Flying Ice

Monday this week was a day made for disappointment. It always is, but this week was worse than most. After an ice storm lent me another four-day weekend, it was a real bummer to come back to the office. Nobody was in a great mood, and everybody had a lot of work that needed doing, to get caught up. I put in my nine miserable hours, packed up some extra reading to take home with me, and then called it a day.

The roads were pretty clear by then, except for the steep-walled piles of dirty gray slush spilling onto the sides, but the drive still posed some little risks. I felt my car slip a little turning onto MacArthur, and again as I pushed up the ramp onto the highway. It was nothing dangerous, really -- just little reminders that the road wasn't really dry.

I hardly needed them, though. My windshield was enough evidence of that, with the thin, semi-transparent patina of slush thrown up by the cars ahead of me. That got a lot worse when I got onto the highway, and I was leaning forward, waiting for another pass of my worn out wipers, when the car in front of me threw up more than just slush. A pebble the size of a BB flipped up and smashed against my windshield, inches from my nose.

The sound of it startled me -- surprisingly loud crack in the still of my car --and as I flinched back, I wondered if it had chipped the glass.

I first started driving in 1995, and I drove for fourteen years without ever getting a cracked windshield. I've certainly taken my share of pebble bombardment, but they make those suckers pretty strong. Still, the thought crossed my mind because, only a week earlier, gravel bouncing out of the back of a dump truck had put a big score in the driver's side glass right above the dashboard. First time in my life, and here came another pebble one week later.

And then the wipers blurred by, smearing away the muck, and they left behind a single glittering spot, ten inches above the week-old chip. I grunted in frustration, I rolled my eyes, I probably thought something mean about the driver of the dirty white Tercel.

But then a sarcastic smile twisted my lips. I shook my head and chuckled, and said, "I wonder if I constructed that." See, I believe in something called social constructionism, and one aspect of it is that the things we expect, the things we anticipate, are the things that are likely to show up in our reality. By worrying about my glass getting chipped, had I made it happen? It was a swift-passing thought. I sighed and let it go. Probably just coincidence. It's a funny old world, after all.

The words were still fresh in my mind, the smile still on my lips, when I heard the distant groan and rip just before a sheet of ice tore free from that same car. I'd seen it happen on my drive in that morning, and even once or twice already on my drive home, but this time it happened right in front of me. A blanket of ice and snow packed two-inches thick suddenly caught the wind, dancing like a kite up into the air for two seconds, three, and slashing back down to earth.

I was too close, though. I got in the way. The largest shard -- probably two feet across -- came stabbing straight down at me. I braked, I swerved, but there was no time. I caught a dozen pounds of ice dead center on the passenger side of my windshield, at sixty miles per hour. It boomed like an explosion, and the whole windshield shattered -- safety-glass holding the fractured bits in place, but ruined.

It was five o'clock on a Monday afternoon, northbound in the left-hand lane of one of the city's major thoroughfares, so I had sixty-MPH traffic right on my tail. As soon as I knew I was still alive, I put my foot back on the gas. My heart thundered, and I had to fight to catch my breath, but the windshield held. I had a small rectangle, maybe two feet by one, right at eye level on the driver's side where the glass was whole. It was enough to give me a clear view of the road, as long as I leaned forward. It was enough to get me home, anyway.

So I drove on, terrified every time another piece of ice flipped up into the air and wondering if the shattered windshield might give way yet. Ten miles still to go, and nobody else on the road cared how fragile my situation was. I just focused on breathing, focused on getting home safely.

And while I was at it, I tried my hardest to ignore that chip, right in front of my nose, marring the one bit of good glass left to me.

(I prepared this post according to the assignment description in this week's Creative Writing exercise over at UnstressedSyllables.com. I'd love any feedback you've got to give.)

The Placebo Effect

Found this article through Digg, and thought it was worth sharing.

The headline claims that placebos are getting stronger, but the real situation is a little more complicated than that. Still, it's a great review of the placebo effect in general and a fascinating look at how major pharmaceuticals are addressing it right now.

Greatness: The Dream House

A Postmodern Short Story

Facebook has recently put me back in touch with an old high school friend, G--. He was never a close companion on the scale of D-- or Brad or Mike, but we shared classes and we shared conversations for most of six years, so I was glad to see his name and face show up under the enigmatic, "People you might know."

I added him to my friends list right away, and when he confirmed he immediately followed up with an email offering a quick summation of his lifestate, and I responded with one of my own. Then he wrote back, saying, "Man it's good to hear from you! I'd completely lost track, but I've never forgotten all the crazy conversations we used to have. Are you still playing part-time philosopher, or have you finally joined the flock?"

I hesitated over my answer, and finally wrote back, "Still just as crazy, but I hide it better. My big obsession since college is radical social constructionism, which suggests we collectively shape our reality by our expectations. It goes deeper than that, but that's a good snapshot."

I sent that off and put the ball in his court. If he wanted to ask me for more clarification, he could. In the process he would bring down an avalanche of information from me, but at least that way it would be on his hands. If he wanted to let it go, safe in the knowledge that I still had some weird notions ready to hand, he could. He surprised me, though. He wrote back and said, "No way! That is a good summary, but I know all about it. Weird that we would still end up talking about the same ideas after all this time...."

So it turned out I was the one who couldn't leave it at that. I've known a lot of people who get social constructionism when I explain it to them, but never one yet who was already familiar with it. And I sure didn't expect G-- to be the first one! He'd always been willing to listen, stupefied, while I rambled on, but he was never the real philosopher himself. So I asked him for his story, and it was a good one.

He graduated with me in the spring of ninety-eight, and while I went off to Little Rock for the summer and then to Oklahoma for college, he stayed in Wichita and spent a few months working on a roofing crew to save up his tuition. When he got into WSU in the fall, he held onto that job. It paid well, and he liked the work.

So one weekend he was working on this rotted out roof over on the West Side, tearing out ruined plywood and rebuilding the frame while the irritated homeowner tapped his foot down in the front lawn, wanting them to be done. It was a big job, though, and they ended up working until well after midnight, tacking down new shingles by the light of flood lamps so they could do another job the next day. Sunday morning he got up, went to work, and showed up at a home halfway across town to find the same homeowner standing by the curb talking to his boss.

G-- pondered on that while he worked, and when his first break rolled around he struck up a conversation with the client. Turned out the guy flipped houses for a living, and both of these were projects he hoped to clear in a couple weeks. That piqued G--'s curiosity, and I guess the fellow liked G-- because he gave him a business card and told him to keep in touch. G-- did, and at the older man's direction he spent all his free time that fall going to seminars, reading books on the topic, listening to tapes, and checking out videos that all promised the guaranteed secret to financial independence through home sales. By the end of his first semester he was ready to give up roofing and studying and become a real estate man.

By that point he really felt like he knew what he was doing. Nineteen, with no money, no degree, and still working his high school job, he was sure he was ready to make the investment. So he did his research, and over finals week, between tests, he closed on a 2/1/1 FSBO west of Tyler that he knew was worth a twelve percent profit. It cost him sixty thousand dollars and he had the whole Christmas break to get it fixed up and listed.

So he drove out on a Sunday morning in his crappy little pickup, armed with nothing but a little toolchest he could carry easily with one hand. There may have been a power drill, too, but that would be pushing it. He eyed the dead lawn critically, the gutter hanging loose over the front porch, as he approached up the walk and turned his sixty thousand-dollar key in the twelve-dollar Wal-Mart lock. Then he pushed the door open, but it caught fast at three inches. The chain was on. Not only that, but he could smell incense burning in the house, and a moment later he heard someone moving around inside. He took a step back, checked the address, but this was the right place. He'd been here before after all, for the inspections, and the house had been empty then.

He probably should have been afraid, but young men are fools. He pounded on the open door, loud as he could, and called out, "Hey! Hey! Who's there?"

A woman's voice answered him indistinctly, and a moment later she floated into view. Her haid was black, pulled up on one side in a complicated braid. Her eyes were green, and she was wearing nothing but a threadbare white towel. That stopped him short.

She didn't show any sign of embarrassment or remorse. She just smiled politely and said, "Well? What's all the fuss?"

"This is my house," he stammered, his anger coming back a bit. "I came out here to do some work on it--"

"Good," she said. "You need a new water heater."

"I need to know what you're doing here," he said. "This is my house."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "It's mine."

He frowned, and his heart started pounding. He knew all about liens and he'd spent a week reading about squatters' rights, but he hadn't really expected problems at this place. He'd cleared the title two days ago. His stomach knotted at the thought of the legal expenses it would take to get this sorted out. He shook his head, trying not to think about it, and said, "How do you figure?"

