Sunday, November 16, 2014

Half Way There!!!!

So half of November is over.  How is the writing going?

Have rolled over and gone belly up, leaving NaNoWriMo for some other poor soul?

Well actually no, I haven't.

Part of me though is still part Nano Rebel, I can't quite write all fiction, I just can't seem to spend as much time as is needed to complete this task without having my heart in it.  My heart just isn't in fiction, I just think to myself if I spend this much time writing I want it to be something that I want to share with others, what is deepest and dearest in my heart.  I want to share how God is all around us, how he works in our lives, how he blesses us, how if we keep our eyes open we will see him, and what joy can be found when we seek Him.  But there is also a part of me that says if you are doing Nano, you need to follow the rules, so I am trying my hand at mixing it together.  The fiction is in a person who comes across this book and the book is what I truly want to share.  I am struggling with the fiction part, but today I changed tactics a little bit and I wrote a section of fiction I really like.  So off I go to NaNo again.....

So I am half way in more ways then one, half of November has gone by and I have written over 25,000 words, so now to just keep writing.

The after effects of NaNoWriMo day 1.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Is it November again?...Well, No Promises, But Here is a Post.

So my sister talked me into starting NaNoWriMo with her, so I don't that there will be many November postings this year, but her is an inspired writing from early this morning.  Enjoy


Monuments.  What are monuments?  According to Webster, truth be told, one of my favorite books, it is “a statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a famous or notable person or event.”  Washington D.C. has a number of monuments, for all sorts of different people, I remember going up the Washington Monument as a child and watching the city turn from day to night.  I wish I could tell you more of the interesting sights and things to do in Washington D.C, but all I remember is the Washington Memorial and coming down after dark and driving by the White House and seeing it through the gates with the lights illuminating it - yes that was in the days you could drive by the White House.  We headed out of town then and if we saw any other sites there in the background of those two events it made little impression on me because I have no recollection of them.  Someday I have liked to return and see Lincoln Memorial and the Smithsonian, but back to the topic of monuments.  They are things that we erect to remember someone or something.  In the case of Washington Monument, it is George Washington, and then closer to my home where I grew up is McKinley Monument, it sits upon a hill, one hundreds steps up, and then you step inside  and it is cool and high ceiling, giving it an echo.  I was always in awe of that monument, until one day when I visited a friend in Vermont.  This particular friend was from Brazil, she had lived near me during the school year working at a local elementary school and then spent the summer at a camp in Vermont before returning to Brazil.  While at the school, they had taken a field trip to McKinley Monument, and then while I visited her in Vermont, we happened upon the grave yard where Calvin Coolidge was buried.  He was buried in a little cemetery, on the side of a mountain road, amongst family and regular towns folk.  Two presidents, she knew little about either of them, other than their graves/monuments and their names, McKinley and Coolidge, and that they were both presidents, but she told me she liked Coolidge better, because he didn’t have to make such a big monument to himself but rather was there as a regular person among family and nature, and she felt it spoke volumes about the person.  I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t McKinley that built the monument, but rather others, after he died, but somehow that conversation has always stuck in my mind, what kind of monuments do I build? what monuments do I leave behind?  what monument, if any, will be left when I am gone from this world?
I have seen monuments or cairns out in the wilderness on hiking trails.  I first remember seeing one form of cairn, called inuksuk, when I traveled across Canada as a family.  We enjoyed spotting them and learned that they were there for navigation, a point of reference, or to mark a travel route or a food cache, a good fishing spot or hunting ground, camp, or holy place.  To use it was a message that had been lost in time.  We had no idea what the person who had placed that inuksuk there was trying to convey, perhaps someone knew after much study, but for us it was just an inspiring little structure that we knew had had some significance.  So if I leave behind a monument, who will remember what it means?  What will it mean to someone else?
I have built a couple monuments well, sort of, in a way.  Both stemmed from the same story I heard, it was a story about monuments.  A story that spoke to me, spoke to my heart.  The story is of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River, it is found in Joshua 3-4.  God tells Joshua to have 12 men take stones from the middle of the river when they crossed over and place them as a memorial, so that when people saw them, they would ask, “What do these stones mean?”, they would remember God had brought them across the Jordan on dry land and that all would know that God’s hand was powerful so that they might always the Lord their God.  A monument to remember what God had done and his powerful hand.  My first monument was just one stone and I don’t know if it ever found its place or not, but I gave that stone to a friend of mine who was praying for healing, and I gave it to her not for healing that had already occurred, but rather as testimony to God’s powerful hand and the healing that he brings.  It was a monument to his promises.  The second monument, is twelve stones, somewhere beside the creek that ran in the woods behind my home at the time.  I have no idea if it is still there or not,  if some children came along and carried them away, or if an animal came through and knocked them over, or maybe if the stream flooded and the water carried them away, or perhaps they are still there, a curious pile of twelve rocks, that speaks testimony to God meeting me there and speaking to me.  No one else that came across that monument would know what it meant, unless the spirit spoke to them, but that day was a meaningful time of prayer, as I prayed as I gathered each of those rocks and set them there, and then sat down, with the final words of the Spirit washing over me.  I was in the middle of a conflict that I didn’t want to be in, and the words from Joshua 5 spoke to me, in the man who came to Joshua, and Joshua asked “Are you for us or for our enemies?” and the man answered, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I come.”  In that moment,  the Spirit spoke to me and told me that God was not fighting on either side, but rather for something else entirely.  The conflict was resolved, and a few months later when an unforeseen event shook us all, I saw what God was doing, I hated that time of conflict, but I would go through it time and time again, knowing the end and the privilege God gave me in those months between when I got to know someone just a little bit and dream of what could have been, before God took her from this world, much to the heartache of those left behind....somethings we never understand.
Again, to monuments, what monuments do we build? why do we build them? how are they remembered when we are gone? and do they give the message that we desire.  The monuments of our lives......never forget to pay attention to what we are building.