Hijacking the church

Sometimes the church is the victim. Even though my fiction is about spiritual abuse as it is expressed within the American Protestant context, I recognize that the church is not always to blame. Truth, integrity, and civil discourse are better than pride, personal agendas, and vindictiveness hijacking otherwise good motives. In my opinion we all default to sin whether we believe in God or not. So why am I so constantly surprised by the failings of our flawed fellow humans? ...churched or unchurched...Yesterday I attended an event at which bad motives twisted around a good purpose and ended up leaving a bad taste in everybody's mouths. The unfortunate target was a small-town's church.

There.....

On CNN this morning I saw an interview with a female Methodist pastor who has decided to become an atheist and has left the pastorate. She plugged some online support groups for clergy who are struggling with issues of faith as well as for laity who are leaving their faith. I understand the horrendous emotional and philosophic trauma that faith crises provoke - the more costly the stakes, the more isolated the struggle tends to be.

My fiction pushes the envelope for such struggles - when abusive Christians control and diminish other Christians in the name of God such struggles intensify with the twist being self-imposed by the victim due to her (largely it is a her) issues of conscience and naivete....

My fiction exposes what happens in the heart's inner space and behind closed doors and doctrinal confines.

My fiction demands huge levels of honesty and intellectual integrity and if it pushes someone to question the very foundations of their own faith, so be it.

God is big enough to defend His own faithfulness and as with the woman I heard on tv this morning, may He pursue us all in the midst of our storms and tantrums with His relentless mercy.

I find God where T.S. Eliot found Him: "at the still point of the still turning world...there the Dance is" ....

Business Comes First

Unfortunately it takes a certain amount of leisure - or at least breathing room - to write especially when writing takes up a chunk of ones everyday work day. Today, for example, I wrote two business letters, a speech for a member of my Board of Directors, several emails, and a proposal for a presentation I hope to be selected to do in November. But this week I became reacquainted with a woman whose career may provide key information for Stuck in the Mud so that's awesome. By the way, I just created an author page on librarything.com, a social network site that connects individuals by means of the books they list as being in their personal libraries. Check it out.