Posted by
SciFiCCGuy on Monday, November 27, 2006 8:55:36 AM
Writer’s block: Of course I’ve experienced it before. Sometimes you sit in front of a computer screen (or a piece of paper) and the white blankness of it overwhelms you. It’s not even a question of how to write something, but rather what to write.
There’s reason for it: I want it to be eloquent, whatever it is. And I’ve been writing in a journal for well over ten years now, and writing something about my walk with God every month for about the last seven of those years at least. That’s not even including the times I talk about God in my other journal sections, like December of last year when I talked about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’d be willing to bet it would even out to at least one other time each of those months where I talked about my walk with God at some other place in my journal. Seven years times twelve months in a year is eighty-four, and eighty four twice is 168! That’s a lot of writing about God. In all of it, as I sit here trying to write something new or original, I have to think, “Have I written this before?” The good Lord knows I’ve covered some similar topics from time to time. How often have I written about the flawed theory of evolution, and said the exact same thing? How many different ways can I talk about our freedom to choose our own paths before I start to sound like a broken record? How do I keep my writing alive and fresh after writing well over 168 essays on God, especially if I’ve got writer’s block?
Here’s what’s going through my mind: We’re done studying James in church, and now we’re in a series called “Exploring the Da Vinci Code” while they teach about the fallacies of that Dan Brown book. The movie is released next month though [I originally wrote this in my journal in May], so I thought if I talk about it at all, it should be next month. Then I heard the old song “Those Shoes” by the Eagles with that killer base line this morning. I had never really paid attention to the lyrics. This time, however, I listened, and as they sang about “those shoes” as a character trait, almost an integral part of the woman they sang about as if the shoes helped to describe exactly who she was, I thought about the same thing for the choice I’ve made to follow Jesus and to walk in his footsteps (or desire to). I thought of the premise of a poem, perhaps something with a title like “The Sandals,” and it would explain the choices we all make and where those choices take us, and I’d substitute different kinds of shoes for the different choices we could make. It didn’t turn out.
Then I watched some of my Wow DVDs. I loved the song “When Love Takes You In” by Steven Curtis Chapman and the pumping “Savior Song” by Rachel Lampa, and then “Irene” by TobyMac choked me up a little due to the message of maintaining hope in Jesus and His love for us in this day and age and in this sinning world that surrounds us. Wonderful messages all. Rebecca St. James’ “Song of Love” also captures something very special, and made me think of God in nature, and that combined with the message of “Irene” made me think of a waterfall of living water washing us clean and making us new in His sight and His love, and I toyed with writing a poem called “Waterfall.”
And of course I thought of God when my older brother called us about his son. I collect Touched by an Angel on DVD and was watching an episode when he called, and just as with the lyrics to “Irene” by TobyMac (if you really pay attention to them), Monica’s inspirational speech to a cop who survived being shot and became addicted to drugs in that episode (Joe Penny in “Trust”) rings true for my brother’s troubled son as well: “This bullet ripped through your body and your body survived, but your spirit is still bleeding, and that’s because you weren’t wearing your armor. There’s only one thing in this world that’s truly bulletproof, and that’s faith: Not faith in a gun that shoots or a radio that works or faith in your own cop’s instinct, but the faith that you wrap yourself in every day of your life, the faith that no matter what happens, you won’t lose God’s love, and all the bullets in the world can’t pierce it, and all the pills in the world can’t replace it…” If only this message could truly reach my nephew’s ears and soul!
Don’t let this long passage fool you. Though it is filled with an obvious love and devotion for God, it is also quite disjointed, going all over the place, just as my thoughts are now. If nothing else, it at least shows what’s going on in my head right now, as embarrassing as that may be. It’s not a side of myself I usually like to show the world, but it is the beginning of thought and, hopefully – eventually - wisdom.