She just smiled and said, "Magic." He stared, blank, and she slipped the chain off the door and withdrew into the room. He pushed in and found a beanbag chair and a tiny, ancient black and white TV plugged in by the front door. A spill of worn paperbacks lined the wall -- the tattered carpet their only bookshelf -- and a stick of incense burned in its holder atop a battered minifridge on the far wall. He took it all in at a glance, and felt his rage rise up again.

"What is all this?"

She shrugged one shoulder without losing the towel and said, "My stuff."

"Why?" he asked. "Why this house?" He felt a desperate fear, and wondered if his dad could help him out of it.

"I had a lovely dream that took place here," she said. "Well, not exactly this house, but one close enough. And I was driving down the road last week and saw the sign out front and I thought, 'That's it. That's my house.'"

"But it's not yours," he wailed. "It's mine. I saw the sign, and then I bought the freaking house."

She smiled and turned away. "That's a kind of magic," she said. "Money. But mine's better."

"And what's yours?" he said, as he dug the cell phone out of his pocket.

"Desire," she purred, turning back to him. "Anticipation. Faith." She gestured to the room around her with a long, slender arm. "This is going to be my house. I can make it mine by sheer force of will."

She caught his hand and dragged him back toward the hall. "This will be my room," she said, opening the door on the smaller of the two. "Just enough room for a twin bed and four bookcases." Then she turned him around and pushed open the door to the master bedroom with one toe.

The walls in there were angry red, the wookwork stained almost black. Bringing that room to a neutral color was a chore G-- was dreading, but it had a dreadfully oppressive feel as it was. It didn't seem to get through to her, though, because the girl danced into the room and said, "This will be the kids' room. Lots of space to play. Can't you just imagine?"

"Listen," he said, "if you want to buy it, I'll have the house on the market soon--"

She shook her head. "No you won't," she said. "Not this house. Besides, I don't have any money."

"You don't need any," he said. "I've got a great guy. I'll give you his number."

She just shook her head again. "I'm not interested."

"Then you have to get out." It was hard to be stern with her, but he had work to do. "Today. Now. Or I'll call the cops." He wasn't entirely sure he could do that, but she didn't call his bluff.

She sighed, and her shoulders fell, and she said, "Fine. I'll go. Can I use your phone? I need my dad to bring his truck if I'm going to get all this stuff out."

He grumbled about that, too, but if it got her gone he could spare the minutes. He waited there with her while she made the call, heard her ask the man on the other end to bring the truck, and then he got his phone back. "Good," he said. "Umm...thanks. Now you can get dressed or whatever. I'm just going to get started--"

"Fine," she said, and disappeared into the guest bedroom. He just stood for a moment, stunned, staring at the closed door. He thought about calling his dad, but decided to wait. He didn't want her to overhear any part of that conversation.

Instead he went to the front door and got his tools. He had a handful of little projects from the inspectors, and he had planned to knock those out quickly and then spend the rest of the day planning his big renovation. He pulled the list from his back pocket, unfolded it, and picked the first item: busted faceplates in kitchen and laundry room. He had a couple cheap tan light switch and outlet covers in his tool chest, so he grabbed those and a flat-head screwdriver and got to work.

Thirty minutes later he was out front with his pickup pulled up in the yard so he could stand on the hood to reach the gutter. He had three long gutter spikes between his teeth and a hammer on his belt, but all his attention was on the warped bit of sharp-edged sheet metal in his hands. He couldn't get the dangling section to match back up to the piece still on the wall.

Below him the screen door screamed open before it banged against the wall, and G-- mentally added two items to his list: oil the hinges, and reattach the hydraulic arm. Then he glanced down at the pretty trespasser. She was wearing patched jeans and a worn brown sweater now, with flip-flops for shoes in spite of the cold. He growled, "You still here?" but the nails between his teeth garbled his words. She giggled and held up a thick paper cup. Sweet-smelling steam curled off the top of it.

"He'll be here any minute now," she said. "Hot tea?"

He just shook his head, amazed at her aplomb, but after a moment he relented. He climbed down off the hood of his truck and let go the dangling gutter. It creaked ominously, but it didn't fall. He took the offered cup, then sank down on the front steps. "Thanks," he said.

She moved around in front of him, fists on her hips, and waited until he looked up to meet his eyes. "I'm not a bad person," she said softly.

"No," he said, biting off the words. "You're just crazy."

She took a step back as though he'd hit her. For the first time since he'd shown up she looked upset. "I'm not crazy!"

"You can't just move into someone else's house because you want to."

"You'd be surprised," she said. "But I didn't. I moved into my house--"

"This is not your house!"

"As you see it," she said, then held up a hand to forestall his argument. "Okay, and the cops, too. I can't suppress that kind of authority."

He took a slow sip of his tea, then set the cup aside. He leaned back and looked up at her, finally curious. "What are you talking about?"

She frowned, as though she didn't understand the question, and he shook his head. "You were talking about magic earlier," he said. "Now it's 'suppressing authority.' You don't look a crazy person--"

She stomped her foot. "I'm not crazy!"

"Then what are you talking about?" He glanced up at the dangling gutter and knew he'd rather hear her story than get back to that. "Spill it."

"Have you ever heard of Phenomenology?" she asked. "Brain in a vat?" He shook his head and she sank down on her heels in front of him. "Your whole universe is a model built inside your head, using your experiences, your expectations, and tiny electrical pulses from your nerves to populate it. Everything you see is just a message from your eyes to your brain, and based on that little spark of lighting your brain adds to the model however it sees fit. Everything you touch, every word you hear me saying--"

"Okay," he said. "What's the point?"

"It's all a dream," she said. "Your reality is a dream. Your brain is making it up, all the time, and you just go along with it. If you wanted to, though, you could change it. Take control of the dream. Put your mind to work for you and start producing reality instead of just consuming it." She was breathing faster now, and her eyes were wide. He couldn't help smiling at her enthusiasm.

"See," he said, "that's where you start to sound crazy."

She rolled her eyes. "That's the hard part," she said. "When dreams overlap. When my world and your world come into contact, and they're not the same, we have to negotiate a common ground."

"And how would you do that?"

"Talking," she said. "That's the purest magic, rhetoric. Money works, too, like you said. And force." She turned up her nose. "You invoked force, and I retreated, and your dream won out over mine." She rose back to her feet, unfolding gracefully, and reached out to touch the fallen gutter with a tender hand. There was sadness in her eyes. "I lose my dream house," she said, "and you get this dump. Congratulations." As she said it her dad pulled up to the curb behind her. He honked the horn once and she glanced back over her shoulder. "I'll be gone in a minute," she said, and disappeared into the house.

After that there wasn't much excitement to the project. G-- got down to work. He fixed the easy stuff quickly, but after that things ground to a halt. He got into the attic to examine the ductwork and found termites in the ceiling. He pulled up carpet to check out the hardwoods and found water damage down to the subfloor. Christmas break came and went. When the lease on his apartment expired in the spring, he moved into the house so he could work on it full-time over the summer.

In spite of his difficulties, he kept an eye on the real estate market, still committed to his plan. In June he bought another place and sold it in July. In August he bought and sold two places, one of them in the same neighborhood as his starter house. He finally settled into a rhythm, learned the eccentricities of the local market, and got pretty good at what he did. He never could sell that first 2/1/1, though.

Then on a Thursday night, two years later, he was at Barnes and Noble grabbing a book on plumbing when he spotted her in one of the comfy chairs reading a trashy fantasy novel. He fell down into the chair next to her and when she didn't look up he said, "Hey, squatter."

That got her attention. She blinked at him for a moment, then grinned sarcastically and answered, "Hey there, cops."

"That's me," he said. "What's happening?"

"The kingdom's crumbling and the lord goes off to war," she said. "You?"

"Better than that." He grinned. "Want to know something funny? I never did sell that house."

She tilted her head, considering him, and said, "If you're looking to unload it, I still don't have any money." She opened the book back up, ready to forget him.

He blinked, and coughed an awkward laugh. "Umm...no," he said. "That's not what I.... Listen, do you think you'd want to go out to dinner?'

Again he got that long, quiet stare, but then she nodded. "Sure," she said. "Where did you have in mind?" They did Mexican, and then the Olive Garden on Saturday, and burgers next Friday before they went bowling. And then in April they got married. He finished college, and two years after that they started a family with twins on the first try. He spent a weekend moving furniture, painting, getting the kids' room ready. And as he put the finishing touches on the new nursery -- their old master bedroom, but they would need the extra space for two cribs, two dressers, and oh, the mountain of toys -- he laughed out loud and went to find her in the living room, curled up with a book.

