The Meaning in the Stone

“There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.”               

       Marie Antoinette (attributed)

This spring when my hometown was still digging itself out from under a blanket of snow, I visited some friends in Europe. Germany was already bursting out with nature’s first gold—that nearly neon green of new life budding on every branch—; a place where the weight of history is felt and seen everywhere. Castles built in the twelfth century loom over the switchbacking turns in the Rhine. Cities with cobbled streets and historic architecture retrofitted to the needs of the present bustle with the lives of its people. The new and the old; the present and the past mingled together everywhere. It’s impossible to wander through a park without encountering a moss covered monument to what has gone before. Some good events, some certainly bad—many of which I didn’t recognize or understand. 

“When your children ask their fathers in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you had passed over, so that all the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.’” (Joshua 4:21b-24)

Perhaps one of the most powerful and perplexing abilities of the human mind is our penchant to forget. In purely material terms, we process inordinate amounts of information constantly. Paying attention, for example, to the height of a step just long enough to walk without tripping, yet forgetting almost immediately the small sign of warning about the existence of a step once our need for that information has passed. If we had fallen down and bruised a knee or twisted an ankle; we would certainly remember. We remember pain in order to avoid more of it in the future. And yet, we forget the information that prevented a potential injury in the first place. We deliberately forget; moving on to our next moment; often only remembering what has hurt us, and not what has saved us. We are contradictory creatures, ruminating on that of which we ought to let go, and abandoning what we ought not to forget. And, knowing our failing, we erect memorials for the future in order to remember the past.

Yet time weathers stone and monuments get hidden in lichen as new generations of life erode the words that would remind us what the stones mean. Always of twin purposes—a warning and a reminder. Don’t forget what you knew at this moment. Don’t forget God’s miraculous provision. Don’t forget what He spoke. Don’t forget what was revealed here. Take it with you. Witness it for a generation yet to come.

Even without monuments of stone, we each have our little ways of remembering. We write lists. We set reminders. We keep mementos as witnesses. Souvenirs—to remember. We write down events and thoughts and prayers in journals; or at least, I do. Filling notebooks with the good and the bad, the warnings and the signs, the desperate needs and the miraculous provisions. I’ll write it all down and then abandon it in a box in a closet; forgetting what I need to remember as I move on to the next moment. What good is a memorial if I forget what it showed me? What good is any of it, if I don’t take it with me? 

It is a choice for forgetfulness to dismiss the miraculous signs and denigrate God’s wonders as close calls and lucky coincidences. Why should only our bruises be honoured with remembrance while the acts of God are treated as so commonplace so as to be unworthy of recall? Questions worth asking, whether I can bear the answers or not. What have I etched in the stone of my remembrance? What do I speak when I’m not trying to be good? What do I write when I’m writing for me? Do I record God’s voice speaking to me; His miraculous provision or even our inside jokes? Or, is it only my complaining sighs as I count up my scars? 

“How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have done among them?” (Numbers 14:11)

Undoubtedly, the most powerful monument is the story that I repeat to myself. The perspective from my past that informs what I believe for the future—especially about God and others and myself. And so, I’ve gone back; examined old notebooks and journals;—not so much for my own words, but rather looking for His. Tilting the pages this way and that for the holographic appearance of Jesus to be revealed in the midst of circumstances that were clouded with pain. He’s there. I just have to remember. 

This article was originally published in the May/June 2023 issue of live magazine. Check them out at baptistwomen.com

You sly boots! You got me dialoguing!

If you're a writer and you find yourself on the internet browsing for advice about how to be a better writer; a more successful writer; you'll come across a range of suggestions from self-described industry insiders that will span the distance between Somewhat Helpful/Mildly Misleading all the way to Gag-Inducing and everything in between. Personally, I think that stuff is mostly a waste of time;--at least, I've wasted a lot of time and spent a good deal of my insecurity finding out that much of the advice is just flat out wrong. (The same principle can be applied to every Women's Magazine article you've ever read, incidentally.) But, in the interest of being more helpful than the previous appears, I say the following:

The quantity of your unseen writing should dwarf the quantity of your seen writing.

Now, most of the time, that isn't so much a goal as it is the reality of the situation; particularly in the beginning--but it is actually a good thing, though it doesn't feel that way. Every writer wants his or her words to be read. And, I hate the idea of wasting hours on pages and pages that will never be seen by another person. This, however, is the way that it should be. Most of writing is never seen. It is edited, deleted, left forgotten and mouldering in a file somewhere on an old laptop. Scenes without backstory or future. Conversations replete with witticisms that no one will ever chuckle at. Paragraphs and poems, odes and epics all doomed, like that proverbial wildwood flower, to blush unseen. Thousands and thousands of words that are never read or seen by anyone else save the author.   It is easy to regard the hours spent on those un-feted words as a waste of time, but they were not. They were the workout. They were the practice that was necessary to produce the final result. The character sketches, the descriptive settings, the opening lines that never reached their closing curtain--all essential in building the skill and refining the artistic eye that produces the one thing worth showing to someone else.

