Who Are We Going to Be?

There is a lot going these days that can substantially test our faith and force us to confront who we are as Christians. Who we are as followers of God. And what that translates into in our daily actions.

It’s been a year since I began releasing Come Hell or High Water so I figure, by now, everybody did the reading. For those of you who didn’t, a) you can find it here; and b) here’s a quick recap (this is your moment to jump ship if you don’t want to know): Our story begins where The Road to Hell ended—with Lucifer and the Fallen in Hell, Heaven locked in a frozen state of shock (literally), the remnants of the Host trying to maintain some sort of order, and Michael…well, Michael is kinda off the reservation. See, the events of the previous book did something to him, changed him, and Michael has taken it upon himself to ensure order by any means necessary. This is means, to him, hunting down those angels who did not pick sides in the war and executing them: destroying any potential for rebellion.

While practical in theory, this is a particularly brutal way to maintain order in reality and Michael the Archangel clashes with Sariel, with his own army, Raphael, and Emmanuel, ultimately getting exiled to Earth.

His actions aren’t what God had in mind for Heaven.

Now Earth is a whole ‘nother story. Our little blue planet is the proving ground for doing all the things you have no business doing. Michael meets Adam and Eve and his first task is to be the consequence of their disobedience. Everything escalates from there: Raphael and Sariel and the army come to find Michael, Lucifer actually finds Michael and drags him to Hell, Raphael falls in love…with a woman. Yada yada yada…and God floods the Earth.

I’m not gonna give you ALL the details—you should still check it out. It’s actually free.

Anyway, the point of this story is really about the costs of not doing what you were meant to do or not being true to yourself. True to your purpose. Let me give you an example:

Michael is the Peace Maker. His role is to turn chaos into order, to be a unifying force when the individual desires and wants threaten the divine order. God understands that His sons and daughters—His angels—will have wants and desires, will follow pursuits that are antithetical to His intentions. That is part of free will. He leaves Lucifer there as an example to the others—this is where your pride and vanity, your entitlements, your unchecked wants will lead: to destruction. To separation. To Hell. But He also gives us Michael as a check along that road. A guidepost if you will. The problem is Michael misunderstood his role.

As writers, we are given 3 types of conflict to explore the human condition: Man vs Himself, Man vs Others, and Man vs Nature. We learn and grow and discover through introspection, direct conflict with others, and interaction with the environment. Our actual world is no different: the dangers we face as a species come from within, from our peers, or from the environment. In the case of something like climate change, it’s actually all 3.

There’s no such thing as 100% safe. It doesn’t exist. From the moment we are conceived until the day we die, there are forces or circumstances or situations that threaten our existence. There are things we can do to mitigate our risk but alleviating it entirely isn’t realistic and it isn’t something we’d actually want. Have you ever seen the Final Destination movies? They’re a series of films that focus on a group of 20-somethings who escape a catastrophe (the first one is a plane crash) because one of them has a premonition. They spend the rest of the movie trying to avoid death but death keeps picking them off, one by one, in the most gruesome, painful ways possible. Gory details aside, the movies do highlight my point: these people sacrifice their lives trying to stay alive. They hide in cabins and live in fear, walk around shielded by mattresses and hockey masks. Their fear robs them of the potential their lives held. Win or lose, live or die, death wins.

Which brings me to our world, the real one, the one right outside our doors. A week ago, the United States issued a ban on travelers, legal residents, and refugees coming from 7 Middle Eastern countries. This ban separated families, turned people away from their lives and our borders, sent people fleeing a civil war back into certain harm. And it damaged our standing on the world stage. Safety was the rationale given for the ban but we all know, there is no such thing as 100% safe. We’ll never get there and pursuing it with reckless abandon is harmful to us and to others. It isn’t how we grow, it isn’t how we live. It isn’t who we are.

In Come Hell or High Water, Michael is exiled for conducting an inquisition to those angels who didn’t choose to fight for the Father or for Lucifer. They didn’t pick a side. Though he justifies his actions in the name of safety, these actions aren’t what Heaven is about. It isn’t who Michael was meant to be. On Earth, Michael learns the true consequence of living beyond your purpose, of pursuing wants or desires or routes that are outside of what God has designed for you. He gives us the latitude to choose but the consequences remain.