"It's about done," he told her.

She looked up at him absently, then saw the look on his face and her eyes narrowed. "Why are you smiling?"

"Remember the day we met?" he said, sinking down next to her on the couch. "Here?" She nodded, and he went on. "You said the master bedroom would be your kids' room. Standing there in a towel, you told me that with a straight face." She nodded again and he smiled. "Well, it's done," he said. "It came out just like said. Isn't that crazy?"

But she just smiled, and laughed, and told him, "No. It's just as it should be."

Greatness: Heart's Desire

There's a verse in the Psalms that took me by surprise, first time I read it.

"Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart."

That's Psalm 37:4. It's in a familiar vein, "Ask and you shall receive," and the kid asking his father for a loaf of bread, and even the insistent widow. That's all Jesus, though, right? I mean, he was a generous guy. It struck me, though, reading the psalmist saying the same sort of thing....

Prayer is a serious thing, in the Bible. It's a powerful thing. We are encouraged and ordered to use it. And not just for meditation, not just as an opportunity to spread our lives before God, and hopefully gain a new perspective. We are directly instructed to ask for what we want, because God wants to be our provider. He makes that clear, again and again. Look what he was trying to do in Eden.

That Psalm caught my attention when I was a boy, back when I was about sixteen, and I put it to the test. I felt confident in that time, because I did delight in the Lord, I was certain of that, and more importantly, I knew without a doubt the desire of my heart. And I didn't have it.

So I prayed. I prayed, and in the night I had a dream, a glimpse of the life I wanted to have, years off, and that was enough for me. I took confidence from that moment, and I received what I asked for then.

That was a powerful experience for me.

A prayer isn't a birthday cake wish, y'know? I don't think it needs to be a secret. Sitting in church last Sunday, the man was saying this or that about relying on God, about letting him exercise his power within your life. That's something I believe in, as all of you know. I believe the world is a malleable thing, that reality can be bent for the purposes of God or man. I nodded, understanding and encouraged, even, and suddenly I remembered high school, and that desperate prayer....

I have a heart's desire, in my life today. I have lots of things to ask for (and hope that they will be given). We have a baby on the way, and I want her to be healthy. I want Trish to be healthy through it all, and I worry about that. I want lots of little things, the comforts that require wealth beyond what I already have. I pray a lot. I ask for a lot. But those are just things. Somehow, in my head at least, I've separated such prayers, such petitions, from the sort of desire the psalmist was talking about.

My heart's desire, today and now, is to be a best-selling writer. I want to publish a work, and have it read by the world. I want to write, stories and lessons and snapshots, to show readers what the world was and is and could be. I want my name to be remembered, for the words that I said. I have a message that I want heard, I have talents, gifts, that I want to use. I want the money. Not that -- I want the opportunity. I want my writing to be my life.

I was an A student in elementary school. I was good at everything except multiplication. I could teach myself, given the right books, and I usually managed to get them. I had a lot of plans for the future. For most of my childhood, they had nothing to do with writing.

A lot of you have known me for a long time, but if you haven't heard me tell this story, you don't know this story. That is to say, most of you know me as a writer, but none of you were there, at the crucial moment, when I discovered why I was a writer. Maybe Josh, but no one else.

I was maybe twelve. Probably eleven. We'd had a handful of writing projects over the last year, and I'd done well enough on them (but, then, I did well on all of my projects, as long as they weren't based on multiplication). One day I was thinking through the writing process, though. The actual job description, of the sort of person who writes stories, and I realized it would be a home job. Maybe a nice office, maybe just a pad of paper on the kitchen table, but it would be a home job.

I wanted that, because I wanted to be home for my kids. I wanted to be home with my family, even when I was working. That picture stuck in my head, and I've never shaken it. Even times when I was certain I didn't want kids, it was mostly because of some variation of the disappointment at realizing I wouldn't be able to realize that picture.

I was twelve. That's how I thought when I was twelve. Yeesh.

That's my heart's desire. I have a great job now, a fantastic one, that pays well and demands nothing of me but those things at which I excel, those things I can do easily and quickly and well. Given some of the things that have been discussed recently, it could get even better. And it's a better job than I deserve, considering the effort I've put into it. I chalk that up to a blessing, a gift. I'm in no position to complain, and I realize that.

But my heart's desire is to be a writer, just a writer, completely a writer, for my family. That last bit matters, too. I could have been a starving artist. I could have refused to take a job, and chased after every avenue available to me to get a book sold (in a market that is incredibly difficult to get a foot in the door), but it's about more than that to me. That's why I described my picture, my goal when I was twelve. I want it for my family, not in spite of my family. I want something better than I deserve to have, something I maybe had a shot at in the past, but I've squandered my opportunities. I want something that would completely change my life. I want it as a gift, served up on a silver platter.

Why not? It's happened before.

I do delight in the Lord. Maybe not as loudly as I did back then. Certainly not as dogmatically. But I do. And I crave this, looking through the few short days between now and then, I want this very much. Please, let it be so. Amen.

The King, to the Poet (A Poem)

The King, to the Poet

Something happened, when no one was looking.
Quietly, politely, we tore it all down--
Ages old, majestic and mighty, we tore it down to build something new.

Shiny and new.

It was a tapestry once, that told a story around which we built our lives.
It was a mighty whole, a single fabric, built of myriad mysterious pieces.

With the blessing of all (or all but the fringe) we took it apart.

We took the shiny pieces and the pretty pieces and the useful pieces
And put them to work,
Doing our bidding (we once did its), and serving us in strength.

We marvel then at what our lives have become,
All built of artificial fibers and synthetic materials.
Appropriated. Misused.

And what of that old rag, that ancient tapestry?
It's tatters now, of course, torn to shreds and threadbare
All that's left behind.

And those same who plundered it now mock it for all the things it lacks.
For all the holes, for all the inconsistencies and flaws--
For gaps, that they had made.

There are gaps, and holes. Places where things once were,
Where things shiny and things pretty and things useful used to be.
It's not the rag that's torn, though.

The single piece is shattered, scattered, but its fragments still as strong.
Alas, they no longer grow as one.

You see, it was a living thing. It breathed the life of man.
We killed it, for our own ends -- butchered it, for our wealth.
We took its intellect, to make us wise.
We took its heart, to learn some sort of kindness.
We took its soul, to give us more than life.
We took its might, its powers, its strength to change the world, and we made the world we wanted.

We still have all the pieces, and look how much they change our lives.
We killed the thing to get them, though.

We could start anew, of course. Some have tried.
We could make a new fabric, and start the ages-long process of giving it life,
Weave in the first of many threads, and make a gift to our descendants.
We're a world of scavengers, though.
We've made our lives out of plundered parts now, and we're not about to stop.

Start another if you want. It can be done.
But I'll tell you this, my prophecy and sigh:
They'll watch,
And they'll point and laugh,
They'll criticize everything that is not what the old thing was.

Then they'll take everything that's good, and mock you all the more.

Greatness: Story Idea

I took a nap and had a dream.

It was mainly about a little girl, named Ideine, who had a bunch of friends, but wasn't happy. The actual scene in the dream was kinda something out of Buffy, and the girl was kinda Willow (but, to all of that, not really).

The story would start, "Ideine sat alone, and cried."

Sometime in the past, an old man gave her a penny and he said, all sad, "You get everything you ask for, and you lose everything you want." And it was true. The rest of her life, from that point, went exactly like that. Those became the natural laws of her reasonable, ordered, rational universe.

She became a kind of Cassandra, although she had been given no powers. She learned how to know what the universe would be, to see the future, simply by extrapolating based on her two natural laws: "You get everything you ask for, and you lose everything you want."

Umm...it probably wouldn't be a very happy story.

Backstory for My Vampire Book

There are two distinct elements at work here....

First: hundreds of years ago, there was a boy named Daven who went up against a dragon and lost. In the process, though, each received a kind of infusion of the other's blood, creating a bond between them.

(There's a whole long story, there, but to sum up, dragons are creatures of pure chaos, raw energy undirected. Humans are granted the special power of order, reason, to overcome their environment. The combination of the two made a single entity greater than its racial template, as it were.)

Daven had three sons by his wife Isabelle. After the birth of the first son, Isabelle also bonded a dragon, and as a result their second and third sons exhibited remarkable characteristics. They were born with a vast potential of power, inhuman authority, and they gravitated toward extremes. Isaiah became a creature of pure order, an aesthete who divorced himself from the messy chaos of humanity. Damion, on the other hand, embraced the raw power of chaos, embodying its lust for power and thirst for life. He became a monster, a terrible force that fed upon the blood of man for its survival and bent its victims to its own dark purposes.

