Insidious

I made a rule for myself earlier this year that I would not do homework on Sundays. So far, I've been able to stick to it (except for when I do my American lit readings on Sundays, because that's reading and it's enjoyable, right?). Tonight, though, I'm going to bend my rule a little further, because it's not homework if it's a blog post!

This semester I'm enrolled in a lit seminar focused on C.S. Lewis. We've been going over The Great Divorce, which I read my freshman year when an actor named Anthony Lawton performed an excellent adaptation of it. Describing Lewis's words can't come near to the way he puts things himself, so if you haven't read The Great Divorce (or The Screwtape Letters), I urge you to drop all the things you're holding and pick up a book at once. And then maybe this will sound more like a musing on a book than an adapted essay.

Something made abundantly clear when reading about the ghosts in The Great Divorce is that selfishness goes along with the bending of good and truth. In making something more important than God, you set yourself up along with it. Almost any sin tries to make us God. All sins fail in that they take us farther away rather than bringing us closer to Him.

There are sins I am prone to. I look down on others for being less competent than myself. I'm jealous of those more capable than me. I let myself be carried away by more extreme emotions because I want to think I deserve to feel the way I do, which lets me wallow when it's too hard to do something about my circumstances.

The thing is, even when I'm aware of these things, I can trick myself into thinking I'm doing the opposite. Instead of being irritated at someone for doing poorly, I can pity them instead. That feels like compassion, right? Jealousy is just a desire to learn to do better. And when I know I'm letting myself get carried away, I can just try to get over it, and aren't I so strong and noble to be overcoming myself so?

Sin is insidious. It sneaks into the things we try to convince ourselves are right. It hides in the dark without knowing how big the light is.

The Great Divorce highlights how ludicrous sin and evil really are. In the face of God, in the knowledge of how deep and beautiful and enduring Truth and Goodness are, our shifting thoughts, self-justification, writhings and whimperings make for a pathetic show.

In Lewis's encounter with the Tragedian and the Lady, the Lady tries to make her husband understand. "Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their will self-crossed?"

No matter how we try to justify ourselves, Hell cannot veto Heaven. The things we would claim for ourselves cannot be right or great or truthful if they are not in God, even if born out of a desire to struggle for truth.

The real answer to all our desires can only come with eternity. With his usual deftness, Lewis puts it in words assigned to the character of George MacDonald:

"All answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain.... But if ye are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see -- small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope -- something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all."

In time -- or maybe, as Lewis puts it, once we're outside time -- we will see how small we currently are. We will grow bigger than the insidiousness that tries to claim us. Heaven will be an answer better than all our theories and strivings, better even than all Mr. Lewis's words can make us hope for.

Crafting

Every once in a while, I get in a really crafty mood. Sometimes it's the result of a project that's been mulling in my head and finally spills out, demanding attention (must! buy! yarn!). Other times it's from a need to do something with my hands and be away from people. Often, it's the drive to try something new.

For the last week or two, I've been working on my Halloween costume, a Regency-style dress so I can be Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. (Yes... book nerd...) I've never done such an involved sewing project before. I had to carefully read the instructions, troubleshoot problems, and worst of all, hand sew buttonholes. I even opted for period accuracy and hand stitched the visible seams. I usually wouldn't put in so much time for a Halloween costume, but my hope is that I can possibly use it in the future for reenactments and cosplay. (And now I can be Lizzie Bennet whenever I want.)

Making the dress started me thinking about the patience it must have taken to live in a time where people had to make their own clothes, grow their own food, and repair their own tools. Things we take for granted, even get irritated about if they take too long, were simply considered work to be done. People had to be productive in order to get to what was more important.

Except I realized that didn't have anything to do with me making the dress.

For me, doing something like sewing a dress simply because I can is a way to instantly feel accomplished. Since I'm good at doing crafty things, trying a different crafty thing feels like something new, but really it's just another exercise in things I know I can do. It doesn't take too much effort, but I still end up with a tangible manifestation of how skillful I am.

lotrolife.com

Even when I try something completely new to me, the beginning stages are often easier to grasp, so it feels like I'm making progress. I do believe it's important for a person to be able to do a wide variety of things, but in RPG terms, my weakness is a tendency to multiclass. And giving in to the excitement of trying new things can take away from working on more important things -- skills where I now need to put in a lot of effort to improve and really accomplish something.

Namely, writing.

Because I love learning, it's easy to feel satisfied when trying something new. It is much harder to get past the beginning stages and dedicate myself to becoming an expert. Writing my novel is proving difficult. It's no longer new and interesting, but if I want to excel at it, I'm only going to improve if I keep working, rather than distracting myself with easier projects.

It's funny how doing something by hand can show you how short your attention span really is.

Upcoming NaNoWriMo

I came up with a list of posts this week so I'll never be stuck without an idea on a Sunday evening. Unfortunately, I don't have enough brain at the moment to write any of those. Instead, I've got a quick update on one of my favorite things -- National Novel Writing Month.

