writing - Where Death Delights To Die

New Site, New Stuff

I’m still here.

I’m not where I want to be, not where at the end of DTS I thought I would be, and not where my fear thinks I should be, but I’m where God has me. Life and its lessons continue, and the lessons of the moment are mediocrity and dependence.

And after several years of word-by-word labor, withholding my works from friends in hopes of distributing it to strangers, the bell rang and I approached the mob of commercial publishing. And as I considered which publisher would benefit me most (or accept me), I bumped into the sermon on the mount. Jesus’ audience certainly was tempted by prestige, wasn’t it?

In 2014, a friend gave me Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water and wrote in its cover the following:

“In the beginning, God created…”
“And God created humankind in his image…”

And if we have been created to sub-create, shall we do so in service of fame? Our industry of reputation twitters on, but Christ came not to be served but to serve. Is sub-creation not, like everything else, a method for relating—of intimacy, even? What have we made it, and why do I desire whatever it is we’ve made?

So in spite of the appeal of reputation, and while I can’t dismiss what value conventional publishing surely has, I’ve decided to publish primarily within my sphere. The old site, patrickdpace.com, has been absorbed by wheredeathdelightstodie.com, which allows for organizing content more thoroughly. It’s especially useful for longer pieces, collections, and non-writing projects.

I will post twenty pieces, in particular, within the next week or two. The final three parts of my Of Sin series and the first addition to my collection are the ones I’ve put the most work into, but to help fill out the number I’m submitting for the Copyright Office’s GRTX, I reaped the least weedy from ..\Writing To Be Organized\. After publishing them, I’ll add a new blog post to list them all. And after that, I’ll continue to tweak and add content to the site, as I’m able.

5/8/2018

I woke up in the best way today—a bit stark raving. Every thought is a letter.

I drink from a red mug with a chip in it. Wabi sabi, the Japanese might call it. There’s a glory in the fractured. You won’t find it, in this world, in the perfect. This is, right now, my favorite mug. I didn’t like it especially yesterday, and I probably won’t tomorrow, having returned to that erking and ever-present worry that I might not be perfect.

The me that wakes up three hours early to peanut butter toast and 1/3 a pot of coffee is the real me. The me that’s got it figured out and wakes up with thoughts every day is not. And there’s a glory that is not mine in my fracturedness. My wabi sabi. The glory of the broken. I’ve seen trendy pictures of plates broken and repaired with gold. I am broken and repaired with another’s blood. And in looking upon the shards of my so-called perfection, you might see it’s crimson smirk, it’s ridiculous, loving smile at the stupid child whom it loves.

This is my wound. Drink from it deeply. And I put my lips to the chip in the mug, and I sip more of my whipcreamed coffee. And I type out stupid words that the angels wonder at—not at their profundity but at their stupidity, for what good thing have the sons of Cain to offer? As we shatter our mugs and call them perfect? Is it not only the blooded ones that matter? Is it not only the blood that matters?

And I sip again from my mug. Drink deeply. This is my blood. Drink deeply.

I’m tearing up. I tear up easily when I’m tired and have read things that make me weepy. Yesterday I woke up pissed. I woke up later, but still early, and pissed. Today I did not. Today I woke up bloody.

Sip.

Perfectionism is setting in. Back to breaking things. I mean writing. Back to writing.

This time the photo is mine. My wife hates that I leave junk on the kitchen counter, but that’s the only place I can think to leave it. And that night light—which if on under the LED overheads lays a crazy yellow shadow behind everything it touches—accompanied my morning ruminations for many months.

7/17/2017: On Self

This sent me spinning.

Kind of reminds me of my reaction when reading The Grace Awakening.

Is self-absorption wrong? Short answer—only when it lacks love.

If the focus on self follows a similar model to C.S. Lewis’s metaphor about ships, then no. If a person becomes absorbed with the self but does so as self relates (in love) to God or others, then it’s as right as actively working with or for others. For instance, recognizing/correcting/suppressing/dealing with one’s own anger in order to more healthily relate to a spouse is loving. And what about the person who, in introspection, further plumbs his own sinfulness, with the result of a greater appreciation for and dependence upon God? Sometimes love requires us to become absorbed in self.

However, a person who is only absorbed in self cannot at the same time love. That self-absorption—or perhaps, better, “ego-absorption”—is symptomatic of a lack of love.

Because of his adjectives, I don’t think, necessarily, that Taylor condemned the former. The type of self-absorption to which he refers seems to be that of the unloving kind.

