The Answers

The World's Cutest Niece (now to be abbreviated "Twcn"--or possibly "Toucan") likes maps. Evidently. The second-to-last time I skyped with her and her parents, she spent much of the time saying "Camel! Camel!" while her parents recounted their trip to the environs of the Dead Sea. She had gotten to ride a camel with her daddy on the trip and was still very excited about it. Much of the rest of the time, she marched smilingly in front of the webcam with a book of Israeli maps. Then she climbed up between them on the couch and gave the book to one of them to "read" to her. Did I mention she's not even two yet?

The three adults (her parents, on one side of the globe, and me on the other) all laughed indulgently at this, and then Sister-in-Lu picked up one of those photo-illustrated guidebooks and waved it at me. "She also likes to look at this," she said. "She'll sit down and look through the whole thing." Apparently sometimes she makes her parents identify everything in the photos. Even the tiniest photos. Even if she couldn't possibly have any point of reference for the subject of the photos.

Dave describes it like this:

This happened again when Lu came back with a camera full of pictures from the City of David excavation south of the Old City of Jerusalem. The ruin is an archaeological mess of eras.

Hannah points at a specific feature of a picture. She says, “Bah-TANNN!” (or some combination of syllables we can’t agree on). Emmylou says, “Hannah, that’s a stepped stone structure (Hannah says, “Steps!”) that supported the fortifications of the ancient city.” (Hannah points at it again, saying “Bah-TANN!”) Lu: “It might have been from the Jebusite period, or maybe from when David was king.” Hannah points at something else in the picture. “The tower on the left is Hasmonean.” Something else is pointed at. “Bah-TANN!” Lu: “See that house in the middle with the four columns? (Hannah says “Co-UMs!”) That’s from the seventh century [BCE]. It was built right into the stepped stones! And see, those are steps going to the roof! (Hannah: “Steps!”) And that room over there? It still has a toilet seat in it! That’s where they put their stinkies.” Satisfied, Hannah is ready for the next picture. The next picture appears, and Hannah points to a specific feature and says, “Bah-TANNN!”

She did this for the whole photo shoot, which was around 45 pictures. She’s gone through up to 60 pages at a time of the pictorial travel guide this way too.

We were marveling over this together--the brilliance of TWCN and the mystery that is the mind of a small child. "Maybe," I said, "she just needs to know that you know the answers. She doesn't need to understand them. She just needs to know there are some, and that you, her parents, know them."

Life would be so much easier if I could just relax in knowing that Someone--my adoptive divine Parent--knows the answers. I have some other allegorical and analogous thoughts about this facet of my niece, but, as I am wont to do, I shall discuss them at another time.

Photo:

Underwater Observatory Marine Park, Eilat. Photo presumably taken by Sister-in-Lu. Stolen from Facebook by jennwith2ns. 2010.

Growl

I think I might have mentioned that Oscar is a quiet dog. I have only heard him bark in my house twice. The first time was when he was still kind of new here and he caught the distorted reflection of himself in the glass front of the woodstove. His bark ricocheted off said glass front, echoing into his face and startling him so much that he never tried it again. The second time I heard him bark here was a few weeks ago when the Other Jenn came over for dinner and let herself in. We were both startled and impressed.

But usually, he just doesn't say much. He might whine a little, but that's about it. His tummy, on the other hand? Well, let's just say that if he doesn't eat his evening meal, I am bound to wake up once or twice in the middle of the night, because his stomach has a voice of its own. The first time this happened, I thought I was having some kind of supernatural, audibly-manifested, spiritual attack, the sounds were so weird. (I've never had one of those--nor do I want one--but these were my immediate thoughts upon waking up from a sound sleep at 3 a.m. with the bizarre utterances his stomach was making.)

Last night, Oscar for some reason declined his dinner again, though he had ample opportunity to eat it (we went to my friend Mom-Elizabeth's for dinner, but I actually remembered to bring his food along), but at least this time I had a fairly good idea what was coming. The sounds don't get any less weird, and when you have dreams like I have, the noises still sound like someone or something is trying to say something when you wake up to them, but at least I was a little quicker on the uptake this time.

I figured Oscar would run to his bowl first thing after our Walk this morning, but he didn't. He didn't drink any water, either. He's spent the entire morning so far either hiding under my bed, or snoring on the floor next to the couch. And while he always sleeps a lot, there's something about the quality of this sleep and the fact that he's missed two meals that is making me wonder if there's something a little more wrong with him than just funny tummy-noises. I'm hoping he'll recover and we won't need to visit the vet, come Monday. But mostly I just hope he'll recover. I'd rather he barked than starved.

