We’ve Seen This Before, Pt. 3

1666

It’s been a while since I’ve submitted an installment of my runaway hit blog series “We’ve Seen This Before.” An email flooded in this week asking if a new installment was in the works (thanks, honey) so I thought I’d tap out another one of these little exercises in historical perspective.

I wrote the first of these back in September of last year when the nation was fully in the throes of the Ebola panic. As you may recall, at the height of EbolaFest 2014 (U.S. headquarters, Dallas, TX), a lot of folks were convinced that at least three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were already saddled up with their steeds impatiently pawing at the ground.

So, if you need to catch up on this series, you’ll find parts 1 and 2, here and here. And now for Part 3 . . .

Maidenhead, England–1660s

For this episode, I want you to imagine you’re living outside of London in the middle part of the 17th Century—let’s say 1660.

From your vantage point just outside one of western civilization’s largest cities, you are increasingly certain that all four of the world’s wheels have come off and that the planet is careening out of control down history’s freeway on rims—sparks flying—as God the Driver laughs maniacally with His hands off of the steering wheel.

Today,  historians politely refer to this period as The General Crisis—a period characterized, as Wikipedia tells us, by “a widespread break-down in politics, economics and society caused by a complex series of demographic, religious, economic and political problems.”

But in 1650 this era is more commonly known to you and other people living through it as simply, “All the poop, hitting all the fans, all the time.”

Speaking of the Horsemen . . .  War, Famine, Pestilence & Death pretty much own the 17th Century like a boss . . . actually like four, cruel, remorseless, sadistic bosses.

Drab Four

Jerks.

War

Beginning in 1618, the “Thirty Years War” starts as a slap fight between Catholics and Protestants in Germany but soon engulfs almost every nation on the continent and drowns everyone in blood. People obviously won’t start calling it “The Thirty Years War” until it is officially over in 1648 and someone does the math.  Prior to this, everyone in Europe just calls it “Life.” . . . “In Hell.”

The war bankrupts all the participating nations; leaves one-third to one-half of the population dead in many regions; devastates the local economies and agriculture; and just generally tees everything up nicely for the next rider . . . Pestilence.

Thirty years of war wasn’t enough, however. On your little island, and all over the world, its still all wars and rumors of wars all the time. In quick succession, your home country, England, experiences the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–51), The Protectorate civil war (1653-59), and the Glorious Revolution (1688) is just a few years away.

Scores of other bloody, little wars rage around the world, as well. France is in a full-blown civil war called The Fronde (Oh, the French. Only they could come up with such a precious name for an ugly war.) You read in The Times that the Ming Dynasty in China has collapsed, after ruling most of Asia for three centuries.

Pestilence

For a couple of hundred years you and your ancestors have been watching plagues sweep through Europe and England–wiping out appalling numbers of people each time. Cheerily labeled The Black Death, this scourge has killed, by some estimates, 200 million people. It’s hard to say because the few people who can count that high keep dying. In one particularly busy five year period, it kills nearly 50 percent of Europe’s population.

In your own neck of the woods, you watch the plague tear London a new one in 1665, killing roughly 100,000 people.

Great_plague_of_london-1665

The healthiest thing in this picture is the guy smoking.

As if Nature weren’t already being enough of a complete rectum,  you and the rest of the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere are also contending with completely off-the-hook, too-outlandish-for-Hollywood climate change, leading to lots and lots of awesome . . .

Famine

Scientists in the 21st century will have an adorable name for your era—“The Little Ice Age.” The world experienced a period of ridiculously cold weather throughout a 300-year period beginning in about 1550. That’s right, everyone everywhere pretty much froze their hindquarters off for three centuries. But Nature has saved the very worst of it for your generation. Climate researchers point to 1650 as the “climactic minimum” of the Little Ice Age.

Minimum being a technical, scientific term for being able to walk across the Thames River every winter because it is frozen solid.

