A word from an "Everyday (fill in your appropriate citizenship)":

“It’s all about fear and greed.”

Back when I was first trying my hand at the stock market —and losing— that’s the perspective that my father gave me.

“It’s all about fear and greed.”

You sell your position because you are afraid the stock will go down and you will lose money. You buy because you think the stock will go up and you will make money. Fear prompts one decision. Greed, the other. 

This extends beyond the market to politics. Particularly, in election season, we ‘Everyday’ citizens get a chance to hear each party’s pitch on what exactly we should be afraid of, and what we can hope to get our grubby little hands upon if we just put our vote on their right group. 

Fear and greed—the basis of every sales pitch. Whether it is the #lifegoals marketing on Instagram—selling a filtered, imaginary world where every bit of reality’s clutter is pushed out of the frame; or political candidates calling your views ‘deplorable’ or ‘knuckle-dragging’, or some equally friendly phraseology. You hear that and think, " I don’t want to be lumped in with such unpopular folks, I’d better toe the party line. What is it these days?”

It’s all about fear and greed.

Here’s what I want from my government: Get out of the way. Get out of the way of business. (They are the only ones creating jobs.) Get out of the way of the economy. Don’t grandstand your virtue by running down the economic engine of one part of the country in order to buy votes in another.  Don’t tax us into the ground so that you can send money to other countries, participate in meaningless international agreements, pay for the high priced hookers of foreign despots you court for sweetheart deals. Don’t hamper the healthcare market and then tell me its too expensive not to let the government run it. Don’t subsidize some industries and kneecap others.  Don’t tell us what we can earn. Don’t tell us how to raise our kids. Don’t tell us who we are. 

We know who we are. And, we know who you are, too.

Get out of the way. 

Don’t try to get me to trade my personal autonomy for free stuff. Don’t tell me that if I don’t give up my freedom, I’ll be sorry. Don’t threaten me. Don’t try to make me vote for you by telling me to be afraid. Don’t try to turn voters into prostitutes—even those high priced ones— who sell their autonomy for money.

I don’t want the government to be my dad. I don’t want the government to be my pastor or God. 

Get out of the way.

Promise me that and maybe we can come to some kind of an understanding.

Why I Don’t Believe the Media about Anything (Anymore).

“Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you.”

That’s what the monotone slow-talker with black eyeliner said to me when I told him that, no, I didn’t have any money for him. I was eighteen years old and waiting with some friends for a train from Munich to Salzburg to take us back to school at the end of the weekend. He opened flatly with, “Don’t mind the makeup,” as though the scrolling black curlycues and paisleys decorating the majority of his face were just an unfortunate sunspot that had appeared—nothing to do with him, see—rather than a bizarre indication of what he had been up to in the hours previous to our early morning run-in.

“Don’t mind the makeup,” and “Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you,” the comments that bookended our brief interaction, have since become staples in my lexicon. I quote that eyeliner fellow whenever the occasion arises; delivering the lines with the prerequisite deadpan monotone that was fashioned, I can only suppose, in admiration of Ben Stein and aided by extensive use of narcotics. This was back before Germany was on the Euro and most of us had spent the last of our weekend’s budget of Deutschmarks buying breakfast. But even if that hadn’t been the case; even if my pockets had been replete with surplus cash, my answer would have been the same. “No, sorry. I don’t have any money for you.” He persisted, flatly requesting smaller and smaller denominations before finally concluding our interaction with a condemnatory, “Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you.”

It was a funny line given the circumstances—as though his credulity was essential to my well being—but I appreciated picking up the line nonetheless because I’ve found myself saying the same thing in response to the media a lot these days. Clickbait headlines. Social Media posts formulated to induce viral outrage. Newscasts so steeped in assumed bias that it is breathtaking. 

Fine, but I seriously don’t believe you. 