As is often the case with “over thinking” or “worry,” people tend to define self-absorption by degree. If a person is “too” self-absorbed, it’s bad. But it’s not the degree that’s the problem. It’s the quality or the reason. It’s the motivation behind it. The man who cries “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” is surely thinking about his own sin. But he is also thinking about God’s goodness, and he desires to have the span between God and himself bridged.

It also reminds me of the little I learned about the Ego and Self idea. But as I understand it, Ego is the I, whereas Self understands I only in relation to We. The I doesn’t disappear, but it’s context is different. The Self is part of a unified diversity of communal individuals. The former is the lack of the love, and the latter is the love—the relationship.

I am afraid of being self-absorbed. To the extent that I become self-absorbed about being self-absorbed. And then I write documents to determine whether or not I’m being self-absorbed or justifying why I am. Taylor could easily be writing about my blog. And, at least in part, the fear of that led to the creation of this document.

A couple thoughts:

As saint-sinners, and assuming the I is the only alternative to love, all we think and do is, to some degree, self-absorbed. Until glorification, we cannot escape it. No man-created thought or system is safe. No man-understood thought or system is safe. We are wholly dependent upon God for anything not self-absorbed.

Learning by Keyboard documents are meant to depict the development of my thought life over time. They include sinful and incorrect thoughts. They also include some grace and some love. I imagine every form of thought and conversation from every person in this age, no matter how godly, follows the same pattern. Indeed, Taylor might as well have said, “I come across people sinning all the time.”

I’m not defending or diminishing the sin to which he refers. It’s sinful, and the goal of the believer is to love better.

But duh. Really. Of course artists will sin while arting.

But back to the LBKs—Taylor could mean my blog (I doubt it, but I could fit his model), but that’s fine. That’s part of being authentic and transparent. I don’t mean these articles as didactic. They’re exploratory.

To the degree that God provides grace through faith, as I work to obey, I will love while writing. And while thinking and learning. And thus to that degree, these documents will lean away from the sinful form of self-absorption and toward the more relational, loving form, in which relationship provides the context, rather than the ego.

But again, Taylor says this as well. #LordSaveUs

Verily!

Photo by Masha Danilova on Unsplash

3/16/2017: Art and Cultural Norms

“Only worship music is good music.”

I grew up with this belief, or something like it. I have trouble responding with any measure of clear-headedness when someone brings it back up, though I have been and am being convinced that valuable art is a much broader category than just worship music.

This is from a document for my novel:

This is the issue with southern moralistic Christianity that requires that all “art” be “Christian” to be good. It’s an application of a cultural norm more than a recognition that intent always qualifies morality and that the intent should be “love one another.”

Otherwise—and this is not a reason or a proof against this system but a symptom or result of it—a southern moralist cannot accept or interact with other cultures that do not censor the same taboos but that might still be loving. He cannot speak with the Irish or persons from Spain or the Nordic countries, who cuss like crazy. He cannot hang out with the English or persons from Seattle or Colorado (or pretty much anywhere) because he can’t handle being in a pub. He can’t regard art that incorporates disturbing imagery even when its message is the Gospel.

Indeed, how can southerners interact with the Gospel? Maybe by Lifeway books and movies.

Intent determines moral purity; rules do not (unless they are followed with pure intent). Christ certainly exemplifies this when combatting the religious leaders, whose rules had the appearance of purity but no heart. I think our tendency is the same—to make rules and then forget the heart. And maybe it’s a parenting failure, or maybe it comes from losing faith. Or maybe it comes from failing to understand or care where rules come from and why those origins matter. Though it’s probably at its core an issue of faith.

I think Israel is a really interesting example. They began with the heart, in Abraham and then down through the central figures. They also had God-given rules designed to cultivate and guide that heart. But they lost the heart, kept the rules, and built upon the rules. Didn’t they? (12/13/2017: A friend once told me that the Ancient Near Eastern understanding of Law was more idealistic or prescriptive than prohibitive—”Look upon this law, understand the truth and justice behind it, and apply that truth and justice in whatever way is best per context”; even so, it’s pretty clear that the Jews of Jesus’ day were of the prohibitive brand). It was culture that they built upon purity, but it was godless culture. The same is true, I think, of much of southern moralism today. And surely other brands of moralism.

The problem for Christians, and anyone else looking for goodness and beauty and truth (may they find Christ), is when we assign purity or impurity to culturally normalized morals, like “(So called) worship music is the only music worth listening to” or “No cussing,” “No drinking,” “No ‘vulgar’ media,” and even, sometimes, “No nudity.” I do not believe anything is necessarily impure. Impurity requires less-than-pure intent.

The standard is love. Not just lack of unlove, but the act of love. If it’s not in love, it’s impure.

