Insanity Comes Naturally

Figs for Thought

Then the word of the Lord came to me: "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

-Jeremiah 24:4-7

don't stop the madness,

don't stop the chaos,

don't stop the pain inside of me:

do whatever it takes to break my heart,

and bring me to my knees.

-Tenth Avenue North-

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Dusting of the Pen: A Few Pale Threads of Varying Ambiguity

(these paragraphs are not chronologically or necessarily connected in any way)

He looked at the little weapon, shining with all the marks of carefully crafted deadliness. It had been gifted him when he took his oath as an inspector, and he had sworn to use it in the service of bringing criminals to justice. “I have taken vows to my King, Inspector," he said a little hoarsely, and the words (though certainly true) seemed to smell a little like a long-dead thing coming from his mouth. “I am bound by duty to carry it in the pursuit of justice, for a little longer at least.”

It was one of those mornings where, upon waking up, things were plainly Not Quite Right. Nothing so innocuous as everything being Totally Wrong - just the slight off-set to the way things Ought To Be, like a sentence that presents an otherwise grammatically correct front amidst a blur of Moderately Unsettling Misapplication of Otherwise Acceptable Standards of Grammar. Even when Nurse poured the milk into Lady Jane’s tea, though she poured exactly the proper amount and neither a drop more nor less, she seemed to be pouring it backwards. The perplexing indefiniteness of the Not Quite Right state of things only contributed to the state of things, and by the time half-ten had come Jane was beside herself with that worst sort of anxiety that knows neither cause nor effect, but does quite well at being there nonetheless.

She gave him a look in her good-natured manner of disapproval. “I’m glad you didn’t rush to my rescue,” the reply conveyed not a little relief. “Such a scheme, if it didn’t get all the wrong people killed, would at least have certainly gone straight to your head—which would have been an unhappy ending enough for any night.” And then, quite unexpectedly, she buried her face into the lapels of his coat (which she was somehow now wearing) and began to cry.

"A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit;

how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!"

-Twelfth Night-

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

I think, after such an undeniably long absence from my own shabby art of blogging, that a bit of rambling and ranting on the miseries of the Dread Writer's Block'd'arts would be justifiable. But I'm not going to talk about that; instead, I'm going to talk about why I'm not talking about that, and thus probably spend more time talking about it than I would if I weren't not talking about it.

Clever, clever. I know.

There is a part of me that is inclined to dispute that such a thing as writer's block exists at all - or at least, that it is a phrase tossed around too often without any clear meaning. It seems doubtful whether or not that part of a person which makes them a writer (if such a part exists, and one is not merely writer) can be somehow temporarily cut off from functioning. If I may tediously make an analogy, the mark of the mother is her deeply-rooted share in the affairs of her household and its members, and though the household would surely fall apart if the functional acts of caring for the house and its occupants did not take place, she does not cease to be a mother when she sits down for five minutes' rest.

Similarly, I suspect that what makes one person a writer has more to do with his share in the literary and less to do with the actual, functional part of setting words onto paper. The latter is important, of course, but it is not complete. Back to the tedious analogy, one does not say a woman has "mother's block" in those moments when she is too disorganized and weary to decide what needs to be done next. One may say that she is being lazy, or that she does not possess the skills to maintain her home, but those are very different things than saying that she is "blocked." Put in those terms, the idea of a "block" seems a very passive sort of excuse.

(Here one gets a little too close to treading on one's own toes for comfort... )

Taking the role of writer to mean something closer to one who has an appetite for words literarily set to paper than one who has an appetite for literally setting words to paper, I then suspect that nine times out of ten when the word "blocked" leaves my mouth, it is not only a passive excuse but something unduly blamed. If a writer has merely ceased to produce words, it does not necessarily follow that a full block has set in. Now, if a writer ceases to write and read, and simply mucks about in a stew of mediocre thoughts and reality television, then I suppose he may fairly refer to his whole writing self as effectively blocked. But, once again, a little change in habits will quickly fix that, without trusting to the return of fickle inspiration. He may turn off the television and begin to read again, trusting that his appetite will return shortly.

I fear I have set my thoughts toward a conclusion on my Unwritingness that is more to my own shame than anyone else's. I have read, but I have little more to show in writing from the last three months than a few scraps of sentences far-flung among my many battered notebooks. And yet I have not simply been too busy to look at my sundry Word documents of ill-promise; I can recall several instances over the last few weeks, at least, where I spent quantities time scrolling through them and ... for what?

Pecking without promise - that is how I would describe ventures into my stories of late. Opening a document with the intentions of scrolling to the end and moving forward, and somehow always finding myself lost in a sentence somewhere in the already-written portion, chipping away towards some ideal of perfection as if that sentence were the only sentence in the story. I have not written very much, and still I could spend hours in editing. I write, but I do not move forward; surely this is classifiably blockage.

But I have gone too far in the paragraphs beforehand to leave it at that, and I begin to think (uncomfortably) that "writer's block" is simply another name for a far less excusable condition. If I look at my so-called block, I find that lack of inspiration cannot be blamed. Too often I am unable to write because the story might not be good enough for me to have written it, and unable to read because I do not wish to be still and contemplate the fact that someone else might be God. There - behind every tale of my writer's-block woe - there it is. When I am blocked, it is merely that same unbelieving pride that felled humanity, now speaking in me: "I am only a writer when I put something forth, not when I receive." This same pride must make something of itself now, must write the story now, must not be called upon to wait and to listen. Not having something to say cannot be a divinely-granted privilege to be still and know that He is God. I must be allowed to write; I must be allowed to produce; I must be allowed to follow my Christian calling and construct something worthy of my own approval...

