Updates --Creative and Personal

Aaargh! I'm beginning to think no work of art is safe.

There I was, beginning a new novel. Young Adult. I figured I'd write it and clear my head of Constant Tower so I could go back and edit Constant Tower with the cold dispassionate eye of an artist. Well, noooo! This YA, My Life as an Onion, is bringing back all kinds of painful memories about my bullied school years. I'm actually crying while I write some of those stupid chapters. Well, there I am. I figure I can't go back now. Just get the thing down and move on. I want to enter it in the annual Delacorte YA contest so yeah, I have to finish it.

On the religious front, I've been thinking about building one's house on the rock. Jesus said, in MATTHEW 7:24-27 Wise man built on Rock.Foolish man built on the sand.The storm blew the sand house away!

This is one of the verses that talks about walking the walk instead of merely talking the talk, and instead of deceiving one's self about one's walk. I got to thinking, "Okay, I think God says his word is like medicine and health to all or flesh if we meditate in them. But really, have I been taking his word as medicine?" Hubby and I command son's body to be healed in the morning. We read the word to him but we really do not take the word as we would medicine the world gives us. So we're attempting to do that. Three times a day. Very hard to do! But why is it very hard to commit to? Because probably somewhere in our hearts we're undisciplined and uncommitted to taking medicine in a prescribed way -- I totally, totally CANNOT follow a recipe-- and also because somewhere else in our hearts we really aren't believing the medicine will work. But we are told to obey a verse. And it's only when we obey that we see the truth of the holy insight. Wisdom is justified by what it produces-- only when one produces it.

Same thing goes with the verse, "With the heart one believes that Jesus saves and with the mouth one confesses UNTO salvation." And all those other verses about ordering one's conversation aright. Some folks believe in their heart and never speak the affirming positive confessions, and some folks speak the affirming confessions like robots mimicking words but don't really believe in their hearts. We're told that we walk by faith in God's word not by faith in what we see, feel, hear, etc. So I've been getting better at speaking the spiritual theological truth instead of the pathological truth. I've had moments when I slipped and if someone says, "How are you?" then I said, "I feel like crap, I haven't slept in three weeks, the chest pain is getting worse and my heart is hurting me, Older son is sick, yadda-yadda, yadda." But now I've gotten better at that. Which means if I disappear from the internet for a while it's probably because I'm ill but from now on you won't hear that out of me. And it also means I'll be getting better and better because I'm doing what God wants me to do.

Third thing, I had this dream

I dreamed I was in the frozen north and a sudden cold and snow had separated us from everyone else. One girl found a kind of All-terrain vehicle and she decided she would hug the lake or ocean whatever that was and travel around the marshes and cliffs to the inhabited town miles and miles away. I shouted to her to watch out for sinkholes, hidden lakes, ponds, etc. She said she would but I began to think she had developed a kind of snow sickness because she was driving a bit too erratically and seemed to be enjoying it and laughing a bit much. She even attempted going up a cliff in it. It kinda succeeded but then it fell over backward on its top. She survived, though. I was watching her but then she and I met other folks. We were all happy to do that.

At first there were about three different people traveling alone but then we all met up and at last ended up in a little hut. There was a radio which ran on its own generator, and a stove which was connected to the pipeline but there was very little in the fridge and the question was should we attempt to move on or all stay put and how long would the snow and cold separate us from help or the mainland? Were rescuers even looking for us? I think there were about five women and two men. I remember an older black guy and a youngish white boy. I was far from in shape. I saw that two of the women with us had gone out into the snow from far and had each cleared a bit of the road. It was now my turn. Or it'd be coming up soon. One girl called it the ostrich neck of the road, or that the road ostriched-neck. I kept thinking of how cold I got when I was in the snow, my toes froze easily. My chest ached whenever I tried to lift snow. And I didn't have any pants, just short sheer underwear/upper leg warmers and a black polyester skirt. One of the ladies was challenging another of the ladies about me. She said, "You don't think she can do it but just look. She'll cut such a path in the snow and do so much work you'll be shamed because you won't do that much." The more she spoke of how good I'd do, the more nervous I became because I didn't believe I could lift the shovel more than twice, much less push the snow up the steppelike hillside which was going to be my bit of shoveling, harder than the flat path ...or the part of the road beyond the ostrich neck. 

All the while I kept thinking, why don't we just stay here and attempt to eat off this land and fish in the ice? There's got to be food around and leaving the hut might only get us all killed if we attempt to go all those miles in this snow? Don't survivors die when they leave their place of safety and attempt to go sixty or whatever miles in frozen wasteland to the nearest inhabited town or outpost? But all the while I kept looking around for shoes and something to keep me warm while I went out to shovel.

So then I got to thinking: (First on the physical stuff, although I felt the dream was primarily about spiritual exercizing.) I really must get an exercise bike. I need to lose weight and I so hate winter that I never really walk outside in the snow. And then I thought about the spiritual thing -- that the dream was talking about me wondering if I was up to life spirituality -- Had I been doing my spiritual exercises? Praying for the sick? Praying for others? Meditating on the work? Forgiving creepy cruel people on an ongoing basis?

I really think something creepy is up the bend -- not for me alone but for the world at large-- and am I spiritually prepared to do my part in clearing the path? So, yeah...am attempting that. That's about all. -C