Last year I did an August NaNoWriMo instead of the November version. This ran over into the beginning of school, but the summer version helped me avoid most of the stress of balancing school, theater, and writing for an entire month. This year, I've got another approach -- halving my word count.

My third year of NaNoWriMo, I wrote a book (based on Jack and the Beanstalk) that I realized wanted to be a graphic novel. It was painful trying to pack it with enough padding to make word count. The thing that really captured my imagination was the aesthetic of the world I imagined, one it took me a while to understand would work best in a visual medium. Since I want to illustrate it, that project is shelved until I get more experience in scripting and illustration.

This year I have an idea I'm also anticipating will be a shorter work. I'm going to shoot for 25,000 words, which will only be 833 words a day. (Or less than a page and a half. I can do that, right?) It is again a rewritten fairy tale -- maybe next year I'll try to shift out of that. I'm excited because I've never written a novella before, and I'm hoping I'll be able to play to the tightened medium. I'm also excited because the magic system is based on origami. This means I have to do research, but it also means I get to learn a new craft.

Unfortunately, my novel is still at a standstill, but I think it might be good to start a new and fun project for a change of pace.

Are you going to write a novel next month? If not -- what's keeping you?

Happy writing.

Steelheart review

I should have learned long ago when my older brother handed me The Hobbit to trust his taste in books. Still, it's taken a couple years. There have been many cases when he would recommend a book, I'd tell him I'd get to it eventually, and then go about my daily life thinking I could find books perfectly well myself, thanks.

Then, since I'd delayed reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson much longer than necessary, he bought a copy and gave it to me. Since then I've been a bit more willing to trust. Also, he no longer has to remind me to read Brandon Sanderson's books.

I read Steelheart last week with high hopes. In short, it met expectations I might have had for any other book with its premise, but didn't quite reach typical Sandersonian levels of awesome.

Don't get me wrong. I liked it quite a lot. We've got an evil superpowered ruler and a team of resisters. We've got cool technology and character development. We've got edge-of-the-seat moments sprinkled with the ethics of rebellion.

What we're missing is the Brandon Avalanche -- the part of the book where stuff starts happening and then holy cow I didn't think of that and then things keep happening and, by the end, you're left in awe of the sheer brilliance of all the plot details and action you couldn't have imagined coming together in so short a time. Instead, we get a somewhat tamer climax.

But there are more books coming, and there are still questions unanswered. Nicely done, Sanderson.

As per usual, things were most exciting when we got to see the worldbuilding work. Supervillains -- called Epics -- exercise their powers and succumb to weaknesses. A city turned entirely to steel changes the lives of the people of Newcago. And we see how these things changed how one young man grew up -- David, the main character.

David is kind of awkward. I had to accept the awkwardness as part of the character and not the writing itself, but once I did, I was willing to go along with some of the running jokes (David's inability to make a good metaphor, being distracted in his thoughts as he talks to the reader, etc.). It works to show a kid who didn't get a normal childhood because he was too busy plotting revenge on his father's killer and still has some growing up to do. (Seeing this quirky 18-year-old guy launched into a group of hardened fighters is pretty endearing.)

The book isn't long, but it's packed full. Details are dropped at a headlong run as the story progresses, which was great, but description isn't Sanderson's strongest point. Again, I got used to it as we went along, but I might have wished some of the information to be more smoothly integrated into the plot. Usually I cared too much about what was happening for it to pull me out.

Team and leadership dynamics are some of Sanderson's favorite things, and we revisit those here. I love that in a tough, dystopian world, Sanderson makes his characters laugh. The thing is, he seems to like to do that by inserting at least one character who acts the clown. I love zany, humorous characters, but it's just not as fun when an author uses the same zany, humorous character every time (okay, so just once before in Alloy of Law, but still).

I've been nitpicking, but that doesn't negate the fact that I read this book within a day even though I kept telling myself I had homework to do. Do yourself a favor. Read this one, and then wait breathlessly for Firefight to come out next year.

And Mr. Sanderson? Bring back the avalanche. I know you want to.

Wisdom theology

Last Sunday, I finished reading Perelandra by C.S. Lewis for the first time. I loved it, and it's been interesting how bits of it have come floating up into my mind, intersecting with my days. One sentence in particular keeps occurring to me:

"You make me grow older more quickly than I can bear."

In the book, being made older is a phrase for being made wiser. Incidentally, I'm also taking a Biblical wisdom literature class this semester. I can only suppose reading Proverbs, the textbook on being wise, is supposed to make you older.

I've been reading other things, too. In addition to Perelandra, this week I might give you a review for Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart. I've also read some more Redwall, which has been lovely. I'm trying to memorize Rudyard Kipling's If. (Interestingly enough, the day after I started working on that, my wisdom lit professor brought it up as an example.)

