Lost Crusader #129 Every Little Thing

 “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

John 20:30-31

 

Reading the Bible often inspires many questions for which it supplies no answers. But then, it was not the author’s intent in writing, to answer every question people might ask. It is not as presumptuous as some might think to claim to know the author’s intent—it is stated plainly by one of the scribes.

In the literature classes I’ve taken, I am forever amazed at the things assigned as the author’s intent that are read into a novel by those analyzing it. I suppose I’m not that deep. Then again, maybe sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I have not begun to scratch the surface of the Bible as either literature or as divine revelation.

I do have to admire the One whose hook is “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” No info dump of back story, no introduction of the characters, just a giant jump in medias res—right in the middle of things. Yes, the middle things.

What was God doing before in the beginning? It was the beginning for us, not for Him. We don’t know and are given very few hints. The book is not trying to deliver that information. The text is restricted to a broad outline of the story of the relationship between the human and the divine.

I had an editor that generally took exception to my writing something like, “Jack walked across the room” because I didn’t first say that Jack stood up. How Jack might have walked across the room without standing up still escapes me. But the editor felt like the reader shouldn’t be left to guess or assume.

Ah, if God only had an editor, what secrets we would learn!

People are often disappointed in their reading of the Bible because it doesn’t explain everything
under the sun. In fairness though, it does mention there is nothing new under the sun—great principles and themes are eternal.

The Bible can speak to the skeptical. It has little to say to those unwilling to give the author a hearing. The Bible is bound to be disappointing when the intent of the author is thrown over for the predetermined intent of the reader. The author wrote the Bible as the author’s call to make peace with estranged readers—and that done—He promises to explain everything else to them as their relationship blossoms. There really is no other reason for God writing the story at all. The Bible was written for inquiring minds, but the author chooses only to satisfy those, in His own time and in a personalized fashion unique to each reader and then only as they became part of the narrative.

A man was once told by Abraham that if his brothers could not read the law of Moses and believe in God, they wouldn’t believe if someone rose from the dead and recounted the same story. If you cannot read the Gospel, hear the author’s words and believe them, seeing miracles or receiving answers to outrageously crafted prayers won’t move you. Of course, you are free to write your own version and many do.

Maranatha

 

The Colonel #91 Seizing Control

 “The Left today has badly misappropriated the word “equity,” using it to mean equality of outcome—something to be achieved through affirmative action and economic redistribution. But real equity, in the old sense, cannot be given. Real equity requires the old fashioned virtues. It is inextricable from full ownership of your own course in life.” 

Matt Rosenberg

The idea that virtue is the ground of true liberty and equality has been lost with the classic philosophers. Virtue has no scientific basis, no what’s-in-it-for me motive, no political agenda to defend. In fact, virtue requires no defense for we cannot bestow it, export it, or demand it—we may only live it for ourselves and so, no one may take it from us.

My colleague the Lost Crusader will tell you that prayer changes things and that the thing most changed by prayer is the one praying. What we pray for is a true measure of that we value. Sadly, so few pray. Prayer is too obsolete. It trusts in divine assistance rather than conjuring our own positive vibrations. How we get “positive” anything without God, as a standard to measure against, is beyond reason, but that’s for the Crusader to labor over.

The battleground of equality, equity, and the virtues that spawn them is within us, not in the political or social arena. It is better to live viewing all men are creatures of equal worth than to carry signs demanding it of others.

St. Peter once asked Jesus what another disciple was to do with his life. The Lord’s response was, “What is that to you?” follow Me. Seizing ownership of our own life provides us with the focus we need to change the world.

 We are ultimately responsible for our life and the manner in which we live it, not the mandates of government, not the consensus of Facebook likes, and not the demands of talking heads assaulting us from a screen. Tear down all the statues you will, pass the laws and regulations you can imagine, there is nothing in the world that can change the truth that we are responsible for our life. “I was just following orders” is a hollow substitute for living a life of our own.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not the provision of government. They are something we craft from within from the demands of virtue. Where virtue is unknown, there is no ground for equality or motivation to pursue it.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Know Jack #340 Perpetuating the Myth

 “It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

Ernest Hemingway

I am a Christian. I don’t usually mix that into this blog on my writing life. It’s not that I am ashamed of it in any way. As Popeye would say, “I am what I am, and that’s all what I am.” However, this quote by Hemingway lends itself so well to my experience as a Christian and a writer that I had to pursue it.