Isn't It Ironic?

The first time I ever heard anyone go on a rant about Alanis Morissette's song's use of the word "ironic," I was still living in England. The ranter was this somewhat arrogant young British chap whose British manner of self-expression made the rant funny even though he was arrogant and he was using his diatribe as a a sort of "proof" that Americans have no idea what irony is. I think he meant people from the United States. (Isn't it ironic that she's Canadian?)

Since that time, however, I have heard a few North American rants about this very same thing, except they specify the artist herself as the one who doesn't know what irony is. These rants are actually kind of trendy, as a quick perusal of the comment section under the YouTube video makes evident. I confess that I have ranted similarly before . . . when I didn't realise just how many people were experts on the meaning of the word ironic.

The latest rant I heard on this topic, however, came from Dave and was directed at me. I had used the term to describe a series of coincidentally badly-timed real-life events which were in nature not unlike Morissette's vignettes. It was at this point that I got both snippy and embarrassed, because I had to admit that, even though I have a B.A. in English Literature and am continually correcting people's grammar and spelling in my head (if not aloud), I myself am probably not overly clear on the meaning of the word irony. Dave, who has a B.A. in Philosophy which requires better-than-average language skills as well, became very intent on trying to tease out the knots of this issue for me. However, because the examples at hand were Morissette's lyrics and my bad luck, the explanation fell a little short of a language lesson. It may not be ironic, but it's kind of a bummer when your life is getting moderately sucky and you are wrong about the word you want to use to describe it.

We managed to agree that a more accurate adjective for the situations posited by Morissette and actually being lived through by me is annoying. But last night another such episode transpired, and I would just like to say, in both my and Alanis' defense, that the reason we want to use the word ironic for these kinds of situations is because annoying doesn't cut it. That word is too broad. Lots of things are annoying and don't incorporate these weird little twists of what-have-you. There isn't a word for these scenarios, is the problem, see. There are combinations of words, but nothing nice and concise like the word ironic.

"Who woulda thought--it figures," is Alanis' more accurate summing up of both her and my scenarios, but you can't go around saying that all the time. Even "doesn't it suck?" or "isn't your luck terrible?" or "isn't it bad timing?" doesn't really do it, even though all of those things do, in fact, describe the situations in question. None of them touch on that thing inherent to these situations that Alanis is calling irony--maybe it isn't, but it's something beyond suckiness and bad luck and bad timing. I think we need a new word, guys. Right now, I'm calling it "go-figure timing," but don't try to make a song out of it, because it's still really unwieldy.

You Learn Something New . . .

I have enrolled in my first seminary course. It is "Church History to the Reformation," and I am finding myself surprisingly riveted. I've always had a sort of passive interest in church history (feed it to me and I'll gobble it up, but no hunting/gathering really happens here), but I think what surprises me most is that the main textbook for the class--naturally a weighty tome--is so well-written. I've never had a textbook, which wasn't a novel for a literature class, that I have looked forward to reading so much. (Well, except for maybe Dr. Blomberg's Jesus and the Gospels.)

As I'm reading it, I'm finding lots of thoughts entering my head, not to mention information I never knew before. Like this: in 1975, when this book was written? The author thought that Gnosticism had totally died out. Huh. Maybe not.

Here's something else. It is impossible, in a post-DaVinci Code world, not to have heard about the bad, bad, misogynisitc, racist, close-minded clerics who gave Gnostics and other heretics a run for their money . . . or tried to get them to totally die out. Said clerics may in fact have been misogyinistic and/or racist--or they may have been products of their time and not been thinking about those issues because they were thinking of whether or not Jesus was both fully God and fully human and what that meant. There were some less-than-pleasant characters among them. I'm just saying, they might not be the villains it is currently fashionable to paint them as.

Among the lesser-known details about these accounts is that on occasion, the heretics won out--at least temporarily. Arius, for example, was sent into exile, but for some time later his doctrine almost completely triumphed, dying out mainly because divisions within the group's own ranks.

