. I will trust Him whom I cannot see, surrender what I cannot control anyway.” Formula is the assurance of things planned for, the conviction of things seen. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). But we are afraid. So we control instead of trust. We don’t take a step unless we can see where we’re going. We build neat little formulas and say “THIS will keep me safe!” Then we blame God when our puny formulas fail."
Oh my goodness. So true.
Anyway, I had a whole other blog planned, but I just had to get that off my chest. Maybe I'll post the other blog tomorrow, when I send off my query letter.
Gulp.
Friday, July 22, 2011
July 22nd
As you can see, I gave my blog a face lift. It was fun and thematically appropriate, considering both Torii and the metaphorical mountain that is the attempt to get published.
Allll-rightly, then. After about 735 revisions, here is my new one line summation:
Narrated by the heroine with emotional authenticity, The Hidden Road is a love story that explores the captivating interplay between reality and fantasy.
A bit wordy, but getting there. One of the tricks seems to hinge on being aggressively selective with one's adjectives. I hate this, since I tend to throw them out like beads at Mardi Gras.
After about 1,398 revisions, here is my newly revised mini synopsis. It's okay that this is more than three paragraphs, btw. For this agent, it need merely fit on one page, which it does, along with my introductory and concluding paragraphs:
Growing up in the woods of New England, Phillipa Ramsey always knew the pines hid mystery amid their shadows, but as a self-contained college sophomore, she thought she had put such fancies aside... until a flat tire stranded her along an unknown road, one cold, March night.
When Phillipa knocks at a stranger’s door, she finds a man who has been hiding from his past. For centuries, Ceallach had lived a calm, reclusive life, one that contained no hint of his Sidhe heritage. He wanted nothing more than his books, his gardening and the quiet passage of the seasons… until he opens his door to Phillipa.
The attraction sparked between them that night proves to be irresistible; it quickly becomes a love that is passionate, tender and full of wonder. With the buoyant impracticality of first love, Phillipa begins the task of making a life with her eccentric, reserved Sidhe lover, often with humorous results.
Phillipa’s new life with Ceallach comes to an abrupt end when he receives a summons he cannot ignore. He must return to the ruined landscape of his past, to fulfill a long held debt to his older brother. Initially forbidden to come, Phillipa insists upon following him, despite the fact that only one day in the Sidhe world could means decades lost in hers.
In the treacherous and beautiful land of Tir na nOg, Phillipa’s fledgling relationship is put to the test. She must remain true to herself amid the bewildering Sidhe world. With her resiliency and dry sense of humor, she quickly becomes an anchor for Ceallach, as he finds the courage to put his ghosts to rest, both on and off the battlefield.
Each step along their journey, their life in human world could be slipping away, lost to the capricious passage of time between the worlds. Phillipa must hold onto her love through all the dangers, arguments and obstacles, or they will never find the hidden road home.
I have several completed short stories, as well a 40,000 word adaptation of the fairy tale, A Sprig of Rosemary. I am currently about 50,000 words into my second fantasy novel, The Sacred Gate.
Better, yes? But still so distressingly blurb-y. I mean, I know. That is the point: it's supposed to be a blurb. But, gah! It's not me, it's not my voice. Is that the best way for me to summarize my work?
I don't know.
I'm going to let this version simmer away during the weekend, and then, come hell or high water, I'm sending it out on Monday. Or maybe Tuesday, when the agent might be in a better mood, you know? Actually, Wednesday might be optimal... Or, next week sometime.
Sigh.
Notice that in the paragraph where I should put all my non existent accolades, accomplishments and contacts, I have instead named my other writings. This is to make clear to her that, although I am not yet a professional author, I am a prolific one, and she can stand to make a fair amount of money off my apparently continuous creative flow.
Though, who knows if I have a third novel in me or not. If I do, I can't feel it yet, though I have some vague ideas simmering away.
Now that my brain is fried, I'm going to go swim.
Allll-rightly, then. After about 735 revisions, here is my new one line summation:
Narrated by the heroine with emotional authenticity, The Hidden Road is a love story that explores the captivating interplay between reality and fantasy.
A bit wordy, but getting there. One of the tricks seems to hinge on being aggressively selective with one's adjectives. I hate this, since I tend to throw them out like beads at Mardi Gras.
After about 1,398 revisions, here is my newly revised mini synopsis. It's okay that this is more than three paragraphs, btw. For this agent, it need merely fit on one page, which it does, along with my introductory and concluding paragraphs:
Growing up in the woods of New England, Phillipa Ramsey always knew the pines hid mystery amid their shadows, but as a self-contained college sophomore, she thought she had put such fancies aside... until a flat tire stranded her along an unknown road, one cold, March night.
When Phillipa knocks at a stranger’s door, she finds a man who has been hiding from his past. For centuries, Ceallach had lived a calm, reclusive life, one that contained no hint of his Sidhe heritage. He wanted nothing more than his books, his gardening and the quiet passage of the seasons… until he opens his door to Phillipa.
The attraction sparked between them that night proves to be irresistible; it quickly becomes a love that is passionate, tender and full of wonder. With the buoyant impracticality of first love, Phillipa begins the task of making a life with her eccentric, reserved Sidhe lover, often with humorous results.
Phillipa’s new life with Ceallach comes to an abrupt end when he receives a summons he cannot ignore. He must return to the ruined landscape of his past, to fulfill a long held debt to his older brother. Initially forbidden to come, Phillipa insists upon following him, despite the fact that only one day in the Sidhe world could means decades lost in hers.
In the treacherous and beautiful land of Tir na nOg, Phillipa’s fledgling relationship is put to the test. She must remain true to herself amid the bewildering Sidhe world. With her resiliency and dry sense of humor, she quickly becomes an anchor for Ceallach, as he finds the courage to put his ghosts to rest, both on and off the battlefield.
Each step along their journey, their life in human world could be slipping away, lost to the capricious passage of time between the worlds. Phillipa must hold onto her love through all the dangers, arguments and obstacles, or they will never find the hidden road home.
I have several completed short stories, as well a 40,000 word adaptation of the fairy tale, A Sprig of Rosemary. I am currently about 50,000 words into my second fantasy novel, The Sacred Gate.
Better, yes? But still so distressingly blurb-y. I mean, I know. That is the point: it's supposed to be a blurb. But, gah! It's not me, it's not my voice. Is that the best way for me to summarize my work?
I don't know.
I'm going to let this version simmer away during the weekend, and then, come hell or high water, I'm sending it out on Monday. Or maybe Tuesday, when the agent might be in a better mood, you know? Actually, Wednesday might be optimal... Or, next week sometime.
Sigh.
Notice that in the paragraph where I should put all my non existent accolades, accomplishments and contacts, I have instead named my other writings. This is to make clear to her that, although I am not yet a professional author, I am a prolific one, and she can stand to make a fair amount of money off my apparently continuous creative flow.
Though, who knows if I have a third novel in me or not. If I do, I can't feel it yet, though I have some vague ideas simmering away.
Now that my brain is fried, I'm going to go swim.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
July 21st
I've decided to be frightfully well organized about the whole thing. The publishing thing, that is.
So, I've come up with a folder in Microsoft Word for each organization I'm thinking of sending my work out to. I will slowly work on compiling all the documents in the way each of them requests it, which, by the way, is not at all uniform.
For example:
The literary agent wants only a query letter, and by query letter, they mean a mini synopsis. If they like said mini synopsis, they will request sample pages. If they like the sample pages... I don't know, to be honest. They don't say. I assume they'll want to read the whole thing at that point.
The publishing house wants a query letter, by which they mean a copy letter, with short description of the book, myself and my credentials, and then a second letter containing a synopsis, not to exceed five pages long, and the title page with the exact word count, and then the first three chapters.
These are just two. I have identified three other literary agencies that, according to their websites, are interested in the sort of thing I write. All of them have different requests and steps to take.
One of the successful query letters included the statement "I have a popular blog."
Nightmares like sugar plums danced in my head as I envisioned what the agent would think if they ever, for any reason, stumbled across my blog.
Which leads me to my first publishing commandment: Thou shalt not misrepresent thyself.
I mean, it would be tempting to try and hint at or let them assume that I'm a bright, vivacious conversationalist, capable of hosting a wildly popular blog and kissing children at book signing venues.
However, this would only make things that much worse when they realize that I am, in point of fact, a neurotic, anxiety ridden introvert, prone to political rants of the wrong persuasion and in the habit of talking to Jesus.
In short, just not the most highly sought after candidate for a successful book promotion. And, as one of them said on one of their websites, the days of someone deep in obscurity and sitting hunched over the typewriter, punching out a masterpiece and then sending it, tattered edges and all, to be accepted and published at Houghton Mifflin, are well and truly over.
I guess I'll just have to have faith that someone out there will figure they can make enough money off my writing to make up for the fact that I'll never come up with a platform.
Or, I'll never get published. I googled platform, by the way, and came up with ten utterly laughable, completely impossible pointers, the point of which is to get my name to come up when the publisher googles me. Here are some of them:
1. Attend Literary Readings and Book Launches.
2. Give a business card to everyone you meet.
3. Create short video presentations.
4. Write a Readers' Guide for your book.
5. Once you have a book to sell, hire your own publicist.
This has got to be for writers of nonfiction, right? They also suggested that I plug into an already established series, like Chicken Soup for the Soul, or the Dummies line.
Who would do that?
Doesn't that just take out all the joy of writing? There's already one Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Do we need a knock off brand? Isn't there something original to the person that the person wishes to write out of themselves? Isn't that why they want to write?
Who gets up in morning and says, "I want to write a knock off version of Chicken Soup for the Soul?"
Its one thing to finish writing and realize, "Hey, this is very similar to CS for S. I'll use that comparison in my query letter; it'll help the agent conceptualize my work." After all, no one has an entirely original idea; all our stories are like something else already published.
It's another to try and aim directly at the knock off.
Anyhow, one publishing house is looking for fantasy that has: depth and insight, great writing, original ideas, interesting characters who have believable behaviors, motives, and relationships, believable dialogue, strong plots, unique settings and richly detailed and original cultures.
Oh my god. Everytime I read that, it's like I'm back in elemantary school, and I know I have the right answer, and I'm practically on the edge of my freakin' seat, wildly waving my hand in the air, eyes wide.
My writing has all or most of that. People who have read Ceallach tell me so. My editor friend described it thusly: "It's got an even greater level of depth to the writing than even your last story. It comes across as real: layered, nuanced, gritty, textured, surprising. Like life."
Who could ask for better feedback?
Maybe people in real life as not as witty as my characters, but how can that be a bad thing? It's so entertaining. Surely some small publishing house like that one will pick me sometime or other.
Sure, I clearly have a hangup over garish cover art, but I can get over that real easily. I have only one stipulation: do not put Ceallach, shirtless, on the cover.
I am resigned to the fact that if they put him on the cover, they will do so with his hair loose. What else can you expect when you have a character with waist length silver hair? Who could resist putting that, all windblown, on the paperback cover? Not the cover artists we all know and love.
It doesn't matter that this would deeply embarrass Ceallach to be represented this way or that he never wears it loose unless it's for a specific purpose. I can't expect others to be that in tune with my character's character.
But I do draw the line at shirtless. That's just too much. I don't care how fantastic a picture that would be. It's just not allowed.
So now that I've settled that obscure point on an issue that will probably never come up at all, I should get back to writing. I didn't write at all on Torii yesterday, and in the evening, I realized that I missed their company.
Tenshio has cast down the Ganges and they must meet up with Lord Fushi on the fertile banks of the Kosi river. They must bid farewell to the crew of the Unabara Maru and begin their ascent into the Himalayas.
So, I've come up with a folder in Microsoft Word for each organization I'm thinking of sending my work out to. I will slowly work on compiling all the documents in the way each of them requests it, which, by the way, is not at all uniform.
For example:
The literary agent wants only a query letter, and by query letter, they mean a mini synopsis. If they like said mini synopsis, they will request sample pages. If they like the sample pages... I don't know, to be honest. They don't say. I assume they'll want to read the whole thing at that point.
The publishing house wants a query letter, by which they mean a copy letter, with short description of the book, myself and my credentials, and then a second letter containing a synopsis, not to exceed five pages long, and the title page with the exact word count, and then the first three chapters.
These are just two. I have identified three other literary agencies that, according to their websites, are interested in the sort of thing I write. All of them have different requests and steps to take.
One of the successful query letters included the statement "I have a popular blog."
Nightmares like sugar plums danced in my head as I envisioned what the agent would think if they ever, for any reason, stumbled across my blog.
Which leads me to my first publishing commandment: Thou shalt not misrepresent thyself.
I mean, it would be tempting to try and hint at or let them assume that I'm a bright, vivacious conversationalist, capable of hosting a wildly popular blog and kissing children at book signing venues.
However, this would only make things that much worse when they realize that I am, in point of fact, a neurotic, anxiety ridden introvert, prone to political rants of the wrong persuasion and in the habit of talking to Jesus.