It's a good thing we have central heat and well insulated hou . . . oh dang.

It’s a good thing we have central heat and well insulated hou . . . oh dang.

For your entire life, not only have winters been bone-crunchingly long and cold, but the summers have been absurdly cool and short. Think puny harvests and outright crop failure. And not just for a year or even two. But year after year; decade after decade. The world is a cold, cold place and no one alive can remember when it wasn’t.

Economic Collapse

On top of everything else, the price of everything you need to survive is soaring. One of the things that made The General Crisis of the 17th century so chock-full of crisis-y goodness was runaway inflation.

End Times Expectancy

Not surprisingly, this perfect storm of misery, cataclysm and death has you and everybody else convinced that the End of Days is at hand. You’ve not only read The Apocalypse of St. John—you’ve been living the movie, over and over—Ground Hog Day style.

Numerous candidates for the Anti-Christ are put forth in widely circulated pamphlets and condemned from countless pulpits.

Of course, you’re taking all this in from your vantage point in Maidenhead, England—a few miles west of London, population 500,000—in the Year of Our Lord 1665. Toward the end of the year you look at your day planner and realize that next year is 1666.

Could this be it? Will this be the year? It would have to be wouldn’t it? The flipping Mark of the Beast in right there in the date! And don’t think that others in this era haven’t noticed. In fact, the English poet John Dryden has declared the year 1666 an annus mirabilis, a “year of wonders,” precisely because of the foreboding 666 number in the year.

So you enter the new year filled with dread and expectancy. Horrible day follows horrible day. But it’s the normal horrible, you know, Black Death, war, inflation, cold and political turmoil. You’re beginning to think you’re going to get through this year without any extra-horrible wonders. Then September rolls around and . . .

London burns down.

great fire

Wait . . . what?

Yep. That’s right. On the night of September 2 you look to the east and it looks like the sun is rising 12 hours early. But not to worry, it’s just massive, uncontrollable fire roaring through the heart of London. It will burn for three days. And before it’s done the beast will have devoured 13,200 houses and 87 churches, including the jewel in London’s crown, St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Here in the year 1666—the year of wonders—you watch one of the world’s great cities go up in flames. And as far as you know in that moment, all the other world’s great cities are probably burning, too. This is it. Didn’t St. Peter say it would be “by fire next time?”

Think we’re living in crazy times? Perhaps. But crazy is relative.

We’ve seen this before.

God is Smarter Than We Can Imagine

Quantum Mechanics

It’s impressive to think God knows THE future.

But it’s staggering to consider that, in fact, He knows every possible VERSION of the future, driven by the moment-by-moment choices of more than 7 billion humans exercising the gift of free will.

Which reminds me that Romans 8:28 does not say, “God causes all things.” (full stop) But rather that He “causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

There is an ocean of theological significance in the placement of that period. And comfort in knowing that whether or not those around you choose to do things God’s way or not, He has calculated the outcomes and is finding a way to do you good.

Impressive indeed.

A Few More Thoughts for Aspiring Writers

IMG_0097As a follow up to my previous post, here are a few more thoughts about writing well, followed by some links leading to additional food for thought.

1. Never sacrifice clarity on the altar of creativity.

When you’re writing for an audience—when you self-consciously care about what the reader thinks about what you’re writing—it’s tempting to strive for innovative, flashy ways of getting your message across. But your message can easily get lost in the effort to be fancy.

A couple of years ago I tweeted this advice after a session of editing a young writer’s work:

Writers. Thou shalt not be confusing in the quest to be clever.

Writing that doesn’t effectively transmit your ideas or information—no matter how colorful—is not good writing. In the oft-cited words of the prison warden in the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

2. Keep sentences short (for the most part.)

Whenever I’m editing the writing of novice writers, much of my time is spent blasting crazy-long sentences into smaller chunks.