Journalism as an institution was created to report the who, what, where, when, and why of current events. Those five questions formed the bones of every story. Nowadays, however, finding those details in a given article feels like voluntarily treasure hunting in the midst of an Orwellian Two Minute Hate. Either these reporters are really bad writers, or the media seems to have an active disinterest in pursuing and conveying the facts in clear and concise terms. They have abandoned their noble journalistic origins, clamouring to be an instant Commentariat instead, interested only in shaping your interpretation of those facts with correct groupthink. That is, if you can get the facts at all. The who, what, where, and when—the once essential contextual pillars of every story are often hidden in the miasmic narrative of why. The interpretation is always paramount over the details.

This is an era where clicks determine editorial direction and anonymous ‘sources’ whose unverified claims are belched all over the airwaves nonstop until the next outrage. Who are these sources, though? What is their credibility? Shouldn’t such details matter? Where is the editorial integrity that held back a story unless a source was willing to go on the record, or their claims could be corroborated elsewhere? It was that editorial restraint and character that made us trust news media in the first place. It was those abandoned standards that demarcated the journalists from the gossip-mongers.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” (John Adams)

Word, John Adams. However, those with the means and agenda have created a workaround: promote the notion that there is no such thing as objective truth and watch this pesky factual problem evaporate. ’Facts’ are less stubborn if the truth can be whatever you want it to be. If truth is not inviolable, then it is merely a matter of narrative opinion. The facts of biological sex must be changed if they do not correspond to the subjective nature of how an individual might feel. A human life becomes the dissociative ‘products of conception’, rather than an unborn baby dismembered alive in the womb. The cultural slump away from adherence to the principle of objective truth leaves us all vulnerable to the manipulation of narrative. And this is the first reason why I seriously don’t believe the media anymore. If there is no recognition of objective truth, then there is no such thing as fact. All that remains is someone else’s narrative.

The second reason for my media disdain is that everything is a crisis these days. No matter what, it is always the worst that things have ever been. How else are you going to get people’s attention in the age of 24/7 news? Whether it is clickbait headlines that always imply that someone is trying to keep something from you, or the fear that sells you new diets; the politics of indignation and victimization; or disaster movie plots sold as planetary realities, fear is the primary tool of manipulation. Fear of loss. Fear of destruction. Fear of not having the correct virtuous opinions in the face of an online mob. Fear is the conduit by which we receive much of our information from the media.

“The world is on fire! This leadership is unhinged! We’re careening toward destruction!”

Ho hum.

If everything is always a crisis, then it seems like nothing really is. You would think that at some point someone in one of these newsrooms would have internalized the lesson in the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  Soon we will need a new word to describe actual crises—one that won’t get bandied about based on partisan political expediency. (I suggest ‘hullabaloo’. Besides being fun to say, having to say it with TV anchor seriousness would drastically cut down on flippant usage. “Local emergency agencies sprang into action to deal with the humanitarian hullabaloo created by rising flood waters…” But I digress.)

There is a third reason, too, for my media disbelief. Culturally speaking, we have squandered a valuable trait of our Christian inheritance—that is, healthy skepticism. It may seem like an anachronistic juxtaposition to put skepticism as a legacy of faith, but that is only because we have drifted far from understanding the intellectual foundations of Christianity. In so doing, we have deranged and diluted our definition of what constitutes skepticism. The meaning has come to be synonymous with doubt in the Judeo-Christian God, rather than the mechanism of examination of any given assertion. Many ‘skeptics’ parrot Richard Dawkins with the same surety as though he were God and his word was the final one. These people often haven’t examined the matter for themselves, they have only found someone else in whom to believe. As Bob Dylan aptly sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” They have chosen their own high priests to mediate between them and ‘truth’; having taken on the identity of skeptic without participating in its action by conducting their own search. The reason for this is pure laziness of the intellectual, spiritual, and physical variety. We cannot be bothered to search out a matter for ourselves, and so instead we piggyback on someone else’s analysis.

That is not the tradition bequeathed to Western Civilization by Christianity. The Berean Christians were described as being of “more noble character […] for they received the message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11) The Bible itself commends and recommends that individuals devote themselves to the examination and discernment of what is true.