I have friends who promulgate something like the Arian heresy and although I disagree, I don't feel inclined to exile them or anything. If I get brave and motivated enough, there may come a post one of these days where I wrestle more with the question of heresy and orthodoxy in general. But right now, because I'm feeling a little fed up with fashionable conspiracy theories, I feel like telling some heretics to stop whining--they had their day, and they still have it . . . heresies come and go and come back, for goodness' sake (or something?), so stop making stuff up about the 2nd and 3rd century theologians (not to mention, say, the apostle Paul) and try to deal with orthodoxy. Accept it, reject it, whatever. Just . . . is it really necessary to make up stories about Paul being a Gnostic and Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene just because we're uncomfortable with Jesus' life and claims?

Okay. Enough soap-box. It's going to come back to bite me (if soap-boxes can bite), via my own words or someone else's--or both--soon enough.

But here's the other thing I just found out. Evidently, in the time of Tertullian, when people got baptised, there was a lot more to the ceremony than there is in most churches I've ever been in, but also, after the baptism, the one who had just been baptised "refrained from the daily bath for a week after having received the rite" (Latourette, p194). I'm glad that tradition didn't stick around . . . although it might explain why people hardly bathed at all during the Middle Ages . . .

Don't Hate Me Because I'm . . . Complicated

I used to go to a church where I was more liberal than most of the members. Now I go to one where I'm more conservative . . . at least on some issues. For the last two or so years I've had an on-again, off-again complex friendship with the Milk Guy, a man with whom I think I have a moderately deep connexion, but with whom I share very little in terms of background or faith. I had cancer for a while but (fortunately) nothing much came of it. And, though I am not a really great cook on any terms, I tend to cook better Indian food than American. These are just some of the ways that I suspect I don't live up to expectations . . . and I'm okay with that. (Today, anyway!)

This afternoon I shall be adding to my resume of weirdness by going on video record with my views on marijuana. One of the young men who grew up in the church I work for, but who currently . . . well . . . doesn't, is going to film school and is doing a documentary about pot. "I already have people to interview who are for it," he said. "I thought you might have another perspective." He is undoubtedly right, although my perspective may still not be exactly what he (or anybody else) anticipates. In any case, in a weird sort of way I feel kind of pleased and honoured to have been asked. If this documentary ends up on Youtube and I end up not looking too stupid and/or reactionary, I'll share the link so you can find out what I said. In the meantime, I did talk about pot once at A Wandering Line . . .

Nightmares

If you know me well, chances are you know I tend to have pretty vivid dreams. By this I mean that most times when I sleep, I wake up with at least a faint recollection of having dreamed, and often a pretty clear recollection of what I dreamed about. (I usually have to talk about it almost immediately to retain the recollections, though, which doesn't happen so often since I haven't got roommates anymore and my family lives on the other side of the Atlantic.)

I also have recurring dreams; when I was a kid I was forever dreaming I was being chased by tv or literary villains, whose identities changed as I aged (ranging from the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk through Looney Tunes through Gargamel all the way up to Darth Vader). When I hit my mid-twenties, I dreamt often about being forced to marry some smarmy older guy I had never met before and was repulsed by. In my thirties, for some reason, my most-recurring dream has been that one where I'm in college, have signed up for a course I promptly forget about, and then the week of exams I'm suddenly freaking out trying to prepare for an exam and make up all the credit I've lost by not attending the class. As Former-Roommate-Rachel says about this kind of dream, "It's always about math." Yes. Yes it is.

Anyway, ever since quitting Starbucks in June last year, that recurring dream seems to have shifted setting, because suddenly Starbucks is turning up a lot. Right before Christmas I dreamed that the newish manager there had scheduled me for a week. I think Matty and Mouse noticed and caught on to the fact that, since I no longer worked there, no one would actually be filling that slot, and so they started trying to get people to fill it for the week, but in the meantime, I came in to get a coffee. The manager was out, and the shift supervisor on duty was someone I had never met but who somehow knew me, and she started browbeating for not showing up for my shift.

"Yeah," I said, "but I don't work here anymore. I quit."

"But you're on the schedule," she insisted. "You should at least have called around to get your shift covered."

"But I quit."

"But you're not working right now. Why don't you just come in and cover it? We need you."

"But . . . I'm not even on the payroll."

Fortunately at this point Matty the Hero came in and told her he had gotten all my other shifts covered. Some people are consistent to their characters even when they're in someone else's subconscious.

Then, about two nights ago, I dreamed that, because I'm so short on funds, I succumbed to working for Starbucks on Saturday nights only, just to get a little more income. They don't allow you to work one day a week anymore, but according to the Starbucks-in-my-sleep, because I was signing away every single Saturday night for, presumably, the rest of my life, they could make an exception.