I do not mean that we should disregard all prudence when dealing with these things. Paul talks about this. Don’t tempt the alcoholic with the real freedom to drink in appropriate contexts. Don’t tempt the porn addict with the real freedom to regard the human body in appropriate contexts. But the reason for those rules (I suppose they are rules) and therefore the only thing that makes them worth following is love. Assigning these rules without assigning love leads persons into sin and wickedness. So love requires that we encourage them away from things that tempt them, until such time that they grow in faith and not be overcome with their temptations as they love.

With this in mind, certainly all bad art, and bad thinking, takes at face value the norms of its cultural context—culture being the things that man has developed.

Cultural norms, because they typically originate in fallen man, are less than good.
Good things accord with God. So good art accords with God—in its truth, in its beauty, in its recognition of the world and the human condition, in its creation of cosmos from chaos.
So good art, and good thinking, always calls into question (typical) cultural norms.

3/6/2018: If art accords with any particular culture (given that all our cultures, even in the church, are man-touched), my guess is it’s not good (stick this word on a scale in your mind before impaling me on my perfectionism). And if you think it’s good, maybe you’ve got some introspection and repentance to do. My only real point here–good art challenges.

Edit 3/7/2018: Apparently astrophysicists agree.
[tweet https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/970815875635929088]

Edit 2: Also G. K. Chesterton (whom I’ve yet to read).
[tweet https://twitter.com/brehmcenter/status/971252789597831169]

3/15/2017: On Success

If artistic success, and indeed Christian success, is not measured in dollars, then what is success? What would success be for my pursuit of writing?

A life of love is a success. A life spent, poured out, in service to God and others. And what does that look like? It looks like quality relationships. Dialogue. Humility. A corporate and cooperative search for truth. It looks like learning, like recognizing failures and doing what I can to make up for them. It looks like depending upon grace and extending that same grace to others.

Art is the same. Art pours itself out in service to others. It works to heal wounds. It encourages. It questions wrongs. It seeks what’s right and invites others to do the same. It stands before others in vulnerability, asking to either be part of their lives or to be set aside or to be demolished. It relates.

Thus artistic success is using my craft in relation to—in relationship with—others. And not just to the nameless masses—that plumb-line of success I tend to follow and I think that much of the world around me tends to follow. It is in relation to others in the same way that I am called to relate to others in all of life. I am called to love those who are in my sphere. If I abandon those persons in my sphere and seek to share my work with other spheres, where does that leave me? Surely not love. My desire for other spheres couldn’t be a loving one, given that plenty persons exist in my current one.

Thus my art should begin with persons I know. And it probably ends there, too. But I haven’t developed in my understanding that far, yet.

And if success isn’t measured in dollars, how do I make enough money for my family and still art? Do I just jam it in the cracks, like after the kids go to bed? I guess it depends on whatever time God affords me. Right this second, I have enough time to write freely. At least for the moment. After this, I don’t know. (2/20/2018: Not anymore I don’t. I’m currently pulling the cracks as wide as I can and cramming it in there.)

2/28/2017: On Earning A Living

Sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve posted. It’s been super busy.

I wonder if we approach commerce from the wrong direction. I write, or whatever it is I do, to give, to love. What recompense I receive is also someone’s gift. That’s the interdependence inherent in love. And in this way a community should function. I realize this is not the way of the world, it having fallen from love into karma. But God hasn’t fallen into karma, and God still steers the thing.

Thus I shouldn’t think of it as “How can I make myself deserve to be paid?” but rather “How can I best give?”

The natural question that arises, then, is at what point do you make a living? Or how do you provide for your family?

(2/12/2018: I’ve spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what I was saying in this next part. It’s been so long since I’ve posted that it’s been a good reminder about the purpose and guidelines of these posts. But I figure this is a touchy-enough topic that I should probably try to figure it out.

So perhaps I refer to the precedence of grace before action and to us being called to good work without being able to control grace—something about the dependence inherent in faithful work and thus the disconnect between a faithful, dependent worker and a goal corresponding to independence. Or I may have had a couple ideas rolling around in there.)

This seems similar to me to the question of grace and faith. If salvation is by grace and grace alone, at what point does a person act, or respond, as it were? At what point does a person have faith? And in the case of present salvation, or sanctification, at what point does the person take action? There seems to be some kind of disconnect between cause and effect. I wonder if the answer lies in my misconstruing the effect. Is salvation the properly desired effect of faith? Of good action?

Doesn’t the faithful person already assume salvation—that is to say, dependence—and in his godly dependence seek primarily things other than what the so-called independent person still requires?

Is earning a living the properly desired effect of giving to others? I suggest no. And I think my adherence to the question is symptomatic of my so-called independence.