In short, just not the most highly sought after candidate for a successful book promotion. And, as one of them said on one of their websites, the days of someone deep in obscurity and sitting hunched over the typewriter, punching out a masterpiece and then sending it, tattered edges and all, to be accepted and published at Houghton Mifflin, are well and truly over.
I guess I'll just have to have faith that someone out there will figure they can make enough money off my writing to make up for the fact that I'll never come up with a platform.
Or, I'll never get published. I googled platform, by the way, and came up with ten utterly laughable, completely impossible pointers, the point of which is to get my name to come up when the publisher googles me. Here are some of them:
1. Attend Literary Readings and Book Launches.
2. Give a business card to everyone you meet.
3. Create short video presentations.
4. Write a Readers' Guide for your book.
5. Once you have a book to sell, hire your own publicist.
This has got to be for writers of nonfiction, right? They also suggested that I plug into an already established series, like Chicken Soup for the Soul, or the Dummies line.
Who would do that?
Doesn't that just take out all the joy of writing? There's already one Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Do we need a knock off brand? Isn't there something original to the person that the person wishes to write out of themselves? Isn't that why they want to write?
Who gets up in morning and says, "I want to write a knock off version of Chicken Soup for the Soul?"
Its one thing to finish writing and realize, "Hey, this is very similar to CS for S. I'll use that comparison in my query letter; it'll help the agent conceptualize my work." After all, no one has an entirely original idea; all our stories are like something else already published.
It's another to try and aim directly at the knock off.
Anyhow, one publishing house is looking for fantasy that has: depth and insight, great writing, original ideas, interesting characters who have believable behaviors, motives, and relationships, believable dialogue, strong plots, unique settings and richly detailed and original cultures.
Oh my god. Everytime I read that, it's like I'm back in elemantary school, and I know I have the right answer, and I'm practically on the edge of my freakin' seat, wildly waving my hand in the air, eyes wide.
My writing has all or most of that. People who have read Ceallach tell me so. My editor friend described it thusly: "It's got an even greater level of depth to the writing than even your last story. It comes across as real: layered, nuanced, gritty, textured, surprising. Like life."
Who could ask for better feedback?
Maybe people in real life as not as witty as my characters, but how can that be a bad thing? It's so entertaining. Surely some small publishing house like that one will pick me sometime or other.
Sure, I clearly have a hangup over garish cover art, but I can get over that real easily. I have only one stipulation: do not put Ceallach, shirtless, on the cover.
I am resigned to the fact that if they put him on the cover, they will do so with his hair loose. What else can you expect when you have a character with waist length silver hair? Who could resist putting that, all windblown, on the paperback cover? Not the cover artists we all know and love.
It doesn't matter that this would deeply embarrass Ceallach to be represented this way or that he never wears it loose unless it's for a specific purpose. I can't expect others to be that in tune with my character's character.
But I do draw the line at shirtless. That's just too much. I don't care how fantastic a picture that would be. It's just not allowed.
So now that I've settled that obscure point on an issue that will probably never come up at all, I should get back to writing. I didn't write at all on Torii yesterday, and in the evening, I realized that I missed their company.
Tenshio has cast down the Ganges and they must meet up with Lord Fushi on the fertile banks of the Kosi river. They must bid farewell to the crew of the Unabara Maru and begin their ascent into the Himalayas.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
July 20th
As though anxiety over church was not enough, I have decided to try my hand at the "Query Letter," in preparation for sending Ceallach out in search of a literary agent.
By the way, I have tentatively decided to call that story "The Hidden Road," though this is also the title of a book published in 1922 by Wadsworth Camp. (I googled it.)
I'm also thinking of "The Hidden Road Home," which thematically fits right in, and when googled, does not immediately come up with any other books by that title. Though I'm not sure, maybe it's too long for a title.
And maybe just a little too... oh, I don't know. Soft or something. Like a signal to get out your hankies, because this is gonna be a tear jerker- one your grandmother will like. One the Hallmark channel will make into a made-for-TV movie. Heh.
From what I've seen, more than one book can have the same title, though for obvious reasons, it's perhaps not the best idea to go ahead and name your little ol' book after some literary giant.
I've have assiduously studied examples of great query letters and consequently, I feel miserably unprepared to do business in the world of publication.
The main point of the query letter is to demonstrate that you can sum up your book in two or three tantalizing paragraphs that will comfortably fit on the back of the book and lure the unsuspecting into buying it, thus making the publisher a lot of money.
So, I firmly put tongue in cheek and came up with this beauty:
"Phillipa, a reserved, eccentric college sophomore, thought it was just going to be another night of Disney movies and Mac’n Cheese when she agreed to babysit for friends of her parents. However, when she gets a flat tire, lost deep in the heart of rural New England, she discovers not just a whole other adventure, but another world as well.
The quiet, monastic life that Ceallach, a battle weary Sidhe ironsmith, had been enjoying for centuries came to an abrupt end when a lost and bedraggled human girl showed up at his doorstep late one cold, March night.
The attraction sparked between them that night proves to be irresistible; it becomes a love that is passionate, tender and humorous. But the past Ceallach thought he had put behind him soon comes calling, threatening to destroy their new found life.
Together, they must return to Tir na nOg and put the past to rest. Their fledgling relationship must be strong enough to survive not just the battlefield and the restless dead, but their private fears as well. Each step of their journey, they are haunted by the possibility that the capricious passage of time between their two worlds will wipe out the life they had just begun together."
Clearly that's four paragraphs: I'm already a failure as a writer.
Wait. I could just cut out the entire fourth paragraph except for its first sentence. I could move that up so that it becomes the last sentence of the previous paragraph.
Voila, the end.
Gah.
One is not only supposed to be able to summarize one's story in two or three (preferably two- not happening) paragraphs, but also to sum it up in one sentence.
I am not joking. They want it summed up in one sentence. Here is my current attempt, though I am still really wrestling with this:
"The Hidden Road is a nuanced, unexpectedly imaginative story of two people from two very different worlds who must find the courage to create and keep a life together."
Blah. Basically, I'm saying it's a love story like all love stories. But what else can I say? That is what it's about.
Okay, so then the last paragraph of the successful query letter is the one containing your credentials as a professional writer, the awards your writing has won, your previous published works and your contacts in the publishing world.
Heh.
Yeah. So, for me, that paragraph literally doesn't exist. I don't have a single one of those things. Unless my editor friend counts.
Keep in mind that this is a query letter not to a publisher, but to a literary agent. If the literary agents picks you up, then he or she must still try and get your work to be picked up by a publisher.
I've done a ton of research. My options appear to be these:
1. Submit my work to the few, the small and the quirky publishing houses that still accept fantasy novels from new authors. Suffer from poor exposure and garish cover art.
2. Find a literary agent that will help me get accepted at a more established publishing house, for ten to fifteen percent of whatever I make, once I make it. Though I may still end up being accepted, via agent, at a small publishing house, thus still suffering garish cover art, for fifteen percent less.
3. Wallow in despair.
4. Self publish and or publish on line
I'm going to go play some Guitar Rock, a platform where I know I can shine, damn it.
By the way, I have tentatively decided to call that story "The Hidden Road," though this is also the title of a book published in 1922 by Wadsworth Camp. (I googled it.)
I'm also thinking of "The Hidden Road Home," which thematically fits right in, and when googled, does not immediately come up with any other books by that title. Though I'm not sure, maybe it's too long for a title.
And maybe just a little too... oh, I don't know. Soft or something. Like a signal to get out your hankies, because this is gonna be a tear jerker- one your grandmother will like. One the Hallmark channel will make into a made-for-TV movie. Heh.
From what I've seen, more than one book can have the same title, though for obvious reasons, it's perhaps not the best idea to go ahead and name your little ol' book after some literary giant.
I've have assiduously studied examples of great query letters and consequently, I feel miserably unprepared to do business in the world of publication.
The main point of the query letter is to demonstrate that you can sum up your book in two or three tantalizing paragraphs that will comfortably fit on the back of the book and lure the unsuspecting into buying it, thus making the publisher a lot of money.
So, I firmly put tongue in cheek and came up with this beauty:
"Phillipa, a reserved, eccentric college sophomore, thought it was just going to be another night of Disney movies and Mac’n Cheese when she agreed to babysit for friends of her parents. However, when she gets a flat tire, lost deep in the heart of rural New England, she discovers not just a whole other adventure, but another world as well.
The quiet, monastic life that Ceallach, a battle weary Sidhe ironsmith, had been enjoying for centuries came to an abrupt end when a lost and bedraggled human girl showed up at his doorstep late one cold, March night.
The attraction sparked between them that night proves to be irresistible; it becomes a love that is passionate, tender and humorous. But the past Ceallach thought he had put behind him soon comes calling, threatening to destroy their new found life.
Together, they must return to Tir na nOg and put the past to rest. Their fledgling relationship must be strong enough to survive not just the battlefield and the restless dead, but their private fears as well. Each step of their journey, they are haunted by the possibility that the capricious passage of time between their two worlds will wipe out the life they had just begun together."
Clearly that's four paragraphs: I'm already a failure as a writer.
Wait. I could just cut out the entire fourth paragraph except for its first sentence. I could move that up so that it becomes the last sentence of the previous paragraph.
Voila, the end.
Gah.
One is not only supposed to be able to summarize one's story in two or three (preferably two- not happening) paragraphs, but also to sum it up in one sentence.
I am not joking. They want it summed up in one sentence. Here is my current attempt, though I am still really wrestling with this:
"The Hidden Road is a nuanced, unexpectedly imaginative story of two people from two very different worlds who must find the courage to create and keep a life together."
Blah. Basically, I'm saying it's a love story like all love stories. But what else can I say? That is what it's about.
Okay, so then the last paragraph of the successful query letter is the one containing your credentials as a professional writer, the awards your writing has won, your previous published works and your contacts in the publishing world.
Heh.
Yeah. So, for me, that paragraph literally doesn't exist. I don't have a single one of those things. Unless my editor friend counts.
Keep in mind that this is a query letter not to a publisher, but to a literary agent. If the literary agents picks you up, then he or she must still try and get your work to be picked up by a publisher.
I've done a ton of research. My options appear to be these:
1. Submit my work to the few, the small and the quirky publishing houses that still accept fantasy novels from new authors. Suffer from poor exposure and garish cover art.
2. Find a literary agent that will help me get accepted at a more established publishing house, for ten to fifteen percent of whatever I make, once I make it. Though I may still end up being accepted, via agent, at a small publishing house, thus still suffering garish cover art, for fifteen percent less.
3. Wallow in despair.
4. Self publish and or publish on line
I'm going to go play some Guitar Rock, a platform where I know I can shine, damn it.
Monday, July 18, 2011
July 18th
We checked out another church on Saturday and will try attending it next Sunday.
It's amazing to me how disloyal I feel over leaving a church we attended for maybe a month and a half. Why do I feel as though, since we started attending there, we are now obligated to continue?
I know exactly why. Because that is the way I was taught to feel about church; all or nothing. No quitters. Blind loyalty to those in authority and if it hurts, if it's hard, if it weighs you down, then church must be doing its job.
It's amazing to me, to realize the extent to which I still carry all this baggage. It's fresh; it springs to life like fungus after a rain. It's discouraging, is what it is.
But then, I take a step back and remember that I haven't exactly been able to work through this baggage, until now. So, naturally it's going to be untouched and the emotions raw. In fact, it's pretty incredible that I'm strong enough now to begin to work through it. So, that's something to be proud of, even if I feel as though I've taken a couple steps back.
And the whole goal of this reengaging my personal church dynamic is to be able to attend church in a healthy, self respecting, thoughtful and deliberate way. I like the idea of coming together with other real, imperfect people who all love God and want to worship Him together, each in their own way.
Though I'm beginning to grow increasingly doubtful about whether or not I can find that within an actual church building. If only I could breeze through it- in and out, the happy church hopper. Lots of people do it, or so I hear. At least, I remember reading an article lamenting the rise of church jumping.
At the beginning of the process, I thought to myself, "All churches are imperfect, so I'll just choose the one that's literally closest to the house. I mean, why not?"
But that did not work out. Now I'm tempted just to go based on music. I mean, if the church is going to be imperfect, why not choose the one with the most beautiful music? In which case, in my experience, the Episcopalians win.
However, we have found one of those super large churches with a full band, digital projections screens, and a Greeting Team at the door. I watched one of the sermons they had on their website, and it moved me nearly to tears, so we'll give it a try. Despite the fact that, according to their website, we will be given name tags to wear on our first day.
Talk about driving away visitors.
And then my story! Holy crap, but that story has a ton of moving parts. Everything is slowly building and it slowly builds out of my own worst experiences. Dragging it forward frequently feels like just that; as though I have a wooden sled of stones and I'm pulling at the rope, getting it to jerk forward inch by inch.
And sometimes, it gets wedged. Like now. I wrote about three paragraphs today, all total. I am in the midst of trying to describe the Ganges personification and the ensuing confrontation, none of which am I very clear on.