Why break up a long, compound, complex sentence into smaller, easily digestible bits when you can string everything you want to say into a long chain of clauses and phrases; because readers never get mentally weary or need you to get to the point—they being able to absorb an infinite amount of detail and keep it all straight, and all?

Because smaller bites are more easily digested. And despite what your 9th grade English teacher told you, it’s okay to start sentences with a conjunction. (That last one did.)

3. Shun clichés.

Cliches are sets of words that are so routinely jammed together in conversation that you can finish the phrase without it actually being spoken:

  • Read my lips . . . The bottom line is, at the end of the day, if you want to go whole hog on writing as good as gold, then you’ll want to avoid clichés like the plague.
  • It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know you’d give an arm and a leg to be back in the saddle.
  • Be a babe in the woods where you let sleeping dogs lie.
  • Go back to square one like a kid in a candy store.
  • Go back to the drawing board and take the bull by the horns and burn the candle at both ends when you’re down in the dumps.
  • For all intents and purposes the jury is still out on whether you’re bigger than life or blind as a bat.

That’s all for now.

Some Links

Be a better writer in 15 minutes: 4 TED-Ed lessons on grammar and word choice

23 Websites that Make Your Writing Stronger (fiction-centric)

Advice for Aspiring Writers

don-typing

Got a call this week from a dear old friend from our Minnesota days. Wasn’t it just the other day our kids were small and we were taking turns hosting sleepovers?

It seems their offspring, like ours, had the chutzpah to grow up and plan productive lives of their own. (Kids can be so insensitive.) He was calling because one of his young-adult girls had recently expressed interest in becoming a writer. He was hoping I could share a few insights or practical words of wisdom to help her get started.

I actually get this question or some variation thereof quite a bit. A few times per month someone reaches out to me by phone, email or social media in search of advice. Some, like my friend’s daughter, want to pursue writing as a calling. Others believe they have a book in them that needs to get out. Some have experienced an extraordinary life event and have repeatedly been told by friends and loved ones, “You need to write a book about that.”

Of course, I’m always happy to dip a ladle into the exotic bouillabaisse that is my life experience and dole out a steaming, savory cup of crackpot sagacity for a hungry enquirer. However, I’m sure most of these askers are profoundly disappointed once they hear my advice. I can see it on their faces. That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?

I suspect my honest answer is far too simple to be satisfying.

How simple?  The essence of the advice I give aspiring writers can be found in the two-word reminder I once put on a Post-It Note and stuck on the front of the monochrome monitor of my IBM PC XT compatible (a whopping 640k RAM) 30 years ago when I hadn’t written anything longer than a 60-second radio commercial or a two-minute newscast.

The handwritten note said, “Writers write!”

designI’m not the first to have used that reminder as a motivational pointy stick for self-prodding. It’s a novelists’ proverb that has been passed around among aspiring writers since Jane Austen was in a training bra.

The meaning is that countless people think about writing. Multitudes speak frequently about their plans to write. But precious few ever sacrifice the time, push through the pain, and actually put words on paper (or screen).

Pain? Oh, yeah. I’ll get to that in a moment.

But just know that the first rule of Write Club is: “Don’t talk about Write Club. Just write.” You may be bad at it at first. (I was. Reading my early stuff now induces a grand mal cringing-wincing episode in me.) But you’ll get better. No one may pay you for what you write at first. But you’ll be banking experience and learning the craft.

Back in the Late Cretaceous Period when I first started writing, there were no blogs and no self-publishing opportunities on Amazon. There have never been more venues in which to write; and it’s never been easier to have your writing “discovered” by others than there are today. But the writing has to get done. Which brings me to this . . .

Writing is sometimes often almost always painful.

New Acquaintance: “Do you enjoy writing?”
Me: “Oh goodness, no.”
New Acquaintance: (shocked-confused face) “Really?”
Me: “No. I don’t like writing. But love having written. Do women enjoy childbirth?”