And I wonder if, buried in all this dissection of distasteful negativity, one might find the true calling of a Christian writer: beyond simply not writing smutty books (though this is important), and beyond even the production of excellent writing with beautiful themes of truth. I do not deny the value of clean, excellent, meaningful writing; I think I must deny its wholeness as a calling. They are but a handful of words from one sentence in a story of which I am not the author. To treat them as the most important sentence, and to spend a multitude of hours editing and re-editing my presentation of symbols and themes as though it were the summary of my calling as a Christian writer - as if I, who have been given everything that is anything, must somehow forge my own worth when it comes to my craft....

What is the job of the Christian writer? Is it not to spy the roots of unbelief and pride which (though dead) still linger in the fiber of who I am as a writer and not wall myself off from the reality of them with red herrings of a supposed "block?" Can I call myself a 'Christian' writer if in the act writing I persist in seeing falsely, forgetting that in all things literary or otherwise I am called first and foremost not to do something for God, but to revel in the works of another on my behalf, and so kill sin and love Jesus? Is this not the true calling of a Christian (writer): more than sacrifices and burnt offerings, more than dedications in the front of books naming the name of Jesus, and far more even than stories that depict Christian values and redemptive themes in an excellent manner?

In a job that is often centered on mystery and imagination and the ability to produce catchy, exciting things, it is all too easy to fall back on the folly of Digory's Uncle Andrew and proclaim that "ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny." Pagan writers and movie-makers, believing this, have produced plotlines exalting people with similar destinies, and these are the tales of our generation: thousands upon thousands, tributes to the bent nature of twisted selfishness and blind anarchy that seem to ever only ape greatness and never reach the mark. The self-made writer with his glorious 'Christian' calling may evade such follies in writing, but in being he joins Uncle Andrew and the pagans. What if he gains a whole book, and loses his soul?

Let us be as kind as we can. Let us take this Christian writer with his brash ideals and aspirations of Christian writing, and set him alongside the sons of Thunder, asking it be given him to sit beside Christ in glory. And then the trouble with a self-made destiny becomes clear. The flaw is not that it is too high or too lonely; rather, that our self-conceived destinies are bound too close to the earth by the weight of sin, and so too crowded by sins and miseries. We cannot be high or lonely enough. It is not within the powers of our imagination or creativity to transcend such a weight as the pride of unbelief - not when the desire to do so originates in that same pride. The Christian writer has only to bind Micah 6:8 across his forehead and about the doorposts to his heart, and then be still and know that Christ is God. Because then Jesus will certainly turn and ask if this bold scribe is ready to drink of His cup, as indeed it will be given to His own to drink: a far higher and far lonelier destiny than anything dreamed of by Uncle Andrew or the pagan storytellers or the sons of Thunder, telling the tale of foolishness that shames wisdom and weakness that shames strength.

"But indeed, words are very rascals

since bonds disgraced them."

-Shakespeare-

Read More 1 Comment | scribbled by Unknown

Hindsight.

Do you remember the times spent in hunger,

the soul-spots that nothing could fill?

I made breakfast with my youngest brother;

he laughed when the eggs took a spill.

Do you remember the era of long nights

that churned out despair like a mill?

We used the old tales for starlight;

the bright moon was spun on a quill.

But surely you think of the grey times,

the dark, fruitless days with no sun?

I recall filling teacups with sunshine,

my dishpans as battlefields won.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Read More 1 Comment | scribbled by Unknown

Only a Sentence in the Story

He came back.

After that brutal Friday, and that long, quiet Saturday, he came back.

And that one intake of breath in the tomb changes everything. It changes the very reason I drew breath today and the way I move about in this world because I believe he's coming back again. The world has gone on for more than two millennia since Jesus' feet tread the earth he made. What would they have said back then if someone had told them that two thousand years later we'd still be waiting? They would've thought back to that long Saturday and said, 'Two thousand years will seem like a breath to you when you finally lay your crown at his feet. We don't even remember what we were doing on that Saturday, but let me tell you about Sunday morning. Now that was something!'

These many years of waiting will only be a sentence in the story. This long day will come to an end, and I believe it will end in glory, when we will shine like suns and stride the green hills with those we love and the One who loves. We will look with our new eyes and speak with our new tongues and turn to each other and say, 'Do you remember the waiting? The long years, the bitter pain, the gnawing doubt, the relentless ache?' And like Mary at the tomb, we will say: 'I remember only the light, and the voice calling my name, and the overwhelming joy that the waiting was finally over.'

The stone will be rolled away for each of us.

May we wait with faithful hearts.

-Andrew Peterson, album insert;

photo courtesy of deviantart.com, #LaVieDeBoheme.

If you have not had the pleasure of listening to Andrew Peterson's music,

especially Resurrection Letters, Vol. II,

I strongly encourage you to do so.

You may find it and many other gems at:

www.andrew-peterson.com & www.rabbitroom.com

Read More 1 Comment | scribbled by Unknown

Figs for Thought

Dusting of the Pen: A Few Pale Threads of Varying Ambiguity

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

Hindsight.

Only a Sentence in the Story

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The Authoress

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