Anointed For One's Burial

"She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying." Mark 14:8


Okay, so this verse is on my mind today because I listened to a sermon by Esther Ibanga called "anointed for my burial." I


And it connected to me because it really made me think of taking up my cross, dying to self, crucifying the world to my heart, the fear of man. Much It has to do with my WIP, The Constant Tower. I find that I'm engaging in a kind of self-repression. It's as if I'm afraid to go through the same walk I went through with Wind Follower...so anything that's religious in CT is being squelched. (Yeah, I know...Wind Follower got published by a traditional and respected publisher and got some great critical reviews and nominations...and ...even Publishers Weekly liked it. But there were those two nasty reviewers I have yet to forgive. And the journey of submitting a flaky novel is scarily faithy.) Honestly, whenever my characters say something vaguely religious I cringe. I'm like... PLEASE DO NOT SAY THAT! WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS BOOK ABOUT RELIGION?


And so I'm kinda not allowing the story to come out the way it should. Heck, I'm even looking back at My Life as an Onion and saying, "Oh, gee! Why did I include the religious thing in that book?"


I so wish -- really, i do-- that I were more typical and less weird. The sad, sad, sad truth is that I am quite odd. Oh, okay, normal folks always say how odd they are...and that they have idiosyncracies.  But honestly, they're not that odd. Or maybe their oddness is on a scale of acceptability that mine can never really make. So I'm always terribly afraid to let all that concerns me be in my novel. And yet, there's this weird part of me that puts it into my novels anyway. 


So, Onion is a black christian YA book but it's not a typical black christian YA book. The character is plainly Christian but frank sexual discussions abound. The character is black and race is a big part of the story but not really. And the characters are super-educated. And now I wait to hear what Delacorte will say. I'm hoping they see how good it is. But wow! what if they don't want it? Would I be willing to remove the quirkiness and the frank sexual discussions and tone it down for a Christian publishing company? What would I do with it? Although weirdly, I'm not too afraid Onion won't find a home. What with all those godwinks, I think God has told me He's aware of it and will get it published. But how can I write CT without any of those godwinks? Can I truly walk in faith when I don't have a godwink guiding me along?


Anyway, in Esther Ibanga's sermon, she basically talks about the woman with the alabastar jar anointing Jesus and after that all hell broke loose in the form of Judas' betrayal, the disciples fleeing, the religious people turning on him, to solitary suffering in the garden. She says, "Lots of ministers want the anointing to pray powerfully, to do all sorts of great things, but do they want the anointing for their burial? 


So now I'm thinking...am I willing to be "anointed for our burial?" Could I be anointed to go into the wilderness? To go through a fire? I sooo hate any kind of judgment or snideness from my peers. I HATE rejection. There are kinds of Christianity that are somewhat safe. For instance, the world isn't gonna get into a fight with an Episcopalian -- we American Episcopalians can be pretty trendy and easy-going about stuff like homosexuality, etc. Then there is a Biblical Christianity that is safe for other Biblical Christians: if one goes around being cookie-cutter, conservative, "normal," "happy," and "thorns in the flesh," cake-bakes, prosperity and doesn't talk about stuff like too much about extreme stuff like deliverance, the evils of the conservatives as well as the progressives, the evils of American imperialism, healing the sick, raising the dead, not loving the world or the things in it, etc...


Also thinking -- cause I have a morbid streak-- if God were to tell me I was to die...would he anoint me in a way that enables me to accept it and go through the valley of the shadow of death normally.


As a Christian writer, I guess there is a kind of anointing that can come. But if one is a Christian writer --or even a regular person-- who wants to speak of certain unsafe things.... that anointing is definitely necessary. 


 "Father God, let me do what I need to do so I can be who you want me to be so I can write the stories you want me to write. Remove from me the fear of man and let me be anointed for dying to self and to this world. I ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen." 

Loic, Psal, Ben...and me

Yes, yes, it's been years since I updated this blog. Sorry about that. 