I was born into Christianity, but I have spent every day since learning to become a Christian. Someday, I might just make it. I make no secret of the fact that I do not practice what I preach. I preach Jesus Christ, the perfect God-Man. My practice of imitating Him is far from perfect. Yet my imperfections do not hinder me from waking each day thinking that this will be the day I move one step closer to that goal.

What does that have to do with writing? Just this, I believe writers are born not made. God gives to some people a natural talent for putting words together to tell a story and without that gift, they soon turn to other pursuits. In that sense, I was born to write.

Writing, like Christianity, is both a gift and a discipline. The gift becomes only what the recipient makes of it. No one who is serious about writing is exempt from putting forth the effort involved in learning to write well.

I have met people who think their latent talent is good enough. Those people’s visions of their future success as a writer are more delusions of grandeur than anything else.   

I still have a long way to go to write well, and not nearly enough years left to get there, but I am persistent. That’s a nice way of saying that I’m stubborn as a mule. Fortunately, persistence may be the most important lesson a writer needs to learn.

In the words of a man famous for speaking few words, Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.”

It’s okay to let the world think it all comes so easy. Let them dream of the glamour and fall for the mystique of writing a novel—creating fantasy worlds is what you do. Smile and let them think you were born with it.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #128 Altar Your Life

 “Prayer changes things.”

I’m not sure who first said that, but it has taken on the stature of scripture. It is true enough, but an incomplete thought. It leaves people thinking that by prayer they will alter the circumstances they face. As a general rule, I find this patently untrue. That’s because the real power of prayer is to altar the one praying. No, I didn’t misspell that. But before I get to my word choice, let’s look at prayer and circumstances.

To pray for an alteration in your circumstances is not wrong. It does, however, indicate a certain degree of belief that you are not experiencing God’s plan for your life. That’s a huge assumption—and often the wrong one to make. More often than not, we are just where God wishes us to be and experiencing the situation that He believes is the best for our growth in the kingdom.

Yes, we might be in the shape we’re in as a direct result of our own disobedience. There’s a lesson to be learned in that case and who’s to say we aren’t meant to learn it and fully appreciate it before moving on? Israel’s disobedience generally led to unfortunate circumstances that God declared to be for their learning. Then there’s the Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, and today, and forever” thing.

So, what does prayer change? The person doing the praying. What we pray for is the truest measure of what we value. Prayer may not change our circumstances, but it will change our outlook on them, usually sending us to the altar within ourselves for redirection and reflection.

Pray is not meant to destroy our enemies, but to point us to love them despite their words or actions—in effect making us more Christlike—which is God’s desire for us. I see more of my mistakes when I pray than when I search for them. It’s akin to having a divine proofreader for the story of my life.

The scripture says to pray without ceasing. Paul told the Romans that this exercise resulted in a transformed mind free of conformity with the world.

Maranatha

The Colonel #90 God Help Us

 I’m going to go out on a limb here and say if you don’t know who Millard Fillmore is that you are more likely to be part of the problem facing our country than part of the solution.

Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States and the last President not to be affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. That’s not really a valuable piece of information except that it says something about the type of education that was offered to you and your participation in it.

In keeping with President Fillmore’s bon mot, his party folded at the end of his presidency, and he failed to be reelected as the candidate of a new third party. (The new party, the Know Nothings, needed a candidate more like Brandon.)

Fillmore was correct in his assessment of the American people; they were deeply divided and neither side had any interest in peaceful coexistence. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Both sides saw the other as lacking not only intelligence, but also the right to an opinion, and any degree of integrity or humanity. It’s not surprising that eight years later we were killing each other in support of our opinions and lifestyles.

