Have You Got Your S*** Together?

Recently at my church we had a Sunday of good old fashioned Gospel music and Mardi Gras fun. We sang traditional spirituals and gave some glory hallelujahs some time out of the religious closet. The children's choir even did a great rendition of the gospel classic, "Ticket To The Promised Land" complete with train whistle.

Everyone had a good time. Some more than others. I heard comments afterwards. "They just don't understand that we're much more intellectual here in San Francisco. We like High Church. We're more sophisticated than some of those suburban churches." Now, don't get me wrong. I love my gospel. But I also love my Mozart. And I know that in the past I've balked at some of the hillbilly changes proposed for our church like modern music and electric guitar praise band because I've considered those methods of praise to be beneath a church like mine. We're much better than that.

It got me to thinking about the gospels. They are so different, one from the other, and in some ways portay Jesus in a different light as well. I'm currently rereading the book of John and I find that the theology of John is very sophisticated compared to the "simpler" gospels of Matthew and Mark. I'm finding that I like John the most this time around. But, in putting the two thoughts together, I came across a revelation that seems to cut across the four gospels.

Everyone in the gosples that has their s*** together is screwed! Every single guy that society would have portrayed as being respectable, sophisticated, and above the rabble is, in fact, way too worldly for Heaven. Or, to put it another way, if you ain't broke, you ain't getting saved.

Wow. I think we've all overachieved. We live in a world that praises us for being useful, respectable, sophisticated, and above the rabble. If Jesus were to happen today, most of us would miss the boat entirely. Not only would we not know Jesus, we wouldn't even know He existed. He'd be off talking to the really screwed up folks - the folks that even Jerry Springer won't have on the show - and healing them. He'd be telling us that everything we think we know about God is wrong. He'd be going into our sanctuaries and turning over our money making ventures. He'd be walking through the bad parts of town as one of them. And the people who knew Him would be praising Him in whatever way they could manage, and telling their friends. And what would we want to do to Him. We'd want to see this trouble maker dead, of course, for bucking the system and for challenging us to do His work.

Its all well and good to want Jesus to return because we picture Him arriving in a golden cloud and fixing all the troubles of the world with a glance. But just like the father who comes home and takes out the trash that you were supposed to but forgot about, you'd better be prepared for a whooping.

Being together. Being unbroken. Being responsible. Being sophisticated. Being respectable. Being quiet and polite. These are all well and good. But let's not use them as walls between us and God.

James Cameron is a Poo Poo Head

Just some odd thoughts, cheap shots, and connect the dots on this lazy Tuesday afternoon.

James Cameron is a poo poo head. And not entirely because he produced a rather salacious and stupid documentary about the Tomb of Jesus being found in Jerusalem. The whole concept of the documentary is just insane and the worst sort of science. I'm an archaeologist and I've just uncovered a tomb in Jerusalem from 2000 years ago and, HEY LOOK, there's some ossuaries with names written on them and one of them says Joshua, son of Jesus. THEREFORE, 2000 YEARS OF RELIGION MUST BE WRONG! Cause, quite frankly, that's the ONLY conclusion we can reach from this chain of events, right? Dumb, dumb, dumb - idiots! But rhe real reason James Cameron is a poo poo head is Aliens, T2, Titanic, and then... The Tomb of Jesus. Wow! Way to underwhelm me, film guy. I'm the KING OF THE WORLD! Now let me take off my clothes and run around naked in the streets! Get off your lazy money grubbing butt and start making real movies again and leave the theology to the professionals before you hurt something!