At points like these, I remind myself of the private vision I have of the story, of what it will ultimately be like, hopefully. And I know I can do it. I just have to do it slowly right now. I keep in mind what I want it to be: richly imagined, evocative, disturbing, and beautiful. Just saying those adjectives inspires me to continue hammering away at the damn thing.
And holy crap, but I have been really upset about not being pregnant all of a sudden. That feeling has not gone away since the Baby Isle Episode. Where is this coming from? It's like my reproductive organs have mysteriously decided, all at once, to rise up and consume all my hard won calm and contentment.
It's not even that time of the month, and various commercials are killing me.
It's amazing to me how disloyal I feel over leaving a church we attended for maybe a month and a half. Why do I feel as though, since we started attending there, we are now obligated to continue?
I know exactly why. Because that is the way I was taught to feel about church; all or nothing. No quitters. Blind loyalty to those in authority and if it hurts, if it's hard, if it weighs you down, then church must be doing its job.
It's amazing to me, to realize the extent to which I still carry all this baggage. It's fresh; it springs to life like fungus after a rain. It's discouraging, is what it is.
But then, I take a step back and remember that I haven't exactly been able to work through this baggage, until now. So, naturally it's going to be untouched and the emotions raw. In fact, it's pretty incredible that I'm strong enough now to begin to work through it. So, that's something to be proud of, even if I feel as though I've taken a couple steps back.
And the whole goal of this reengaging my personal church dynamic is to be able to attend church in a healthy, self respecting, thoughtful and deliberate way. I like the idea of coming together with other real, imperfect people who all love God and want to worship Him together, each in their own way.
Though I'm beginning to grow increasingly doubtful about whether or not I can find that within an actual church building. If only I could breeze through it- in and out, the happy church hopper. Lots of people do it, or so I hear. At least, I remember reading an article lamenting the rise of church jumping.
At the beginning of the process, I thought to myself, "All churches are imperfect, so I'll just choose the one that's literally closest to the house. I mean, why not?"
But that did not work out. Now I'm tempted just to go based on music. I mean, if the church is going to be imperfect, why not choose the one with the most beautiful music? In which case, in my experience, the Episcopalians win.
However, we have found one of those super large churches with a full band, digital projections screens, and a Greeting Team at the door. I watched one of the sermons they had on their website, and it moved me nearly to tears, so we'll give it a try. Despite the fact that, according to their website, we will be given name tags to wear on our first day.
Talk about driving away visitors.
And then my story! Holy crap, but that story has a ton of moving parts. Everything is slowly building and it slowly builds out of my own worst experiences. Dragging it forward frequently feels like just that; as though I have a wooden sled of stones and I'm pulling at the rope, getting it to jerk forward inch by inch.
And sometimes, it gets wedged. Like now. I wrote about three paragraphs today, all total. I am in the midst of trying to describe the Ganges personification and the ensuing confrontation, none of which am I very clear on.
At points like these, I remind myself of the private vision I have of the story, of what it will ultimately be like, hopefully. And I know I can do it. I just have to do it slowly right now. I keep in mind what I want it to be: richly imagined, evocative, disturbing, and beautiful. Just saying those adjectives inspires me to continue hammering away at the damn thing.
And holy crap, but I have been really upset about not being pregnant all of a sudden. That feeling has not gone away since the Baby Isle Episode. Where is this coming from? It's like my reproductive organs have mysteriously decided, all at once, to rise up and consume all my hard won calm and contentment.
It's not even that time of the month, and various commercials are killing me.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
July 16th
I turned the corner in the story; they are now sailing up the Ganges.
I had to sit down and watch some TV this morning, to remind myself that normal life in the "outside" world continues apace. People are still interested in the latest fashion, recipe, decoration, etc. It seems some deal will be made concerning the debt ceiling. Families are going camping, or to the beach or to "Pick UR Own" fruit farms for seasonal berries.
I'm glad. I'm glad normal life goes on. Sometimes I think about joining it, but it seems like so much work. I used to think that when I had children, I'd join. I'd have to- all those PTA meetings, school supply lists, play dates, safety equipment, cupcake baking and doctor and dentist appointments.
Today Keith and I went shopping after he got a lack lustre haircut at the local strip mall place. It was a very nice place, but not geared toward the military. When Keith says he wants it skin tight on the sides, he's not kidding; he wants his skin gleaming. The hair he wants left, on the very top of his head, looks like a landing strip for an airplane.
He got a cheeseburger to make up for his still bristly scalp and then we went on our zig zag course around the store. I got in some one's way in the razor isle and even when I got out of their way, they walked past me with an audible "Hmph!" and a toss of their head and hip combined; a pretty impressive move.
I have to admit, I was in a worse haze than usual. When we walked past the baby stuff on the way to the dairy section, I felt, oddly, as though I was going to start bawling, right then and there. Just out of the blue, just at the sight of small containers of baby wipes and Johnson&Johnson products.
It took me very much by surprise; I haven't been conscious of an increased desire to be pregnant and I continue to procrastinate on moving forward with infertility treatments. I have no desire ever to pursue them.
I suppose, until I have children, or if I never have them, there will always be such moments taking me by surprise, moments where I remember that I had a completely different idea of what my life would be like.
Just recently, I was watching the video of Annie Lennox's "Why." Gosh, I remember so vividly hearing that in my early twenties and feeling it so strongly...
"This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent..."
Only, it makes me smile now, to think of myself feeling something that acutely, back before I had much living under my belt at all. Though, I guess by then I was already divorced, so I would have reason to empathize with the song.
But, gosh! Did I ever feel, back then. I still do, but I now have the ability to find myself amusing, which is a huge gift. And now I have much better perspective on the dreams we dream instead.
I had to sit down and watch some TV this morning, to remind myself that normal life in the "outside" world continues apace. People are still interested in the latest fashion, recipe, decoration, etc. It seems some deal will be made concerning the debt ceiling. Families are going camping, or to the beach or to "Pick UR Own" fruit farms for seasonal berries.
I'm glad. I'm glad normal life goes on. Sometimes I think about joining it, but it seems like so much work. I used to think that when I had children, I'd join. I'd have to- all those PTA meetings, school supply lists, play dates, safety equipment, cupcake baking and doctor and dentist appointments.
Today Keith and I went shopping after he got a lack lustre haircut at the local strip mall place. It was a very nice place, but not geared toward the military. When Keith says he wants it skin tight on the sides, he's not kidding; he wants his skin gleaming. The hair he wants left, on the very top of his head, looks like a landing strip for an airplane.
He got a cheeseburger to make up for his still bristly scalp and then we went on our zig zag course around the store. I got in some one's way in the razor isle and even when I got out of their way, they walked past me with an audible "Hmph!" and a toss of their head and hip combined; a pretty impressive move.
I have to admit, I was in a worse haze than usual. When we walked past the baby stuff on the way to the dairy section, I felt, oddly, as though I was going to start bawling, right then and there. Just out of the blue, just at the sight of small containers of baby wipes and Johnson&Johnson products.
It took me very much by surprise; I haven't been conscious of an increased desire to be pregnant and I continue to procrastinate on moving forward with infertility treatments. I have no desire ever to pursue them.
I suppose, until I have children, or if I never have them, there will always be such moments taking me by surprise, moments where I remember that I had a completely different idea of what my life would be like.
Just recently, I was watching the video of Annie Lennox's "Why." Gosh, I remember so vividly hearing that in my early twenties and feeling it so strongly...
"This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent..."
Only, it makes me smile now, to think of myself feeling something that acutely, back before I had much living under my belt at all. Though, I guess by then I was already divorced, so I would have reason to empathize with the song.
But, gosh! Did I ever feel, back then. I still do, but I now have the ability to find myself amusing, which is a huge gift. And now I have much better perspective on the dreams we dream instead.
Friday, July 15, 2011
July 15th
Yesterday, after a sabbatical of several weeks, Keith rediscovered the joys of his battery powered wasp of a helicopter. He alternated between flying it in and around my personal airspace, and looking up youtube videos of gas powered trucks.
I don't know which whine was worse; the helicopter's whirling steel blades, or the teeny, tiny gas engines in the studly little trucks.
If some diabolical person comes up with a miniature version of the M1 Abrams tank, we are in serious trouble here in the Indiana household, that's all I can say.
I was irritable anyway. Story junctions always make me irritable. It's a good thing I wrote the Ceallach story before getting into this one; I kind of know what to expect.
For the reader, it's all "Oooooo, yet another setting! Interesting characters! I wonder what happens here?" At least, I hope it is. I know I feel that way as a reader.
For me, it's nothing but hassle. "Damn it, more reading! Damn it, I was just beginning to get a feel for the ship! How about I just extend that time a wee bit? Put them out on deck chairs to chill? I don't know anything about this damn place. More characters to come up with-argh!! I've no idea what happens, how they get anywhere, or how long it takes them!"
However, I have decided upon the vital question of landscape morality. I've decided to go with human actions impacting landscape, via the whole stewardship thing. If humans display poor stewardship of their bit of land, that land turns sour.
Therefore, the Ganges river is going to be a foe. Antarctica was pristine because, well, it is pristine, or pretty close to it, still. The ocean is incorruptible because, well, Tolkien said so. And the pirate daemons keep it that way.
I have changed their route; they are avoiding Calcutta, or Kolkata, like the plague. It just doesn't make sense for them to sail up the Hoolghy river at all when they can take the Padma and avoid that massive, festering city, which would be especially terrible due it history, population size and age.
The Padma river is the border between India and Bangladesh- this whole story has been great for my geography skills, let me tell you. Both rivers are essentially the Ganges, it's just that once the Ganges reaches its delta, it splinters off into this mind blowing maze of different rivers and channels, making up the word's largest delta. It's called "The Mouths of the Ganges," once they all pour into the Bay of Bengal. Which is cool: it sounds so ominous.
It would be very cool if they met up with a matriarchal tribe of wise elephants. I'll have to research that possibility. They might make their way up the Kosi river banks on elephant back.
I don't know which whine was worse; the helicopter's whirling steel blades, or the teeny, tiny gas engines in the studly little trucks.
If some diabolical person comes up with a miniature version of the M1 Abrams tank, we are in serious trouble here in the Indiana household, that's all I can say.
I was irritable anyway. Story junctions always make me irritable. It's a good thing I wrote the Ceallach story before getting into this one; I kind of know what to expect.
For the reader, it's all "Oooooo, yet another setting! Interesting characters! I wonder what happens here?" At least, I hope it is. I know I feel that way as a reader.
For me, it's nothing but hassle. "Damn it, more reading! Damn it, I was just beginning to get a feel for the ship! How about I just extend that time a wee bit? Put them out on deck chairs to chill? I don't know anything about this damn place. More characters to come up with-argh!! I've no idea what happens, how they get anywhere, or how long it takes them!"
However, I have decided upon the vital question of landscape morality. I've decided to go with human actions impacting landscape, via the whole stewardship thing. If humans display poor stewardship of their bit of land, that land turns sour.
Therefore, the Ganges river is going to be a foe. Antarctica was pristine because, well, it is pristine, or pretty close to it, still. The ocean is incorruptible because, well, Tolkien said so. And the pirate daemons keep it that way.
I have changed their route; they are avoiding Calcutta, or Kolkata, like the plague. It just doesn't make sense for them to sail up the Hoolghy river at all when they can take the Padma and avoid that massive, festering city, which would be especially terrible due it history, population size and age.
The Padma river is the border between India and Bangladesh- this whole story has been great for my geography skills, let me tell you. Both rivers are essentially the Ganges, it's just that once the Ganges reaches its delta, it splinters off into this mind blowing maze of different rivers and channels, making up the word's largest delta. It's called "The Mouths of the Ganges," once they all pour into the Bay of Bengal. Which is cool: it sounds so ominous.
It would be very cool if they met up with a matriarchal tribe of wise elephants. I'll have to research that possibility. They might make their way up the Kosi river banks on elephant back.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
July 13th
I really turned myself inside out while writing yesterday.
It's interesting; I notice myself narrating much more in this story than any other I've written. I'm a firm believer in letting the reader live it, as opposed to listening to me tell it, if you know what I mean.
But this story has so many complex emotions going on that I must narrate for the reader, in order to help guide them through. The emotions and the actions of my characters, especially when it concerns Gilly, can be contradictory. So if I merely showed what Gilly was doing, and did not explain what she was thinking and feeling at the same time, the reader would miss the whole point.
I have, by now, a great deal of confidence in my descriptive ability; I am a highly descriptive writer. I have less confidence in my narrative voice. Though, come to think of it, that's all I do when I'm blogging, so it's not as though I lack experience.
I think it was just that those last few scenes I worked on so challenged me emotionally that I had no energy left over to focus on the words I was using. After a little bit, I'll go back and rewrite it; try to give it some nuance and rhythm.