I'm not even wondering what my subconscious is trying to work on right now. Are you?

Copy Cat

Today I am trying to register for a SemLink course at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I could probably do this pretty rapidly if I didn't have to wait 50 minutes for the registrar's office to re-open after lunch. As it is, I am finding all sorts of forms except the one that I'm looking for.

This one, though? Is my favourite:

• Guidelines for Avoiding Plagiarism (Used with permission of the University of Indiana)

Citing sources, folks, citing sources. No double-standards for these guys.

Resolved

Happy New Year!

I was recently asked by a Facebook Friend how many New Year's resolutions I was planning on making for this year. I replied by saying I wasn't making any, and furthermore, I didn't, as a general rule.

He seemed enough taken aback by this to make me think that New Year's resolutions are standard practice for him, his family and the people he frequents. I'm not sure they are for mine. Then he said I should blog about this.

I'm a little nervous to do so, because I'm not sure it's possible to argue either side of this debate without sounding sanctimonious, especially if you have a faith tradition underpinning the whys and wherefores of your everyday (or every year) practice. In reality, I think the making or disdaining of New Year's resolutions has more to do with personality than divine or moral mandate, but I don't know if anyone can really talk about it from a purely detached point of view. (I think plenty of people, both the resolution-makers and those who don't, can not-care one way or other if other people make them or not, but I'm not sure, if asked to defend their reasons for one course of action or the other, they could be entirely dispassionate.)

As I say, I think the real reason I don't make resolutions is that I don't really have the personality for it. I don't actively resist it. I just don't think about it. Or, maybe, care about it. But, imagining this as a Christian-liberal-arts-college exam essay question ("Do you think Christians should make New Year's resolutions? Use Biblical evidence to support your conclusions"), I would have to say Micah 6.8.

Actually, first of all, I would say I don't see people making resolutions in the Bible. People repent and "rend their garments" and put on "sackcloth and ashes." People get talked to by blazing shrubbery and heavenly lights. People even get talked to by each other. I just don't see people making lists of long-term decisions of how to better their lives.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think I personally have achieved perfection. (You might be relieved to know that I am aware of this). And I think the "little" things (taking care of one's body by eating right and exercising, say) are important. But my greater discipline in exercising this year wasn't because I wrote down, "I will exercise more this year," or even because I clenched my fists, squinted my eyes shut, concentrated really hard and said, "I will exercise more this year!" (Trust me--I had kind of been doing the latter for about 7 years, with little effect.) It was because my job situation changed, my schedule stabilised, and I no longer had an excuse not to exercise.

Resolutions may not have this effect on everybody, but what they usually do to me is make me feel guilty and resentful, or even rebellious. They make me focus on a thing, an action, even a state of mind, when my focus should be on Jesus and letting Him make me the person He wants me to be. Even if the things themselves are godly, once I put them into a resolution, I end up focusing on the thing and on my own efforts to achieve it, when, if it's really valuable, I'm not going to be able to achieve it without Him. I'm not advocating sitting around and waiting for the Holy Spirit to zap me with "godly-juice." I do agree that we have to be cooperating with the Spirit's work in us. But Jesus, talking about His Spirit, said that the wind blows where it will, and I don't ever know what God's going to want to work on in me next.

This is what I do know, and this is what I want my life to do: in Micah 6.8, the prophet tells people that all God wants of us is to do what is right, to be merciful, and to walk humbly with Him. I'd say that pretty much covers all the bases. I'd say I have a long way to go to get anywhere near that standard. I could make some resolutions about how to get there, or I could not, but unless He's the one moving me, I don't think it matters much.

Make a Smilebox greeting

Something Merry

It turns out that I already wrote a post far more articulate than the one I was just thinking about writing, which says basically the same thing, so you should really go read that. However, since I've been pondering this issue again, I do just want to say this:

I get kind of . . . at least uncomfortable, and at most upset . . . when the Milk Guy decides to throw out Jesus' name, randomly, without actually talking to Him. Most Christians I know don't like it when Jesus' name gets used that way, or any form of God's name gets used that way, really.

So why are so many of us so insistent that people who don't believe in Jesus, don't love Jesus, aren't actually talking about Jesus, aren't celebrating Jesus, use the word Christmas? How is it different from what we call "taking God's name in vain"? Is it? Isn't it? I'm just asking . . .