Damion was not all dragon, though, and his roots in humanity tethered him to a sort of order, a limitation he could never escape. No matter how his power grew, he was always defeated by the unity of man, and the desire for order and control. Undying, immortal, he was always driven from any place he claimed. His greatest weakness was the overwhelming and unifying power of the Darken Orthodox, a strict and extensive branch of the ancient King's church.

(Part the second)
The Darken Orthodox held sway over all the lands of the Ardain, the southern mainland that had once been part of the FirstKing's lands. A century after the death of Daven the kings of the land lost control of their realm, and the Ardain rose up in rebellion, dividing into four kingdoms, known as the Major Baronies. In the city of Darken, in the southeast of these lands, stood a Cathedral that rivaled any in the world, commissioned from the wealth of Daven himself. Following the rebellion against the crown, the Darken Cathedral became the heart of the Darken Orthodox, the church of the Major Baronies.

The church's power was absolute, and gave the Darken kingdom a political dominance of the other three. The church had its own order of knights, who had political authority to cross any border at will, and bore full judicial authority throughout the Ardain region. Many of the powerful resented the church's clout, but the commoners were a devout people, and church prospered.

It came to pass, though, that an heir of the ancient king was found in the Northlands, and a high-ranking officer within the church's Order Knights started a war to re-establish the old king's throne. Civil war came, then, with five sides fighting each other, and in the Chaos, the church lost much of its hold on the nations.

In this atmosphere, the wandering Damion saw a chance for power. He began on the outskirts of one of the Major Baronies, on the border between civilization and wilderness. He began to establish a presence within a small town, gradually building influence over its citizens and amassing an army. There were rumors of dark tidings, but it was a dark time throughout the nation, and none looked too closely into the rumors.

This is the background. Our story begins when a lowly soldier returns home. A one-time Order Knight, disgusted with the policies and practices of the church in its prosecution of the war, abandons his faith and his assignment and seeks to return home. It is a dangerous journey through lands torn by war, but when he arrives home, he finds his village dark, changed, and a gloomy tower stands on the horizon where a beautiful, mysterious stranger has taken up residence.

Naturally, hilarity ensues.

Greatness: A Story Idea

A long time ago, I had a dream in which I was reading a short story by Zelazny, and when I woke up I remembered the story that I had been reading. It was a good one (and very Zelazny-esque), and I made some short notes to myself, in the hopes that one day I would write it up.

Then, of course, promptly forgot all about it.

Bruce wrote me the other day, and mentioned in passing the AA phrase, "fake it til you make it," which reminded me of my own comment recently on the issue of lying, concerning pretending to be something better than you are, in order to become that (and the difficulties associated with that).

Also, for some completely inexplicable reason, Toby has been inundating my poor GMail with countless (read: "two") articles concerning mind-controlling parasites.

And thinking on these things reminded me, across time and space, of the story idea I'd had long ago.

It goes like:

Somewhere in space, on some out-of-the-way planet, there is a parasitic creature that is capable of mind control, that enhances its victim's aggressive instinct.

Another advanced race discovers the parasite and cultivates it, using it as a form of rehabilitation on truly horrible criminals, enemies of the state, and conquered enemy soldiers, turning them into state-sponsored assassins and soldiers. Eventually that race's entire standing army is peopled with zombies controlled by these parasites.

Generally the life-expectancy of one of these zombies is pretty short, given its reckless charge into danger, but one particular criminal is so incredibly lucky and talented, that she lives for years longer than any other. She is quickly promoted from soldier to assassin, and becomes feared through the galaxy (style of thing).

Finally she shows up at some out-of-the-way bar and sits down across the table from some wanted fugitive, who recognizes her and knows that he's dead. He strikes up a conversation, trying to buy time, and most of the actual story takes place within their little dialogue. And over the course of the story, you discover that the mind-control parasites themselves only live a couple of years, and that this one woman's controllers died more than a decade ago, but she had become so much what the parasites made her, that even after their influence was gone, she just kept it up.

Then I suppose she kills him, because why not?

God: The Magic Architect

Once upon a time there was a Magic Architect and he was the best Magic Architect that had ever lived. The Magic Architect was able to build any kind of house or building just by wishing for it. Anything he could imagine, he could create, with just a word! His own home was a huge mansion, and it was filled with delightful things, but there were very few surprises there. Everything was simple, and beautiful -- every wall, every room, every decoration.

Then one day the Magic Architect had a child! A beautiful baby boy was born, and the Architect was very happy, and very in love with his little son. As the boy grew older, he began to play with toys, and his favorite toys were little blocks. The boy would sit for hours, building, and the Magic Architect saw that his son, too, would be a Magic Architect.

(Continued in comments...because it is REALLY long.)

Greatness: Self-Determinism and the Nature of Reality

One of the most fascinating aspects of human history has been the remarkable success of the human species. Man, pitted against all Nature, has been able to thrive in nearly every climate. Man's dominance over his environment can be seen in every aspect of his life. Man acts as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, building environments to suit his needs, maintaining them according to his expectations, and destroying them when and where they no longer suit him.

Man exerts his control over his environment in many ways, from metaphorical response to concrete pragmatism. From his earliest days, Man has used storytelling to create meaning and understand the world around him. By interpreting natural events in mythical ways, early Man was able to conceptualize the complexities of his environment in his own terms, and then respond to the story, rather than the base environment, in a way that allowed cultures to unite and prosper in pursuit of common goals. By sharing stories, individuals were able to share their interpretations of the world in which they lived. While the creative story defines the meaningful world in which Man lives, his interaction with that world tends to take a concrete form, in the use of tools and technology. From the crudest axe to the particle accelerators and nuclear reactors we see today, Man has long sought to use the elements of his environment to shape it into one more suited to his desires. Whether building structures for safety or damming rivers for power, whether moving mountains for easier travel or developing medicines to double his lifespan, Man uses technology to shape the reality he encounters into the reality he desires. Even within his own communities, Man creates reality, building up social structures to define the roles of community members, and manipulating expectations so that the creative energy of a multitude might work together to strengthen their shared environment. This last process can be most clearly seen in any established institution, from the covenant of marriage to the culture of Western Science, societies work together to construct shared systems of control on their environment.

Of course, these institutions are as much devoted to sustaining as they are to creating, and this can be seen clearly in the tendency of such systems to incorporate a great degree of tradition and respect for history. The base concept of "culture" -- that is, the collection of human creations that most clearly illustrates a society's constructed environment, most commonly in art and stories -- is a maintenance force. That is, the cultural works of a society are valuable precisely because they are able to illustrate aspects of the society's constructed reality, and encourage an audience to continue to construct for themselves a similar reality. By "constructed reality," I mean those aspects of a society's environment that are not inherent, not absolutely natural. This extends to every manufactured good, every built structure, but also to ephemerals that factor -- in a very real way -- into the lives of the society's members; ephemerals such as morality, covenant relationships of any sort, and higher-level constructs such as worldview that, though based on the natural environment, will not naturally occur in precisely the same way from individual to individual, or society to society. Whenever a society agrees to share a constructed reality -- again, from a similar architectural style to a generally compatible worldview -- the society tends to devote itself to the maintenance of this constructed reality. On the most practical level, this is seen in Man's animal instinct to survive, as the individual seeks to maintain a reality that includes him, rather than accepting nature's proposed reality that...doesn't. This same practical survival instinct echoes through all levels of a society's constructed reality, as people strive to maintain what they have built, encouraging others to accept their own creations, and defending them against outside threats. Just as Man's creative aspect can be found in the tools he uses to create, so too his sustaining aspect can be seen clearly in the tools he uses to measure and to record. Man's clear desire to ever-more-perfectly measure and describe the world around him arises out of a desire to defend that world, to replicate his reality as faithfully as possible, whenever it is threatened.

Any force capable of creating and sustaining, must necessarily be able to destroy, as well. Consider the example of Man's animal desire to survive, used earlier. This very basic sort of sustaining can only be achieved through the act of destruction, whether of plants and animals used as nourishment or of enemy creatures competing for resources. In the same way, Man's power over nature includes a powerful destructive aspect on every level. Just as story and myth are used to create a meaningful worldview, there are methods of philosophical and rhetorical speech that can be used to destroy constructed meaning, from Nihilism to parody and satire. Furthermore, some methods of constructing meaning, such as Rationalism and Western Science, simultaneously construct meaning while destroying any other constructed systems that might rely on the same source material. Of course, Man's destructive nature is not limited to his own constructions, but can also be bent against his base environment, destroying aspects of it that stand in his way (such as a mountain demolished to clear a path for a highway). Naturally, such destruction must also extend to those competing with Man to define his environment -- namely, other societies of Man. Thus we have seen, throughout history, the violence and brutality of war, the viciousness of execution and murder, as Men ultimately destroy those who would challenge them to define the environment in which they move.