Might makes right. Policy at the point of a bayonet became our inheritance. Oh, we don’t use physical weapons anymore but that’s not to say weapons are not employed. Today it’s the blind eye of the media and the compliant masses given to one side, and its dogged scorn of the other as somewhat less than human.

Business giants working for their Great Reset agenda are bent on the destruction of small, family-owned businesses, a global reach for the few, and finding/harvesting ballots to ensure the “right” people who support them are elected. Zukerbucks didn’t bother buying individual votes, they bought vote counting and vote counters. (On Wisconsin!)

Buying votes is nothing new, it’s as American as voting, but outside of Chicago, we’ve not seen it as blatant or on such a scale as we did in 2020. I read the great vote finder and possible disciple of Stalin’s election model, Stacey Abrahams, has been made President of Earth in the new Star Trek, so there’s a real future on selling out the country.

We the People have not learned our history nor learned from it. In fact, we are now bent on ignoring and whitewashing history. Not to fear, we’ll stumble over it again soon.

Let’s end with a word from President Fillmore’s successor, Democrat Franklin Pierce—“There is nothing left to do but get drunk.”

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Lost Crusader #127 The Greatest Miracle of All

 “He knew me, yet He loved me…”

Terry Davis

“O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandeth my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it althogether.”

Psalm 139

The Bible is filled with stories of miraculous events. There are those who outright deny them, others who try to substitute some “reasonable” explanation, and those that take the accounts at face value. That is as acts of God that supersede the laws of nature.

Jesus once healed a man born blind. When the man was questioned as to how that was accomplished, he said he didn’t know. What he did know was that Jesus made clay, put it on his eyes, and when he washed it off, as Jesus told him to do—he could see.

I do not find miracles hard to believe. It could be because I’m not that philosophically astute, not that intelligent, and certainly not Woke. It could be, but it’s not any of those things, true though they may be. I believe because, like the blind man, I not only experienced a miracle but because that miracle is new each day.

The miracle is that God, the Creator, the Great I Am That I Am, loves me. I don’t know why, and the how is not clearly understood, yet the who, the what, and the where are as crystal clear as the river of life.

I am the nineteen-year-old man, a complete stranger to church and Christianity with a somewhat checkered background who walked into a church in Tipton, Oklahoma one Sunday and saw that the people there had something I did not—peace with God.

There could not have been anyone less worthy, or more rebellious than me. Yet, when I asked God to give me what those people were having, He did. God gave me a new life, a life of friendship and fellowship from which He has never failed or forsaken me. (I wish I could say the same for me.)

He did it because He loved me. I can’t explain that, there’s no logical or reasonable explanation for it. I certainly was not loveable. He knew me and He still loved me—that’s impossible, except nothing is impossible with God.

God knows I’m not perfect. God knows I battle some dark depression at times and have a long history of failures. God knows all of that, yet He loves me, and that’s the greatest miracle of all.

“Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you…”

Maranatha

The Colonel #89 The Decline and Fall of Meritocracy

 “It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.” ~ Petrarch

This year as we prepare to set our clocks ahead an hour, with the other hand we are turning the calendar back several decades. We are abandoning the ideal of merit-based promotion in favor of the old inequalities we once tried to destroy.

Now, we are going to undo racism and sexism by employing racism and sexism. I guess you could call it fighting fire with fire, but in the end, everything is still burning, and ashes are our only inheritance.

Merit will always be the chief cornerstone of equality, the recognition of deeds always greater than the accident of birth. That is true no matter what we choose to practice in our personal lives or national conduct. The fact that things have not always been equal, or fair should be an inspiration to make it so not an excuse to continue to go astray.

That was the American ideal, taught by my parents and teachers when I was young. Of course, that was a different America and we have left that vision far behind for what amounts to a policy of revenge.

In this modern America, we have returned to awarding jobs and awards, choosing judges, and deciding a person’s worth based upon color, gender, and sexual preference. I doubt the idea of merit ever once entered Brandon’s mind when selecting his Cabinet. It certainly didn’t in his choice for a Supreme Court Justice.

Back in April of 2021, NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk stated that “The president’s FY 2022 discretionary funding requests keeps NASA on the path to landing the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon under the Artemis program.”