I'm in a modern Middle East class which is making me look at the ramifications of religious beliefs and political systems. I largely try to ignore politics, but I'm starting to be convinced that it is important. How people live their lives every day, pulled together into nations -- it's a fascinating process of theology, that is if you define it how my wisdom lit professor does.

Real theology, our beliefs about God, shapes our every way of living. (When you take a look at what most people believe, is that scary or what?)

Everything I've been learning lately, even when reading fantasy, has been growing my mind in ways I don't really know what to do with. But it's significant. I feel it. I'm growing older every hour, but in the end, it seems to be filling me with thoughts I don't know how to express in my life.

How do I help the person I know is struggling?
When do I follow my emotions when dealing with problems, and where do I use my head?
How should I spend my time? Should I concentrate on every moment being more effective?
What, in my leisure, is worth pursuing?

I wish theology was something that would be more easily ingrained in my habits and in my heart. Until then, it stays in my head, until I can figure where to put it.

In any case, I've got more reading to do.

Books and a heart like a child

I have a plan for not getting too stressed out this year. It involves letting Sunday be a sabbath (even if that means lots of homework on Saturdays), taking walks, eating healthy (the part of the plan that is dropped the quickest), and, most importantly, reading books.

I did a lot of reading this summer, but I didn't really need it like I've found I do right now. This summer I had lots of introvert time. When I'm constantly surrounded by people, though, there's no retreat so convenient as escaping into a book. This is something I've been keenly aware of since about first grade.

I'm hardly the only person who, as a child, discovered books as a means of traveling to other worlds. There are books about children who love books -- even movies about children who love books. Sometimes, to emphasize the point, children literally travel to other worlds through books. Something else I've found, though, is how books can change the world I live in. I suppose they do that by changing me.

Whenever I read a book, I see its ideas finding echo in my daily life. I start hearing words that I might otherwise have forgotten. I start to interact with physical objects with the knowledge that they are really part of the universe. The smells and tastes of life start rooting me ever more firmly in reality even as they open my imagination. And because of this, all the books I've ever read have changed my life.

I spent most of today rereading The Legend of Luke, one of the books in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques I adored when I was younger. Today I realized that in literally every chapter the band of adventurers encounters an enemy, makes new friends, or both. Looking back, I'm pretty sure all of the ones I read were exactly like that. (I think there are three I haven't read.) There are many other things that are consistent between the books: silly dialects, an excess of songs and poetry, enormous amounts of attention given to food, and the knowledge that you will meet the counterparts of all the groups of creatures in the past books. This makes every story pretty much the same. However, my nostalgia meter is floating high, and I couldn't have loved it more.

Sometimes you need to be re-inspired. Sometimes you need to be reminded that good people go on adventures and fight evil. Sometimes you need to rejoice in a story filled with childlike innocence, and by that become a little more childlike yourself.

Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten. -- G.K. Chesterton

Man cannot live on bread alone. He needs stories to feed his heart as much as he needs the Word to feed his soul.

It's a God thing

Edit: after a couple days of letting this sit, I've started to worry that this post might be taken seriously. I promise that I don't usually write stuff this saccharine. I wrote this to point out the contemporary Christian's consistent usage of certain phrases, almost to the point of being ludicrous. I don't necessarily condemn any one of these -- I just wanted to point them out. So, without further ado:

Hello there, beloved. I've been praying for you. You see, God's laid it on my heart to speak the truth in love, just speak truth into your life. I believe we come together in intentional community here at Taylor to build one another up in our daily walks. I've been so blessed to have fellowship with you, and though I want to be a good steward of your time, I thought I'd take a minute to pour into you.

In this season of life, it's easy to feel like God's testing you. It might seem that there are stumbling blocks placed before you, and you might find yourself slipping from the straight and narrow, even straying from the path. When you're struggling, you don't want to become lukewarm. I want to hold you accountable. If you need to open your heart to God, I encourage you to really dig into the Word. Maybe find a life verse to be a lamp unto your feet. No matter the trials and snares, remember, God never gives you anything you can't handle. If he leads you to it, he'll lead you through it. I'm sure God will use it for your good.

Remember, it's a relationship, not a religion. You just have to trust God to move in your life. In short, you need to let go and let God. Don't listen to those lies from the pit the world's trying to tell you -- remember, you are not of this world. You have to give up your burden. I and your brothers and sisters in Christ will pray for you to bear fruit.

If you find you need to keep your sabbath holy, I'd recommend a media fast. Maybe try a prayer walk. You've just got to guard your heart in all this brokenness. I have some great devo books I can loan you. You never know when something might inspire you to rededicate your life to Christ.

If you ever need anything, you're always welcome at my small group. We'd love to lay hands on you or, if you prefer, we can just popcorn it. If you have any unspokens, that's okay too. I know some great prayer warriors with servant's hearts. Me? Oh, I'm just trying to be a Proverbs 31 woman.

Remember, when God closes a door, he opens a window.

I've got to go - I need some QT with Jesus in the old prayer chapel (It's like my prayer closet). Wish me traveling mercies, okay?