And speaking of dumb and stupid and wrong conclusions, I read a headline yesterday that made me check to see if it had been written by The Onion. But, no, in fact, it was written by real news writers who were actually reporting the real news. Crazy. It seems that the young actor who plays Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, has been stretching his acting limbs in interesting ways. Trying not to be forever typecast as a teenage wizard who flies around on brooms, young Daniel auditioned for and received a role in the British production of EQUUS. He plays a troubled young man who has a thing for horses and, at one point, walks onto stage entirely in the nude - with his little wand hanging out for all the world to see. You can see where I'm going with this right? You can see the protests coming from parents all over the world that young Harry Potter is on stage with his little broom hanging out there? Well, you'd be wrong on that. There are protests all right, but not about wee nudity. NO! The Horror of the Situation Is... HE SMOKES! That's right! With Real Cigarettes! On Stage! There's no word on whether he lights up in the buff, but that hardly matters! When parents take their impressionable young ones to see Harry Potter in the All Nude Horse Review, their kids might be traumatized by Harry smoking a cigarette! Mr. Radcliffe, my advice to you is to get a sensible job where people don't give a crap whether you smoke or walk around naked with horses... um... I'm sure there's a job out there like that somewhere... probably in Vegas.

And finally, I just realized that if I lengthen my penis, enhance my breasts, refinance my mortgage, take hundreds of prescription medications, and help a poor guy in Nigeria with his financial windfall... I'd still have an e-mail cache filled with SPAM. Makes me want to go on a Viking raid!

An Inconvenient Film - Just When You Thought It Was Safe

To make a really long story just long, I am taking a film class and I had to make a 3 minute Super 8mm film this weekend. I chose to make the film at the beach.

Problem #1: Having already overcome the lack of equipment, and the lack of time to make said film, I finally only had the one weekend to make this movie, and it was supposed to rain - hardcore - all weekend long. So, Saturday morning, in the hour and a half I had before the basketball game I was doing stats for, I ran down to the beach in the darkness of a pre-storm morning and tried to make the film by myself. The first couple of shots, other than having to run away from the waves a couple of times, were just fine. But when I got to the middle of my film and a montage sequence of people walking, strolling, jogging, riding bikes, etc... I discovered a little flaw in my plan - there were no people at the beach besides me and the birds. Time was up anyway, and I drove home, wet and frustrated.

Problem #2: Problem already solved since I had already arranged help for Sunday from a friend of mine. Even though it was supposed to pour down rain all day Sunday, I figured there might be some sunlight. So when Sunday dawned bright with occassional showers, I was pleased. I ducked out of church early, grabbed my friend and headed for the beach.

"I need to be back home at 1pm."

"What?"

"Yeah, my Mom needs help hauling something."

We filmed five scenes (shooting over again with more light) and then had to go back to his house - then drive across San Francisco to Bernal Heights, pick up a desk, haul it back to his house, then go to lunch in the Inner Sunset at a great Indian food place where I had Chicken Vindaloo and Naan. It was 3 o'clock before we were able to head back to the beach.

Now rushing to finish ahead of the incoming storm (again) and the dwindling light, there was still the problems I had faced the day before, finding people to walk, job, run, etc... I was creative, but it wasn't easy and it took a big chunk of time. I got through that stretch of film as the tide started rolling in, only to discover that the next sequence on my shooting script calls for waves smashing off rocks - which means getting close to the waves and the rocks. Down I run to the waves, film, scream like a little girl, and then run away. At one point I was filming waves as water completely surrounded the rock I was standing on.

But I don't have time to slow down, I have to keep filming, the light continues to fade, the waves keep getting closer, my stuff keeps getting further and further back on the beach, and I keep getting as close to the waves as I can without getting wet.. ter.

Finally, with the filming done, my friend and I head back to my car and load the equipment inside and climb in. We're wet, chilled to the bone, and tired. And just as I start the engine, the rain started to fall.

You can take your Oscar anytime... to me, this is what film making is all about!

Bittersweet Bloke Bludgeoned By Buxom Biddies!

Or... Why I blame Ariel for this post.

Innocent me, minding my own business, I was strolling through the blogiverse yesterday, as I'm wont to do sometimes, looking for enlightenment, when I came across a post by Ariel at Bittersweet Life (see link in the side panel). This innocuous looking post reminded me of a certain apple on a certain tree. It looked juicy and innocent... but it hid the DEVIL! Or, to be more accurate, the Devil in the form of a link to another innocent looking post from an Australian blogger about Why Men Don't Attend Church.

Being completely naive about such things, I read the post and found that some of the words confused me and made me agree with them. I was bewitched I tell you. I started thinking things like, "Damn straight!" and "Ooh Rah! A man's gotta be a man!"