Today I began researching India. Here's the tentative plan: they will sail up the eastern coast of India, to Calcutta, and then further along the Ganges river, until they reach the Kosi river, a tributary. The Kosi river goes up to the Mt Everest region.
There will be some difficulty at Calcutta; I don't know to what degree. I'm not sure yet how strong the corrupt daemon of that territory will be, when I begin to write him out.
It's interesting, because the Ganges river is one of the most polluted in the world, filled with the ashes of the cremated and fecal matter. It's also considered to be the junction between earth, heaven and hell, and to be the consort of various gods.
This stirs my imagination, though in what ways exactly, I don't yet know. It's just sort of brewing away in the back of my mind. Will the river have a personification? Perhaps a filth smeared unholy eyed goddess with riverweed in her hair and six arms with painted, hooked nails?
I did sort of figure that hills, streams and mountains would have their corresponding spirit personifications, but I was leaning toward them all being inherently good, sort of alone the lines of "the rivers clap and the hills are joyful."
But what if some of the actual features of the landscape are corrupt as well, in the spirit realm? But why? Would that have any correlation to the human actions in that area, or would it be the free will of the hill or river that would determine its moral standing? (Heh. What a question to ponder!)
Anyway, trouble will arise on the Ganges, whether from the river itself or its denizens, I do not yet know; somehow, trouble will come.
The fact of the matter is, Tenshio is a powerhouse and few creatures can stand toe to toe with him, though no one really knows it yet. At the moment, he's just this quiet, formally speaking creature with strange eyes and a tendency to get sea sick. But, I can feel free to throw some major players at him, especially when backed up by the crew of the Unabara Maru, Lord Fushi and the husky.
That is a formidable group, right there. I might actually need the Ganges itself to rise up against them, in order to present them with any kind of challenge at all. In the mountains, they might meet up with Yeti. Maybe. Only they will be like the Kringmerk; uncorrupted.
In other news, I went on a shopping trip today. Holy cow. How much stuff can just two people consume? Unending stuff, it what the answer would look like, if you had happened to see my shopping cart as I valiantly shoved its towering heights through the parking lot this morning.
I'm almost afraid to imagine what the cart would look like if we did have children. I'd have to go every single week, or go on the weekend, so Keith and I could both push a cart.
Our pool was growing algae, a lovely green algae. This green was showing up on the straps of my bikini; I wondered what was making it turn green like that. No one came to check on the pool for three weeks and we've had several heavy rainstorms, so it was reverting back to a state of nature. I saw fireflies dancing out there last night.
It's interesting; I notice myself narrating much more in this story than any other I've written. I'm a firm believer in letting the reader live it, as opposed to listening to me tell it, if you know what I mean.
But this story has so many complex emotions going on that I must narrate for the reader, in order to help guide them through. The emotions and the actions of my characters, especially when it concerns Gilly, can be contradictory. So if I merely showed what Gilly was doing, and did not explain what she was thinking and feeling at the same time, the reader would miss the whole point.
I have, by now, a great deal of confidence in my descriptive ability; I am a highly descriptive writer. I have less confidence in my narrative voice. Though, come to think of it, that's all I do when I'm blogging, so it's not as though I lack experience.
I think it was just that those last few scenes I worked on so challenged me emotionally that I had no energy left over to focus on the words I was using. After a little bit, I'll go back and rewrite it; try to give it some nuance and rhythm.
Today I began researching India. Here's the tentative plan: they will sail up the eastern coast of India, to Calcutta, and then further along the Ganges river, until they reach the Kosi river, a tributary. The Kosi river goes up to the Mt Everest region.
There will be some difficulty at Calcutta; I don't know to what degree. I'm not sure yet how strong the corrupt daemon of that territory will be, when I begin to write him out.
It's interesting, because the Ganges river is one of the most polluted in the world, filled with the ashes of the cremated and fecal matter. It's also considered to be the junction between earth, heaven and hell, and to be the consort of various gods.
This stirs my imagination, though in what ways exactly, I don't yet know. It's just sort of brewing away in the back of my mind. Will the river have a personification? Perhaps a filth smeared unholy eyed goddess with riverweed in her hair and six arms with painted, hooked nails?
I did sort of figure that hills, streams and mountains would have their corresponding spirit personifications, but I was leaning toward them all being inherently good, sort of alone the lines of "the rivers clap and the hills are joyful."
But what if some of the actual features of the landscape are corrupt as well, in the spirit realm? But why? Would that have any correlation to the human actions in that area, or would it be the free will of the hill or river that would determine its moral standing? (Heh. What a question to ponder!)
Anyway, trouble will arise on the Ganges, whether from the river itself or its denizens, I do not yet know; somehow, trouble will come.
The fact of the matter is, Tenshio is a powerhouse and few creatures can stand toe to toe with him, though no one really knows it yet. At the moment, he's just this quiet, formally speaking creature with strange eyes and a tendency to get sea sick. But, I can feel free to throw some major players at him, especially when backed up by the crew of the Unabara Maru, Lord Fushi and the husky.
That is a formidable group, right there. I might actually need the Ganges itself to rise up against them, in order to present them with any kind of challenge at all. In the mountains, they might meet up with Yeti. Maybe. Only they will be like the Kringmerk; uncorrupted.
In other news, I went on a shopping trip today. Holy cow. How much stuff can just two people consume? Unending stuff, it what the answer would look like, if you had happened to see my shopping cart as I valiantly shoved its towering heights through the parking lot this morning.
I'm almost afraid to imagine what the cart would look like if we did have children. I'd have to go every single week, or go on the weekend, so Keith and I could both push a cart.
Our pool was growing algae, a lovely green algae. This green was showing up on the straps of my bikini; I wondered what was making it turn green like that. No one came to check on the pool for three weeks and we've had several heavy rainstorms, so it was reverting back to a state of nature. I saw fireflies dancing out there last night.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
July 12th
I woke up to an unusually foggy morning here. It is suffocatingly damp and hot out there, and the cement is covered by the broken pieces of branches and bunches of leaves that got flung down in the last storm. They've all shriveled and turned rusty brown now. I scoop them out of the pool each time I swim.
As I was fixing my coffee, I had a unexpected moment of nostalgia for Kentucky, no less. So, that can get filed in Merriam Webster, listed under "irony."
Colorado now feels so far away that it's no more than a dream, a dream of clear, dry air and fresh sunlight. It is now the stuff of legend, and the reverence that a legend commands is often in our voice when Keith and I speak of it. "Colorado," we sigh, with low, hushed voices, "oh, Colorado!"
I'm bogged down, temporarily, in Torii. I hate writing through the awful parts. It seems so terribly complicated and I hate thinking through them. I still haven't figured out who exactly it is that is abusing her, what his relationship to her is, how old he is, what his position in life is, where he lives, etc, etc.
Basically, I know nothing about him because I wish to give him as little thought as possible. That's ok, for now. It's ok not to know a lot of things about your own story, even while you're writing it. At some point, I'll sit down and map this person out.
There's so much mercy in my story that I'm even tempted to extend mercy to him. For example, I was going to have Tenshio castrate him, once Tenshio learned who he was. And then, when I got to that part, I thought, doesn't justice lie with God?
Though, of course, Tenshio can act as the agent of God's justice. It wouldn't be wrong of Tenshio to do that; it would be gratifying. And I may still have that happen. It's just, I got to that part and somehow, I held back.
In the meantime, Gilly has been forced to realize that the dead girl lives inside of her. The next step is to realize that the dead girl is a part of her, and not evil, and not dead, and not bestial. Tenshio will have to explain this to her, over and over again.
It's a hard thing to believe. Actually, writing about the early stages of Gilly's emerging memories was quite difficult. I know now that the part of myself that held the abuse memories was incredible good, to point of self sacrifice, and incredible strong.
But I remember distinctly when I thought of that little girl as evil. Going back to that place felt almost like a betrayal of that part of me that had sacrificed so much for me, that part that waited in the filthy dark for years and years, waiting for me to become strong enough to rescue her.
However, Torii just wouldn't be as powerful if I didn't write it fully through every stage of the process. Besides, self hatred can be so pervasive, and for so many different reasons. I want to write one story of such self hatred and reveal how transforming it is when we choose to look at ourselves in a different way, when our eyes are opened to who we truly are.
I didn't expect these issues to be coming while on board the ship. I planned on having that happen on the Indian subcontinent. I thought of the ship voyage as largely trouble free; I had some vague idea that the water itself would be like a sponge and absorb the spiritual qualities of the Kagamihara, or some such nonsense.
I am letting the story spin out as it will, though it's not going according to my schedule. I'm worried that if I try too much to direct it against my own, mostly subconscious instincts, the story itself will dry up. Maybe by the time they reach Tenjiku, Gilly will have made some kind of peace with herself and be ready to see the actual memories themselves.
By the way, Tenjiku is the ancient Japanese name for India and guess what it means? The heavenly middle of the earth, or the sacred center- something along those lines. I'm not making this crap up, it's true. How cool is that?
Since I am getting closer and closer to the massive "hinge" of the story, or the Torii gate itself, I'm beginning to see more and more clearly how it's going to be written, which is exciting. I'm eager to be on the other side of this curve.
As I was fixing my coffee, I had a unexpected moment of nostalgia for Kentucky, no less. So, that can get filed in Merriam Webster, listed under "irony."
Colorado now feels so far away that it's no more than a dream, a dream of clear, dry air and fresh sunlight. It is now the stuff of legend, and the reverence that a legend commands is often in our voice when Keith and I speak of it. "Colorado," we sigh, with low, hushed voices, "oh, Colorado!"
I'm bogged down, temporarily, in Torii. I hate writing through the awful parts. It seems so terribly complicated and I hate thinking through them. I still haven't figured out who exactly it is that is abusing her, what his relationship to her is, how old he is, what his position in life is, where he lives, etc, etc.
Basically, I know nothing about him because I wish to give him as little thought as possible. That's ok, for now. It's ok not to know a lot of things about your own story, even while you're writing it. At some point, I'll sit down and map this person out.
There's so much mercy in my story that I'm even tempted to extend mercy to him. For example, I was going to have Tenshio castrate him, once Tenshio learned who he was. And then, when I got to that part, I thought, doesn't justice lie with God?
Though, of course, Tenshio can act as the agent of God's justice. It wouldn't be wrong of Tenshio to do that; it would be gratifying. And I may still have that happen. It's just, I got to that part and somehow, I held back.
In the meantime, Gilly has been forced to realize that the dead girl lives inside of her. The next step is to realize that the dead girl is a part of her, and not evil, and not dead, and not bestial. Tenshio will have to explain this to her, over and over again.
It's a hard thing to believe. Actually, writing about the early stages of Gilly's emerging memories was quite difficult. I know now that the part of myself that held the abuse memories was incredible good, to point of self sacrifice, and incredible strong.
But I remember distinctly when I thought of that little girl as evil. Going back to that place felt almost like a betrayal of that part of me that had sacrificed so much for me, that part that waited in the filthy dark for years and years, waiting for me to become strong enough to rescue her.
However, Torii just wouldn't be as powerful if I didn't write it fully through every stage of the process. Besides, self hatred can be so pervasive, and for so many different reasons. I want to write one story of such self hatred and reveal how transforming it is when we choose to look at ourselves in a different way, when our eyes are opened to who we truly are.
I didn't expect these issues to be coming while on board the ship. I planned on having that happen on the Indian subcontinent. I thought of the ship voyage as largely trouble free; I had some vague idea that the water itself would be like a sponge and absorb the spiritual qualities of the Kagamihara, or some such nonsense.
I am letting the story spin out as it will, though it's not going according to my schedule. I'm worried that if I try too much to direct it against my own, mostly subconscious instincts, the story itself will dry up. Maybe by the time they reach Tenjiku, Gilly will have made some kind of peace with herself and be ready to see the actual memories themselves.
By the way, Tenjiku is the ancient Japanese name for India and guess what it means? The heavenly middle of the earth, or the sacred center- something along those lines. I'm not making this crap up, it's true. How cool is that?
Since I am getting closer and closer to the massive "hinge" of the story, or the Torii gate itself, I'm beginning to see more and more clearly how it's going to be written, which is exciting. I'm eager to be on the other side of this curve.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
July 10th
Excerpt:
“Are you coming to bed now?” Gilly asked Tenshio, once she was safety tucked in the bottom bunk of the cabin.
The lamp light fell in a long slice of orange across the deck and onto her feet, and across the thick silver fur of Pidguyok’s back. He was curled up at the foot of the bed, his long snout resting on his front paws. Tenshio’s face was in shadow, but she could see his eyes glimmering. She could hear the sound of water murmuring and gurgling just on the other side of the hull of the ship, and for once, the sound was not soothing.
“No,” confessed Tenshio slowly, caught off guard. “I was going to read.”
“It won’t storm tonight, will it?” she asked, anxiously.
“That seems unlikely, though I have no expertise in predictions of that kind.”
“Will you say my prayers with me?” she whispered.