It is easy to focus on this last aspect of Man's power and despair. It is equally easy to look on great works of art from time gone by, and regret what has been lost, or to consider Man's wondrous accomplishments and marvel at the greatness of Man's spirit. It is most important, though, to consider the whole aspect of Man's power, to see clearly the ways in which Man builds environment (and maintains it, and destroys anything that would challenge it). It is important to understand the whole picture, to consider the parts together, so that we can more wisely interact with our fellow Man, and more powerfully, more perfectly shape an environment that will benefit us all.

(Click on Comments for links to previous posts on this topic.)

God and Greatness: Honesty and/or Truth

This is a bit of a puzzler....

Y'see, I'm a fantasy writer. I write fiction. Not, y'know, professionally, because apparently it's not good enough. Pah. But deep down, that's who I am. A storyteller. That's quite apparent to all of you, of course.

And in the course of becoming that, you have to confront the possibility that making up stories is the same thing as lying. In fact, that's a popular way of describing little children who tell lies -- "he's telling stories again."

But at the heart of all good art is a lie. Every piece says, "The world is this way." And the world is not that way. The world is more complex, or uglier or, in some cases, much prettier. Art is not reality -- it's an expression of reality.

And unless you're growing up in an extremely fundamentalist household (which I wasn't), it's pretty easy to realize that our culture recognizes the value of a story as literature. So that little moral qualm quickly passes.

(Note that this hasn't always been so. You may be aware that theater still has a lingering reputation of being a little skanky, for some reason. There was a time when the Church -- and, for reference, this was a time when the phrase "the Church" could only refer to one institution -- made it very clear that telling fictional tales was the equivalent of bearing false witness, and pretending to be someone you weren't was nearly as bad. Morality plays got by, because they were a method of teaching Bible stories to the illiterate masses, but drama was strictly forbidden.)

Anyway, the point I'm getting at is this: from a very early age, I've been wrestling with the difference between truth and honesty. And I've generally been losing that match, too. When I was in middle school, I told some laughably ludicrous lies about my own past, about who I was. It made sense to me -- I had just moved to a new state, and a new school, and none of these people knew my story, so when they started asking about it, why tell them a boring tale? Y'know? So I made up something with some flash and dazzle.

My whole life I've lied, to be perfectly honest.

(Yeah, that line made me smile.)

And this post comes from several discussions I've had with all of you, and those with Daniel and Toby particularly. There are clearly times when telling not-truth is okay. There are times, at least according to social convention, when it's actually good. But, clearly, there are times when telling not-truth is quite destructive.

What's the line? When is honesty right, and when is it just anti-social? Daniel and Toby have both, at some point, come to the conclusion that our society is far too comfortable with untruth -- that what we need in our lives is a great deal more honesty. Instinctively and intellectually, I disagree.

There's a thing I know. I'm not quite sure where or when I learned it, except that it would've been sometime before high school. See, the Ten Commandments include that one rule, "Do not murder." Well, in Aramaic (that's right, isn't it?), there are several different verbs for "to kill." There is a generic word that means to end another person's life. There is a word that refers to killing in battle, and another that refers to a judicial execution. And, finally, there is the word that we would translate "murder." It doesn't necessarily imply specific circumstances, but it states that this killing is socially and legally forbidden, and therefor a criminal act.

The commandment against murdering is precisely that. I know people who are against the death penalty on the grounds that the Ten Commandments forbid killing. That's what I'm getting at. The commandment specifically doesn't forbid execution, it forbids the act that the person is getting executed for. (And, since I'm here, I should pretty much state that I don't think the Ten Commandments should be considered the primary deciding factor in decisions concerning present-day American judicial policy. Just that I know people who do.)

But, back on topic, I wish that I knew the relevant Aramaic to let myself off the hook for the lying thing. That is, I kinda wish I could appeal to some higher source, and get those boundaries of what's wrong, what's okay, and what's right.

I guess since we're at the Ten Commandments, I'll glance at them real fast. The phrase there is, "bear false witness," and I get that the phrase is not just referring to witnesses in criminal proceedings. However, it does imply a certain degree of specificity that I'm comfortable with. Telling a story for entertainment purposes is not the same as claiming, "and because Superman did that, you have to vote Republican." That is, claiming that the implications of a fictional story impact the hearer's (or reader's) life in a compelling way.

Hmm...I think I'm back to Christian Leadership here, in a way. I guess I feel that the difference between a story and a lie is that a lie is forced upon the hearer (or, presented in such a way that it will be taken as forced), whereas a story is presented as an opportunity for the hearer, to take or not at his discretion.

That's a fairly vague line, though, and it doesn't cover nearly enough of the ground I need to cover. What about self-image? People have this amazing tendency to become what they believe they are. Tell a child that he's a genius, and you'll be surprised how smart he turns out. Tell a child he's an athlete, and he'll be incredibly apt. Tell a kid he's an idiot and a bum, and he will be. There are limits, naturally, but a person's self-image clearly and consistently guides his future development.

Given that, there is value in telling un-truth for the sake of growth. It's what our myths are all about. We say, "a man can be like Hercules," not because anyone ever particularly was like Hercules, but because focusing on that potential encourages us to grow toward it. That's the beautiful value of ideals. Ideals are not real (and therefore not true). They are better than true. They are honest.

Then again, a dishonest person could use that very line of reasoning to destructively conceal his own failings -- to justify a lie, in fact. Sure, I'm an alcoholic (not me -- this is just an example), but I don't want to be an alcoholic, I know I shouldn't be an alcoholic, and so I will claim not to be in the hopes of growing into that potential. I will sneak and hide what I am, telling a lie for the greater good.

How is that different from telling your child that he's a genius, in the expectation of him becoming one? To bring it into closer parallel, let's talk about playing along with someone who's pretending not to be an alcoholic. Believing that he can become sober, you pretend, with him, that he already is. How is that different from encouraging your child toward a potential he has not yet indicated? How is it, fundamentally, different from saying, "No, honey, that outfit does not make your butt look big"?

Honestly, I don't know. I recognize that it's a real problem, because a broken person's best hope of getting fixed, is in his recognizing the break. However, I also believe that a person's best chance of becoming something incredible, is in convincing himself that it is perfectly credible.

Hmm...I've come to no conclusion here -- just raised some issues. Please feel free to carry on the argument. I look forward to the discussion.

Greatness: Man's Divine Nature

Okay, for several of you, about three paragraphs into this post, you're going to think, "He's talking about me!" And that "me," in case you didn't catch it, is shrill and outraged. Honestly, though, this is something everyone needs to hear, often. It's not directed at or wholly inspired by any one of you. (No, not even you.) But, if it happens to speak to your own life, now, take it to heart and be glad at the coincidence that placed words into your life right where they belonged.

I'm just sayin', is all.

But here's the thing: everyone you encounter in your life is a person.

I need some snappier way of saying that, a clever phrase that will stick in your head and pop into your thoughts right when it's needed. Maybe before this post is through I'll come up with one. For now, though, we've gotta settle with the boring, apparently obvious "everyone you encounter in your life is a person."

That's a big deal, though. We live our lives inside the first-person point-of-view that so many authors have discarded as being too limited in scope. Each of us sees his life as his own story, and all the people he encounters along the way are just characters, just plot developments that push his story this way or that. Some of them we love for the impact they have on our lives. Some of them we hate, for the same reason. And the named characters keep coming back, keep affecting our lives in different ways, so maybe our feelings about that person change, shift, over the course of the story.

Even so, making another human being into a dynamic character in your story isn't enough.

Because, behind his eyes, he's living his own story. He's got a whole world, a whole life of his own to live. He's conscious and aware and trying to live his life well. Where it intersects with yours, there is conflict. In writing, we refer to all of these intersections as conflict. It could be a fistfight or an embrace, but it's still conflict. It's two stories trying to come to terms enough for each of them to move on, in their own directions.

This post isn't about the story metaphor, though. In fact, my main point is that the story metaphor completely defines most of our lives, and it's totally wrong. Or, rather, dangerously limited in scope.

Everyone you encounter -- whether it's a friend, a loved one, or a perfect stranger -- everyone you encounter is living a whole life, is a person encountering you at the same time. And every one of us (I'm convinced of this) is trying to live a good life. What exactly that means changes from day to day, but every one of us is trying to live a good life.

I know you are. Right now, you are.

And yet, even so, you make mistakes. You say something offhand to someone you really care about, and it's just devastating to them. You've done that, without ever meaning to offend, and you've seen the impact it had on their lives.