This, in and of itself, would probably not be so bad. And, in fact, it had no immediate effect on me. I went about the rest of my day and early evening feeling manly and not having an ill effect on anyone. Until I arrived at church last night for choir and met, "As A Deer."

For a guy who has been singing since I was in second or third grade, I have never once questioned the manliness of what I do. This is God's gift after all, and I usually get so uplifted afterwards. I have never, not once, considered the manliness of being a Choir Boy. But last night, after singing "As A Deer" I wanted to rip hairs off my chest, wrestle an alligator, or perhaps ride a motorcycle without a helmet at a high rate of speed while being chased by a Hell's Angel gang. But still, I was not in trouble. No.

The trouble came when I innocently noted to the entire choir, "This has to be the sappiest song I think I've ever sung." For some reason, I immediately had 20 sets of female eyes narrowed on me in that disapproving sort of way that says, "You've crossed the line buddy!" It didn't help that the three other guys in the choir all had their heads and eyes turned away from me in a manner that clearly said, "You're on your own, Rambo!"

I tried to explain. I tried to plead my case. But I was just too outnumbered. I had been done in by an Australian blog and a sappy song combining in my church like The Perfect Storm. I felt emasculated.

And so, I went home, opened the first e-mail I saw and ordered a Penis Enlargement kit... No, just kidding. Had you going for a second though, didn't I?

Unboobified

While I wish the title of this blog could refer to a miraculous reappearance of my manly physique, that is only wishful thinking right now. What it does refer to is the clean mental air I breathed last night on the first night of my TV fast for Lent.

I did not feel good last night. I think the oncoming symptoms of a cold finally started to train wreck me. So after spending a few hours reacquainting myself with my computer, and specifically with the programs I need to update my website (hint, hint, hint...), I crawled into bed early to read a good book. Had I known that there was only about three pages left in the book I was reading, I might have spent more time on the computer. Five minutes later, I was done with the book and I was too tired to do anything else. I just lay on my bed, not watching TV, and letting my mind wander.

I discovered something that I had forgotten. At first, it was just words. Then entire sentences began to race around my mind like kids rediscovering Disneyland for the first time in years. I suddenly realized that I was thinking... yes, THINKING! Imagine that. Ideas, thoughts, feelings, concepts... it was a smorgasbord of mental activity. And underlying all this delightful mental gymnastics was the single thought, "So this is what it's like when you turn the TV off!"

The cobwebs fade. The noise disappears into a mere echo of itself. There is no TV in my existence for the next 39+ days.

Thank God!

What DO you believe?

This blog post marks my 300th and I can think of no more appropriate discussion to signify the 300th post, let alone as a topic to begin Lent.

I've been disturbed of late by an ever more aggressive attack by Atheists on Christianity in specific and religion in general. Their arguments, though now conveyed by all the modern conveniences, have not changed in thousands of years. How can We believe in the things that are written? How can We believe in a man who claimed to be the risen Christ? How can We believe in an invisible creator who made everything, even us, and yet, does not reveal Himself to us? Isn't religion just a trap? Isn't it something make believe that We all want really really badly, so we made it up? There is no evidence for any of it and any of us who believe it, therefore, are delusional. The world would be better off without religion.

Perhaps they're right. We must, for a moment, concede the fact that We can not physically see God. We must concede the fact that much of the life of Jesus Christ is a mystery and that none of us can empirically prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that He existed, much less was raised from the dead. We have no proof that the universe was created. We have no triggering mechanism for life and nobody that We can see has ever stepped forward and claimed to be the creator. Religion has been the cause of so much turmoil and destruction that perhaps we would be better off if it had never been discovered.

And so what does that leave us with? What is the alternative to a world filled with religious belief and faith? What DO these atheists purport to believe in?