Taken to its logical conclusion, a world bent on pursuing its wants, desires and lusts without a check on that behavior ends with that world flooded, humanity destroyed, Raphael banished from Earth, Michael lost and Lucifer victorious. There is no positive outcome. This is best captured in Lucifer’s telling of the flood in Come Hell or High Water:

…This place was dead, the world and its promise was dead. And Michael and I stood in it. Alone. Silent.

Until the Father screamed.

I have existed since the beginning. I breathed before light was born, spoke before your world was forged, wept long before the sun burned in the heavens. I have seen countless souls created and destroyed, I have watched brothers and sisters tear one another apart, sons and daughters reduced to blood and bone. I’ve seen nations rise and empires fall. I have heard the wails of angels and demons, the cries of man and women. But I have heard nothing like the agony of the Father. Nothing like His rage and frustration and disappointment and the very essence of His futility. He is the Father. He is the beginning and the end. The author of it all. Omnipotent. Omnipresent. God. And yet He could not stop His children from tearing themselves apart.

Even the Father could not stop the inevitable.

He began to cry and His tears came down in torrents, in sheets. Incessant. Flooding the world with His grief. Washing it all away. The bodies of the fallen broke beneath the raindrops, beneath the Father’s tears, leaching into the earth. Trees, thirsty for the water, soon began to drown in the tumult. We watched rivers rise beside us, overflow their banks and rush, unbidden, across dry land. Water poured down mountainsides, dragging rocks and trees in horrible landslides, devastating whatever lay below. We heard the screams of men and women, children and animals, unable to escape the rush of water. We heard them drowning, begging for mercy.

We heard it all.

Michael sat down in the decay, in the rain, let it wash the detritus of battle from his body. He scrubbed his face, cleaned his hands and stabbed his swords in the dirt. I joined him, grinning.

“You win,” Michael said to me. “Happy now?”

I was.

 

 

A Promise is A Promise

You ready for that hot fire?

On Sunday, I told you I’d be releasing Come Hell or High Water through this blog. Well, I keep my promises – and this time I’m being timely about it.

So here’s how it goes: I’ve dropped the first 3 chapters of Come Hell or High Water (that’s #CHOH for you cool kids) on WattPad, an online social writing/reading service. Every week, on Tuesdays, I’ll leave you another snippet and we’ll get through this thing together.

Together.

That’s the important part. Don’t just read the story and hang out until the next week. Leave a comment. Jump on the Heaven Falls Facebook and ask a question. Tweet about it. Let me know what you think, what you like and hate, and what you hope to see.

And thanks for checking it out at all.

That said, here’s your first installment of Come Hell or High Water: The Book of Raphael.

Oh, and here’s the back cover text to whet your whistle:

I swore to protect you. And I will until my dying breath. I will because I love you. Because He loves you.

Because I said I would.

Because it is my fault. Lucifer is among you. Michael is coming. The war will follow.

My name is Raphael and I loosed the Devil upon the world.

Enjoy!

Come Hell or High Water is Coming – For FREE!

I love my story. I love the things Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael have shown me about me, about life, about faith and love and vengeance. I published The Road to Hell in 2011 and since, Lucifer’s whispers have filtered into my dreams, I’ve felt Michael’s anger in my fists, the compassion of Raphael has overwhelmed me at times.

But it’s been 5 years.

I actually finished Come Hell or High Water in July 2013. Somewhere on my other blog Crooked Letterz, I even posted a picture of the binder, thick with printed pages, as I tore into edits and rewrites. I convinced myself over the last 18 months that it was broken, that Come Hell or High Water was incomplete or ineffective or simply bad storytelling. I hemmed and hawed, found other things to focus on, and eventually stopped writing all together.

The truth is, I’m frightened about what happens next.

See, I LOVE The Road to Hell, warts and all. It has grammar issues and places where I could have tightened things up and incomplete ideas. But it has some amazing insight into the human condition and our relationship with God. I love that book. Come Hell or High Water has a lot of heart—it’s a love story in my own wicked way and it’s big and expansive and full of moral ambiguity. It hits much closer to home. Much closer to me. I see myself in its pages. Parts of myself I’m hesitant to show the world.