“Of course,” he said quietly.
“Go ahead,” she said, after a moment.
“Ah,” said Tenshio. “I go first. Very well.” He reached forward and placed his hand gently on her head. “Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch or weep tonight,” he said, his low, calm voice complimenting the quiet rhythm of the words, “and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, Lord Kyuusheishu; rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones; soothe your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones; shield your joyous ones; and all for your love's sake. Amen.”
Gilly opened her eyes in wonder. “Where did you learn that?” she whispered.
“A philosopher who lived centuries ago in your world first prayed that,” Tenshio explained, putting his hand back in his lap. “I thought it would be appropriate.”
“Who’s Lord Cue-says-you?” she asked, suspiciously.
“You call Him the Messiah,” explained Tenshio, letting her pronunciation go, for once.
“My prayer isn’t that good,” admitted Gilly, embarrassed.
“God would not expect your prayer to be anything other than that of a child’s,” Tenshio assured her.
Gilly sighed and pushed the blankets back. She sat up on her knees, clasped her hands and composed herself for the trial.
“Dear Jesus,” she prayed. “Please forgive me my sins. Thank You for the ship and please make sure it stays up. Please be with my mom and dad and everyone. Thank you for Master Tenshio and Pid... yok. Don’t let the squid come up from the dark. In Jesus name, Amen.”
She looked up at Tenshio, questioningly.
“Those squid do not normally come to the surface, Gilly,” he said gently. “They prefer to stay in the deeps, where they are comfortable. They are not inherently evil; they are as they have been created to be.”
“God created them?”
“Of course.”
“But there are evil things here,” Gilly said. It was almost eerie, the assurance with which she stated it. “They’re coming.”
The hackles went up on Pidguyok’s back; he lifted his head and looked at Tenshio, his blue eyes wide.
“Pay no attention them,” said Tenshio, calmly. “Their fate lies in wait for them. At the proper time, they will meet their end.”
“By you,” added Gilly.
“Some,” he qualified. “And some by you.”
“I will kill them?” she whispered, doubtfully. “But I can’t.”
“You do not yet know the full extent of your power,” explained Tenshio. “When you are an adult, it will be made clear to you.”
“But you will stay with me.”
“When you are in this world, I will,” he assured her.
“What happens when I leave this world?”
“God Himself will stay by you.”
“What will you do?” She looked up at him, sorrow in her face. Her fingers picked at the wool blankets.
“I will visit you.”
“Forever?”
“For as long as you or I are living.”
“Will you have children?” asked Gilly suddenly, the idea just then occurring to her.
“I hope to, one day,” Tenshio answered, surprised.
This was an insupportable turn of events, to Gilly. All in one moment, she hated those children; she hated them with all the fire of her heart. Those lucky ones, those safe ones; cosseted, loved, taught, and secure! In the next moment, the hate turned to dust as she repented, horrified at how black and unacceptable her heart was. She was a covetous, evil girl.
Without realizing it, a tear trailed down her cheek. She turned and threw herself onto her pillow, hiding her face under it. She was the ragged one, the orphan. She was the one who wore the cast offs, who received the leavings of her parent’s life and affection. It was her lot and she must bear up under it, and be loyal to her parents. She must honor and obey them at all times.
Tenshio was bewildered, uncertain what had just happened. He put his hand gently on her back. “Gilly?” he asked.
“No!” she cried, her voice muffled.
“Gilly, what is the matter?” he asked, sternly.
“I don’t want you to!” she cried, sitting up and making a clean breast of it. Tears soaked her cheeks; she could not look at him. She looked instead at the ceiling. “I don’t want you to!”
“You don’t want me to what? Do you mean that you don’t want me to have children?” He looked at her in amazement. “Why ever not?”
“You’ll love them more,” Gilly sobbed out, abject, her shoulders bowed.
“Gilly,” he breathed. He reached out and pulled her close into his arms. “Little Gilly. Don’t you know that I could never love another child, or indeed, another person, in the way that I love you? Your place in my heart is unique, just as you are irreplaceable.”
He put his face against the top of her head, inexpertly combed and smelling of ocean. “It was not by accident that God sent you into my care,” he said, quietly. “He has a purpose, and every purpose that comes down from the Sacred Realm is a good, though many times we cannot know what it is.”
“Are you coming to bed now?” Gilly asked Tenshio, once she was safety tucked in the bottom bunk of the cabin.
The lamp light fell in a long slice of orange across the deck and onto her feet, and across the thick silver fur of Pidguyok’s back. He was curled up at the foot of the bed, his long snout resting on his front paws. Tenshio’s face was in shadow, but she could see his eyes glimmering. She could hear the sound of water murmuring and gurgling just on the other side of the hull of the ship, and for once, the sound was not soothing.
“No,” confessed Tenshio slowly, caught off guard. “I was going to read.”
“It won’t storm tonight, will it?” she asked, anxiously.
“That seems unlikely, though I have no expertise in predictions of that kind.”
“Will you say my prayers with me?” she whispered.
“Of course,” he said quietly.
“Go ahead,” she said, after a moment.
“Ah,” said Tenshio. “I go first. Very well.” He reached forward and placed his hand gently on her head. “Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch or weep tonight,” he said, his low, calm voice complimenting the quiet rhythm of the words, “and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, Lord Kyuusheishu; rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones; soothe your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones; shield your joyous ones; and all for your love's sake. Amen.”
Gilly opened her eyes in wonder. “Where did you learn that?” she whispered.
“A philosopher who lived centuries ago in your world first prayed that,” Tenshio explained, putting his hand back in his lap. “I thought it would be appropriate.”
“Who’s Lord Cue-says-you?” she asked, suspiciously.
“You call Him the Messiah,” explained Tenshio, letting her pronunciation go, for once.
“My prayer isn’t that good,” admitted Gilly, embarrassed.
“God would not expect your prayer to be anything other than that of a child’s,” Tenshio assured her.
Gilly sighed and pushed the blankets back. She sat up on her knees, clasped her hands and composed herself for the trial.
“Dear Jesus,” she prayed. “Please forgive me my sins. Thank You for the ship and please make sure it stays up. Please be with my mom and dad and everyone. Thank you for Master Tenshio and Pid... yok. Don’t let the squid come up from the dark. In Jesus name, Amen.”
She looked up at Tenshio, questioningly.
“Those squid do not normally come to the surface, Gilly,” he said gently. “They prefer to stay in the deeps, where they are comfortable. They are not inherently evil; they are as they have been created to be.”
“God created them?”
“Of course.”
“But there are evil things here,” Gilly said. It was almost eerie, the assurance with which she stated it. “They’re coming.”
The hackles went up on Pidguyok’s back; he lifted his head and looked at Tenshio, his blue eyes wide.
“Pay no attention them,” said Tenshio, calmly. “Their fate lies in wait for them. At the proper time, they will meet their end.”
“By you,” added Gilly.
“Some,” he qualified. “And some by you.”
“I will kill them?” she whispered, doubtfully. “But I can’t.”
“You do not yet know the full extent of your power,” explained Tenshio. “When you are an adult, it will be made clear to you.”
“But you will stay with me.”
“When you are in this world, I will,” he assured her.
“What happens when I leave this world?”
“God Himself will stay by you.”
“What will you do?” She looked up at him, sorrow in her face. Her fingers picked at the wool blankets.
“I will visit you.”
“Forever?”
“For as long as you or I are living.”
“Will you have children?” asked Gilly suddenly, the idea just then occurring to her.
“I hope to, one day,” Tenshio answered, surprised.
This was an insupportable turn of events, to Gilly. All in one moment, she hated those children; she hated them with all the fire of her heart. Those lucky ones, those safe ones; cosseted, loved, taught, and secure! In the next moment, the hate turned to dust as she repented, horrified at how black and unacceptable her heart was. She was a covetous, evil girl.
Without realizing it, a tear trailed down her cheek. She turned and threw herself onto her pillow, hiding her face under it. She was the ragged one, the orphan. She was the one who wore the cast offs, who received the leavings of her parent’s life and affection. It was her lot and she must bear up under it, and be loyal to her parents. She must honor and obey them at all times.
Tenshio was bewildered, uncertain what had just happened. He put his hand gently on her back. “Gilly?” he asked.
“No!” she cried, her voice muffled.
“Gilly, what is the matter?” he asked, sternly.
“I don’t want you to!” she cried, sitting up and making a clean breast of it. Tears soaked her cheeks; she could not look at him. She looked instead at the ceiling. “I don’t want you to!”
“You don’t want me to what? Do you mean that you don’t want me to have children?” He looked at her in amazement. “Why ever not?”
“You’ll love them more,” Gilly sobbed out, abject, her shoulders bowed.
“Gilly,” he breathed. He reached out and pulled her close into his arms. “Little Gilly. Don’t you know that I could never love another child, or indeed, another person, in the way that I love you? Your place in my heart is unique, just as you are irreplaceable.”
He put his face against the top of her head, inexpertly combed and smelling of ocean. “It was not by accident that God sent you into my care,” he said, quietly. “He has a purpose, and every purpose that comes down from the Sacred Realm is a good, though many times we cannot know what it is.”
Saturday, July 9, 2011
July 9th
"Grace is such a humiliation to the ego, and such a surrendering for the human need to achieve, that even most of church history has lived inside of the economy of merit. We have been offered so much more, but it only makes sense to those who have personally “suffered” the experience of unearned love."
Adapted from Simplicity, p. 121, Richard Rohr
I stole this from my dad's facebook page.
I'm getting more confident in my ship scenes, as I continue to pick up the vocabulary. I have to go back and lot and correct stuff. In my last scene, when I said the sails had been trimmed back, that was incorrect. Trimmed is when they are adjusted for the right angle to catch as much energy from the wind as possible, so that between the sails and the keel, the ship is propelled forward.
Reefed is when the the sails are drawn back, to prevent being over canvassed, a bad condition which could lead, in worst cases to the ship capsizing and certainly to damage to the rigging.
Excerpt:
In the morning, the water was a scintillating expanse of rippling wave and sunlight. The air was fresh and clear and cold, but the sun’s heat felt a little stronger than before. Most of the deck had dried. The sails were fully unfurled; the ship was soaring over the blue and gleaming waters.
Gilly had had a breakfast of fried fish and rice, Pidguyok had eaten his fish raw on the deck, leaving a brilliant scattering of silvery scales over the planks and Tenshio had eating nothing at all, though he had drunk a cup of very hot tea.
He sat on the salon roof and closed his eyes, profoundly thankful that the seas were relatively calm, though the skimming motion of the ship did sent up wide arcs and sheets of spray. The rope railing was soaked.
Plum Blossom, having been retrieved that morning from the luggage, was now being introduced to the ship. She was shown the bowsprit that extended out over the ocean at the very front of the ship and to which were rigged three overlapped triangular sails, the jib, the flying jib and the stay foresail.
Below the bowsprit was a large rope net, which Gilly assumed was there in case people fell off, since she had seen crew members lightly walking along the length of the bowsprit from time to time, sometimes not even using their hands, a feat which had deeply and truly impressed her.
She longed to try it herself, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that any step of hers in that direction would cause Tenshio to spontaneously combust. She glanced over at him, covertly. He appeared to be drowsing in the sun, his eyes shut, his hands in his lamp.
She was not fooled; he was always paying attention. In fact, just that morning when she had been eating her rice, he had instructed her to sit up straight. This had offended Gilly’s sense of time and place; surely while on board ship, a person could not possibly be expected to eat with the same attention to manners as they would elsewhere. Surely it was like a picnic! But no. Table manners were still clearly expected to be followed.
Plum Blossom was shown the impressive foremast, which towered up over the bow of the ship, and the fore boom, the thick beam that extended out horizontally, fore and aft, over the main salon roof, towards the stern of the ship. The running and standing rigging, the ropes that held and maneuvered the massive foresail, were secured to these two beams.
Beyond the salon roof, closer to the stern of the ship, rose the main mast and this was even taller than the fore mast. The main boom extended out past the stern of the ship and securely held the main sail and its lines.
Under the main boom, on the quarter deck, was the wheel of the ship, with its iconic spokes that so delighted Gilly. She had touched them covertly, gently, in passing and the crew member who stood there had grinned down at her.
“Do you want to steer the ship, little girl?” he had asked, with the same sing song beauty of voice that Kaito spoke with. This crew member was broad and tall both, missing his right pinky finger, and wore his dreadlocks loose. Despite the chill in the air, he was barefoot and wore nothing but baggy trousers and a wool vest.
Caught in the grip of an agonizing shyness, Gilly could only mutely shake her head, though she lied. She did want to steer the ship; she longed to steer the ship. But she turned away and ran quickly down from the quarter deck to where Tenshio still peacefully sat on the main deck. She huddled up against him.
“You can steer the ship for a little while, if you wish to, Gilly,” Tenshio said to her with gentle amusement.
“No,” breathed Gilly. “It’s okay.”
“No, thank you,” corrected Tenshio, automatically.