Writing is EasyWhich brings me to another of my favorite proverbs for writers: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare intently at a blank screen until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

In other words, if you wait to be infused with inspiration to start writing, you’ll likely never start. You just start slogging. Slog long and persistently enough and inspiration has a way of sneaking up on you.

So here it is. The secret sauce. The mysterious alchemic formula I’ve used to write 37 published books (most of them anonymously, as a ghostwriter), two of which became New York Times non-fiction bestsellers.

  1. Put rear in seat in front of keyboard.
  2. Lay one word down after another until you have a whole sentence.
  3. Keep creating sentences until you have a paragraph.
  4. Keep building paragraphs until you have a full page.
  5. Repeat.

I’m sorry. I truly wish it were sexier than that. It’s just not. Thus, the truths described above winnow out about 98% of all aspiring writers. They are also the reason I’ve been able to make a pretty good living writing other people’s books for them over the last 30 years.

Of course, if a person is willing to put in the time and hard work—has the “fire in the belly”—there are some practical things one can do to get better, faster. There are a few hacks, tips and tricks in the craft.

design-2One thing I’ve noticed over the years . . . Really good writers tend to be readers. In fact, I’ve never met a gifted, successful author who wasn’t a voracious devourer of books.

More specifically, it’s helpful to read good writing. Read over your head. Read above your pay grade. Read outside your usual interests and preferred genres. Read genius writing that’s so good it’s actually discouraging. (The discouragement will wear off, but the genius will rub off, and germinate in your soul.)

Here’s another pro-tip I wish I’d learned sooner . . .

Yes, “writers write.” But then they re-write. And then re-re-write. You never do your best writing on your first pass. The best, most productive writers create a rough draft—the operative word there being “rough.” They don’t try to perfect a sentence before moving on to the next one. Likewise, they don’t try to perfect a paragraph before moving on to the next.

write edit

They write quick and dirty, loose and ugly, just to get the basic ideas, concepts and thoughts down before they evaporate. The goal is flow, not perfection.

Your brain will fight you on this. Seriously. It will engage you in fierce, dirty, krav maga combat. To win, you have to continually reassure your brain that you’re going to go back over those sentences later. But that for now, it’s vital to just keep moving forward.

I delicately describe this first draft exercise as, “throwing up on paper.” The more artful saying among experienced wordsmiths is “Write in haste. Edit at leisure.”

Finally, there are some books on the art and science of writing that have helped me a lot. Some of these I dust off and re-read every few years. I’d recommend starting with The Elements of Style. It’s indispensable. You really do need a firm grasp of the “rules” of good writing—even if you ultimately end up breaking them. It’s okay to break the rules but it’s not okay to not know when you’re breaking them. Or why you’re doing so.

Once you’ve internalized those principles, I’d move on to the “sequel” so to speak, Beyond Style: Mastering the Finer Points of Writing.

The quickest way to start getting paid to write words is to become skilled at marketing and direct response writing. To learn this craft I’d start with the ancient but still-relevant books of John Caples, the original Don Draper. See here and here. I also recommend Robert Bly.

For aspiring novelists and screenwriters, I recommend Robert McKee’s, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting.

The fact is, all effective writing—no matter what the genre—involves story telling. It seems the human mind is wired to take in, remember and be impacted by information presented in story form.

Do you have a good story to tell? Are you prepared to tell it well? I’ll pull up a chair. Others will too.

A Quantum of Winter Solace

ShackletonWell, here at Pine Thicket Palace we’re pre-hunkering down for the brief wave of late-winter weather that the Weather Channel hype-machine has dubbed “Winter Storm Quantum.”

The naming of winter storms was an inevitable development, I suppose. Television news and information ratings are driven by hype and hysteria-inducement. I await the Weather Channel’s dire warnings about Mild Warm Front Armagezzmo at some future date.

Mrs. Blather ran to the grocery store to pick up a few soup making supplies and found it a scene out of an apocalyptic B-movie. All the grocery carts were in use by the horde of shoppers frantically clearing the shelves. She’s not sure but a fight over the last jar of gherkins may have broken out on Aisle 3.