A long time ago, someone asked me about writer’s block. I said then that I didn’t believe in writer’s block, that it usually means there’s something we need to say and aren’t willing to be honest about it. I still believe that. The writer’s block I have isn’t about the book that’s complete. It’s about the next one. Damned If I Do is the third book in this series and it’s Michael’s story. He’s a pretty dark cat. I know I started with Lucifer—and he’s the Devil—but Michael the Archangel is something else. Something worse. I’m scared of what I’ll find in his head; I’m more scared of what I’ll find in mine.

But that isn’t a reason to delay Come Hell or High Water anymore. It isn’t a reason to keep the story from all of you. So I’m not. Not anymore.

On Tuesday, January 20 (like two days from now), dropping like a hot fire mixtape, I’m releasing the first few chapters of Come Hell or High Water. I’ll drop it on Wattled, post the link here. And then, every Tuesday after that, serial-style like The Walking Dead, you’re going to get a little more. Until the end. The whole book. Totally free. No charge. No cost. Nada. And like Talking Dead, as you read it, let’s talk about it. There’s a Facebook page right here. I’ll be on it everyday—Like it, post a comment, and I’ll respond. Promise.

Do Angels Have Mothers?

So in the week after Mother’s Day (fraught with Pandora’s bracelet and sinus infections), I’ve been thinking a lot about motherhood and the role it plays in the Heaven Falls series.

At first glance, my answer is “not a lot.” The angels don’t have a mother: the Father is the primary source for the paternal and maternal role in the story. But I think that’s really surface. At my second glance, I realize the idea of motherhood is embedded throughout the story; so much so that I don’t think The Road to Hell would be complete without it. I also didn’t realize how much of my own mother I would see in the story.

For those of you who’ve read The Road to Hell, you know the story doesn’t move in a chronological fashion: this story starts in the dark, lurches back to the beginning, then resumes again until the light returns. Chronologically, the first mother we actually see in the story is Lilith. She’s Lucifer’s victim, his horrible accident, and she only wants to make something beautiful in the midst of sadness and sorrow.

I don’t usually talk about it but I didn’t grow up in the suburban lap of luxury. My parents divorced when I was 9 and mom became a single mom—working multiple jobs, struggling to pay bills. There were nights we didn’t have heat or lights or both; summers filled with hot dogs, pot pies and generic potato chips—everyday. We had laughs and I learned to appreciate the good things but I also saw the hard times. It wasn’t until my brother, sister and I had grown up and moved out, become parents and college graduates that I realized what my mom was trying to do: make something beautiful in the midst of sadness and sorrow.

The first “mother” we actually meet in the story is Sela. Michael meets her in the second chapter, right after his “birth” and he’s watching her create something huge and painful and laborious. Something whose outcome she doesn’t even know or understand. My goal here was to tap into the maternal idea of birth—the struggle and pain of childbirth, the hope that you’re strong enough to bring this new soul into the world, praying you’ve been given the gifts required to do it right. Sela and Eve are united in this, birthing humanity, and Come Hell or High Water builds on the similarities between them. Since his personality is purely masculine, I wanted this birthing idea to be something even the Father had to stand back and watch.

The Road to Hell features one additional “mother” and it’s my favorite: the Holy Spirit. In the Heaven Falls series, I see the Holy Trinity as a family: Father, Mother and Child. The Holy Spirit is the mother and this isn’t more clearly delineated as when she is addressing her sons, Michael and Lucifer, in Chapters 27 and 28. For Lucifer, it is the wind of her stare, steadily growing in intensity, as he solidifies his defiance. A word doesn’t to be spoken. I remember those stares from my own mother from the choir stand in Pilgrim Baptist when my brother and I would act up in the balcony during service. No words had to be spoken. With Michael, it was an expression of love in his darkest hour meant to move him from his despair to action. It’s honestly my favorite passage in the book, when the Spirit says, “You are my chosen, Michael. I love you. I have always loved you. I will never leave you.” I always hear that in my mother’s voice.