You act, trying to do something good (or at least something pleasant), and years later you see how your own actions are impacting the lives of people you've met, people you care about. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways, and you never really know which will be which.

Sometimes you just act like a jerk. I'm not accusing you, I'm just reminding you of something you know is true. Sometimes you're in a bad mood, and something touches you off, and you just act like a total jerk. It's a short-lived thing (because you're not a jerk), and next moment you're back to trying to live a good life.

And that's okay. Life is a learning experience. You try to get better as you go along, which is the same as saying that, all the time, you're trying to live a good life.

Now...change perspectives. Think of someone you encountered yesterday. It can be a stranger, or it can be your spouse. But think of someone specific. Think of someone you encountered yesterday, and realize that that person was trying to live a good life. That person was an awareness behind his eyes, looking out on the world and making decisions about it. Maybe he said something that hurt your feelings. Maybe he acted, in a way that will impact your life down the line (for good or bad). Maybe he was just a complete jerk.

But he wasn't doing any of those things to you, y'see? He's living his life, just like you're living yours. He was making decisions, and maybe floundering and maybe just shining like the sun. We do that, sometimes, too. You do that, more often than you realize. You're just going along, trying to live a good life, and out of nowhere, BAM!, you actually do. You flare up like a nova, and shed beautiful light on the lives of everyone around you.

I've seen you do it. Otherwise I wouldn't have invited you to read my blog.

And think about your own life. Sometimes you're awesome. Sometimes you're horrible. Through it all, though, remember that you're a Child of God. You are this amazing thing, this beautiful, boundless potential, and you're living a life learning how to live up to that potential. Remember that you are everything that you could one day be. You are the brilliant, shining moments, and the cost of becoming that, the very process of becoming that, necessarily includes the sleazy, cruel, selfish moments, along with all the rest.

And that stranger who just cut you off in traffic? He's the same thing. That's one of his bad moments, but he's a Child of God, and you had better believe that there's times he glows in radiant beauty. The same is true of everyone you meet. Every person, every single person, is a little bit of divine spark trying to learn how to shine. And all of them are seeing the world through their own faulty eyes, trying to guess what it all really means (just like you do), and making decisions, and making bad choices, and stumbling through today because, please, maybe tomorrow will be better.

That includes people close to you. That includes your Mom or your Dad. It includes boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses and siblings and children who just won't treat you like you deserve. They're looking at a world they can't quite get, they're fending off frustrations and trying to find their purpose and wrestling with the injustice of it all, and when you cross their path, when you enter their life, they make a decision that will impact you.

And it may be good, and it may be bad. Switch perspectives again. You encounter someone in your life, someone important to you, someone you care about, and you make a decision that will impact that person's life. It may be good, it may be bad. You want it to be good, but you know from long, long experience, that there's equal chances something will go wrong.

All of us, every one of us, is trying to live a good life. It's fair to be hurt when someone hurts you. It's fair to be annoyed at someone acting like a jerk. But remember, always remember, every single one of those people is a little bit of divine spark, trying to learn how to shine.

I challenge you, personally, to try to see that in people. Try to see people as people, wherever you encounter them, not just as characters in the story of your life. Try to remember who they are.

And, in a very specific application of this, here's your homework. Think of someone you care about, and who you know cares about you. Someone who has hurt you so bad that you almost discarded them from the list when I said, "and who you know cares about you." Think about that person, and the thing he or she did to hurt you.

And think about a time when you made a choice about someone important to you, and you hurt them. Whether you meant to hurt them or not, you made a choice that hurt their lives.

Dwell upon these two things, and find the space behind this person's eyes. Find the space inside his or her own mind, where the offense happened. And try to recognize it for what it was, rather than what it became within your life.

Please? For me?

Worldmaking

On the drive in to work this morning, the fog was incredible. Glancing out the window, even now, it still is.

Actually, while I was on the highway, I was thinking, "This fog isn't that impressive. It couldn't even cause an accident at 75 mph." Well, actually I thought, "at seventy-five miles per hour," because that's me.

But once I got off the highway, and down onto the streets, it was incredible. Maybe forty feet of visibility, probably closer to twenty. After that, a blank wall of white.

Driving through it, it felt like I was building a world around me as I went, forging a path through nothing, forcing memory and imagination into the shape of reality.

Too bad all that exercise led me back to work, but it was worth it for the drive. Beautiful.

God, Government, and Greatness: Adoption

I have my doubts that I will get across everything that needs gotten, but there is a base concept of Adoption which I really need to establish.

I may have mentioned this to some extent in my earlier posts on Goverment (Monarchy specifically), but I couldn't find it if so, which means I didn't go into enough detail.

First, I'd like you to read a passage from Romans 7. It's verses 13-19, 22-23. The two verses I omitted do not significantly change the meaning of the text, so I've cut them for clarity. By all means, feel free to read the entire passage in context -- I'm just not quoting it all here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed....

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is not, of course, the only place we see reference to God-the-Father or, by extension, the members of the church as his sons and daughters. In the book of Romans, though, Paul is able to draw upon that concept more fully and powerfully because of the Roman cultural practice of Adoption.

Our culture has established its own ideas concerning adoption, specifically the conception of a second-class status for adopted children. It's silly, it's an easily-dispelled idea, but it's one that persists in our culture and, honestly, that's how we feel in relation to God. When Paul says that we're the adopted sons and daughters of God, that makes perfect sense to the American mind. We're not his REAL kids, but he was generous enough to adopt us.

That's not how Adoption worked in the Roman empire.

(I referenced Goverment in my tagline, and that's about to come into play, too.)

Y'see, when we think of old-timey inheritance, we generally think of a system called "primogeniture" whereby the first-born son inherits the entire wealth (including titles) of the father. This is one of the huge stumbling blocks of monarchy as we imagine it -- that terrible corruption of passing the throne from Louis I down the line to Louis XVI.

The Romans had a system in place to prevent that, to some extent. Adoption. It was the responsibility of a Roman man to choose his own heir. It could be his first-born son, but a first-born son was not actually born with any inheritance rights. In order to pass his estate on to his first-born son, the Roman gentleman would have to adopt his son as his heir. He could just as easily adopt a nephew or a brother-in-law or, more likely, an apprentice or assistant. It was his responsibility to choose an heir who could effectively maintain the estate he would inherit.

Obviously this system was open to abuse of its own. I'm pretty sure most of you are already thinking of Nero and Caligula, and after all, who is going to try to hold an Emperor accountable for living up to his social responsibility? The Emperors did hold their followers responsible, though, and there were dozens (hundreds?) of kings within the Roman empire who were compelled to choose fitting heirs, and bound to that decision by the process of Adoption.

Adoption, then, was not an act of mercy or compassion, but one of investiture. When a Roman adopted a son, he proclaimed to the world, "I approve of this one. He deserves to one day own all the wealth and power that I possess."

And that is what God has done with us. That's the entire point of this passage in Romans. God has Adopted us into his sovereignty -- not just into the comfort of his home, but into the position of wielding his great might. We have been proclaimed worthy of becoming like God himself.

Here's the important bit "we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

We have been made Sons of God. We have been given all the power Christ bore when he walked the earth, but more than that. We have been promised the full power of God. This is the confidence he has shown in us. This is his expectation of us. Because adoption is a responsibility as well. We must live like Princes, in training to someday assume the throne. That's the "sharing in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory" bit. And that's an amazing position to be caught in.

And -- this is what irks me -- it's a role that we are not taught! My dad taught me about Roman adoption, and what it means to be a son of God. Other than that, I heard not a word. Have any of you heard of this before, from anyone other than me? We're taught that every one of us is a foot soldier in God's army. We're taught that we're prey the lion is stalking. We're taught to think like the Israelites, for whom God provides manna. We're taught that we're like the lillies, and God will clothe us in beauty, or that we're like the birds of the air, and God will fill our needs.

But that's not even the point of that passage. Jesus cries out, "how much more, then, will he do for you?" We are not just soldiers, we are not just cute little animals and pretty flowers. We're not even like the trackless Israelites, but like Moses who led them, all radiant from the Glory of God. We're Princes. We're Kings and Queens, arrayed before our Emperor. Stand up! Be proud, ye heavenly powers. The armies of angels are our armies.

Remember the parable of the prodigal son? Remember how he went away and sinned, and because he had squandered his wealth, he lived among the pigs, and lived like a pig. That's what we're doing, and the whole point of the story was that it was never necessary. Stand up! Go back to the wealth and the power that is your due -- not on your own merits, but because you have been adopted by the most powerful benefactor reality has ever known.

Live like it. That's your responsibility.