Anthropology can't grasp religion. Despite the fact that science has tried to understand the dynamics that make it work, change, and effect so many people, science can't grasp what religion is exactly. They can't define it. It is as elusive to anthropologists as the GUT theory is to physicists. They have tried to define it as a system by which a society controls its members. They have tried to define it as a social heirarchy that exists on a level outside of society, but that has a defining presence on any society that it contacts. But one thing pure science can not allow is a definition of anthropology that includes the existence of a divine being or beings controlling the universe - which is sort of like trying to define an Oreo without believing in the existence of cream filling. It can't be done. And when you really think about it, there is no such world that could exist without religion.

Many atheists say that they believe in a moral universe, not a religious one. But moral to who? And to what purpose? What does it mean to be good? Or evil? If there is nobody that will judge your ultimate actions? If our existence is merely tied to one life time on Earth, give or take all, one roll of the dice, and then... oblivion; what does any of it matter?

Without a backbone of belief, law has no meaning. Without a backbone of belief, good and evil have no meaning. Without a backbone of belief, existence is purely chemical. We are no more and no less important than the flea on a dog, or an amoeba. We exist. Our life is meaningless. Our existence is a cruel joke - a longer lived May Fly. To what end?

The universe boomed into existence. The universe expanded, cooled, created worlds, created Earth. Life formed. Life evolved. We're born. We grow. We procreate. We die. The universe cools. The universe dies. How very depressing.

If an atheist truly believes what they say they believe, then none of this matters. Life is just existence. Love is just chemical. Joy is just hormones. Sunset is just science. Money is just economics. Everything is controlled by an immutable set of laws that just popped into existence of their own accord and we are just cogs in the wheel of existence.

But I don't believe that for one second, and I don't think there's a single atheist on the planet that does either. You couldn't exist if you truly thought that. There'd be no reason to exist. There'd be no point in raising your child. There'd be no way for the human race to have ever survived. We'd have never had a reason to evolve.

God created every single one of us. We all have a purpose here on Earth. Each of our purposes is hopelessly entangled with each other's purposes, so that no matter what we do, it involves interaction with one another. None of us is more important than any other and none of us have it completely right. We all matter. We're all important. And we all share in the bounty of God's love.

You can decide what you want to believe. I can't decide for you. But as for me, I'm going to believe in something, because quite frankly, there really is no other choice.

Let It Be

I am not a patient person. I never have been. And while God has been working on me, my patience is still not endless. But I have managed to attain a certain amount of Godly wisdom over my years, whether I practice it or not, that there are times when the best thing to do is nothing.

When I was a teenager, the thing that scared the bejezus out of me was nuclear weapons. I used to wake up with nightmares. I'd be driving along in my car, panicked, in a hurry, and then I'd see a flash behind me and there'd be a mushroom cloud rising over San Francisco and then I'd wake up with a start and covered in cold sweat. Way too damn serious for a kid - and ultimately nothing I could do about it. I just had to hope and pray that God would keep me safe. Eventually, the cold war ended and nuclear weapons stopped being such a great fear, but by then I had moved on to other worries.

For me, anxiety is a full contact sport. I shake and shiver and wind myself up about ready to explode. I'm the kind of person who gets to the airport four hours early for a one hour flight - just to make sure I am safely checked in and past security before the plane leaves. When I reach my final destination, I can finally relax and move on to some other anxiety. But while I am gripped with anxiety, I feel like the other shoe is about to drop.

I have never really connected my anxiety with a lack of faith. I am sure that I'll be extremely anxious on the day of judgment as well - hopefully for other souls, and not so much for myself. But anxiety is almost universally a state produced by a lack of faith - whether in God or yourself. And its simple cure is to abandon your anxiety and throw it at the feet of God and let Him take care of it, which is usually much easier said than done.

In July of 2001, while I was driving in New York, I was trying to find the turnpike that would take me to Boston (I never did find it). I was driving by myself with only a rudimentary map and no previous driving experience in the area. As the city melted away into rural countryside and I started seeing "familiar" landmarks like Westchester County (home of the X-Men), I realized that I was what most people would refer to as lost. My anxiety was growing by the minute and I felt ready to pull off the side of the road and rage against my outrageous misfortune.

