The Successful, Short, Sinner/Saint Son of Abraham

Bless me, Blogger, for I have sinned. It has been sixteen days since my last blog post. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to come up with stuff to write about on a consistent basis. That's a problem for me, since I desperately want to be known as a writer.

I think I figured that out about myself pretty early on. My first creative writing assignment (at least the one I canonize as first in my memory) was a short story, a wildly meta fantasy in which the protagonist (whose name was, most likely, "Dave"--or perhaps "Danny," which as a kid I considered an objectively better name than "Dave" and thus a better name for myself) was soooo much smarter than his peers that he kept being advanced into later grades. Eventually his precociousness took him to high school where he could no longer reach the handle to his locker, and he returned to school among the hoi polloi of his age-appropriate class. Poor Dave/Daniel: the one thing he lacked on his rocket to success was a growth spurt.

I was as proud of that story as I was of my presumed advanced intelligence. I wrote songs, short stories, book reviews--you name it--all before adolescence. Even as I shifted my self-concept to "musician," I kept writing. I was proud of the essays I wrote for my college applications, proud of the essays I wrote in my literature class to stave off failure, proud of the one-liners I'd come up with on the fly to defy my teacher and entertain my French class. I bragged about my wit and mastery of language during a parent-teacher conference, to which my eighth-grade Basic English teacher responded, "Well, I suppose you have to be clever when you're small."

Ouch. In the narrative arc of the hero's journey, this moment might be considered my passage through the first threshold, "which is crossed in such a way that it appears to be death."

That's really the way it works, though, isn't it? Our fantasies about ourselves (which likely have some base in reality) clash with the more common perceptions of us among our peers: "I am smart," despite the fact that I had not qualified for advanced English and was stuck in a remedial English course with an insensitive teacher; "I am known as witty," despite the more immediately obvious designator for me as "small."

Today, for the purposes of feeding this blog and my own ego, I find myself identifying with another short but otherwise impressive fellow, Zacchaeus. A tax collector in first-century Palestine, he gets nine verses in Luke's Gospel--not enough to really know him; just enough to get a sense of him. But we get quite a sense of him, because in meeting Zacchaeus we once again encounter Jesus.

Jesus always drew a crowd, and Luke 19 is no different. Everyone in Jericho wanted to get a good look at him, including Zacchaeus. We learn two things about Zac right off the bat:

1. He's the chief tax collector.
2. He's rich.

So in matters of wealth and accomplishment, he's a big deal. Bully for him. But we very quickly learn one more detail:

3. He's short--so short "he could not see over the crowd."

I imagine the citizens of Jericho begrudgingly paying their taxes to Zac and then consoling themselves by ridiculing him for being tiny. Zac has, conceivably, a Napoleon complex, aggressively and myopically chasing success as a way of compensating for being small. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that Napoleon had a Zacchaeus complex. Maybe I have a Zacchaeus complex. Maybe all of us "fun-size" (to borrow a term from my friends the Heuertzes) humor the taller among us with reaches that exceed our grasp.

Anyway, Zac didn't get rich and accomplished by giving up, so he climbs a tree, at which point Jesus sees him and invites himself over to Zac's house for dinner. This audacious act by Jericho's newest big thing must frustrate the townspeople. Wee Zac comes out on top again. To quote the band Midnight Oil: "The rich get richer, the poor get the picture. The bombs never hit you when you're down so low." So for the sake of posterity Zac's neighbors give us another description of who Zac is:

4. He's a lowdown sinner.

But Jesus knows there's more to Zac than what his neighbors think; there's even more to Zac than what Zac thinks. In a move that nobody saw coming, Zac offers restitution for his unjust (though not illegal) practices in collecting taxes, in keeping with the commands of Torah. Beyond that, he publicly pledges half his wealth to the poor folks in Jericho, again honoring the spirit of Torah. This is so out of keeping with who Zac knows himself to be, who the townspeople know Zac to be, that it can only be thought of as a miracle. But in the eyes of Jesus, this miraculous Zac has simply returned to normal, because Jesus knows a fifth thing about Zac:

5. He's a child of Abraham.

Zac is a child of Abraham just like all his neighbors, which means he is a beneficiary of the promises of God, a member of a covenant community that, according to God its head, takes care of the poor and treats one another justly. The children of Abraham, the scriptures tell us, love God and love their neighbors as themselves. Jesus tells us that these two rules sum up all of Torah. So this is who Zac is, who his neighbors are--or, more accurately, who they would be if they lived like they were born to live.