Government and Greatness: The Contemplative Way, and the Active Way

This is an excerpt from King Jason's War, that I enjoy. It is, here, entirely out of context, but I'm hopeful that it will still make some sense. It describes, I think, some of what's going on between the radical Liberals and the radical Conservatives, in these days.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It's amazing, really." Jason sighed. "They have their expectations of the world, of how it works, and the world just seems to shape itself around them."

"That is generally the way of it, with noblemen."

Jason growled, "It's not just the people. Sure, you'd expect it to be that way with people. All the commoners know that the nobles are in charge, so they conform to the world as the nobles see it. But…I mean…everything. The Eskiem certainly don't credit our Peers any authority, but look what has happened. The Peers want a war, and the events of the last few hours seem to guarantee one! Reality shaping itself around their expectations."

"There is more to it than that, Jason—"

"But the worst part is," Jason took a deep breath, eyebrows furrowing, "the worst of it is being me, living in this world of my own that doesn't conform to their expectations, but watching their world move right along in spite of me. They see a war as right and necessary, and my little objections—"

"You have not been entirely sure of your objections, Jason." Robert interrupted, softly, but Jason stopped speaking and listened closely. "Are you suddenly sure that you stand against this war?"

"Not…well, yes, but…. No, I see your point, but even so—"

"They believe, and stand by their beliefs. You doubt, you take time to consider, and your search for real understanding makes you hesitate, makes you wait for more information. Meanwhile, they act in their quick confidence, and the world has left you behind."

"It's not fair, Robert. It's not right that recklessness should have the upper hand."

Robert started to answer, but then stopped, thinking. Finally, he said, "It's not necessarily recklessness, Jason. Their path, their whole worldview, is one of confidence and action. Yours is one of contemplation and philosophy. Yours requires patience, and care, and long years to attain its end."

"But what do I do about this war? This decision must be made today, no matter my own patience."

Robert looked over and met his friend's eye. "Are you truly asking my advice? Do you want my answer to that question?" Without hesitation, Jason nodded. "Then here it is: your path has nothing to do with this war, or any one war. Your philosophy is not one that shapes decisions, but worldviews. If you stand against this war, the war will happen anyway. If you become king, you will have a lifetime to change the way this nation views the world around it. My advice, good and true, is to say your piece, and then let the Council make its decision in this matter. Then commit your reign to crafting a world where we will never have to face this decision again."

Greatness: Change

It's easier to initiate change on objects in motion than on those that are sitting still. Once change happens (for good or ill), you have a special opportunity to initiate a little change of your own.

It's complicated, though. Sometimes you want to make a change in a particular directions, other times it's toward a particular destination. Chaos is GREAT for initiating a change in direction. It's too random to target a precise destination, though.

Every now and then, for precisely this reason, it's good to spread a little chaos of your own. Mix things up (harmlessly, of course, if you can manage it), and then bend the world in the direction you want to go.

But the other aspect is the real point of this post. Sometimes the world changes violently, against your will. Lemons and lemonade, my friend. You can mope once things have settled down (you won't REALLY know how bad the change was until it's over ANYway). Meanwhile, spend your energy making what good you can.

That's my advice, anyway. Also, live well.

Greatness: From Me to You

This is what I would have you know:
Life is big. Really big. It's amazing. It's...dynamic. We stop it from being so, every day, for our own comfort.

That's okay. It's nice to be comfortable most of the time. There's a certain thrill to going camping, sleeping under the stars, eating fresh-caught fish pan-cooked over a little campfire. But...well, we don't have to live like that. Camping is just a fun little bit of excitement we can sprinkle into otherwise comfortable lives.

What I want you to know, what I really want to get across to you, is that the comfort is something we've made, for our own sake. We haven't changed anything underneath -- it's all still there. We CAN still go camping. You can go camping within an hour's drive of Denver and it feels like the most remote wilderness in the world. Even with all the civilization that is Denver.

This is important. This is a big deal. You can step outside of your comfort, into excitement, into magic, into legend. It's all there. Jason and the Argonauts, David creeping into Saul's camp, fire from Heaven and so much for Baal. Not just that, though. Garden State. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. American Beauty (*sad sigh*).

Think of your favorite movie. Your life could be like that. It's not, because it's more comfortable to not live life like that. But you could wake up tomorrow and make your life like...whatever movie you're thinking of. Life is that big, it's that powerful.

I'm not asking you to. I'm certainly not suggesting. Hell, how often do I actually go camping? It's nice to know it's an option, though. Remember that, when you're feeling trapped or bored or insignificant.

Greatness: Constructed Reality and You

Here's the thing: you're already familiar with constructed reality on a day-to-day basis.

Have you ever had a dream that felt real? So real you couldn't tell it was a dream until afterward? A dream in which all the pieces fit together, logically, within the dream (even if they seemed entirely absurd after you woke up)?

That's a constructed reality. Dreams are our minds' way of communicating to us, when we're unwilling to listen to direct signals. It builds up a whole world for us, a whole universe, and lets us experience what we refuse to accept in logical impulses.

My point is this: our brains are GOOD at building realities. We all know it. We all experience it all the time.

Have you ever seen someone hypnotized? I very much hope so. It's an amazing experience (being hypnotized, yes, but even just watching). You tell someone he's a chicken and he begins to behave as though he's a chicken. Yeah, that's a silly one. My favorite is the three-year-old. Watch how someone becomes a three-year-old, within his own mind.

As a matter of fact...HAVE you ever been hypnotized? You can realize you're participating in an imaginary universe (you're conscious the whole time) even as you are completely submersed in it. You're not ACTING, the suggested scene becomes truly real for you and imposes itself on you, but there's a part of Man that can sit outside and watch, even as the body and mind are caught up in the illusion.

That's a very important point, right there, and it's what keeps the rest of what I'm saying from being just mad, useless ramblings. We are capable of stepping outside and watching the play, even as our bodies and minds are trapped within it. Most of us choose NOT to, which...

Well, you've heard that rule about hypnosis, that the hypnotist can't make you do anything you normally wouldn't do. That's not entirely true. It's possible, in normal hypnosis, to let the monitoring part of your mind...go to sleep. Most people don't (they don't trust the hypnotist), but it's possible, and then you just go along.

It's also possible, as a hypnotist, to build so deceptive a world, so captivating an illusion, that the environment itself (rather than your suggestion) causes the hypnotized to do something they wouldn't normally do. Maybe you couldn't Command a hypnotized woman to take off all her clothes in front of a huge audience, but you could convince her that her clothes were full of vicious, biting ants....

Both of those are real concerns. What we do, with our science and our logic and our arm's-length consideration of philosophy, is put to sleep that monitoring part of our mind. We like to stop thinking of this world as an illusion, because that's less WORK. It also means we no longer have the freedom to manipulate our own role within it, or to stop the play if it gets too absurd (or repulsive).

We need to be reminded, from time to time, that the reality we're living in is just an illusion we've dreamed up for ourselves. We need to look at it from the outside because we (especially we Christians) know we have that power, that perspective. Constantly examine your life, your reality, to make sure it's not misusing you, not leading you down paths you don't want to follow.

Greatness: Okay, for Real, The Matrix

(Now...I always have trouble in these conversations knowing exactly when to STOP. That is, I can't necessarily tell when I've lain a foundation AND drawn an explicit conclusion. Or, more often, I'll lay a foundation and think the conclusion is so obvious that it would be insulting to ACTUALLY state it explicitly, and so I don't, and then find out I was overly obscure.

That will be an ongoing issue. Any time you see me drop a conversation before I've made my point, and you're not quite sure where I was going with it, please mention that in the comments, and I'll try to fill out my argument.

All that said, today's post might be going too far. If you already know where I'm going tying in "The Matrix," please feel free to skip it.)

(See! I made it past the parentheses this time! Well, not yet....)

The Matrix took me entirely by surprise. I suppose it did that for most folks since, coming into the theatre, all we really knew was that Morpheus couldn't tell us what the Matrix was. And something about Kung Fu.

It was, however, in its entirety a visualization of Post Modern Social Constructionism. I'm not trying to use The Matrix as a metaphor or anything -- it was very clearly drawing on these ideas from the beginning. It's useful to me, as it has provided a very popular, base-level understanding of what Social Constructionism implies about the universe.

(Okay, I'm sometimes a stickler for proper typography and whatnot, but I'm writing this on a forum that doesn't EASILY allow for hypertext markup, and I'm going to be referring to The Matrix far too often for me to switch into Edit HTML mode, add the less-than-i-greater-than brackets, and switch back out every time I name it. So I'm just going to throw it in title case, and trust that all of us consenting adults reading this article can recognize that I'm referring to the movie whenever I capitalize the "The," and to the computer construct when I don't, and make your best judgment calls when I start a sentence with it....)