For me, it’s all a grand excuse perfectly rational argument for putting off a lot of work in the yard.

If we’re trapped inside for a day or two, I’ll make good use of the time. I need to prepare outlines for a couple of new Bible study series I plan to teach in March and April. (Stand by for news.) Plus, Mrs. Blather and I will be leading a marriage and family encounter weekend at a great church up on Wisconsin in April as well.

No, the only worry I have regarding “Quantum” is for all the new buds, blooms and blossoms that emerged over the last couple of weeks.  Same thing happened last February. We were about to get a riot of spring color and a long, hard freeze literally nipped everything in the bud.

Stupid nature.

 

 

 

 

 

On the First Signs of Spring

Holland Camellia

Spring arrives relatively early here in northern Texas—several weeks earlier that what I experienced growing up in Oklahoma. And about 12-to-14 weeks earlier than when we lived in Minneapolis.

Technically the first signs of Spring’s impending arrival here are . . . weeds. In fact, I’ve been in engaged in a pitched battle against dandelion and henbit for several weeks now and believe I’m getting the upper hand. And last weekend I launched a fierce preemptive strike against crabgrass and dallis grass—having lost nearly half of one side of my front lawn to the unholy invaders last summer.

The price of liberty and weedless lawns is eternal vigilence.

By the way, did you know that the dandelion plant was introduced to North America by the first European colonists . . . as a food source. It’s true. You can prepare and eat dandelion leaves as you would collard greens or “poke salad.” Tuck that away in your memory in the event there’s a complete breakdown of social order and we find ourselves in some sort of post-apocolyptic crisis. You can survive on dandelions in a pinch.

While enjoying Valentine’s Day coffee with Mrs. Blather on the patio this glorious morning (we’re expecting sunshine and 78 today), we noticed the two blossoms pictured above on one of our two Camellia trees. Many more will follow over the next few weeks. And then they’ll be done for the year–first in, first out.

The azaleas are up next, along with the Redbud and ornamental Cherry we planted a year ago last winter. Then the dianthus, the other perennials, and finally the roses.

Summer’s heat will arrive soon enough and refuse to leave until October. Until then, we’ll savor the first splashes of color. And offer up genuine thanks for the little pleasures we find here on Pine Thicket Lane.

 

On the President at the National Prayer Breakfast

As we have seen many times, there is no moment so grave that our current president will not to use it to get up on his high horse, take a shot at Western civilization, and emphasize his own moral superiority.

That’s the opening line of David Galernter’s important and devastating piece posted over at National Review Online.  I encourage you to read the whole thing. 

On “A Fierce Exchange of Tracts”

For no particular reason I was reading the Wikipedia entry for the “Plymouth Brethren.” I still can’t stop laughing about one particular passage concerning an 1845 theological dispute between Brethren sect co-founders John Darby and Wills Newton:

Two years later, Darby attacked Newton over notes taken by hearers of a lecture Newton had given on the 6th Psalm. A fierce exchange of tracts followed and although Newton retracted some of his statements, he eventually left Plymouth and established another chapel in London.

Ooooh, the dreaded fierce exchange of tracts. You hate to see a dispute devolve into that. Nothing uglier.

 

The God of Gradually

treeringsThis may sting a little. At least at first. But stay with me. There is much good news and no small bit of comfort here.

There is a rousing, thrilling sermon I’ve heard preached several times and in varying forms over the years. It always seems to be a crowd pleaser.

The message is built around several of the many “suddenly” scriptures in the Bible. Walls suddenly fall down, bringing victory. Seas suddenly part, providing a pathway to deliverance. “Suddenly” a sound like a mighty rushing wind fills a room and everyone inside is filled with God Himself.

It’s an appealing, exciting thought—especially to those of us living in the age of drive-through everything and same-day delivery from Amazon.