Jesus doesn't demand that we be something other than what we are--he didn't lay hands on Zac and make him tall; he didn't take his ill-gotten gains from him by force or expel him from the covenant community for violating usury laws in Torah. Jesus called it as he saw it, and he saw more clearly than anyone what needed to happen and indeed what had happened for Zac:

6. He's saved.

Today, then, as Advent begins, let us wait together with joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who will deliver us from the prisons of our reputations and the cells of our self-concepts, and restore us to our original identity as children of a loving God--with all that entails for us, and all that demands of us.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Writing Through Writer's Block

I'm finding myself at a loss for words as the new year has begun. I'm not sure what's behind that, but I do know that it presents a problem for me, because I've committed myself to a fair bit of word-manufacturing.

I blog here, and I blog at Strangely Dim, and I write a column at Burnside Writers Collective, and I write reports on how writers might improve their manuscripts. I write status updates on my Facebook account, comments on links I post there and comments on other people's status updates and links. I even write tweets--carefully crafted (in my mind, at least) sequences of 140 characters that go out to my followers on Twitter. I get paid to write the reports, but the other writing is perhaps more urgent to me--not because people are counting on me (imagine needing someone's tweet!) but because by my writing I've come to define my identity. My business card says I'm an editor, but in my heart I'm a writer.

So writer's block isn't just an inconvenience to me, it is, in some ways, a crisis. One solution is, of course, to write about not being able to write. See what I did there? I've done it before, and it's actually often a helpful exercise. But writing about not being able to write has a finite appeal. It's circumspect to the utmost. We--all of us--don't (or shouldn't) write for the sake of writing; we write to find our own way, and to point the way for others, to something on the far side of writing, some resonant idea, some observation that releases us from some paralysis, some gateway that once unlocked allows us to progress. We write not for the sake of writing but for the sake of our souls, and the souls of one another.

So, I suppose, I apologize for this post. It's embarrassingly self-indulgent; I had my own little gateway that needed unlocking. We'll see what turns up on the other side.

Tripe for the Picking Apart

The hardest thing about writing a book--at least for me--is having other people read it. All my defense mechanisms kick in, including the pre-emptive self-effacement ("It sucks; I'm sorry I subjected people to this tripe"), the reactive self-defense ("What the &%$*%& do they know, anyway?") and the self-serving faux humility ("Oh, glad you enjoyed it; of course it's totally meaningless, in the same way that everything is ultimately meaningless--oh, I'm so spiritual and couth"). So far with Deliver Us from Me-Ville I've received a "bit-o-encouragement" from a guy whose book I'm editing (pretty delicate situation I've forced him into, isn't it?); he said it offers a good discussion of the distinction between significance and self-absorption (I'll have to reread it). A friend who is on the pastoral staff of a church on the east coast says she likes it a lot; "the authenticity and transparency is really going to resonate with people." A friend and unknowing mentor of mine sent me a quick e-mail letting me know that from his quick initial scan, the book looks decent. I should quickly aver that none of these folks has read the whole thing yet, so it's possible they haven't yet reached the really lame parts.

The big test of my depth of character is on the immediate horizon. Some friends are writing a full constructive critique of the manuscript as it is. These are folks well-heeled in the publishing industry, so they know what works and what doesn't, and they have little patience for mindless tripe. One of them e-mailed me today to let me know her critique is in the mail. I suddenly don't feel well.

My subject matter doesn't help. A potential alternate title for the book was Enough About Me. So far, that's not been my experience; I'm generally up for talking about myself, and writing a book makes for lots of polite conversation about yourself anyway, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

It strikes me that there's a paradox in the escape from superbia (another potential title, once upon a time): you think about yourself through to the other side, where you (hopefully) understand yourself in proper context. It's like getting over smoking by smoking till you throw up, but it's also like sitting down with God and saying "Search me and know my heart," and then really paying attention to what he has to say.

How Raw Can You Get?

My new friend (as Facebook calculates time) Tabitha Plueddemann e-mailed me today with some thoughts about a writing project we've been discussing. In it she very creatively subdivided the literary quality of "raw." Before I share her continuum I'll give you a minute to define for yourself what "raw" means literarily.

Whenever you're ready . . .