Green Eggs and . . . a Jewish Carpenter? or, What I Got Out of a Facebook Quiz

At various times in my life I've had people who aren't particularly enamoured of Jesus say things like, "Do you really have to try so hard to find Jesus in everything?"

No. I don't. It just kind of happens, I'm afraid. Like last week when I randomly took a "Dr. Seuss Personality Test"on facebook. First of all, let me say that you should never take a facebook quiz too seriously. This one, for example, only asked five questions, and I'm not sure how they related to any Dr. Seuss characters at all, actually. Secondly, if I were going to really do this scientifically (?), I should probably take all the other Dr. Seuss quizzes online, just to see if they match up. There are quite a few of them, I've seen. But . . . I'm not going to bother.

Still, though, when it turned out that, according to this quiz, "I am Sam--Sam I am," and that cute little short guy with the sign and the plate appeared on my profile, I thought, "Yeah! That's me! Sam-I-am!" Well, except for the short part.

Check it out. Here's Sam. He's all stoked because he's got something he thinks everybody would (or, at any rate, should) love. He doesn't give the impression of thinking he's better than anyone. He's just so enthusiastic about green eggs and ham he can't let up until his friend/innocent bystander/person-that-doesn't-really-like-him-much tries them. He doesn't seem to realise that, to an onlooker or an outsider, such a dish looks at the very least sketchy, with any inherent delight being, to that perspective, indiscernible.

Not to be discouraged, Sam tries to "frame" his green eggs and ham in ways that might appeal more to his resistant friend. The two characters, now thrown together under more and more bizarre and extreme circumstances, continue their back-and-forth for several more pages. At the point when the train has driven off a cliff, the boat has sunk, and both Sam, his victim and an entire menagerie of animals and other characters are floundering in the water, the poor beleaguered green-eggs-and-ham-avoider decides that he will try the dish just to get Sam off his case. Then--joy of all joy and surprise of all surprises!--he likes them! Sam is vindicated! Green eggs and ham really are delightful! They're so great that the former hater doesn't even worry about swallowing his pride along with the green breakfast and whole-heartedly thanks Sam-I-Am for, as wikipedia calls it, "his persistence."

I dunno. It kind of reminds me of my life . . . a little . . . ? Here I am, both suddenly and gradually delighted and overwhelmed by the knowledge that, messed up as I was and still easily am, God Himself came here to join in my life and to sustain me through it. He came to be my life, and though life with and through and by Him can often be alarming, I also wouldn't (by His grace) have it any other way. And I just know that He came to be life to everybody, and I just want them to realise it.

So sometimes I can get a little annoying. I'll try to be "all things to all people" like the Apostle Paul, sometimes even to the point of ridiculousness, and sometimes even to the point of some suffering and inconvenience. But I still think that, though they may "swallow" the whole thing differently than I do, that the real source of life for anybody--anybody--is Jesus. And so . . . it's not that I want to be annoying. I just want my friends to experience how worth it this is, in spite of the difficulties and the sometimes sketchy-looking nature of what I'm trying to share. Right now, I guess I'm still pushing green eggs and ham on people in boxes and houses and trains and boats, but one of these days I really hope someone--or a lot of someones--will decide that . . . well look. I don't even care if they decide they want me off their case. I just hope they see that Jesus is for them--and that at the end of the day they'll thank somebody.

Writing His Own Reality

So, for those of you who haven't been following along, in the last two posts I've been processing the idea of God's having created and set human history in motion as a way to work through His own issues. I don't think He did, but still, sometimes you have to process thoughts you disagree with, too, and give them an honest look.

While I was talking about this, though, I had one of those moments where you say something and then you wonder if it means something more than you meant when you first said it. This was the thing I said:

You feel, if you're writing a story through which to work out your issues, that you can't make anything happen that you don't want to happen to you, so you allow some conflict and stuff, but you can't let anybody get into really deep water, because you don't want to get into it yourself. You might end up writing your own reality.

It suddenly occurred to me that here was something God actually did. He wrote His own reality into the human story. I don't mean He wrote it through the vehicle of the human story. It's not that He had issues and has been inflicting them on us this whole time. It's that we have issues and He allowed us to inflict them on Him. I didn't love my NaNoWriMo characters and so I didn't want to get to involved. But God? Well, evidently He wasn't afraid of getting into the deep water Himself.