A couple of days ago, I spent most of my workday playing around with dialogue--attempting to write a perfectly comprehensible conversation without any helpful speech tags. No explanation of who is speaking, or helpful adverbs to direct your imagination. Is it comprehensible? You be the judge.

Otherwise, it will never be read by anyone.

“Is it shallow of me to think that I don’t think that I could ever be in a serious relationship with a guy who has an Instagram account?”

“Of course you couldn’t. That isn’t shallow. It’s a strike against shallowness— judgemental, sure, —but not shallow. Guys worth having don’t have Instagram accounts. Preferably they have no social media. But if anything, it’s Twitter—and probably Facebook because we all got those before we realized what we were getting into. But now we’re all too far into the social media honeycomb to get unstuck. No one can claim ignorance. But Instagram for manly men is just not a thing.”

“That was my thought as well.”

“Just out of curiosity, whose Instagram did you see and think, ‘Pass’?”

“Is that really important right now?”

“These thoughts don’t come out of a vacuum. Last night I posted on Facebook that the inventor of three quarter length sleeves should be banished from civilized society, along with whoever created the open-toed boot.”

“What prompted that?”

“Someone posted a video where I was wearing a three quarter length sleeved shirt. They should also be banished.”

“Did you get rid of the shirt?”

“No,  because I need it for choir performances. So I’ll just be wearing it like an A-hole for many holidays and special occasions to come. Whose Instagram were you creeping and determined it would never work?”

“Shane’s.”

“The video editing guy?”

“Yeah—it’s tragic.”

“That is tragic. Wait, maybe it was for his work? Instagram accounts for work are okay.”

“He has one of those, too. This was personal.”

“Maybe you should make an exception. He’s heart-stoppin’ handsome. Like, not usually seen in real life.”

“It appears he thinks so, too.”

“Vanity is unattractive is a man—worse than in women. I don’t know why. Still, that's a shame.Maybe you are being too harsh? He seems worth further investigation—you know, just to be sure.”

“He goes on beach holidays and takes artful pictures of his muscle definition.”

“Never mind. Scrape him off. Don’t be me with the three quarter length sleeve equivalent of a boyfriend.”

“Since we’re not dating, done and done.”

“He was dancing around it, though.”

“Maybe, but I think he got distracted taking a picture of himself in black and white.”

“What’s his account? Maybe I should follow it.”

“Nice.”

“Maybe he dabbles in photography?”

“Everyone with an Instagram account dabbles in photography.”

“That’s not entirely true. I follow yours. The last thing that you posted was a picture of a plant you killed.”

“That was photo realism.”

“Yeah, well, that’s really not the point of Instagram.”

“So you can see how Shane and I wouldn’t be a great fit. He understands Instagram. I don’t.”

“He could light your dead plants better. Looks like you overwatered—“

“I did not over water. I gave it the same amount it had been happily imbibing for months. It just did that for no reason. That was the whole point of the post. It was a hashtag #whatthehellplant hashtag #someplantsaresuicidal kind of thing. And, what’s with this reversal? At first you said, of course I couldn’t date a guy with an Instagram account.”

“No, I said you couldn’t be in a serious relationship with a guy with an Instagram account.”

“You said I should ‘scrape him off’.”

“I was overzealous. I didn’t remember what he looked like until I looked him up again just now. It might be worth it. Besides, he could really punch up your Instagram account. Get you a few more followers; maybe you could crack the fifties.”

“Nice.”

“Look, I get it. No one is perfect and vanity is a failing and it looks like it might be his.”

“One doesn’t usually lead with the failing.”

“Vanity isn’t incurable. In the next ten years or so, his looks will start to fade, and the filter use will increase as his Instagram usage decreases…”

“But until then, I can’t compete with that. I’d feel insecure and unattractive. I don’t want to be the one in the relationship with the good personality.”

“Oh—I thought you were just turned off by his vanity. I didn’t realize it was because of your vanity.”

“My insecurity—not my vanity.”

“Other side the coin, kitten. That’s just the other side of the coin."

Things I thought about writing while mixing my metaphors.

"November is usually such a disagreeable month... as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it."

-L.M Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

It’s the beginning of November and I’m watching the snow falling on the roof of my garage and undoubtedly covering the gardenia plant that I nursed all through Canadian summer to the production of a solitary bud that has yet to open. I’ve given up hope that it will ever bloom and release the sweet, intoxicating scent known to that temperamental shrub that blesses gardening zones that fall in the double-digits. Really, I am amazed it has lasted this long, albeit abetted somewhat by my schlepping it into the garage late at night when the mercury is predicted to drop. I’m done with that, though. Time to let go and let God, as it were. There are some things that you cling to in October, that November buries at long last.  

October is a month of nostalgia. Even writing out the word, I remember the almost lost days of elementary school and writing out the date on the top right hand corner of my notebook page in the large, looping hand of my childhood penmanship. October lent itself to illumination. Pumpkins. Leaves. Black cats and jellyfish-shaped ghosts flitted around the dates that marked my education. It is a month that keeps giving. Thanksgiving and Halloween and warm sunshine with crisp apple cider scented wind as the unharvested crab apple crop softens on the branches of gnarled and naked trees and perfumes the air before splattering on the ground below. They’re mess makers, those trees, but forgiven once again come May when they adorn themselves in a luxurious display of blossoms.