OK. Time's up; pencils down. Here are the two subcategories Tabitha laid out for me:

* raw in the sense of a garden salad
* [raw] in the sense of a bloody shank of pork impaled on a hook and coated with flies

First of all, hilarious. Second of all, I find it interesting to think about raw in a countercultural sense. I've been conditioned, I think, to associate the term "raw" with the bloody-shank-of-pork end of Tabitha's continuum. I've also been conditioned to count "raw" as somehow "more true, more culturally resonant." The Zeitgeist, if I'm using that word properly, hovers somewhere over that end; as evidence I point to the return to TV of "Dexter," everybody's favorite, lovable serial killer. I'm told that the show "Prison Break" this season will take place in a third-world prison camp where inmates are groomed for violence and fed nothing but uncooked meat--"raw" in more than one sense.

But the ingredients of a typical salad are no less raw than the bacon you would never deign to eat, and you can make a decent meal of it. I'm reminded of the song of a few years back "Pretty Good Day," just a shiny happy song daring to be naively innocent in a harsh, jaded world--"raw" in its most countercultural sense.

So I'd be interested in hearing where people fall on this continuum when it comes to your consumption of culture. What qualifies a song or a story or a testimony as "raw"? What are you seeing that crosses a line "good" raw to either, on the one end, salacious spectacle or, on the other end, pollyanic naivete?

I Wish I Were a Speechwriter

I just heard President Bush say of the new immigration reform bill: "Unregistered immigrants will not be treated with amnesty, but also not with animosity." I chuckled out loud; nice word play, President Bush!

When I was a kid and heard that the president uses speechwriters, I was a little bit dismayed and a whole lot intrigued. I think I'd like that job: putting words to the seminal moments in political history, giving voice to the nation's inarticulate pain in the wake of tragedy, filling page after page in historical anthologies. That'd be a good gig--like back-seat driving the president.

I remember Chris Matthews's ("Welcome to Hardball!") reaction to Al Gore's concession speech after the disputed presidential election in 2000. Matthews--a former speechwriter for President Carter, I believe--was nearly in tears as he talked about the brilliance of the speech, the place it will take in the historical record, the punctuation it added to the political process. I think he was a little jealous of Gore--and, I suppose, of whoever Gore used to write the speech.

I learned a bit from 24 about how the speechwriting process works. The president actually is an active participant; for the speechwriter it's partly taking dictation, partly practicing intuition, partly writing creatively. It's probably a little bit (only a little bit, I assure you) like the process of the writing of Holy Scripture.

That'd be a good gig too, actually. To be Luke or Habakkuk or Moses or 2 Peter--to enter into some literary matrix of divine dictation, inspiration and imagination. If I had my choice, I think I would have written Isaiah or 1 Samuel--but I would have called that one the "Book of David" for sure. Which portions of the Bible do you wish had your name on it?

Don't freak out. Just play along.

As Presbyterian as I Wanna Be

Today I got two copies of Presbyterians Today in the mail. Normally I get one, because I'm a subscriber, which is already a pretty incontrovertible mark of my Presbyterianism. But today I got two because this issue includes an article I wrote a year ago. They paid me for it a year ago too, and I was starting to think that the editorial board was sending me a message: "How much do we have to pay you to leave us alone?" But magazines have themes; the content inside must cohere. This month my article "Doesn't Jesus Care?" came close enough to the theme to secure its place. If you read the article and the byline and decided to come visit, welcome! I'm glad you're here. If you didn't even know there was such a thing as Presbyterians Today, let me assure you that there is. Read it and reap.

To Scribble or to Gnosh?

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. (2 John 12)

I found myself caught off guard by this little comment, tacked on to the end of both 2 John and 3 John. I originally posted this at Accountable Devotions, but I keep thinking about it, so I wanted to expand the pool of inquiry. What are the limitations of something written (even something written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) in personal relationship? How do we know when it's time to set aside the paper and ink, and instead go face to face? What are the relative merits and weaknesses of written versus verbal conversation?

A New Kind of Journal

Someone just asked me how blogging compares to journaling, and I got really smarty-pantsy about it for a while before thinking, This would be a good question for a blog. So let me put it to you, my few and far between readers: In what ways is blogging like journaling, and in what ways is it not? What would you be sacrificing by journaling online rather than privately, and what are the positive side-effects of such a practice?