I didn't know, before, when people talked abstractly about how amazing it is that God entered the human story, or that God suffers when we suffer, quite what that meant. And I'm not sure I can really describe in words what those abstracts mean to me now. But I have this sense that "amazing" doesn't even come close, and that God knew what I only discovered by talking about it--that if I got close enough to my characters to create real, transforming conflict in their lives, I'd get close enough to get hurt myself. But God didn't just know it. He did it anyway.

We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.

(Isaiah 53 segment, The Message)

Unloved Characters

Sometimes there are things you know, and then there are things that you confirm by doing, and I can certainly confirm, now, that a writer, a story-teller, an artist, might craft something solely to exorcise his or her own "demons." (Or, you know, zombies or whatever.) But here's something else I discovered through the whole NaNoWriMo project:

If the author doesn't care about the characters, nothing is going to happen to them.

I suppose it's not really a coincidence that right before NaNoWriMo started I read Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. (Or is it A Million Years in a Thousand Miles? Or something else? I can never remember. The book was better than the title.) Miller (or maybe his friend Jordan, actually: chapter eight, page 48) defines story as "a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."

He makes the point that conflict is a necessary part of story, and if God is telling The Story, and He wants it to be a good Story, then there's going to be conflict. He even kind of implies or maybe even states outright that at least some of the time God puts the conflict right in there.

It's maybe a little presumptuous to imagine that every life experience I have can turn into a point-by-point analogy about God. On the other hand, even though I don't agree with the Milk Guy that image-of-God necessitates that God actually behave exactly like human beings (or that we always behave exactly like God), I do think it means that we can learn things about God through our experiences and even our reactions or those of others.

So, while I was writing the Story That Shall Likely Never See the Light of Day (oh wait--that's kind of all my stories except Trees), it finally dawned on me that if God is really a storyteller, it's not very likely that this story is just His way of working out His own issues. And I'll tell you why.

I do believe there is something cathartic about storytelling and that you can process what you are going through by telling a story. But if that's all it is--if it's just a psychological-healing exercise--if there's no actual story being unearthed in its own right, as Stephen King describes it, it's kind of rubbish. It ends up like the "story" I wrote during NaNoWriMo--boring. If I don't care about the characters (which I discovered I didn't last month), I can't be bothered . . . or even think how to . . . find out what they want or what conflict they need to overcome to get it. I don't know them, who they are, what they like, even if I'm writing from their points of view. Their personalities change from one day to the next, not because they are developing as characters but because they are subject to my allegory which, it turns out, isn't a very good one. In a sense, we (the characters and I, too) are slaves to the story, but since it is a lame story, we're all just stuck and bored. In the end the whole thing--characters, story and author--
grind to a screeching halt.

If you're in a frame of mind which makes you think God's writing you a lousy story, you might wish for it to grind to a screeching halt, or think that it already has done, but whatever got you to that point, though painful, was probably not boring, and just might have affected your character a little bit. And I will also posit that it doesn't mean God hates you, or that He is indifferent to you. To hate a character, I feel, requires too much energy and the author might then just as well become indifferent to him or her. And indifference, as I've said, does not elicit conflict or suffering--or peace, either. It elicits boredom and lack of resolution.

I'm not trying to justify God in this particular post, nor am I trying to minimise anybody's pain, because what do I really know about it? I am saying that, from the perspective of "creates worlds," I think it's pretty unlikely that all this creation is, is a cosmic attempt to sort out the psychological convolutions of the Divine. I thought it was unlikely before, in theory. Now I think it in practice.

A few more writerly thoughts on this still to come.

Working Out the Issues

When the Milk Guy and I used to talk about this stuff (and by the way, we still talk about stuff--just not this stuff, nor do we hang out very much), he would say he thought if there was a God, that God was just working out his own internal issues through people's lives. He said that if we're made in God's image, then everything humans can do, God Himself does. Not that He is capable of it--He does it.

We would argue about this, and nothing the Milk Guy could say would make me see that this premise is a logical necessity, and nothing I could say would make him see that it isn't. Bummer about that.

I still think I'm right--that it isn't a logical necessity. There is nothing about the "image of God" doctrine that makes it impossible that that image could, given certain circumstances (like, you know, turning away from God), become skewed, twisted, malfunctioning. "Image of God" does not equal "lack of free will," although the Milk Guy denies free will if there is a God. (Also not a logical necessity, despite what he says.)