Biden specifically forbids white men from qualifying for the moon shot in the name of equality. Of course, “equality” is a misnomer, but that kind of subtlety is lost on Brandon, even if it’s not on the media. The appropriate phrase is “equity of outcome”.

White men have been to the Moon, so none should be allowed to go back until everyone else has had a chance to go—equity of outcome. America has never had a transexual Cabinet Secretary—oh, let’s have one!

For me, this is much to do about nothing. Merit doesn’t really matter. It’s not like we elect the most qualified person to be President.

Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Know Jack #339 Selling Your Soul the Highest Bidder

 You’ve written a book. The journey is not over, you’ve just come to a fork in the road. Assuming, of course, you wish people to read your masterpiece and don’t own a printing press, you need to publish it. There are essentially two ways to go—publish it yourself or find someone willing to publish it for you. There is no one right answer.

Years ago, I bought a fifth-wheel trailer to use as my home while traveling as a nurse. The first thing I learned in the process was that there were no perfect trailers. There are tradeoffs to make as far as features, and floorplans—no one trailer had it all. The best I could do was to choose the one that had the greatest number of highest priorities items. I made a choice and am glad to say I was very happy with it.

Finding a publishing solution is a lot like that. Self-publishing and traditional publishing each have their good points and not-so-good points. Choosing which fork in the road to take is usually a matter of opting for the one that fits your priorities best. I have gone down both paths.

Self-publishing is just what the name implies. You’re on your own. You bear the cost of editing (don’t skip this step) cover design, posting your book for sale, and promoting it. You also do all or most of the work. The upside is that you get all the profits, and you have total control. Total control sounds good but it can also be dangerous.

One of my Facebook friends complained that no one was buying her book and she didn’t understand why. Like a fool, I volunteered to help. I got a copy of her work, read the introduction and one chapter, and knew the answer. I suggested she get an editor. Stupid me, I again agreed to help with this in hopes of saving her hundreds of dollars. I send her back my suggestions. Her reply was that every single word of this outstanding creation was sacrosanct—and so it died right there.

Of course, if you want your unadulterated words, just as you wrote them, out there for sale—self-publishing is the only way to go. Amazon has made the world of self-publishing relatively simple. A technologically semi-literate person like me can do it (even without the grandkids helping). There you have the best and the worst reasons to self-publish.

If you choose to publish in the traditional fashion, the most important thing to know is that you are selling your work to the publisher. You sign that publishing contract, and while you still own the copyright, you no longer own the publishing rights to it. You are no longer in control of your book’s destiny. The publisher now has the final say about things like the title, the manuscript itself, and the cover design. The publisher has no requirement to consult you about any of those things.

It’s like selling the piece of your soul that went into writing the book to the devil. The upside—and yes, there is an upside—is that the publisher’s chief goal in life is to sell your book to recoup his investment and show a profit. Which, by the way, is the sole reason you have been offered a contract.

This is why most major publishers do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. They want work vetted by an agent. If you can’t get an agent interested enough to sell your book for fifteen percent of your royalties, the publisher has no time to bother with it.

So, if a traditional publisher buys your book, they are going to make your book the best they can, for their own sakes if not for yours.

Publishing, like any business, is profit-driven whether you are self-publishing or are using a traditional publisher. You can say you’re not in it for the money, you might even believe it, but book sales are not just money—they are readers. If you didn’t write your book for people to read, forget about publishing altogether and save yourself the headache.

I said that I have done both. So, which do I recommend?

The best answer I can give is that I now own a traditional style publishing company—House of Honor Books. I (sort of) like other people looking over my shoulder and telling me my work stinks—that I should say it another way, I should delete that paragraph (or chapter), or that I misspelled rougarou.

There’s that and I still haven’t learned not to try and help out people wanting to get a start writing. I will readily take a chance that I won’t make a profit on a book. I still encounter those like my former Facebook friend who has written an already perfect book. The real goldmine is meeting people grateful for a hand up. They are why I edit, design, and fret over books I didn’t write. My reward is sharing the joy they experience holding a book with their name on the cover. I love that feeling.

Maranatha