But then a calmness settled over me and I heard an inner voice speak up. "Will, you're the smartest guy you know. If anybody can get out of this situation its you. You couldn't get lost if you tried. And even if you did, with all your travel skills, you'll easily be able to find your way safely. You need to trust in your abilities. These gifts weren't given to you to be hidden away. Don't be afraid to use them occassionally."

I drove on, my anxiety forgotten. Ten minutes later, I found a highway that went east, and thirty minutes later, I connected to the turnpike that took me to Boston. I wasn't anxious for a single moment the entire rest of the trip - trusting in my God given abilities to navigate my way anywhere I wanted to go.

Sometimes when things seem darkest, we all need to be reminded to just let it be and God will handle it. That is the only way we grow in faith.

Mysteries of Faith - Part Three

This question only came to me recently while reading through the Gospels again, but I can't shake the question or its implication. So, I need people to weigh in with their opinions.

If the essence of being human is that we are flawed creatures who sin (we can not avoid this if you follow the doctrine of Original Sin), can we really say that Jesus was Fully Human and Fully God if he never sinned?

I know I must be missing something obvious. Please enlighten my dull witted spirit.

A Valentine's Day Message from Andy

1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love is not chocolates. Love is not flowers. Love is not dining at the fanciest restaurant. Love is not a Vermont Teddy Bear sent to the office so that your spouse's co-workers can admire you. Love is not a Hallmark card.

Love is making dinner when its not your turn. Love is taking out the trash every night, even in the rain. Love is climbing under the house to see if the kittens have been born. Love is staying home to take care of sick kids. Love is holding each other's hands when the doctor tells you the bad news. Love is swallowing the words you meant to say in anger.

Love is not Valentine's Day.

Love is every day.

While Andy's Away... Part One

While Andy (Mile From The Beach) is away tending to God's business during his Blogfast, I thought I'd turn things lively here in the old blogverse. I had suggested in a post a while back that one thing I'd really like to see is a debate about the idea of homosexuality and Christianity. What I'd like is a loving debate where both sides present their arguments, people read and listen to these arguments, and respond in a loving and compassionate way. NO FLAMING! NO DEROGATORY REMARKS! Peaceful, kind, safe, intellectual, heartfelt, and Christian in the best sense of that word!

Well, as it turns out, Suzanne left this comment to my last blog:

I wanted to talk about something and I hope that someone responds. Today at a church I started attending lately, one of the ministers (a women), in her sermon about "love", announced that she married another woman in San Francisco a couple of years ago. I didn't quite know what to feel about it. To me, even if legal it seems weird. But who am I to judge? I am certainly a sinner that needs to repent everyday. Now I am not sure if this is the right church for me. What do you think?

I thought, this is the perfect opener to this debate. So I'm opening the discussion to everyone. Please, remember to be Christian in your responses. And please, don't just say, "Because the Bible says so." If it does say so, please leave a Chapter and Verse.

Okay, everyone, let's discern the Will of God!

P.S. I will give my opinion in the comments as well.

I have so much to say...

I have so much to say, that I can't say a thing. My brain is in gridlock. Thoughts, feelings, strategies, reminders, contemplations, prayers - everything is jammed in there tight like Fibber McGee's closet (now I'm pre-dating myself! ;) But I feel like blogging darn it, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm communicating that which makes no sense to me. It might seem like rambling to you, but to me, its mental ex-lax (that's an image to keep you up at night - imagine if all the crap in your head came flying out at once; old locker combos, ex-girlfriends phone numbers, partially remembered recipes, half spoken prayers, lots and lots of useless trivia, gossip, and political diatribes. The entire world would be buried waste deep in smelly communication. Hey. Now that I think about it - that kind of describes MySpace ;)

My default meter is set to humor. I'm sorry if you don't think its funny. Its all my de fault. Ba da dum!

Somewhere lodged in my brain are the following things:

1) Atheists posting a challenge on YouTube asking young people to publicly reject God and Jesus. Thousands of kids, according to the news article, are taking them up on this challenge. Probably because they think its cool. This sort of story makes me sick to my stomach. I don't consider myself to be overly evangelical. I'm perfectly fine with some people being atheists. But this smacks of anti-evangelicalism. This smacks of the Enemy launching a major salvo at humanities salvation. Yet, I'm sure that Pat Robertson is too busy wondering how to assassinate Hugo Chavez to worry about something like this. Where is the outcry for things that really matter from our religious leaders? We're worried about two men kissing on a Snickers commercial but not worried about our youth being led into making public declarations against God?

