Writer's Block

I used to have a fantasy of creating a neighborhood.

It was in my mind that each of the places in that neighborhood would have a name that sort of set that street apart from the others both in theme and character.

Since my relationship to the Rockerfellers or Getty's is sketchy at best, my chances of building my dream is realized only in Lego's at this point in my life.

Like all wanna be's, my delusions of grandeur when it comes to writing come crashing down around my head once in a while. It doesn't prevent me from placing my fingers on the keyboard again for another try, but it tempers when those events occur.

More and more, I find that the way my mind works is disfunctional.

While that might be suitable for the day to day events that are my life, I realize that true greatness in writing doesn't work that way.

A lot like my idea of forming a neighborhood, it can't be done without the necessary resources, and in this case, those would be adequate literary training.

Like a ship without a rudder or a dozer missing it's working blade, I tend to write in circles that look busy, but produce no direction and no discernable work.

So I ponder how I can get to what I desire.

I'd like to have a way to write the things I see, however incomplete they are in my head and heart, but bring them full circle so that someone else would see some worth in the project.

But the dreaded writer's block rears it's ugly head.

Perhaps a merging of the two ideas is in order. A neighborhood and writing combined into an alliance.

Let's see: Welcome to Bookend Estates. Here is a map of our neighborhood and our community. You will note our office, gathering place and clubhouse are all located conveniently here on 'Writer's Block'.

Turning from there to go into the neighborhood, you will follow one of several roads which are interconnected throughout the community. Since our community is seeking to be energy efficient, the use of golf carts and electric vehicles is strongly encouraged. Therefore we have outlined on the map the various paths and their intersections with the main roadway.

We have the Psycho Path for those who are having a hard time connecting with reality.

There is the Sylvia Plath for those who are feeling a little depressed, but write their thoughts out anyway.

And in the back, for the idyllic newly wedded writers who have yet to come out of their romance with the language, there is the Bridal Path.

Yeah, I know...

stupid.

But that is the kind of innane random thought process that grips me when I have a migraine and it hangs over me for days.

If you are fortunate enough to avoid the writer's block that is part of my personal struggle - I will look for your works on the New York Times Bestseller's list.

If you, like me, are part of the unfortunate crowd, I'll save a spot for you on Rorschach Road. We'll study the oil stains and see if we can come up with universal meaning.

In the meantime, God bless!

Kenny, Denise and Me

Ah yes.

A rainy Friday. It begs to begin with a grilled cheese on rye. I realize my penance will be more time on the treadmill and with the ever-smiling Denise Austin.

But for now, the grilled cheese is going down with Kenny playing in the background. His mellow voice assures me that I have made a good choice for the day.

Days like this remind me of why everyone needs a personal library of favorite books to curl up with and savor.

I have always enjoyed reading. Although, I confess, I have not always enjoyed WHAT I have read. Sometimes, the assignments from school were more an exercise in attempting to survive the moment and grab a decent grade on the way to snatching my diploma. But now that I am adult, I can honestly say that I do read for pleasure.

Whether music or books, a great deal of both are now defined by what brings me a sense of joy, peace or whatever emotion I need at that moment. I confess that I am also a big fan of well-written murder-mystery books.

Having said that, I issue the disclaimer that I DO NOT care for books where the overplayed sense of gory turns the story itself into an afterthought. Nor do I care for books that glorify and exalt bedroom antics as if the information was all new. Like the line from a movie once said, "I don't know, they wrote 'Fanny Hill' in 1742 [sic] and they haven't found anything new since."

I like books about the efforts of men and women in the military who serve a greater purpose than self. I listen to music that makes the same statement about becoming more than we are at a given point in time. And I listen to it for the same reason that I read the books.

I want to show up at the pearly gates with something in between my ears besides dust.

Well, it's time to get the chicken into the crockpot for dinner and the laundry beckons. I'll put Kenny on hold and bow to the need to move muscles I seldom use while the perky voice of Denise Austin soothingly reminds me I only have 12 million sets to go.

Ah, rainy days and Fridays...

What if it was time . . .

Thanks to borrowing a book (actually more than one, but I digress) and conversation after the 5k yesterday, I have spent the night thinking and dreaming about the coming gathering of Israel. If the time came, would I indeed join in the host of Israel, or would I turn my back on the calling and resist the word of the Lord for whatever justifications I could create?

Would I let family circumstances and choices dictate my own?

Would I have the courage to come 'out from the world' and hear the voice of the prophet even if others whom I had once trusted chose differently?

I can't say what the future holds for any of us. I am not foretelling gloom and doom, but I do wonder about my own personal understanding of just what it means to come out from the world and be gathered home unto God in the New Jerusalem.