On the other hand, ever since NaNoWriMo, I have had to have a second think about at least the concept of God working out His issues through us. I don't think God had issues before He made us, although one might posit that He does now. And while I don't believe His issues cause Him to sin (He's still complete in His Triune Self and doesn't need to be ruled by anything), I have recently entertained the thought that this idea--this concept of God as a sadistic puppeteer--isn't a logical impossibility, either. (Actually, it is if you look at all the data, but just as an off-the-cuff theory it isn't.)

Here's why I had to take it into account: I started writing this novel at the beginning of November. I started it as kind of a sci-fi/fantasy allegory about cancer and the issues that I've had to mull over in the last year since I had it. This story at the outset was, I suppose, a way for me to work out my own issues. It was a way to process things like chemotherapy versus natural preventatives and remedies, via metaphor and symbol. It didn't take long before issues of God and His involvement, and even some of my tension over the Milk Guy, sneaked their way into the allegory, too.

By that time, the whole plot had started to get murky, and I realised that my characters, as mere caricatures of people I really knew or of concepts I was really dealing with, were kind of annoying. Like, all of them. The most interesting one (and even she was kind of boring) was the one who turned into the zombie-like manifestation of cancer. Thought-processes of semi-conscious monsters are kind of hard to transcribe, though, so I couldn't take it very far. Still, it turned out that if there were any of these characters who I wanted to succeed, it was really only her.

I didn't care about the other ones. They were just vehicles for my issues. They bored me. I could have cared less what happened to them. Let the poor monster-girl eat everybody, frankly, for all I cared. But of course that's not what I want to happen to me. I don't want my cancer to come back, and I certainly don't want it to take over. You feel, if you're writing a story through which to work out your issues, that you can't make anything happen that you don't want to happen to you, so you allow some conflict and stuff, but you can't let anybody get into really deep water, because you don't want to get into it yourself. You might end up writing your own reality.

I guess that's sort of magical thinking, but sometimes I think like that. (You might know that by now.) Realising all this made me really have to sit down and think about the Milk Guy and his theory. I did. I sat with it for most of the month. But stay tuned. I'll tell you later why (besides holding onto what I already believed) I realised that wasn't the whole story.

More About Apostrophes

We have discussed apostrophes before. Then the other day, Antagonist-Andrew (long-lost Starbucks friend recently rediscovered on Facebook) pointed out to me this link. I find it delightful and I think I kinda want that t-shirt.

It did start me off on one of my etymological musings, though. I started wondering who decided apostrophes would be used for possessives and not for plurals, when normally they're used for contractions. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm really sorry. You can just skip this post. This is, perhaps regrettably, how I think sometimes.)

Then I wondered if originally possessives were contractions--like, maybe people used to say stuff like, "David, his book," and the "his" got smushed into the preceding word and ended up as "David's book." This, of course, doesn't immediately explain why we don't say, "Anna'r book" for women ("Anna, her book"), but there might still be some reasons:

1. When possessives started coming into the English language, it was a more patriarchal society so they didn't care about gender-inclusive language.

2. If you must say it, "Jesus's" is easier to say than "Jennifer'r."

3. No one except people from central Massachusetts wanted to sound like people from central Massachusetts by adding "r"s to the ends of words that ended in vowels.

So. Now we actually have a reason for possessives to have apostrophes and plurals not to have them. Listen up, apostrophe abusers! Just stop it, okay?

One Lesson Learned

Much as I may enjoy reading (or watching) sci-fi/fantasy stories, I am utterly unable to write them. I've tried it before. This last attempt, through NaNoWriMo has sort of put the nail in the coffin on that dream for me.

But maybe I just need to read more of it. Even (or maybe especially) children's. Which makes me grateful to Son-of-Milk-Guy, who gave me his entire collection of Spiderwick chronicles. I'm pretty sure he never read them himself, but I was rather pleased that he thought I might like them . . . all by himself.

The End

Ah! It's over! NaNoWriMo is over! I can now go back to watching TV and other useless activities in the evenings!

(I think I just overdosed on exclamation points.)

I think I kind of cheated. My novel ended up being this long rambling inside the minds of four characters. It got badly out-of-focus and off-topic and working on it was like pulling teeth for the last two weeks, because I wasn't going to start all over again. So tonight I spent my last thousand words modifying the "It was only a dream" cop-out . . . I mean, "construct." My version was, "It was only a NaNoWriMo novel gone wrong," and I had two til-then never encountered characters talking about the inconsistencies of the characters and whether it was a good story or not.