But test everything, hold fast to what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

But solid food is for the mature, for those who have had their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:14)

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

I could go on and list other verses pointing out the same thing. Test, discern, practice, because there is no end to the kinds of deceptions that we will encounter in the world. And the thing about a deception is that it is good at looking like the truth—particularly when delivered to us from slick and serious-looking newsrooms by people who are often undiscerning themselves. 

The end result of healthy skepticism is not doubt, but a reasoned and reasonable belief in the truth. Skepticism is the means by which we should be testing every claim so that we can—through practice—discern what is good and what is evil. This is the hard way, though. There is no room for intellectual, spiritual, or physical sloth. This is daily practice. We should not abdicate our individual responsibility to discern by delegating the task to opinion-makers, politicians, celebrities, or even the news media. You, and you alone, are responsible for the things you believe. And, the things that you believe will determine your whole life. But that is a subject for another article. In the mean time, the next time the media dresses itself up in crisis and hides the details and attempts to shame you into joining their groupthink, you too can respond in a flat monotone, “Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you."

The Chosen One

(A version of the following article was published in the January/February edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com.)

“You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.” 

-J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Read the back of nearly any book in the Fantasy section of your local bookstore and you will very likely come across the Chosen One. Within a sentence or two you will be introduced to the one person who can stop the world-ending events that threaten. So ubiquitous is the premise of one seemingly unremarkable individual plucked from the obscurity of their circumstances to perform an impossible feat, that to name a story within the genre that doesn’t follow that narrative is a challenge. Sure, the setting and details vary but from Star Wars to Harry Potter; The Matrix to The Lord of the Rings and everything in between—the idea of the the fate the world hinging upon the Chosen One is as prevalent in our cultural stories as—well—the notion of a dusty ancient book that contains the prophecies about the Chosen One.

While one might be tempted to regard this familiar plot as hackneyed and overplayed; its reoccurrence the sign of an unoriginal storyteller; (and indeed, in many cases, that is likely true)—nonetheless, the fact that ‘the Chosen One’ appears time and time again in our cultural narratives seems to indicate that something else is at work—something deeper. Stories resonate and communicate to the heart of mankind more effectively than anything else. Jesus taught the people using parables to communicate truth through the powerful illustrative effect of a narrative. Stories demonstrate the stakes and the obstacles that surround a truth with greater impact than spreadsheets or powerpoint presentations. We don’t need to take notes to remember them for they are empathetic undertakings. We find ourselves weeping or cheering for the imaginary. Stories get in our heads and hearts and we do not forget them.

The Chosen One resonates again and again because it is true. The plot is written with indelible ink on our hearts and played out against the backdrop of the world. To be plucked from the obscurity of the masses by a force greater than ourselves for a task of monumental importance rings in pitch perfect truth with our humanity. To be loved. To be needed. To be important. To matter. To have been created for a purpose. The yearnings of the human heart are bound up in the story of the Chosen One. The messianic imagery of every Chosen One storyline speaks to the fact that mankind is looking for the One who will come and save the world. The stakes are high and time is running out. It is no mystery that the premise so pervades our cultural stories. We know deep down that our situation is desperate. We know deep down that we need someone to save us.

Despite the implicit question contained in the word ‘chosen’, the World does not know who will be doing this choosing of monumental importance. And—that makes a lot of people nervous. Instead of the obvious, writers fantasize about impersonal forces;—using placeholder words like, ‘destiny’ and ‘the universe’ to cover their fear of the personal God who takes interest in our lives and the events that surround them. The God, who C.S Lewis reminds us in the character of Aslan, isn’t safe, but is good.

We are chosen. Not by chance or an impersonal force; we were created from nothing and appointed to tasks upon which the fate of the world swings. We are called to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. We are called to be children of God reflecting His attributes for His glory. We are called by our names from the darkness of a world spoiled by sin into His perfect presence. We are the chosen ones called to pattern our lives after the example of the Chosen One of God: the Messiah. The Chosen One populates our fiction because it is the substance of our spiritual reality. And, we know this is true because the prophecies in that ancient book have come to pass.