I remember hearing something from someone at some point that went something like this: Give, give, give, and if you happen to get, give that too.

The focus isn’t on not having. I’m not an ascetic. The focus is on giving. And I think we have enough correction by way of Jesus on receiving. That is, don’t depend upon it, for God takes care even of flowers and sparrows.

What about one’s family? Surely providing for others is a gift, and we work in order to earn those things that others need to survive. Yes, but money is not all. There are things more important than money. For instance, learning to give. Giving alongside you. Serving others. Depending upon God. All of those things are more important than merely possessing.

And that term, earn a living, is just wrong. Earn, as in karma. A living, as in those things that make us alive. How graceless and anti-metaphysical is that? As if food and clothing and housing make us alive. As if breathing, alone, is living.

Further, how often does the term actually mean to earn indulgence? We’re on the escalator of indulgence—our horizon of living goes up with every notch of the crank.

Of course we should try to keep breathing. God gave us life, time, and it’s best spent with care. But to what end? To indulge? Or to give?

Thus, we breathe to give. We keep breathing to keep giving.

2/19/2017: On Twitter

Most of my follows are persons who follow just to get follows. I have one friend (with whom I speak regularly) who uses Twitter. The rest of the persons I follow are news outlets or blogs I like or writers or friends who don’t really post but whose posts I would read.

I won’t play the follow game. If I follow 30k people, my feed won’t have anything worth reading. Just self-promotion. I will lose my “curated content.” Likewise, all who follow me will be persons who don’t want to read my stuff but just want to self-promote. No thanks.

I want my social media interactions to be… interactions. Not screaming into a screaming crowd.

The connections I make should be relationships, as far as I’m able. Even if it’s the relationship of the artist to the reader, as is the case with so many content creators that I follow. The same would be the case for anyone who followed me who actually wanted to read my stuff.

I don’t foresee making friends on Twitter, but who knows. It’s difficult enough for me to make friends, given the time and temperament required for me to feel comfortable enough to connect. I require extended conversations, really.

At the same time, there is a benefit from having a public-facing outlet. For one, it helps desensitize me. I will continue to be afraid to be myself openly if I never engage with potential readers. It’s similar to sending work out to publishers. It’s good for me to practice public authenticity and transparency.

Twitter also gives me an opportunity to relate with others in an interesting context and often over interesting topics, even if it’s just in passing. I don’t think the focus in these interactions should be in gaining followers or even being heard for being heard’s sake (in fact I don’t think this should ever be the focus), though that’s the temptation (the reason for which, I suspect, is because followers masquerade as proof of legitimacy). As is the case for all human interaction, the focus should be the interactions, themselves, or the mutual effort toward other interactions. It’s just love: the commandment par excellence, the seminal commandment, the single guideline of all work. The interactions, and to the degree possible, the relationships—they are what’s important. If someone happens to want to continue interacting, great. If not, great. It’s like a giant room of persons, you wander to different groups, contribute to the conversation from time to time, maybe find someone who has something interesting to contribute from time to time. It’s all about the interactions, not about the followers. (10/18/2017: The focus should be on the persons, and the interactions serve as the bridge between them and me. I do not mean that interactions matter more than persons but that my continued interaction with persons matters more than gaining followers.)

And what interactions matter but real interactions? Mutually wanted interactions, wherever you can find them, or at the very least, polite ones.

Twitter has its limitations. But it’s like Instagram for writers. Post a quip instead of a squared photo. And it’s the smallness that makes it accessible and casual enough to facilitate interactions. Maybe not conversations, though. Which is where links and blogs come in.

2/16/2017: Some Novel Editing Guidelines

Warm up vignette first. It will remind you to love your writing and will take some of the droll that can come with the wrong approach to writing.
Don’t edit something just because it needs to be edited. It all needs to be edited. Read and do the work that calls you. Think of it like a conversation. You don’t have to drive through every topic that comes up. Drive through the ones that draw you. And stick with the conversation long enough, and you’ll have driven through each and every section of your book.
Don’t postpone something you want to do because it will take time. Do it now, while you want to.
Try not to get too bogged down in grammar and polish. At the same time, don’t necessarily ignore them. They just have a tendency to bog things down. To make you too linear and not nearly as right-brained and emotionally involved as you should be.
With that said, don’t get too linear. Feel free to jump around. Stop wherever you feel led to. Start over whenever you want.
Read what you’re editing a lot. Read perhaps more than you write. Read over and over. Read sporadically. Read in order.
And think. Read and think. And when I say think, I’m really talking about active quiescence. Daydream. Let your mind wander as you read and think about what you’ve written. Wait and let thoughts come to you. Read slowly.
Remove distractions, so those thoughts can come to you.
Unfinished things don’t have to be finished right now. Leave them unfinished until you’re led to do something with them, even if that’s to delete them. Also, whatever is next (after editing something) doesn’t have to finished right now. Work on whatever you’re led to. I relate it to writing a poem. You find bits that don’t really fit, but because you don’t know what will fit, you don’t necessarily have to replace those bits right away. You might reshape them some, but it’s in the reshaping of the whole poem that you find out if they fit or not and how you can change them to fit. So don’t feel like you have to know or polish what each part is when you come to it.
…