2) I couldn't say no to the start of T-Ball season. I don't have the time for it. I can't imagine shifting everything around to add it to my schedule. But its something I need to do. Like smelling fresh grass every spring, tasting that first brat with spicy mustard, hearing the crack of a wooden bat, watching the man-powered scoreboard change in right field; T-Ball has become part of my hope of spring eternal.

3) My unfocused brain scares me sometimes. Last week I had a great story idea about a cruise ship for elderly people who wish to euthanize themselves. I'm scared to think what I'll think up next if I don't finish my novel soon.

4) No LOST, no Heroes, No NCAA Basketball, No Amazing Race: All Star Edition, No Extreme Home Makeover, No BSG, No Jericho, No Prison Break... what the hell was I thinking exactly? I may be ready to follow Jesus to Calvary by the time I'm done with Lent this year. I will have lost all will to live. Especially if LOST starts to get good again. ;)

5) Duke is down. USF doesn't have a prayer. CAL has lost five straight. Honestly, I picked a good year to not watch the NCAA's. Who cares about UCLA, Florida, or Kansas? Really? One of those teams, especially, seems so Self-ish. ;)

Well, I have to get back to work now. Thank you for letting me unclog.

Have a good weekend.

Overstimulated

As near as scientists can tell, an autistic person is one receives outside stimulus (lights, colors, touch, etc...) and has a hard time processing it. When things are calm and normal, an autistic person will react normally - even though they are being bombarded with things we consider normal - but when things are not calm and normal, when they are trying to deal with a confusing overabundance of outside stimulae or new stimulae that they've never dealt with before, an autistic person will freak out (that's not the scientific term). They have yet to discover what causes autism and I will not venture to guess here, but I did have a realization the other day that may help me to understand the situation.

I spent the day on Friday at my desk taking numbers from one computer, writing them down, and then reentering them into another computer. It was boring work and my brain was going on overdrive trying to process all of these numbers. At the end of the day, I climbed in my car and started the engine and the radio kicked on. I immediately switched it off as the sound of people talking was suddenly just too much. I accelerated out of the driveway, turned on to the road, and immediately became agitated driving behind someone who was barely going the speed limit. And that was when it occurred to me... I was reacting like someone whose brain was overstimulated and who suddenly found it impossible to handle all these conflicting stimulae without freaking out.

We live at a time where this is more stimulus than at any other time in history. We are constantly bombarded with images, sounds, thoughts, emotions, smells. Our phones can now take pictures, receive pictures, play music, play video games, send and receive e-mails, play TV, play video... and make phone calls. And these are just our phones.

Ten years ago I was manager of the Hyatt Movie Theater in Burlingame. During the six months I managed the theater, I had two days off. Not vacation days. Not sick days. Two days, period! And one of those days, I still went in early to open the theater for the employees. During that time, I remember one thing very clearly, the phone constantly rang - and everytime I answered it, it was bad news. I got to the point where I hated the phone.

I still do. To this day, I can't hear the phone and immediately go into sensory overload. My phone rings and a little touch of panic runs through me. I talked on the phone so much in six months, that I learned to loathe the device. Today, while I have a cell phone and a phone at home, I still use it very infrequently to call people. I much prefer e-mail.

I think we are experiencing a period in our history where we as a society are making ourselves autistic. We are cramming so much stimuli into every situation (its not enough to watch a good football game, we have to have 65 hours of pre-game, Billy Joel singing the national anthem while Blue Angels fly overhead, fireworks, a marching band with neon lights, 2.5 Million Dollar 30 second commercials, and Prince singing a half hour half time show with electric guitars and even more half naked cheerleaders) that we are literally overdosing on the stuff. It is causing us to freak out. We are unable to react normally to situations. All of this extra stimulation is preventing us from keeping a sense of perspective about life and about the world. We are ADD Cafinated Sugar Laden children trying to have a time of quiet prayer and reflection. Good luck.