“No, thank you,” repeated Gilly, resigned.
Pidguyok came trotting quickly from the bow of the ship, where he had been hanging off the railing by his front paws, his bushy tail alert as he had scanned the glistening waters below for fish. He threw himself down on the warm, dry deck, his ears pricked forward, his pink tongue hanging out his open mouth.
“One day, we’ll have our own ship, Gilly,” he stately happily. “Once upon a time. Or a long time from now, to be more exact. It will be made of mother of pearl, fish scales and whale bones. Our sails will be clouds caught from the sky, and they’ll take us straight through the morning light. We’ll eat fatty seals and drink elderberry wine and be the ruler of all we survey.”
“Captain Pidguyok!” cried Gilly, delighted.
“Admiral Gilly!” reciprocated the husky, generously.
“What will Master Tenshio be?” she asked, glancing up at his face. He looked down at her in surprise, not expecting to be included in their games.
“Why, His Honorable Reverence will be sea sick; as usual,” answered Pidguyok with a toothy and wicked grin.
Adapted from Simplicity, p. 121, Richard Rohr
I stole this from my dad's facebook page.
I'm getting more confident in my ship scenes, as I continue to pick up the vocabulary. I have to go back and lot and correct stuff. In my last scene, when I said the sails had been trimmed back, that was incorrect. Trimmed is when they are adjusted for the right angle to catch as much energy from the wind as possible, so that between the sails and the keel, the ship is propelled forward.
Reefed is when the the sails are drawn back, to prevent being over canvassed, a bad condition which could lead, in worst cases to the ship capsizing and certainly to damage to the rigging.
Excerpt:
In the morning, the water was a scintillating expanse of rippling wave and sunlight. The air was fresh and clear and cold, but the sun’s heat felt a little stronger than before. Most of the deck had dried. The sails were fully unfurled; the ship was soaring over the blue and gleaming waters.
Gilly had had a breakfast of fried fish and rice, Pidguyok had eaten his fish raw on the deck, leaving a brilliant scattering of silvery scales over the planks and Tenshio had eating nothing at all, though he had drunk a cup of very hot tea.
He sat on the salon roof and closed his eyes, profoundly thankful that the seas were relatively calm, though the skimming motion of the ship did sent up wide arcs and sheets of spray. The rope railing was soaked.
Plum Blossom, having been retrieved that morning from the luggage, was now being introduced to the ship. She was shown the bowsprit that extended out over the ocean at the very front of the ship and to which were rigged three overlapped triangular sails, the jib, the flying jib and the stay foresail.
Below the bowsprit was a large rope net, which Gilly assumed was there in case people fell off, since she had seen crew members lightly walking along the length of the bowsprit from time to time, sometimes not even using their hands, a feat which had deeply and truly impressed her.
She longed to try it herself, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that any step of hers in that direction would cause Tenshio to spontaneously combust. She glanced over at him, covertly. He appeared to be drowsing in the sun, his eyes shut, his hands in his lamp.
She was not fooled; he was always paying attention. In fact, just that morning when she had been eating her rice, he had instructed her to sit up straight. This had offended Gilly’s sense of time and place; surely while on board ship, a person could not possibly be expected to eat with the same attention to manners as they would elsewhere. Surely it was like a picnic! But no. Table manners were still clearly expected to be followed.
Plum Blossom was shown the impressive foremast, which towered up over the bow of the ship, and the fore boom, the thick beam that extended out horizontally, fore and aft, over the main salon roof, towards the stern of the ship. The running and standing rigging, the ropes that held and maneuvered the massive foresail, were secured to these two beams.
Beyond the salon roof, closer to the stern of the ship, rose the main mast and this was even taller than the fore mast. The main boom extended out past the stern of the ship and securely held the main sail and its lines.
Under the main boom, on the quarter deck, was the wheel of the ship, with its iconic spokes that so delighted Gilly. She had touched them covertly, gently, in passing and the crew member who stood there had grinned down at her.
“Do you want to steer the ship, little girl?” he had asked, with the same sing song beauty of voice that Kaito spoke with. This crew member was broad and tall both, missing his right pinky finger, and wore his dreadlocks loose. Despite the chill in the air, he was barefoot and wore nothing but baggy trousers and a wool vest.
Caught in the grip of an agonizing shyness, Gilly could only mutely shake her head, though she lied. She did want to steer the ship; she longed to steer the ship. But she turned away and ran quickly down from the quarter deck to where Tenshio still peacefully sat on the main deck. She huddled up against him.
“You can steer the ship for a little while, if you wish to, Gilly,” Tenshio said to her with gentle amusement.
“No,” breathed Gilly. “It’s okay.”
“No, thank you,” corrected Tenshio, automatically.
“No, thank you,” repeated Gilly, resigned.
Pidguyok came trotting quickly from the bow of the ship, where he had been hanging off the railing by his front paws, his bushy tail alert as he had scanned the glistening waters below for fish. He threw himself down on the warm, dry deck, his ears pricked forward, his pink tongue hanging out his open mouth.
“One day, we’ll have our own ship, Gilly,” he stately happily. “Once upon a time. Or a long time from now, to be more exact. It will be made of mother of pearl, fish scales and whale bones. Our sails will be clouds caught from the sky, and they’ll take us straight through the morning light. We’ll eat fatty seals and drink elderberry wine and be the ruler of all we survey.”
“Captain Pidguyok!” cried Gilly, delighted.
“Admiral Gilly!” reciprocated the husky, generously.
“What will Master Tenshio be?” she asked, glancing up at his face. He looked down at her in surprise, not expecting to be included in their games.
“Why, His Honorable Reverence will be sea sick; as usual,” answered Pidguyok with a toothy and wicked grin.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Written July 6th
I spent pretty much all day yesterday rereading this blog and wow, but I am an odd bird. And I don't hide it. Oh no. I'm just openly, consistently, passionately eccentric.
Who writes about that kind of stuff? Me, apparently. If I weren't me, I think I'd be a little scared of me.
I wish I wasn't so odd, sometimes. For example, it would be great to just fit into a church. I didn't start attending church with the express purpose of trying to find fault with it or the pastor. I was guarded due to past experience, but still up for giving it one more try, you know? I really listened to the sermons. I thought them through, not to find mistakes, but to simply think them through.
Two Sundays ago, I actually shook the pastor's hand and said, "Your sermons always give me so much to think about. I appreciate that." I was speaking genuinely. I didn't tell him that I frequently disagree with what he said, but maybe he picked up on that from the expressions on my face, try as I might to hide them.
Frequently, I wish I had not taken the opportunity to write about my experiences with Christ. When I do so, I sound bizarre. Doing so causes me no end of internal upset, anxiety and heartburn.
On the other hand, I feel Christ very close to me before and after, so it's worth it. I'm constantly checking in; do you want me to say this? How can I phrase that? What does that mean? Do You want me to say this? Where on earth is that verse located?
When I'm finished, it's as though He is the sea and I'm floating away on Him. That's what it felt like last night and the night before. I couldn't sleep for talking to Him... which is a bizarre thing to say.
It helps a little when I remember that He does have a history of using weird people. And various people say wonderful things to me after I've posted, things which remind me that I'm playing a very small part in a very beautiful, vast picture.
So I guess I'll go on writing about these things. I didn't used to be strong enough. My relationship with Christ was my secret; my lovely, hidden world of grace that I kept sheltered away lest someone in Authority came along and said "You cannot have that. That's not how it works. Go back and start over." I know I don't deserve what Christ gives me, so I'm vulnerable to agreeing with such statements.
When I was in middle school, I was riding on the school bus and watching the sun come up through the trunks of the trees, bare and black, as they flowed past the dirty window, when an awful truth struck me: I did not love Jesus.
I thought of Him as He was portrayed on my childhood Bible: a pastel Jesus, interested in lambs and pink cheeked children. He was above earthly realities, sitting in heaven, the demanding and angry first born Son of the demanding and thunderous Father. Jesus was frowning down at me because I owed Him big time and, instead of being a grateful, good girl, I was instead a resentful, hard hearted girl.
Horror enveloped my soul as I realized this. This was sin above and beyond that of the usual sin. I was sinning in the Big Leagues. I scrambled to make recompense, to ask for forgiveness: I scrabbled around in my heart, desperate to find some scrap of honest love I could offer up to God's own Son, the one who stood amid the crowd two thousand years ago and said inscrutable things that I could not for the life of me figure out and was certain I could never live up to.
I couldn't. It was terrifying. There was nothing I could do; I had to wallow in my miserable state. I told myself that when I went to the summer convention that my church held for its youth, I would wrestle with this unacceptable state of my heart. In that settling, surely I would find some kind of acceptable answer; surely my heart would be softened.
When that time rolled around, I took myself up to the prayer tower that still stood as a testament to the beginnings of the church I was raised in- by my reckoning, a very holy place, infused with prayer and obedience. God would have to speak to me there, on the seventh story.
I stayed up there all afternoon. I stayed up there for hour upon hour, reading my white bound Bible, underlining dozens of verses and searching for an answer. I watched while the sun moved through the sky and the shadows changed.
By early evening, I was exhausted and without an answer. I closed the Bible; my prayer changed to a feeling of sheer desperation. What could make me love God as I ought to love Him? What was wrong with me?
In the stillness, I began to be conscious of a growing sensation; one of emptiness. It was as though I could actually see it, and it was inside of me. It was as though I carried around inside of me a square box of frightening emptiness.
In my fear, I cried out to God, "Fill me! Fill my emptiness!" I knew that He was supposed to do that; I had some expectation of Him doing that.
After a moment of perfect stillness, I felt a sensation of liquid warmth being poured over my head. I recognized it immediately for what it was; the symbolism was familiar to me from my church. Only it wasn't oil; it was love. God was pouring down His love for me, starting from the top of my head all the way to my toes.
It was almost unbearable, the amount of love that was being poured out on me. It was as though my body would burst from it. I could not sit still one moment longer. I leaped up from the hard wooden chair.
I want racing down all the many flights of stairs; I ran out into the night. I was acutely, marvelously aware of Christ Himself running along beside me. We were both running and leaping for joy on the dew wet grass of the wide lawns that stretched out on either side of the building.
It was the first time I experienced Christ as a Person. His love for me was so great and so personal that I couldn't take it all in and I could not express it. God Himself was running around with me in the dark: because He loved me, because He knew exactly what it was like to be me, because He is like that.
Later on, as I was tucked up in my sleeping bag, I let Him go. I said, "I know I can't feel You like this all the time. That's unreasonable to expect. But I know You'll always be there, even if I can't feel You. Now I know; all the rest of my life I'll know."
But I never expected the rest of my life to so deeply test that statement.
Several years later, at what I think was the last church gathering I attended, I stood and sang a hymn. I knew He wanted me to sing that exact hymn; that is the only thing that could have compelled me to stand in front of the church and sing, with no practice before hand.
What I didn't know, was that my entire life as I knew it was about to end. I couldn't know. Even then, my family was reeling from revelations of the sexual abuse that had riddled it. Very soon, we would be leaving that church, which was my entire world.
Very soon, I would graduate high school with no plans and no hopes for the future, besides surviving. I would end up marrying an emotionally immature man, an act which would destroy what was left of the person I thought I was.
I would spend the next ten years searching desperately to figure out who I was and how I was supposed to live, all the while crippled by severe anxiety and smothering depression. I would end up in trauma therapy for almost five years, all told. I would try and fail, and try and fail again to try and be the person I thought I was supposed to be, until I finally gave up.
In short, everything soon would be in pieces at my feet. I knew nothing of this; but I knew Christ wanted me up there, on the steps before the podium. So I went. I sang this:
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
is laid for your faith in his excellent word!
What more can he say than to you he hath said,
to you that for refuge to Jesus have fled?
"Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed!
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
"When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
the rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
for I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
"When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
my grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
"The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
that soul, though all hell shall endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake."
(How Firm a Foundation, John Rippon, 1787)
By the time I got to the second verse, tears were pouring down my face; when I looked into the audience, I saw that many others were weeping with me. I could barely sing the fourth verse. It came out in a hoarse croak.
As I sang, it was as though the very roof of the Sanctuary was lifted off; I saw right up through it, into heaven, and I knew that I moved heaven. It was terrifying; it was awe inspiring. It was as though Almighty God moved His eyes right to me, because I was singing His own words to Him.
That summer I left my exhusband, I deliberately put God in the backseat of my life; I told Him I was. The religious strictures and dogmatic, legalistic systems that, in my own mind, were all bound up with Him, were finally too much for me. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know how to think. I had so many conflicting ideas of what the Christian walk was that I felt completely unable to walk it at all. I shut myself away from Him.
I fully expected Him to abandon me. I had been taught that He would. I had been taught that those who sin can't be close to Him and must, in fact, be punished by Him. I told Him that I wasn't expecting clemency; I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew I was leaving His special protection and I could no longer expect His blessing.