The basic theme of these messages is that God is a “God of Suddenlies.” And He is. Sometimes. But is He always?

Is it really the case that when God’s redemptive power, glory or presence inserts itself into this material realm, it invariably does so with startling, precipitous rapidity—in other words, “suddenly?”

Here’s a sobering exercise. Search “suddenly” and “sudden” in your favorite English translation of the Bible and you’ll find that all but a few of the suddenlies recorded there are calamities.

Sudden destruction. Sudden catastrophe. Sudden attack. Sudden collapse. Such a review of scripture suggests that it is this fallen creation, and the outlaw spiritual enemy prowling upon it like a roaring lion, that are the ones who specialize in suddenlies.

There is a reason for this. In this entropic, fallen world, destroying is easy. Building takes time. The twin towers of the World Trade Center complex took eight years to plan and build. Blind, demonic hate took them down in a day.

Brush fires are sudden things. Generous, fruit-laden apple trees take their sweet time—a full generation. Sometimes two.

The fact is, much of God’s work in our lives—as with the unfolding of His kingdom on earth—is progressive. Incremental. Gradual. This makes it easy to miss. Or take for granted.

This truth is seen repeatedly in the imagery the Bible’s Author uses to describe His work in this world.

Tiny mustard seeds grow to be the biggest plant in the garden. A little pinch of yeast spreads and multiplies until the entire loaf of bread comes under its influence. “The path of the justified is like the dawn—growing brighter and brighter until the full day appears. (Prov. 4:18)

In the second chapter of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream features a statue with feet of iron mixed with clay (symbolizing the Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus). In the king’s dream a stone comes out of heaven and smashes the statue’s feet to smithereens. Then that stone grows into a mountain. And then that mountain keeps growing until it fills the entire earth.

That stone’s name was Jesus.

Growth. Progress. Expansion. This is the way of God.

It seems that everything God does has three aspects and phases. Each act of God is:

  1. Definitive (judicially/legally established)
  2. Progressive (gradually enacted or enforced)
  3. Consummative (fully and ultimately completed)

First God establishes a thing as rightful and legal in the court of Heaven for He has built the Cosmos on a judicial framework. Then He—in concert with His human agents—incrementally establishes that thing through progressive enforcement. This continues until the full and perfect manifestation of that thing has come.

In the fall of 1967 I was saved (my salvation was judically/legally established). Since then I am being saved incrementally and progressively. And a day will come—as mortality gives way to immortality—when that salvation will be consummated and complete.

What’s true for me is also true of this broken world. And God is unimaginably patient. Even if we aren’t.

This is not to say that God is not willing and able to work in the suddenly. He clearly is. Or to suggest that we shouldn’t hunger to see miraculous breakthroughs of His power and glory into the natural realm in ways that make broken things whole in an instant. We should.

But often those sudden breakthroughs are only the visible manifestations of unseen spiritual activity that has been taking place for months, years and even across generations.

You see, the under-appreciated truth is that the foundation for God’s suddenlies is almost always laid in his graduallies.

The visible miraculous, instantaneous healing often springs from someone’s (not necessarily the sick person’s) weeks, months or even years of praying, standing, and dwelling in God’s presence. The move of God that “suddenly” breaks out is usually preceded by a lot of unseen, progressive, incremental taking of ground (enforcement) by people of prayer.

A mountain avalanche seems like the most sudden of things. But that roaring tsunami of white was surely preceded by hundreds of quiet snowfalls. Progressively, incrementally—gradually—the snow accumulates on the mountainside. Then one day a twig snaps and the whole thing breaks loose, changing the landscape completely.

So, do twig snaps cause avalanches? Not usually.

I love God’s suddenlies. They’re thrilling. But I’m learning that I see more of them when I wholeheartedly embrace His gradual-ities in my life.

In other words, I understand I’ve been adopted by the patient, methodical God of Gradually.

Apple Tree