But May is still a long way off, yet. There’s November to get through. November with its grey skies and flurries. Its blankets of snow that deflate into grey slush and tire tracks and melting footprints on sidewalks. November with its biting winds and hitched up shoulders. It’s easy to lose hope in November. It is easy to feel like I’ve gotten jammed up, somehow frozen in place and waiting for the sun come near enough to warm me back to life so that the sap runs again. November feels like going to bed and being tortured yet again by the thought that nothing happened today—just like yesterday. If the Christmas season didn’t follow on this clinical depression of a month, I’m not sure any of us would make it. I turned on my Christmas playlist this afternoon in an effort to keep the grey at bay. As though I were one of the little animals turned to stone in C.S Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe celebrating the return of Father Christmas to the land of perpetual winter. That is the astounding thing about stories, they tap into something real and primal—feelings that you didn’t know you had until something in your chest echoed back with perfect pitch the truth revealed in a story. Winter without Christmas—without celebration—is November. Process without the anticipation of hope is a sick land under a spell. The always winter, never Christmas of Narnia, is me if I turn my heart to stone;— incapable or unwilling to celebrate the goodness of God that is coming; indeed, that is already here. 

‘Aslan is on the move’ was the whispered hope of frozen Narnia. Despite the fact that nothing has melted yet, and the world looks as frozen and hopeless as it did yesterday, Aslan is on the move. Thank God for C.S Lewis and the truth of Narnia. A fantasy story about children and talking animals and a white witch who tells you what you want to hear in order to ensnare you into betraying that which is most dear; and the wonderful Lion who isn’t safe, but is good.

Writing that doesn’t reveal the truth is selling something. Perhaps unintentionally, but selling something, nonetheless, even if it is just an interpretation of the world. If it isn’t true down deep, it’s marketing. It’s despair or folly with a clickbait title—it’s the White Witch telling you what you want to hear in order to get something from you.

There are times when the truth is easy to see,—like the yellow brick road that Dorothy followed to reach the Emerald City and find the Wizard of Oz—it is a pathway laid clearly before our feet. And yet, there are other times, too; like the field of soporific poppies where the truth you want to walk on is a hidden thing and the very air itself an opium haze meant to lull you to a death like sleep. 

The truth—that golden path— desperately needed, desperately sought, but hidden amid the snares laid by a different witch. Funny isn’t it, that we expect the truth to lead us somewhere? The questions posed by the longing in our lives are waypoints on a map whose destination in marked with a cross. But no matter how long we’ve been searching and waiting and bearing up, the answers to the urgent feeling of longing within elude us. 

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out.” (Proverbs 25:2)

Strange to think that God has deliberately hidden things from us in order that we might discover nobility in searching the answers out. Writing is a means of searching. Flannery O’Conner once said that she wrote in order to discover what she was doing. Andrew Klavan, another author I admire, said he wrote fiction in order to work out his worldview and I find myself doing the same. There are places that I keep coming back to; ideas and ideals that become inevitable plot points or character traits because they mean something—profound or precious—to me. In every piece of writing, I see the themes emerging like a polaroid photo that gradually reveals a familiar face. At first they are only off-colour, misshapen unrecognizable blobs, but gradually as the the whole takes shape, the ideals come into focus. The ideas that are powerful to me both for good and ill are already present even in the execrable first drafts. They are in the DNA just waiting to be expressed. The problems that I don’t know the answers to; the truth that I am hungry to find. 

Someone asked me recently if I knew the ending of my novel Altruism in Gophers before I started writing it. My answer felt too close. I said I knew where I wanted to go, but I didn’t know how to get there. I could have been talking about myself, rather than the story. How can I as an author answer the questions posed by the characters and the plot when I don’t know the answers myself? 

Writing—for me—takes a very long time. Months go by without much measurable progress, except perhaps for the savage editing of great swaths of text, and a particular brand of self-loathing that I can’t get where I want to go. Providence and serendipity have to play their parts in fiction and in life—but not so heavy-handedly or the reader rolls her eyes at authorial convenience that cannot get within spitting distance of the truth. And yet, I am desperate for serendipity; for Providence to step in with a deus ex machina; lest I sink like Atreyu’s horse Artax into the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story. The search for the truth of the matter is exhausting and costly. Perhaps only kings can afford it—or maybe it is the quest itself that makes a king.

Writing is a strange pilgrimage of discovery and creation. We write and fail and try again. Columbus set out on his voyage in order to find a new trade route to India and discovered North America instead. Sometimes—usually—the answer is different than what we expect. And usually, the search takes much longer than you ever thought possible when you started out: this searching for what God only knows. And it feels like the answers will be out of my grasp forever. But—I remind myself when I feel melancholy and in danger of writing a depressing poem—it’s just November and Christmastide is coming.