Its no wonder we go into our homes and try to shut out the world. We'll happily trade the relatively quiet stimulation of an IPOD for all the outrageous stimulation that American life is trying to throw our way. We don't have to deal with too many things that way. We can try to be alone with our thoughts by blocking everything else out with a song that we've heard so many times that it no longer distracts us.

That's why I've decided this Lent to give up the one thing that overstimulates me the most - Telecommunications. For forty days and forty nights, I will not watch or listen to television, radio, video games, movies, etc... Unfortunately, I can not include computer on that list since I have to work on one (and I have film classes as well as a novel). I will spend the time instead reflecting and trying to work on real life relationships - stimulation of a positive and healthy nature - with friends, family, and God.

It will not be easy. In addition to missing Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, etc... I will also be purposefully missing March Madness. This will be a great sacrifice for me. But, hopefully, it will open up new channels of communication and allow me to exist in my world in a more satisfactual way.

How Long To Sing This Song?

(Sorry, Andy, but you got this song stuck in my head...)

With regards to my novel...

I've been putting off this post because many of you will be asking me what exactly is going on in my head. To be quite honest, I've been wondering the exact same thing lately. The ticking of the clock is a constant threat to me, as if I can look around the corner and see oblivion and obscurity awaiting me.

The short answer is, my novel has never been better.

The long answer is much more complicated. It seems that you can't just take the first act of a three act story and turn it into a full fledged novel with a few quick changes to the text. You see, stories have these high threshold demands - like a beginning, middle and end. And the first act of a story, as needs be, is usually just the beginning. So, when you try to convert one into the other, well... it turns out that you need to create a middle and end. So, the more I wade into this rewrite, the more that I discover needs to be done. I'm halfway through the novel and about half the material so far is brand new. Furthermore, in a three act story you can introduce characters in the first act who don't have anything to do until the third act. Its acceptable. But in a converted novel, you actually have to have a reason for introducing that character in the first act, which means you have to give them something to do that isn't a complete waste of time and space. See, much more complicated answer.

To top it all off, I've been fooling around with college again. Yup. I started back to classes a couple of weeks ago - taking Basic Film Production (a class I need like another hole in my head but that I have to have in order to take anything else) and a course in Film Producing. These classes severely limit my time to write, but then inspire me to want to create. So, as a result, when I have had spare time, I've been spending all of it working on my novel. But there hasn't been as much spare time as there was before.

Now, this may make you wonder how I can possibly think the Novel is in a better place than its ever been. Well, in just about the most convoluted way possible, the story has been strengthened incredibly in the last three weeks or so. You see, while at the library the other day, I picked up a film book to read in conjunction with my film classes. The book was written by a former head of the CAL ARTS Film Program and it was supposed to be about Directing. I thought it might teach me a thing or two about getting those darn actors to do something other than look pretty. Well, I was wrong. I haven't learned a damn thing about acting. What I have learned, however, is how to fix the problems with the novel. In breaking down the problems most beginning screen writers have with their film scripts, I realized that every single problem the former Director was talking about was a problem that I had with the structure of my novel. It was like he had been sitting with me for the past four years helping me write my novel and could recite the problems off the top of his head. Suddenly, in the space of 28 pages of this guys book, I knew where the problems in my novel's narrative lay, and had a solution for how to fix them all.

End result: For the first time in five years, I am confident that I will finish the novel and it will be published. It will still take me some time to finish the rewrite and then to do one final edit (some of the new material is pretty raw and could use some polishing). And then I'm done. Finished.

I know, I know... I should be done by now. Many times over. And it sticks in my craw every time I turn on the computer to start writing again. But the truth is, I started this project with the idea that first and foremost, I was going to learn if a) I could write a novel, and b) how to write a novel. I can confidently say that when I am done, I will have definitively answered both of those questions.

P.S. If you're still reading this and you want more details, go on over to The Thin Line blog. I will make a few comments on some of the changes coming.