1/23/2017: On Editing LBKs

How should I edit my Learning By Keyboard documents prior to posting them?

The temptation is to appear to know all things. To be a superlative thinker and writer.

I read through these things I dealt with months ago, I find things that I have since corrected (in my thinking), and I want to change them to represent what I think now. I don’t want to appear like I don’t know something.

But aren’t these documents supposed to reveal my inner dialogue to others? And isn’t their purpose, when writing them, to learn? And in learning, isn’t the assumption that I don’t know?

Even now, posting something new, I should assume that I will post some falsity. Else I’ll never post anything, since to the degree that I progress, I will always find mistakes.

And again, isn’t my foray into the public in the vein of dialogue? Relationship? That means vulnerability—people seeing me as less than perfect. As human. (10/17/2017: Not a brand).

My tendency is to (attempt to) set myself apart. Or above, rather. I want to surpass everyone else. At least in whatever things I have been convinced matter, which ranges from video games (now defunct) to my ability to figure things out. But I’m learning, or perhaps relearning or developing, that humans were designed as a community of individuals. It’s both, so I don’t believe in the diminution of individuality. But to the degree that you’re set apart, you’re removed from the community.

It’s the difference between standing above and standing beside others.

And if Christ’s example teaches us anything, we stand beside each other. With each other.

So what does this mean for my posts? I don’t think it necessarily speaks directly to the editing. But it speaks to the ground-level desire to appear knowledgeable. And I wonder if I should deny the desire to edit old mistakes or to qualify them with commentary merely to deny myself this desire.

Of course, if these posts were didactic, I would have reason to correct them before posting in an effort to protect others from what I know (or think) are mistaken ideas. But that’s not my intent, really. I want to also show my process of thinking and learning. If someone learns something for the things I learn, great.

This reminds me of something else. I think a much better approach to interaction with others—from the closest circles, like my family and church and work, to the furthest, which is the world and even what might be beyond—is to walk beside them. To seek truth and love and beauty, and ultimately and primarily, God, beside others. To learn together, rather than to learn on my own (as if that were really possible) and then to disperse my golden wit to the street-rats of lesser faculty (!). I have already written about this.

I need growth in this area. And perhaps by posting things that reveal my fallibility, I will grow. And if anyone learns from what I learn in the writing of these, we will learn together.

Furthering this idea—this is little different than posting things that I am thinking through now, like this very document, and knowing that I will later make corrections upon them. The same principles go for all writing, all dialogue, all interaction with others. The same correction—that I should seek what’s good alongside others—applies both to the present and the past.

Another thought. If I wrote something that I now know is wrong but didn’t write the correction to that thing in a later document, to protect others from believing that thing, I could add a commentary.

Am I neurotic or what? Goodness. Ha.

So, how should I edit them?

Fix grammar/typo issues if it makes things too hard to read. Keep it to a minimum.
Add commentary if something isn’t developed in a later document and needs to be corrected for others’ benefit.
Be a human with others.

For further: How to keep writing my thinking documents in the same way that I always have (in order to learn), knowing that I’ll probably post them.

9/28/2017: Thoughts on Portals in Narrative

A portal threat (in a narrative) seems to assume that danger is only external to one’s own world. It’s just not realistic. And it has more in common with a simplistic and separatist worldview—that we will cordon ourselves off from all threats in order to be safe—than a truly good one (a godly one).

In the good one, the hero enters into the darkness and faces danger, even at her own expense, in order to save the rest of them. Or to save the ones on the other side of the portal. Or simply out of faithfulness to a godly call, which is just faith working through love.

In the good one, the hero assumes the threat we already pose to ourselves—that even with portals closed, our doom remains—and the need to dialogue with philosophical and theological opponents in order to grow.

And so there is no, “We have to close the portal!” There is only, “Enter the portal! Enter all the portals!”

I am convinced that God delights in our continued and ever-broadening engagement with his creation. And I suspect the answer is never separation. At least not fully or permanently. It’s always connection.