Everyone I know, with rare exception, is trying to live a good life as best as they can. Sometimes, we fall short in our striving, but we get up and keep trying to make progress.

I can truly liken it to the progress of making my way through the 5k yesterday. It was an up and down route that was a bit tougher than I expected or was prepared for. Of course, I had no way of knowing just what it would be like until I got there.

A lot like our mortal journey, the 5k is a physical representation of the emotional and spiritual efforts which must be applied to be able to prepare to be counted worthy among the house of Israel when the time comes.

Not wishing to be 'salt which has lost its savor', I need all the help I can get. Sometimes, the balky child in me doesn't want to be told what to do, but the occasionally humble adult in me realizes that this isn't something I can do or claim on my own. I NEED the help, the support and the guidance of others and most of all, of my Father in Heaven, in order to make it home.

Rick and I had an interesting discussion related to it all. We decided we would need another trailer in order to bring what we had to share in the temporal preparations to help in our poor way to build the New Jerusalem.

It was sort of tongue in cheek at first, then it became rather animated as we contrasted the idea of gathering from our relative prosperity to the gathering of the early pioneers who gathered, by and large, from their want. They had little, yet those who believed that they were indeed following the Lord gathered what they had and pointed their wagons west to an unknown future guided only by faith.

We have a great deal of the blessings of life. We don't often assess our position in regards to the past generations who would look upon even the most humble of circumstances in our day and age and find themselves astonished to see the luxury that is so taken for granted.

Would those blessings of ease and prosperity keep me from being able to hear and obey?

Just thinking through the keyboard this Sunday morning. . .

More Righteous

While reading some random passages in the scriptures, I came across one again that always give me a little pause...

And because they did cast them all out, that there were none righteous among them, I did send down fire and destroy them, that their wickedness and abominations might be hid from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints whom I sent among them might not cry unto me from the ground against them. And many great destructions have I caused to come upon this land, and upon this people, because of their wickedness and their abominations. O all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they, will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?
(Book of Mormon 3 Nephi 9:11 - 13)

With startling clarity it comes to me again and again. Jesus was not speaking to them because they were totally righteous, he was speaking to them because they were more righteous than the people who were destroyed!

They were just the best of the worst.

Which made me think about my own spiritual commitments.

Am I the best of the worst? The worst of the worst? Lukewarm in my covenants and commitments, am I fit only to be spewed out as being 'neither hot nor cold'?

I have been reading some apocalyptic books of late which are set in a spiritual perspective that reminds me that even good people will not be spared the difficulties which most certainly are coming. But the 'more righteous' will have an opportunity to 'return and repent' and, if we prove worthy, be healed by the Lord of all that troubles us.

There was a hymn I learned a while back called "More Holiness Give Me". The lyrics are compelling to me because it is a pleading prayer to become more than we are on our own, specifically, more than I am in my sinful and polluted state.

Our society has accepted a wide variety of perversion in the name of being tolerant. That isn't tolerance - it's sin.

We can't expect our Father to take us as we are and just hope for the best with no preparation to BE the best.

Momma told me one time that if we didn't repent of our sins, we would be as out of place in the holy, pure and clean kingdom of God as a pair of brown shoes with a tuxedo. It just doesn't work.

The intent is there, but like the 5 foolish virgins who had prepared only part of the way, we won't get into the kingdom on the good deeds and sacrifice of another.

Scary thoughts.

But necessary.

Without the proper preparation both temporally and spiritually, we have no hope at all.

Jesus Christ stands with His arms outstretched and tenderly pleads with us to turn to Him.

We want all sorts of substitutes for what is right. I know anytime I justify my own lack of good choices by making it seem all 'reasonable', I have opened the door and kicked the Holy Spirit right out. Then, I wonder later on why things seem so dark and foreboding.

One of the books I was reading had an interesting passage in it that talked about the self-justifying behaviors that we allow ourselves to wallow in while still believing that it doesn't matter and that those who are wiser heads simple 'are out of touch'.

Funny thing is, those wiser heads are the very people we run to when the house of cards collapses and our world of lies burns us up in the flames we lit.

I want to be better - tomorrow. But I want the benefits of good choices today.

Like the 5 foolish virgins who took no thought for preparation and would have bankrupted others of spiritual light if it were possible, I fear that our tether to the principles of the Gospel are only as tightly wound as our testimony that the leadership of the Church is truly inspired of God.

When we say we sustain them, do we? Do I? Or is it a matter of personal convenience instead of being a matter of personal righteousness?

Voices cry and clamor for change. And change they will get. But it won't be the kind of change they hoped for long-term. The suffering will be great and damage will be done.

But there is One who has already paid the price for the arrogance, the pride and the short-sightedness and who will take all of us back - if only we will be gathered.

Just something to chew on while watching the world revolve...