Rhinoceros

For regular readers of my blog, if there are any, you will have noticed I have been silent for over a month now. That is because I have been having a crisis of spirit. I have received so many rejection letters for my writing, my prime passion in life, that I have considered giving up. I know one needs a thick skin in this business, but mine has been scraped away. Rejection has taken all the joy out of my writing, bleached it dull. Perhaps, after nearly eight years of effort, it is time to call it quits, say the dream was good, I gave it a good try, but clearly it was not meant to be, and move on.
So I took a sabbatical. Stopped writing, said so there, you win, to all those stupid publishers with their little encouraging hand-written notes, telling me I have a strong voice and they loved my story, but they just can’t print it. Bleah on you.
I found there is nothing else I want to do. I like to write. But if nobody but me reads it, why bother? Does writing then become a silly hobby?
My sabbatical continued.
Now I’m back, but on my own terms. I’m going to write for the sheer pleasure of writing, and not worry about commercial potential. I may or may not send my work to market, but that will not be the point. I may never be famous, but ditto. I am still writing. Bleah.

New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s, and time for resolutions. The number one resolution made each year, or so I'm told, is to lose weight. No surprise there. I've never been one for resolutions¾I know how hard they are to keep. I can manage to give something up for lent, but that’s as long as I go. You’d think a broken bad habit would stay broken, but bad habits creep into your life with as much ease as ants into your house.
Instead I decided to make realistic resolutions. Like going skinny-dipping, or taking my picture in a photo booth in the mall. These were things I never did as a youth, and resolved to do the past two years. They were fun and easy and I enjoyed them.
This year I'm aiming a little higher. I'm to going to try to quit doing things solely to gain other people’s approval. I think I spend too much time working to please others, which a is a loser’s game for sure. Even more of a waste of time than trying to lose weight, and even less satisfactory. It’s going to be hard work, since there are no clear road maps, but I will definitely benefit.
I’ll let you know how it goes.

I Hate Turkey

What is it with holidays and turkey? Does anyone really like turkey meat? C’mon, the rest of the year when you go out for a fancy dinner, what do you order? Turkey? I think not. You order prime rib, or steak, or some other beef dish. Maybe you order lobster or even pork tenderloin. But you do not order turkey. Restaurants don't even stock turkey except at Christmas and Thanksgiving. There's a reason for that: nobody likes it.
I'm not being a grinch here. I love Christmas. I love the parties, being with family and friends, going to church at midnight, exchanging gifts . . . I even enjoy turkey dinners. The gravy, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes--real, not from a box--the cranberry sauce, and all the rest are wonderful. But I can only swallow the meat if it’s drowned in gravy. Lots and lots and lots of gravy. I generally take a very smalls slice of meat, place it prominently in my plate, and exclaim over how wonderful it is so no one’s offended by my lack of desire to actually eat any of this foul bird. Pun intended. Then I carve into the good stuff--the mincemeat pie with hard sauce. Especially hard sauce. Mmm . . . hard sauce. I can hear Homer drooling in the background even as I write.
Nobody wants the leftovers. My mother now trashes the rest of the bird because it’s a waste of effort--a lot of effort--to try and save it. And who likes turkey soup, turkey sandwiches, turkey casserole, and leftover dishes that drag on for days? Anyone? I mean it; if you do, tell me.
Not to mention turkey products valiantly sold in grocery stores the rest of the year. Turkey lunchmeat, hot dogs, etc.--meat substitutes that are supposedly more heart healthy than beef. Give me a break. Beef is leaner these day. Enjoy it.
So why do we celebrate our most special occasions with this horrid bird? Is it because we all need the excuse to serve gravy and stuffing?
So lets serve gravy and stuffing and mash and forgot the roast beast.
While we’re at it, lets forgo mince pie underneath the hard sauce. And dip without the ships. Less calories that way.
Have a merry Christmas. I’ll toast you with my rosé wine.

Why does Beowulf upset me?

For some reason the new movie release of Beowulf upsets me. I guess it's because I’m tired of seeing Hollywood remake European films. The Beowulf that came out a couple of years ago was made by people whose ancestry is from the part of the world where the story is told, and for whom the story therefore has some tribal or cultural meaning. That meaning became imbedded in the film and made it interesting even to those of us who do not share that background. I think we all enjoy hearing each others ancient stories--there’s a resonance to them that we can all relate to.
But when a major studio gets hold of one of these gems, they digitize it and sex it up and put in all those great two-bit quote lines, thus distorting the origins of the story and ruining the resonance.
This doesn't happen when Hollywood sticks to what it knows best and tells an American folk tale, such as The Patriot or Alamo. In these films the tone and style ring true, the substance reflects the story, and we get caught up in that American patriotism that can be so stirring even to non-Americans.Why not find a Native American story to tell instead of rehashing a distant myth? After the acclaimed reception of Canada’s Attanarjuat a few years ago, I’d like to see more North American tribal tales retold on screen. I bet I’m not alone.

More on Suffering

I’ve been attending a seminar at my church lately, The Foundations Of Spiritual Companionship. It’s to help pastoral care providers offer more compassionate care, especially when visiting the ill. We were asked to think about our theology of suffering, and to reflect on the book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Rabbi Kushner.
As I think more on this issue, I realize I have not adequately explained what I mean by bad things happening randomly. I am referring to what I see in nature. Lightning does not choose the tree it strikes. Tornadoes do not choose where to set down. Hurricanes do not choose where they will touch land. Forest fires do not choose what they will burn. There is no place in the word where one sort of natural disaster or another will not occur at some point. God does not will these natural events, nor choose the victims. In the same way, I do not think God chooses who will get cancer, or who will be in a plane crash. Rabbi Kushner say that when disaster strikes, we should not ask, why did this happen to me, but, now that his had happened to me, what am I going to do about it?I think this is a healthy approach.

My Theology of Suffering

My theology of suffering has evolved over the years, in a way almost coming full circle. When I was younger, I didn’t question; I took an animalistic view that suffering is simply a part of life, happening randomly, with compassion being the only appropriate response. Then I became deeply involved in prayer, especially in intercessory prayer, joining the prayer circles at the churches that I belonged to. Through this process, I became amazed by the miracles that God often works through prayer, and gradually became convinced that prayer could cure all ills, if only we prayed hard enough, or if only the recipient of the prayers was receptive enough. Thus, although I still felt the initial suffering was randomly placed, I believed that the response to the suffering was under human control through openness to prayer.
I learned the naiveté of that belief when a friend's young son died of brain cancer last year. Man, was that boy prayed for. No one could have received more heartfelt prayers than he. And he was most receptive to prayer, being a very loving and spiritual child. Yet he died anyway. I was devastated, not only but the loss, but also by the shattering of my beliefs. How could God have let me down so? How could God have allowed this child to die? Why hadn't God worked one of his miracles for Matthew?
In the midst of my raging, I went to a one-day spiritual retreat, where I had the brief enlightenment that God does not view death the same way we do. God after all is eternal, and looks at the human condition from that point of view. Although she feels our suffering, she also knows about our afterlife, and this vision, a curtain briefly lifted for me, so that I could almost grasp the eternal message, allowed me to see that there is so much more to the picture than I could ever grasp.
So now, although I have not abandoned my habit of prayer, I have come to understand that suffering happens randomly, and healing cannot be guaranteed, and our only viable response is compassion.