The Matrix presents us with a universe exactly like our own, reality just as we know it, and then proceeds to demonstrate that this reality is simply a constructed hallucination -- sensory input fed directly to our brains. Remember the "brain in a vat" question that I posted about early on? It's been around for AGES. The Matrix is just another story along the way that has played with the idea.

In the Matrix, all the people are sharing in the same hallucination. They can all point to the same object, and say, "That object is red, and round, and suspended from that tree-shaped thing." They can coordinate their descriptions of the world, and verify each other's claims about reality, and successfully build more and more complicated technologies that function more and more effectively based on their observation of this entirely fictional reality.

(Did you catch that? It's science, as we know it. We SEE it happening within the movie. Neo's a hacker, after all. Within the Matrix science examines and describes and tests and discards disproved hypotheses and -- within the story -- all of that only succeeds in supporting the artificial reality, none of it has any ACCESS to the kind of information that would serve to reveal Real Truth. Science can only test the materials of observable reality, which is self-supporting.)

Now, for the sake of completeness, I'm going to make some explicit comparisons. Whereas the reality inhabited by most of the human population in The Matrix was one built using computer code (machine language), Social Constructionism (at least my form of it) proposes that this reality is built out of human language. Whenever we interact socially with another person, we are taking part in (ahem..."jacking in" to) the constructed reality -- the shared hallucination of what is real.

In other words, the fake world which we are fed to keep us docile and powerless is provided, not by malevolent machines seeking world domination, but by...us. By our constant desire to understand the world around us, down to the last detail.

So. In The Matrix we have a scene where Neo and Morpheus face each other in a construct training room, and they fight (yada yada), and Morpheus asks, "You think that's air you're breathing?" And...well, the whole point of his training is the realization that everything around us is a fiction that we are fed. And, if we choose not to play within the rules, then we can be stronger than human bodies are capable of, we can leap farther, we can defy the laws of gravity (because they're "rules" that people choose to obey, not governing forces with authority over us).

Christians believe this, on some level. Christians believe that all of natural reality, all the laws of this reality, are "rules" that we, out of politeness, choose to go along with. Otherwise how could Jesus have called a man forth from death? How could Elijah have raised a dead child? They weren't practicing medicine, they were performing miracles. Walking on water, turning water to blood (or wine), blotting out the sun or causing it to stand still for half a day (or cast its shadow backward several steps). We BELIEVE that the laws of nature are pliable. Social Constructionists explain why.

So why are there walls? Why don't I have a big pile of gold? Why don't any of us fly? Eh? Eh???

There's a reason I keep referring to it as "reality," in spite of my claims. It IS real to us. There's a scene in the movie where Trinity looks all serious and says, "The mind makes it real." That's exactly it. Social Constructionism is something that happens within our mind -- our only connection to our environment. If our mind believes there is a wall ahead of us that will block our way, we will not be able to walk through it. If our mind believes we are bound to the earth, it won't let us fly.

Yeah. That's an easy one to prove (or at least, to support) in the negative. Not so easy in the positive, because I don't know anyone who has achieved transcendence on such a level that he can bestow it on others.

Y'see, even if you MET someone who had freed himself enough from the constructed reality that he could fly, YOU wouldn't believe he could fly. It doesn't work within your universe. And your mind would be doing everything it could to keep him from flying or, if not that, to convince you that he wasn't. At long last, you (and those sane folks around you) would probably just convince yourself it was a dream or hallucination, if nothing else worked.

Right. Tricky. I'm not trying to play word games here to wriggle out of an argument. I'm just recognizing that I CAN'T logically prove to you a system that, at its basest, denies the practical accuracy of logic.

And, to sell out all those Social Constructionists depending on me for a dispassionate, reasoned answer, I can't provide that, either, because my philosophy was born out of my religion. I already TOLD you where the positive proof comes from, for me. It's in axe-heads floating to the surface, and snake-statues curing poison, and ten loaves becoming twelve basketsful, and that fig tree and that mountain and the fish with the denarii in its mouth.

It's right there in Genesis. God made a world outside of Heaven, a temporal place, and in it he constructed Man out of temporal components, but breathed into it Life. He made Man in his own image -- Infinite, but wearing a temporal suit.

So. We (the movie and me, both) propose a world of Real Truth, that we can't see or touch or taste or feel, but that is yet somehow far more important than the environment we experience, and a reality that we CAN see and touch and taste and feel, that exists only as a dream which we are all sharing in.

Not only that, but it's vitally important to exist within that dream world, but a Man can do SO much more within it once he has recognized it for what it is. He's still vulnerable -- always vulnerable to the seductive lie that imagined reality IS Real Truth -- but he's able to do more than all the dreaming sheep around him and, with any luck at all, liberate a few of them along the way.

There we go. Now I'm done with The Matrix unless (miracle of miracles) we get some comments conversation going.

Greatness: Some Honesty to Upset You Science-Types

I'd kinda planned on skipping these points, or glossing them over, so as not to lose some of you completely (I'm looking at you, Kris). But, any meaningful philosophical discussion really does require a significant degree of intellectual honesty, so I'll drop some on you.

I believe pretty much everything modern science claims to be true of the universe, is true of the universe. There! You've gotta love that. Evolutionary speciation, Einsteinian can't-go-faster-than-the-speed-of-light-for-no-good-reason-really, Heliocentricity, all that.

I ALSO believe pretty much everything ancient science (often called "Mythology") claimed to be true of the universe, was true of the universe. See? That's where I lost you.

Today, the world is fifteen billion years old, or whatever actual number you want to claim. Four hundred years ago, the world was four thousand years old. That's where I'm going. All natural matter may be constructed out of 136 elements, but two thousand years ago it only took four elements to do the same thing.

I honestly, seriously believe that our world is socially constructed. All of the rules that govern the universe, all natural laws (as well as all nature) are pieced together from the mind of Man. Everything that can be tested, everything that can be measured, everything that can be communicated by way of symbols is simply a manufactured (might as well say "imaginary") expression of some Real Truth to which we have NO shared access.

Therefore whatever number we put on the age of the earth is just an expression of how we are currently interpreting the nature of the world. If it is more useful for our present-day scientists to believe in time-intensive evolution in order to construct a functional explanation for the nature of animals as we observe them today, then our universe is flexible enough to include a world that's billions of years old.

All it takes to make it true is to say it, and convince other people to believe it.

I believe lightning used to be heavenly javelins, and now it's static discharge. I believe birds used to fly because they had so much Air in their nature, and now they do it using updrafts and hollow bones. I believe heat used to be an invisible liquid-like agent that flowed between objects, seeking balance, and now it's an expression of energy.

I believe margarine used to be better for you than butter, and then butter was better for you than margarine, and now margarine is better for you than butter (I think). And where do we stand with eggs? And coffee?

NONE of this is real. It's all just a game that all of humanity is playing, every day, and we change the goal sometimes, and we change the rules sometimes, but for the most part, at any given time, everybody agrees to a basic set of rules and we all follow them, and keep playing. That's what society is.

That's constructed reality.

There IS something real out there, but it's not governed by any Natural laws. It's not accessible to science, or logic. It's Other, it's Outside. We encounter it all the time, but in the process of trying to explain it, communicate it, understand it, we make something not-quite-like-it, we make a symbol, and then we pass that symbol around for years, forgetting the original source that it was supposed to describe. We make up uses for that symbol, and modify it over time, until it is very much a part of our lives, but no longer CLOSE to the Truth it was supposed to describe.

And then we encounter that Truth again, and it's entirely foreign to us, so we try to understand, describe, and we end up making a NEW symbol for it, which we adopt, and pass around, and use for different purposes, but neither one is the actual thing, see?

So we still have myths about lightning as the javelins of the gods (the old symbol), and we still keep those around, and use them for certain purposes (they make good poetic images, for instance), but obviously that's not the REAL thing, lightning. We know that now, because we've encountered lightning on a different level. We have a new symbol for it, this static discharge idea.... But that's NO MORE the real thing than the javelin image was.

ALL of it (everything we say is true of the universe) is just a symbol we're passing around, and modifying with each iteration, until it's not the same thing at all. In other words, the MORE accurate you make your description (through testing and discussion and professional journals) the LESS like the original impulse it is. Yeah, you hate this paragraph now that I'm talking about lightning as static discharge, but go back and reread the paragraph before this one. It's a constant cycle. It's HOW WE DO THINGS.

Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I'm saying? It's basically what you believe, too, except....

Ehff. You tell me. That's what comments are FOR.