The thing is though, that none of that happened. He never shut Himself away from me; I never felt His punishment, I never felt His anger. Good things happened to me, so did hard things. Whenever I let down my guard, He was right there, loving, patient, and personal. It even offended me, at times. It offended my sense of rightness.
It took Him over a decade to prove to me that His own promises, those promises that I sang to Him, He would keep. He would keep them all exactly as I had sung them. He would keep them despite my sin, in the face of my disbelief, and through my weakness, because it is in weakness that His strength is made perfect.
So we have a history; He and I. We have a history that began before the foundations of the world were laid, a history that charts all the crooked lines of my life.
Years ago, He saw the blood, sweat and tears that poured from my pursuit of a perfection that I believed would please Him. He didn't despise that gift. He loved me the same. All the while His heart was breaking as I condemned myself again and again for my failures, as I took myself away from Him even before He had a chance to say one thing to me, even a word of mercy.
My striving was not the object of His ardor. I think what He most wanted was for me to cease that striving and instead, to fall limp and ugly and incomplete into His arms. He wanted to take over that work for me, so that He could be everything to me. He is a jealous God- it's true. When I did that, He caught me right up close to Himself. He won't let me go, nothing can take me out of His hand.
I don't know why He pours His heart out to me in the way He does. But I know that a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He leads justice to victory. -Matthew 12:20-21
He is the most delicious thing in my life. That verse that says, taste and see that the Lord is good- that verse does not lie. I have been loved, pursued and won by God Himself. How could anyone resist that? I cannot.
Even if it does come out sounding really, really weird.
Who writes about that kind of stuff? Me, apparently. If I weren't me, I think I'd be a little scared of me.
I wish I wasn't so odd, sometimes. For example, it would be great to just fit into a church. I didn't start attending church with the express purpose of trying to find fault with it or the pastor. I was guarded due to past experience, but still up for giving it one more try, you know? I really listened to the sermons. I thought them through, not to find mistakes, but to simply think them through.
Two Sundays ago, I actually shook the pastor's hand and said, "Your sermons always give me so much to think about. I appreciate that." I was speaking genuinely. I didn't tell him that I frequently disagree with what he said, but maybe he picked up on that from the expressions on my face, try as I might to hide them.
Frequently, I wish I had not taken the opportunity to write about my experiences with Christ. When I do so, I sound bizarre. Doing so causes me no end of internal upset, anxiety and heartburn.
On the other hand, I feel Christ very close to me before and after, so it's worth it. I'm constantly checking in; do you want me to say this? How can I phrase that? What does that mean? Do You want me to say this? Where on earth is that verse located?
When I'm finished, it's as though He is the sea and I'm floating away on Him. That's what it felt like last night and the night before. I couldn't sleep for talking to Him... which is a bizarre thing to say.
It helps a little when I remember that He does have a history of using weird people. And various people say wonderful things to me after I've posted, things which remind me that I'm playing a very small part in a very beautiful, vast picture.
So I guess I'll go on writing about these things. I didn't used to be strong enough. My relationship with Christ was my secret; my lovely, hidden world of grace that I kept sheltered away lest someone in Authority came along and said "You cannot have that. That's not how it works. Go back and start over." I know I don't deserve what Christ gives me, so I'm vulnerable to agreeing with such statements.
When I was in middle school, I was riding on the school bus and watching the sun come up through the trunks of the trees, bare and black, as they flowed past the dirty window, when an awful truth struck me: I did not love Jesus.
I thought of Him as He was portrayed on my childhood Bible: a pastel Jesus, interested in lambs and pink cheeked children. He was above earthly realities, sitting in heaven, the demanding and angry first born Son of the demanding and thunderous Father. Jesus was frowning down at me because I owed Him big time and, instead of being a grateful, good girl, I was instead a resentful, hard hearted girl.
Horror enveloped my soul as I realized this. This was sin above and beyond that of the usual sin. I was sinning in the Big Leagues. I scrambled to make recompense, to ask for forgiveness: I scrabbled around in my heart, desperate to find some scrap of honest love I could offer up to God's own Son, the one who stood amid the crowd two thousand years ago and said inscrutable things that I could not for the life of me figure out and was certain I could never live up to.
I couldn't. It was terrifying. There was nothing I could do; I had to wallow in my miserable state. I told myself that when I went to the summer convention that my church held for its youth, I would wrestle with this unacceptable state of my heart. In that settling, surely I would find some kind of acceptable answer; surely my heart would be softened.
When that time rolled around, I took myself up to the prayer tower that still stood as a testament to the beginnings of the church I was raised in- by my reckoning, a very holy place, infused with prayer and obedience. God would have to speak to me there, on the seventh story.
I stayed up there all afternoon. I stayed up there for hour upon hour, reading my white bound Bible, underlining dozens of verses and searching for an answer. I watched while the sun moved through the sky and the shadows changed.
By early evening, I was exhausted and without an answer. I closed the Bible; my prayer changed to a feeling of sheer desperation. What could make me love God as I ought to love Him? What was wrong with me?
In the stillness, I began to be conscious of a growing sensation; one of emptiness. It was as though I could actually see it, and it was inside of me. It was as though I carried around inside of me a square box of frightening emptiness.
In my fear, I cried out to God, "Fill me! Fill my emptiness!" I knew that He was supposed to do that; I had some expectation of Him doing that.
After a moment of perfect stillness, I felt a sensation of liquid warmth being poured over my head. I recognized it immediately for what it was; the symbolism was familiar to me from my church. Only it wasn't oil; it was love. God was pouring down His love for me, starting from the top of my head all the way to my toes.
It was almost unbearable, the amount of love that was being poured out on me. It was as though my body would burst from it. I could not sit still one moment longer. I leaped up from the hard wooden chair.
I want racing down all the many flights of stairs; I ran out into the night. I was acutely, marvelously aware of Christ Himself running along beside me. We were both running and leaping for joy on the dew wet grass of the wide lawns that stretched out on either side of the building.
It was the first time I experienced Christ as a Person. His love for me was so great and so personal that I couldn't take it all in and I could not express it. God Himself was running around with me in the dark: because He loved me, because He knew exactly what it was like to be me, because He is like that.
Later on, as I was tucked up in my sleeping bag, I let Him go. I said, "I know I can't feel You like this all the time. That's unreasonable to expect. But I know You'll always be there, even if I can't feel You. Now I know; all the rest of my life I'll know."
But I never expected the rest of my life to so deeply test that statement.
Several years later, at what I think was the last church gathering I attended, I stood and sang a hymn. I knew He wanted me to sing that exact hymn; that is the only thing that could have compelled me to stand in front of the church and sing, with no practice before hand.
What I didn't know, was that my entire life as I knew it was about to end. I couldn't know. Even then, my family was reeling from revelations of the sexual abuse that had riddled it. Very soon, we would be leaving that church, which was my entire world.
Very soon, I would graduate high school with no plans and no hopes for the future, besides surviving. I would end up marrying an emotionally immature man, an act which would destroy what was left of the person I thought I was.
I would spend the next ten years searching desperately to figure out who I was and how I was supposed to live, all the while crippled by severe anxiety and smothering depression. I would end up in trauma therapy for almost five years, all told. I would try and fail, and try and fail again to try and be the person I thought I was supposed to be, until I finally gave up.
In short, everything soon would be in pieces at my feet. I knew nothing of this; but I knew Christ wanted me up there, on the steps before the podium. So I went. I sang this:
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
is laid for your faith in his excellent word!
What more can he say than to you he hath said,
to you that for refuge to Jesus have fled?
"Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed!
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
"When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
the rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
for I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
"When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
my grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
"The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
that soul, though all hell shall endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake."
(How Firm a Foundation, John Rippon, 1787)
By the time I got to the second verse, tears were pouring down my face; when I looked into the audience, I saw that many others were weeping with me. I could barely sing the fourth verse. It came out in a hoarse croak.
As I sang, it was as though the very roof of the Sanctuary was lifted off; I saw right up through it, into heaven, and I knew that I moved heaven. It was terrifying; it was awe inspiring. It was as though Almighty God moved His eyes right to me, because I was singing His own words to Him.
That summer I left my exhusband, I deliberately put God in the backseat of my life; I told Him I was. The religious strictures and dogmatic, legalistic systems that, in my own mind, were all bound up with Him, were finally too much for me. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know how to think. I had so many conflicting ideas of what the Christian walk was that I felt completely unable to walk it at all. I shut myself away from Him.
I fully expected Him to abandon me. I had been taught that He would. I had been taught that those who sin can't be close to Him and must, in fact, be punished by Him. I told Him that I wasn't expecting clemency; I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew I was leaving His special protection and I could no longer expect His blessing.
The thing is though, that none of that happened. He never shut Himself away from me; I never felt His punishment, I never felt His anger. Good things happened to me, so did hard things. Whenever I let down my guard, He was right there, loving, patient, and personal. It even offended me, at times. It offended my sense of rightness.
It took Him over a decade to prove to me that His own promises, those promises that I sang to Him, He would keep. He would keep them all exactly as I had sung them. He would keep them despite my sin, in the face of my disbelief, and through my weakness, because it is in weakness that His strength is made perfect.
So we have a history; He and I. We have a history that began before the foundations of the world were laid, a history that charts all the crooked lines of my life.
Years ago, He saw the blood, sweat and tears that poured from my pursuit of a perfection that I believed would please Him. He didn't despise that gift. He loved me the same. All the while His heart was breaking as I condemned myself again and again for my failures, as I took myself away from Him even before He had a chance to say one thing to me, even a word of mercy.
My striving was not the object of His ardor. I think what He most wanted was for me to cease that striving and instead, to fall limp and ugly and incomplete into His arms. He wanted to take over that work for me, so that He could be everything to me. He is a jealous God- it's true. When I did that, He caught me right up close to Himself. He won't let me go, nothing can take me out of His hand.
I don't know why He pours His heart out to me in the way He does. But I know that a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He leads justice to victory. -Matthew 12:20-21
He is the most delicious thing in my life. That verse that says, taste and see that the Lord is good- that verse does not lie. I have been loved, pursued and won by God Himself. How could anyone resist that? I cannot.
Even if it does come out sounding really, really weird.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Written July 3rd...
...after church. It took me this long to find the guts to actually post the thing.
I made a mistake during the church service this week. It was kind of funny, when I think about it, though at the time I wanted the ground to swallow me up whole.
The pastor said, "Raise your hand if you're a perfect person." Only, I thought he said, "imperfect," so I half raised my hand.
I kid you not, I'm still cringing when I think of that mistake. He kept looking directly at me after that point, whenever talking about how we can't be perfect. Like, he somehow thought that I might seriously think myself perfect and serenely raise my hand during church service to publicly claim it for myself. Oh my goodness. Seriously?
On the other hand, it sort of does point out something interesting. I do consider myself to be perfect through Christ and my own imperfections and sins to be His business, since I cannot take care of them on my own. In that light, you might say that I do enjoy an unearthly and peaceful perfection which was bought for me through Christ.
The thing is, if I attempted to describe this to the pastor, I think that we would experience what would be called an impasse. From his sermons, I see that he believes our sin is our business; we must be in the business of personally stamping it out, with Christ acting as coach and cheerleader. You know, sort of on the sidelines, giving us instructions on how to be better and cheering us on when we make a right move.
He went so far as to say that our prayers are effective not because we are sinless, but because we sin less, a statement that puzzles me to no end. If it's the prayers of a righteous man that are answered, does one assume that his righteousness is tarnished only by a certain amount of sin? How much sin? Which sins?
And don't we wear Christ's righteousness? Is it possible to take that off, once we've put it on? Does Christ snatch His righteous robe back when we sin? But that doesn't make sense to me because don't we need it because of our sin in the first place? I don't know. But it just doesn't make sense to me.
That statement the pastor made about prayer is similar to something one of the guest pastors said concerning the Holy Spirit. The guest pastor said, "I want to have less sin in my life so that I can have more of the Holy Spirit."
It seems weird to me to think like that, to be perfectly honest. It's as though the pastor is saying that his soul is like a scale, and his sin is on one side, and the Holy Spirit is on the other, and he's constantly wrestling with his own sinful nature so that the scales tip, as much as possible, toward the Holy Spirit.
How can a person be partially worthy of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Isn't that kind of like saying you're half saved?
Can it be that it actually works that way? It's as though God were a car, a car that runs on our perfection. The more sin we stamp out, the holier the gasoline and the holier the gasoline, the further we can drive Him and the more we can get out of Him.
Whereas I tend to believe this:
"The plaintive, self-centred, morbid kind of prayer, a dead-set that I want to be right, is never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is a sign that I am rebelling against the Atonement. "Lord, I will purify my heart if You will answer my prayer; I will walk rightly if You will help me."
I cannot make myself right with God, I cannot make my life perfect; I can only be right with God if I accept the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it?
I have to resign every kind of claim and cease from every effort, and leave myself entirely alone in His hands, and then begin to pour out in the priestly work of intercession. There is much prayer that arises from real disbelief in the Atonement.