Anyway, been doing some tweaking on Constant Tower. Mostly putting in descriptions and making the dialog sound more contemporary. Really trying to avoid the pseudo high-falutin fantasy yoda-speak. Not quite sure if it's a religious book and that's why I'm having trouble with it (because I'm subconsciously avoiding the religious issue) or if I have yet to discover something essential about that middle section. Will see. Anyway, I got to thinking about the characters and about my isolation issues, pondering the differences between my various characters and how they connect to me. 

So, for your enjoyment.... as if you have nothing better to do. 

WIND FOLLOWER

Loic and Psal had rejection issues. Loic had perceived rejection issues. I don't know where he got the idea that no one loved him. I suppose he was way oversensitive to something. The say some kids are permanently wounded by something done quite unintentionally on the parent's part. That's how I see him. He's sensitive but he keeps it hidden under a personality that keeps its distance from people. He doesn't seek their love at all. And he's arrogant and belligerent. He doesn't allow anyone close to him and he falls in love with Satha because he sees her kind action to a stranger. He says to himself, "She'll be kind to me." So he falls in love with her. The woman he loves is also somewhat outside the world but nevertheless she is honored by the world. It's only her family she has issues with because they think she's too dark. She and Loic have family issues. Loic has no best friends and looks to his descendants to be his family; he wants to form a clan of his own. Loic is ill and believes in the Creator but has a problem with the spirits. Loic has a best friend who died and another best friend who is a developmentally disabled old woman.

THE CONSTANT TOWER

Psal on the other hand is truly rejected.  His clan DOES dislike him. His clan does reject him. And the more they reject him the more he seeks their love. Except he can't quite do what they want him to do to actually get that love...which is: he has to be cold to the weak and stop being so dang sensitive and peevish about everything. He can't do this, which makes them avoid him. He falls in love with the first  girl because she falls in love with him. He is willing to marry the second girl because she seems so desperate and she might be pregnant so he can protect her. And he falls in love with Maharai because she is in emotional distress because she has been removed from and misses her own clan and has been placed in a world that is racially different from hers. Just as Psal is racially different from his clan.   (Although racism as such doesn't matter in this story. The races get along, the tribes do not.) Psal wants to just leave his clan and to form a longhouse of his own with two the friends he has. The people of his eime his wife and the other husband of the clan. But he still wants to remain part of the Wheel Clan. (First he just wanted to escape but afterward he decided he still wanted his clan to love him. So he is determined that AFTER his clan is formed and strong, he will be equal to the rest of the Wheel Clan, a chief in his own rights. His longhouse would be a safe home within the clan, a refuge from the cruel world. Psal is ill and does not believe in the spirits. Maharai's brother was murdered and he rmother taken from her, Maharai's mother has adopted an emotionally wounded lost child.

MY LIFE AS AN ONION

Ben is not rejected but he's outside the world. He is the perpetual stranger, the perpetual tourist...and he doesn't want it any other way. He has no desire to be part of the larger world. He has friends but they too are outside the world. Like Loic he is rich and healthy, like Psal he has his own little group around him. Except that unlike Loic and Psal, the woman he loves doesn't like his inner sanctum. And like Psal and Loic, he has also fallen in love with a woman who is outside her world. They are different races. But both have their own little group of friends. Her friends are mental and emotional exiles...and poor. His friends are cultural, artistic and emotional exiles. Ben is kind to everyone and perhaps likes everyone, Denise is kind to everyone and distrustful. Neither of them are physically ill but they are emotionally ill. Ben is recovering from the suicide of his brother and Denise takes care of an ill autistic brother and has to deal with the spirits. 

The women are always poor, the men are often ill, the women are always religious, the women are always dark-skinned. (Husband is quite healthy in real life. And husband isn't Native American or Asian. Husband is white. But after a white minister's white wife told me she didn't want to read of romances where her race was muddied by black people, I figured all my books with Christian interracial couples will have non-white men. Why give them a reason not to read the book. YEAH, I'm still bitter. But I am TRYING to like White Christians, right?) 

  

All my issues, alas.  Race, health, religion, group mind, rejection, etc. 

Trying to sort through the various stuff I'll have to speak on in the sessions at coyotecon.com       Already spoke on the non-western viewpoint session. Next sessions are: Christian Speculative Fiction. And Writing while disabled. Then the last will be Race 101

-C