Monthly Archives: November 2010

Dead Reckoning

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And so it happens that, fifteen years later, my heart finally absorbs another Thing Which Was Never Explained.

How can the burden of Christ–to have victory over sin–be an easy yoke, a light thing?

It’s preached as a must for maintaining personal sterility in a biohazardous spiritual realm. Or perhaps a nebulous line we tread as we walk alongside ravening hostility to God, trying not to end up devoured by its ethos. Just don’t look it in the eye, and you’ll be fine.

But never in all the things I’ve heard was that sterility fleshed out into life as I now see it. As long as it remained another law to be kept, it remained a tool of the flesh for tearing oneself apart inside. I could only ignore the things I heard and rest on what God revealed in Scripture. Slow growth.

But it is not a law to be kept. It’s a simple fact of reality. And reality only has to be realized.

Continue reading →

All Things’ End

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wo strange things happened: first, it was time. And second, we found people we could talk to, who understood without asking for input. After all, it was our past, not theirs. We sat in the living room of a November evening and poured out tears and heartache. A few days later, in someone else’s living room, again we shared what we knew to be true. It comes clearer when compared against outsider reaction.

It was in March 2008 that we left our tearfully-scribbled resignation notes on the pulpit of the former church, held in place on the gaudy upholstered surface by a push-pin. Nearly two years since it turned out to be that easy. We had thought there might be something complicated about it, something else that would be demanded of us. There wasn’t. After all, not a soul got in touch with us afterward, either to see how we were doing or to ask why. We were left unobligated.

The Undesirable Inheritance

We were left discarded, spun free from a process of increasing hardheartedness in the name of good cheer. I speak to the internals of it, not the surface, for we were immersed in it, while many of the rest felt only a sprinkling of the hidden poison, or perhaps a splash. It was something hidden in the workings since the beginning, I believe, and something that will be until the end.

Continue reading →

Marc Schooley: Video Interview

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Welcome to my house. Kids, cooking, hyperactive watchdog, and books. And what is that!? Who let that varmint in here?

That’s right, the varmint showed hisself, and our peashooters just weren’t fast enough. And you know, once they’re in the door, you have to be polite. It’s the Canadian way. So when Marc and his wife visited Canada recently, we grabbed some time after hosting them for supper, and hobnobbed about Konig’s Fire.

On the to-do list for next time:

  • lock the dog up
  • give the children a dose of ether
  • make sure the dishwasher’s loaded first (our poor longsuffering spouses patiently cleaned up while we were being book nerds)
  • wear black socks
  • include the clip where, after denying my claims, Marc says, “What you said was…But don’t use this part, because it’ll give away the ending.” (I rest my case.)

Bonus round for your viewing fun: a group of young creative types, including teen author Christian Miles, have put together a live-action trailer for fellow MLP author Jill Williamson’s second book.

Fall Cleaning in the Googleverse

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Two years ago, I wrote to a British friend,

Here in my corner of Earth, the first snow is falling–we expect ten centimeters and already have an inch. (That’s the luxury of Canada, mixing measurement systems so flippantly.) I have regrets outdoors. I have hope indoors. I have stories begging to be told. I have questions.

What course of action will have the most impact on the world around me for God? How do I live with myself if I let some things go? Will I regret what I do keep? There’s not enough time for all the joyful things God made in this life.

Y’know, I’m trying to remember that all the fun comes later. We have heaven and a whole eternity full of wonderful things. Here and now is the work season. But sometimes I struggle with how wonderful life is and how little I seem to catch as it goes by.

I’m there again. Continue reading →

For The Young Who Want To

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Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

~Marge Piercy

(HT: A.S. King comment on this article)