Hold (a) Fast

(A version of following article was published in the November/December of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but the quickest way to end a conversation between Christians is to suggest a fast. No one—excepting perhaps small children with food aversions—wants to do it. The word is more likely to conjure memories of yellow lab requisition forms and having blood drawn than a divine encounter. Fasting is an old school spiritual discipline that seems out of step with the current era. Unless, of course, you’re a fitness guru chronicling your progress on Instagram—then Intermittent Fasting (IF) is all the rage. We might be willing to fast for medical necessity or physical transformation, but spiritual formation is a harder sell. We don’t know exactly what we’ll find there. Besides, fasting is optional and its effects are more intangible than Instagramable.

Though, perhaps, if our situations are particularly dire, we might consider it as a desperate Hail Mary ploy; a last ditch effort to get God to move when we have exhausted every other option. Even then, though—even when all is darkening around us—the fridge seems more comforting than the fast. The reason for this is simple, fasting removes your natural coping mechanisms so that only God remains. All the noise of life fades into the background as the near constant reminder of hunger points to the One you are seeking. Fasting is travelling a narrow path at a high altitude. Each step—each moment—requires both concentration and exertion. It’s physical effort for a spiritual result. When you think about it, there isn’t much else like it. 

And, like many of the ways of God, fasting is a paradox. It is the conscious effort of subverting physical needs for the purpose of being fed. It is a moment within a moment. A secret thing between you and God. A conversation. A communion. A snuggle under His arm for comfort and rest. It is pressing pause on all that is pressing. The meals to be made, the chores to do, and the errands to run all fade into lower resolution while the spiritual conversation comes into sharper focus. It is an exchange of priorities. It is an act of faith that agrees that, ‘Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ We can hear those words from Jesus and trust that they are true—it is another thing to hunger to hear the Word speaking particularly to us alone

The trouble with the spiritual disciplines is that we turn them into religious duties because we do not know what they are for. We get caught up in the details— wondering if we can still have our coffee during a fast so as to avoid a caffeine headache—rather than rejoicing in the freedom being loosed in our lives. It is in the heart of God to free His people from every chain that binds, every burden that crushes with its weight, and every evil oppression that torments.  It is not His heart to tie us up with the legalistic details of when and how.

Is not the time without eating which I choose, a time to take off the chains of sin, and to take the heavy load of sin off the neck? Is it not a time to let those who suffer under a sinful power go free, and to break every load from their neck? (Isaiah 58:6 NLV)

The purpose—as always—is freedom. It is our mental gymnastics—the never ending internal monologue— that convinces us that the spiritual disciplines are about lack, rather than abundance. We fast to feast because the words proceeding from the mouth of God are better.

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."

Advent: Love in Pretendovia

"Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it."

'Tis the season of the Christmas special.


Netflix has been trimming Hallmark's grass in these last few years; producing saccharine love stories accessorized by holly that are as addictive and unsatisfying as the boxes of over-sweet waxy chocolates that also glut the month. And, like that box of chocolates, without knowing the precise nature of the filling of these films, we all know exactly what we're going to get.

Since I'm offended by bad writing that makes it to the big screen, it wasn't until I was sick last year that I finally watched several of these movies in a row. None were particularly memorable, and there was an incognito prince kicking around in a couple of them. The female protagonist is always klutzy with glossy, salon-worthy hair; a fish out of water in the paper thin backdrop kingdom/quaint village/generic Christmas 'miracle' setting. Her prince (or, village inn manager/soup kitchen owner(?)/single dad/brusque-handyman-with-a-heart-of-gold male lead) is inevitably a cardboard cut-out of a man but with less to say for himself. But, let us not forget the antagonists. These movies have their stock villains, too--generally a sleek, beautiful woman. (But not too beautiful.) Our villainess isn't a klutz either, and most of her characterization is accomplished by the presence of a large, designer purse which is how you know she's both shallow and bad for our cardboard fellow who cares passionately for the homeless/stray dogs/motherless children/the environment, etc.