Jesus is not beginning to save us, He has saved us, the thing is done, and it is an insult to ask Him to do it." Oswald Chambers.
Whatever is in that church doesn't like my serenity in Christ. It is not acceptable to cease all effort, and to simply and humbly live in Christ, just exactly as one is, in that moment, and the next moment and the next.
It doesn't bother me that the pastor believes something different from me. I don't for one moment believe that I have the whole truth. I'm just walking beside Christ, learning the things He teaches me through my own life. So is the pastor. I respect the lessons he has learned and the things that are important to him.
But I'm beginning to get the feeling that the pastor is unable to extend to me the same grace that I extend to him. I think this is because the pastor's beliefs teach him that he must correct what he sees wrong in my beliefs. I think he believes that he must exhort me, like the assistant coach to the Jesus Coach, in perfecting my game plays.
It is actually disingenuous of me to allow him to continue thinking that I'm in agreement, when I am not. Maybe this is what I am feeling. I don't know. But I don't think that we'll be going back to that church.
This increases my anxiety level. I spent hours and hours that Sunday, talking to Christ. This is not praying, mind you, because I wasn't following the four "P"s of prayer, which are persistent, passionate, prevailing and precise, as the pastor taught, as opposed to the vague prayer of "God's will be done" and "help me, oh God," both being phrases that are not included in the preferred prayer formula.
So I asked Him; is that how You want me to pray? Is what we are doing now not prayer? Does it not count? Because, if so, I will. At least, I will try. Not that I don't pray like that sometimes; sometimes I do.
He reminded me how He taught the disciples to pray, a rote prayer that includes the very phrase "God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven." He reminded me that He deeply loves my childlike nature.
During the worship service that Sunday, I literally pushed Him away and shut the door on Him. I sang and kept Him at arm's length. I needed Him too much and I was afraid He would let me down, so I pushed Him away first.
I live in terror of what Christians sometimes refer to as "a desert time." It means a time when God doesn't feel present to them. There are theories about this: that it happens because of sin or because God wants to strengthen our Christian walk, by which they mean faith in God.
That makes sense, but I have no idea, myself, because I've felt the close and loving presence of God even while I was sinning, (which I was always told was impossible) so I don't know how to ensure that it stays. I can't say to Christ, see, I am ready and worthy of Your immediate presence; touch my heart.
I feel like if I decide to stop attending the church and at the same time cease to feel Christ so close to me, it will surely mean that I'm a very bad person indeed, a horrible backslider. (Though this doesn't make any sense, since I felt that closeness long before I started attending.) If Christ withdrew, a part of me feels that it must mean that everything the pastor has said is true, and that I should go up to the stairs and sob out my repentance upon the carpet, instead of in Christ's arms, where I normally go. This is an absurd fear, but there it is. I fear it.
I'm telling you what, I just think that it would break His heart if I did that. I think He deeply loves the way in which I give myself utterly over to Him. Lately He just keeps pulling my mind toward the torn veil, the veil that tore the moment He died. Why, when He eliminated the need for the priest to enter the Holy of Holies, would we then go ahead and set up our own system in its place?
If I don't understand a verse, (that happens a lot, by the way) I hand it over to Him to sort through. He handles all that kind of business; He's very good at it.
I keep thinking, all this grace is just mother's milk and at some point I need to be weaned from it and grow up into the real meat of righteousness, like structured prayer, Bible reading time, dressing modestly, and all those other standards of behavior. So I looked up that verse.
"By now you should be teachers. Instead, you still need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food. All those who live on milk lack the experience to talk about what is right. They are still babies. However, solid food is for mature people, whose minds are trained by practice to know the difference between good and evil." Hebrews 5:12-14
And then I felt horrible. "To whom much is given, much will be required," chimed in my head. All of which caused me to throw myself before Christ in absolute desperation, while at the same time holding Him at arms length, because I didn't want to know what He had to say. So then I waited.
Then I wondered, what are the elementary truths? So I asked Him. He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ All of Moses’ Teachings and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.” -Matthew 22:37-40
I was so excited when I heard Him say this. Like, oh my goodness, I do love Him with all my heart and soul and mind. I have got that first part down! The second part I'm growing in. My neighbor is also my husband, my family, and everyone that He has placed in my life. Loving them is a learning process that lasts one's whole life long. Then He reminded me that when I blog about Him, I might be showing someone else something He wants them to know.
And then, just like that, all my self condemnation was gone; I felt His delight in my freedom from that condemnation. He's leading me right along. He has His own way with me, He is the author and finisher of my faith. (He reminded me of this lately because recently I've been realizing how little faith I have. When He reminded me of this, I felt astounded. So the next time I felt horrible because of how limited my faith was, I remembered and then I said, "This is all Your fault!" which was just a little joke; it's a good thing He gets my sense of humor.)
Over and over again He shows me that He loves me not because of what I do but because of who I am to Him; His own, His creation, His redeemed. He loves me because of His nature, not mine. I am close to Him not because of how I live my life, but because of how He died and now lives His.
Thank God He is not on the sidelines, shouting out to me the ways I need to perfect my plays so that I can somehow beat my way over to Him.
I made a mistake during the church service this week. It was kind of funny, when I think about it, though at the time I wanted the ground to swallow me up whole.
The pastor said, "Raise your hand if you're a perfect person." Only, I thought he said, "imperfect," so I half raised my hand.
I kid you not, I'm still cringing when I think of that mistake. He kept looking directly at me after that point, whenever talking about how we can't be perfect. Like, he somehow thought that I might seriously think myself perfect and serenely raise my hand during church service to publicly claim it for myself. Oh my goodness. Seriously?
On the other hand, it sort of does point out something interesting. I do consider myself to be perfect through Christ and my own imperfections and sins to be His business, since I cannot take care of them on my own. In that light, you might say that I do enjoy an unearthly and peaceful perfection which was bought for me through Christ.
The thing is, if I attempted to describe this to the pastor, I think that we would experience what would be called an impasse. From his sermons, I see that he believes our sin is our business; we must be in the business of personally stamping it out, with Christ acting as coach and cheerleader. You know, sort of on the sidelines, giving us instructions on how to be better and cheering us on when we make a right move.
He went so far as to say that our prayers are effective not because we are sinless, but because we sin less, a statement that puzzles me to no end. If it's the prayers of a righteous man that are answered, does one assume that his righteousness is tarnished only by a certain amount of sin? How much sin? Which sins?
And don't we wear Christ's righteousness? Is it possible to take that off, once we've put it on? Does Christ snatch His righteous robe back when we sin? But that doesn't make sense to me because don't we need it because of our sin in the first place? I don't know. But it just doesn't make sense to me.
That statement the pastor made about prayer is similar to something one of the guest pastors said concerning the Holy Spirit. The guest pastor said, "I want to have less sin in my life so that I can have more of the Holy Spirit."
It seems weird to me to think like that, to be perfectly honest. It's as though the pastor is saying that his soul is like a scale, and his sin is on one side, and the Holy Spirit is on the other, and he's constantly wrestling with his own sinful nature so that the scales tip, as much as possible, toward the Holy Spirit.
How can a person be partially worthy of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Isn't that kind of like saying you're half saved?
Can it be that it actually works that way? It's as though God were a car, a car that runs on our perfection. The more sin we stamp out, the holier the gasoline and the holier the gasoline, the further we can drive Him and the more we can get out of Him.
Whereas I tend to believe this:
"The plaintive, self-centred, morbid kind of prayer, a dead-set that I want to be right, is never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is a sign that I am rebelling against the Atonement. "Lord, I will purify my heart if You will answer my prayer; I will walk rightly if You will help me."
I cannot make myself right with God, I cannot make my life perfect; I can only be right with God if I accept the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it?
I have to resign every kind of claim and cease from every effort, and leave myself entirely alone in His hands, and then begin to pour out in the priestly work of intercession. There is much prayer that arises from real disbelief in the Atonement.
Jesus is not beginning to save us, He has saved us, the thing is done, and it is an insult to ask Him to do it." Oswald Chambers.
Whatever is in that church doesn't like my serenity in Christ. It is not acceptable to cease all effort, and to simply and humbly live in Christ, just exactly as one is, in that moment, and the next moment and the next.
It doesn't bother me that the pastor believes something different from me. I don't for one moment believe that I have the whole truth. I'm just walking beside Christ, learning the things He teaches me through my own life. So is the pastor. I respect the lessons he has learned and the things that are important to him.
But I'm beginning to get the feeling that the pastor is unable to extend to me the same grace that I extend to him. I think this is because the pastor's beliefs teach him that he must correct what he sees wrong in my beliefs. I think he believes that he must exhort me, like the assistant coach to the Jesus Coach, in perfecting my game plays.
It is actually disingenuous of me to allow him to continue thinking that I'm in agreement, when I am not. Maybe this is what I am feeling. I don't know. But I don't think that we'll be going back to that church.
This increases my anxiety level. I spent hours and hours that Sunday, talking to Christ. This is not praying, mind you, because I wasn't following the four "P"s of prayer, which are persistent, passionate, prevailing and precise, as the pastor taught, as opposed to the vague prayer of "God's will be done" and "help me, oh God," both being phrases that are not included in the preferred prayer formula.
So I asked Him; is that how You want me to pray? Is what we are doing now not prayer? Does it not count? Because, if so, I will. At least, I will try. Not that I don't pray like that sometimes; sometimes I do.
He reminded me how He taught the disciples to pray, a rote prayer that includes the very phrase "God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven." He reminded me that He deeply loves my childlike nature.
During the worship service that Sunday, I literally pushed Him away and shut the door on Him. I sang and kept Him at arm's length. I needed Him too much and I was afraid He would let me down, so I pushed Him away first.
I live in terror of what Christians sometimes refer to as "a desert time." It means a time when God doesn't feel present to them. There are theories about this: that it happens because of sin or because God wants to strengthen our Christian walk, by which they mean faith in God.
That makes sense, but I have no idea, myself, because I've felt the close and loving presence of God even while I was sinning, (which I was always told was impossible) so I don't know how to ensure that it stays. I can't say to Christ, see, I am ready and worthy of Your immediate presence; touch my heart.
I feel like if I decide to stop attending the church and at the same time cease to feel Christ so close to me, it will surely mean that I'm a very bad person indeed, a horrible backslider. (Though this doesn't make any sense, since I felt that closeness long before I started attending.) If Christ withdrew, a part of me feels that it must mean that everything the pastor has said is true, and that I should go up to the stairs and sob out my repentance upon the carpet, instead of in Christ's arms, where I normally go. This is an absurd fear, but there it is. I fear it.
I'm telling you what, I just think that it would break His heart if I did that. I think He deeply loves the way in which I give myself utterly over to Him. Lately He just keeps pulling my mind toward the torn veil, the veil that tore the moment He died. Why, when He eliminated the need for the priest to enter the Holy of Holies, would we then go ahead and set up our own system in its place?
If I don't understand a verse, (that happens a lot, by the way) I hand it over to Him to sort through. He handles all that kind of business; He's very good at it.
I keep thinking, all this grace is just mother's milk and at some point I need to be weaned from it and grow up into the real meat of righteousness, like structured prayer, Bible reading time, dressing modestly, and all those other standards of behavior. So I looked up that verse.
"By now you should be teachers. Instead, you still need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food. All those who live on milk lack the experience to talk about what is right. They are still babies. However, solid food is for mature people, whose minds are trained by practice to know the difference between good and evil." Hebrews 5:12-14
And then I felt horrible. "To whom much is given, much will be required," chimed in my head. All of which caused me to throw myself before Christ in absolute desperation, while at the same time holding Him at arms length, because I didn't want to know what He had to say. So then I waited.
Then I wondered, what are the elementary truths? So I asked Him. He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ All of Moses’ Teachings and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.” -Matthew 22:37-40
I was so excited when I heard Him say this. Like, oh my goodness, I do love Him with all my heart and soul and mind. I have got that first part down! The second part I'm growing in. My neighbor is also my husband, my family, and everyone that He has placed in my life. Loving them is a learning process that lasts one's whole life long. Then He reminded me that when I blog about Him, I might be showing someone else something He wants them to know.
And then, just like that, all my self condemnation was gone; I felt His delight in my freedom from that condemnation. He's leading me right along. He has His own way with me, He is the author and finisher of my faith. (He reminded me of this lately because recently I've been realizing how little faith I have. When He reminded me of this, I felt astounded. So the next time I felt horrible because of how limited my faith was, I remembered and then I said, "This is all Your fault!" which was just a little joke; it's a good thing He gets my sense of humor.)
Over and over again He shows me that He loves me not because of what I do but because of who I am to Him; His own, His creation, His redeemed. He loves me because of His nature, not mine. I am close to Him not because of how I live my life, but because of how He died and now lives His.
Thank God He is not on the sidelines, shouting out to me the ways I need to perfect my plays so that I can somehow beat my way over to Him.
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