Look. I'm agreeing with you. It was a cop-out. But also look. It took me 48,500 words to get to the point I had intended to write about in the first place, so I wasn't going to be wrapping it up any time soon, and I had to, by midnight tonight. And . . . I wanted to, because if winding it up took this long, I sure didn't want to to see what wrapping it up was going to look like.

Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall give you a new list of things I've learned from this process, or otherwise bore you with the philosophical musings this has brought up. Meanwhile, take a gander at that nifty little new badge in my sidebar.

This Just In

One of the life eaters (whose label I'm going to have to change because I somehow forgot about the Harry Potter Death-Eaters--which are not the same thing) just ate his human sister's arm and now she is about to turn into a life eater, too. (They're kinda like zombies, because I couldn't think of anything else in "character" that acted more or less like cancer.) I didn't think that was going to happen. I thought . . . well, I thought other things were going to happen. This half-eaten sister happened to be one of the characters from whose perspective I was telling this NaNoWriMo tale, so now I am about to be telling part of the story from the point of view of a monster. Or cancer. Which is the same thing.

If I succeed, I might actually be a good writer. Or crazy. But good writers often are, I've heard . . .

Run-ins

So I've had my new car for about three weeks. Two nights ago, I got pulled over already.

I was driving home from work right around dusk, and had just gotten off the highway and was taking this short-cut bumpy-road home. I had just turned onto it when a car going the opposite direction suddenly turned into a police car. It flashed it's blue lights but then, as far as I could tell, kept on going. So did I, but you can be sure I was being pretty careful about the 30 mph speed limit.

All of a sudden the blue lights reappeared. What?! I pulled over. I rolled down my window. (Actually, I now have a car for which I don't have to roll down the window. Convenient for getting pulled over by cops.) I put my hands on the steering wheel. Oscar, quiet little black dog, sat up straight and still in the seat beside me. We both waited.

It seemed like it was taking this officer quite a long time to come over and tell me I had been speeding--which I was pretty sure I hadn't. Finally a dark shape started moving in front of the really bright headlights shining into all my mirrors. I looked up. The cop shone his flashlight into my face.

"You know you need headlights, ma'am?" he asked, sounding like he was trying not to laugh. "It's a little dark out."

Oh brother. There are only two things I miss about my Corolla: the tape deck (yeah, I said it) and the automatic day-time lights. I apologised and thanked him, because I am a Grosser and that, apparently, is what we do. (We also cry a lot, but I didn't do that this time.) I turned my headlights on. He shook his head disbelievingly and went back to his car. I get that a lot.

NaNoWriNotes

National Novel Writing Month is just beyond half over, and I am just below the number of words I should be at, and I could be writing some more, but instead I thought I'd let you in on what I think of the process so far.

Week 1:
Two thousand words a day. If I just write 2,000 words a day, I'll be all set, and actually exceed the 50,000 word goal. Two thousand words isn't that many. I can do this.

The novel is begun. This is the first piece of writing I've ever tried which tells the story from multiple character's points of view. It's kind of fun. I always thought I couldn't do such things, but they even all have their own "voices," though I'm writing in the third person.

Week 2:
English-Jayne is here, but I still have a little time to write. If I get slightly behind, I can catch up easily enough.

I am reveling in watching the characters do their own thing right before my eyes. One of the advisor-priests (priests in this imaginary world are priests of science, not religion . . . although really? what's the difference) has suddenly and unexpectedly become a main character and, it turns out, is in love with the queen. The queen is best friends with a cook in the kitchens. And the way you can tell if a person has turned into one of the monster Life-Eaters is that they start growing extra appendages, while their original ones wither and fall off.

Week 3:
I can't get caught up. I like my ideas, but this story is progressing like molasses. I have taken all the hyphens out of all my made-up roles, like advisor priests and life eaters and my word count is still down. I have more blog-posts in my head than normal but I can't write them because I have to write this super-boring story, simply because I said I would. What if I quit? Can I quit? Why are all my stories boring? I will never get another book published because I put my own self to sleep with everything but Trees in the Pavement.

The individual voices are merging into one, boring, somewhat grumpy voice. (I wonder why.) Plus the advisor priest who is in love with the queen is probably going to turn out to be an unwitting villain. That could be interesting, but right now it's just annoying. Not enough things are going wrong for the characters, but the things that are, are the wrong things. Ugh!

So there. Back to writing. I figure I need to write about 6,000 words today to catch up. And I'll only get behind again, because this weekend I have an all-nighter with the youth group. Sigh.