There are twinkle lights and cabs called in the wake of misunderstandings. And, perhaps the line of succession in the little remembered European country of Pretendovia is threatened by some unworthy Pretender, and the climactic moment inevitably occurs on Christmas Eve as the clock strikes midnight. And yes, there is Christmas Eve monologuing. Resolution is swift; the nefarious Gucci-clad greyhound of a woman sent packing, and the music swells.  Somehow Christmas has been saved--; and hopefully all within a tidy ninety minute time frame.

These films have little to do with Christmas other than giving the set decorator a theme in which to work, but they do provide an empty sugary treat of a romance story for a cold winter evening. And, really, considering the fact that Hollywood doesn't seem to bother making love stories anymore, it isn't any wonder that we find ourselves scratching that cultural itch with less fulfilling means. The season seems to lend itself well to the notion of romance--it being cold outside and all. But there is more to it than that. We expect magic at Christmas. And what, more than love, is closer to our ideas of magic?

Love--unlike its counterfeit, lust--is not about ourselves. It is almost the only thing that isn't these days. Love is the demotion of self on another's behalf. Love is selfless while paradoxically being the most fulfilling emotion that we can experience.

It is because there is a sense of expectation that precedes Christmas that we look for stories about love sought and attained--; even if it is only the thinnest suggestion of love from the feeblest of actors working with the tritest of scripts. We long for love stories all the same. We long for the magic that removes us from ourselves and places us in a better story.

 Advent--the four weeks leading up to Christmas--are pregnant days. It is the preparatory season that deepens the joy of Christmas. It is the building of expectation that something wonderful is coming. There is a miracle due on December the 25th. There is hope that love will be born.

This love that we are all hoping for--reflected in romance-- is the manifest, incarnate love of God. Women, in particular, look for romantic love to save them. As much as the current wave of feminists might urge that women don't need men to save them; we can't seem to help but hoping that some particular man will. Not just anyone, either. It has to be the right one. 

People misunderstand the fairytales, too. Cinderella needed the prince to fall in love with her to rescue her from toiling away for people who did not love her.  Love looks upon the masses and chooses you for your own self. Love is rescue;-- from indifference, from rejection and cruelty.  Love makes the bleakest outlook bearable; love imparts meaning and purpose.

It is love that clothed the Word in flesh in at Christmas. It was love that brought Him to dwell among us; plucking us from the impossible problem that we had been living in.  Without this love-prompted departure from Heaven, we would still be stumbling about in the dark.


The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shined.
[...]
For to us a child is born
to us, a son is given; 
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called,
Wonderful Counsellor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah 9:2,6)

The best of the Christmas-themed stories are all grounded in the need for a miracle; for the perspective of Heaven to break in and change the parameters of the possible; for love to break through. In Charles Dickens', A Christmas Carol, the hard reality of dwelling in deep darkness is tangible in Bob Cratchit's cold hands and long hours; in Tiny Tim's sickliness. Scrooge is not merely an old crank; but instead a man who has lived life according to his own morality of self. He has submitted his will to nothing and no one. It is only through an unwelcome encounter in which the  spiritual world clashed with his material world, that Scrooge came face to face with the agony of regret.

“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” 

The miraculous coming of Jesus to earth is the answer that the world has been waiting for without knowing it. Light has dawned. Jesus is the antidote to regret; not for the hope of better actions but receiving from Him a living heart, rather than the one of stone engirded by the chains we make for ourselves.  The Netflix/Lifetime/Hallmark movies are saccharine without substance because they have no past tense--they acknowledge no real sorrow or regret. There is no danger of the story not resolving. As such, they can only offer a sugary confection that evaporates as soon as it is ingested.

The weighty joy of Christmas surpasses mere gaiety because there are stakes. There is evil. Mankind is fallen from glory. We are all in desperate need of saving from the shadow of sin that covers each one of us. Dwelling in darkness is to reside in fear. It is meaningless, direction-less, and characterized by confusion. Living there has externalities: hopelessness, faithlessness, lovelessness, joylessness. It is the reactionary world of addiction and abuse; abandonment and rejection. The stakes are real.
We are in desperate need of the Light of Christ.

That is why we expect miracles of love at Christmas--because we got One.

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.