Until now, motherhood was a concept I hadn’t realized was so core to the mythos present in Heaven Falls. Inasmuch as we cannot separate maternity from our day-to-day lives, from the people we are and try to be, it’s an intrinsic part of the Heaven Falls series and something we’ll continue to explore in Come Hell or High Water.

Exodus: Out of the Wilderness

I fought the book. And the book won.

I wish it was really that simple, that easy, to explain my absence from the writing for the last 15 months (that’s the last time I posted here). I wish I could sum it up succinctly—and I tried, over at my other blog Crooked Letterz, to paint a picture of what happened—the words fail even me.

I ran out to stuff to say.

That’s a convenient answer, one that I can pass off and casually explain away. Why write if you have nothing to say? But writers don’t run out things to say anymore than birds run out of air to fly in. That’s ridiculous. I could blame writer’s block but those who know me best know that I don’t even believe in writer’s block: I like to define it as the point where the author is unwilling to say what needs to be said. It’s a point of incongruence, an impasse.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say; it was that I didn’t know what to say. I was lost in my words. I was in the wilderness.

My investigation into the idea of the wilderness from a scriptural perspective (courtesy of Google) helped me understand its purpose and how it fit. Wilderness is both a literal place and figurative, emotional one. It belies a transition from one plane of being to another. For example, the Israelites are freed from bondage in one of the greatest displays of God’s power (the plagues, the Passover idea, the splitting of the Red Sea) and must go into the wilderness before they can reach the Promised Land. The wilderness for the Israelites is not a punishment; it is preparation. They cannot simply transition seamlessly from slavery to freedom—there is a change, physically, emotionally, mentally, that must take place. That change happens in the wilderness.

Jesus, too, has his own wilderness experience. After his baptism, he is led by the spirit of God into the wilderness where he is tempted by the Devil himself. Jesus faces hunger, thirst, and temptations of power for 40 days and nights before resting in the word and truth of God. From there, he leaves the wilderness and begins his ministry as the Messiah.

In both examples (and many more throughout the Bible), the idea of the wilderness is constantly and consistently used as a transformative experience. A transition from one state of being to another. One article called it “a space apart”—a place for someone to confront the realities of God, themselves and those around them. Another said the wilderness was “an in-between place where ordinary life is suspended, identity shifts, and new possibilities emerge.”

A space apart. An in-between place where ordinary life is suspended.

I like to think of my little sabbatical as that: a space apart from my ordinary life of blogging and editing, of trying to force my book, Come Hell or High Water, to reveal its secrets. I was too close to it, too mired in the words and passages, that I couldn’t see the beauty on the pages. Couldn’t see that I’d told the story I wanted to tell, the one I was meant to tell, and it was all right as it was. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

I was in the wilderness.

I’m on the other side of that now, out of the wilderness. At least I’d like to think so. The book is off to the editors’ (again), my kid gave me the central theme and conflict for the next one, and I’m back to doing what I do best: this.

In The Dark – An Excerpt

Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is? Actually, it’s 2 days after I promised you an excerpt. The Seahawks put a whipping on the Saints so…I forgot. I got so caught up in the Chargers deciding not to play on Sunday that I completely forgot that I owed you an excerpt. But better late than never, right?

* * * * *

“I need to tell you something, something important. Something about me.” I wanted to tell her the truth, tell her what I really was. What I’d become.  But I only heard Karan, in Jobesh’s voice, telling me to go ahead, show myself, and watch what would unfold. Here was this beautiful creature in my arms, wanting me for the man she thought I was, the man I truly wanted to be.

I had to tell her. “I’m not like any man you’ve seen, not like any man you know,” I told Ananda in the darkness.

We were huddled in her father’s barn, tentatively touching one another on a bed of coarse straw and woolen blankets in the dull eyes of a dying fire. It hurt for me to sit upright, the wound in my back seeped and pulled and I leaned against Ananda. She was warm and I could feel her pulse through her skin.

She smiled at me. “You seem awfully full of yourself, Raphael.”

“I’m serious,” and I pushed from her, faced the darkness. I pulled open my tunic, showed her the emblems the Father pressed into my skin. “These markings mean I’m something…else. Something other than you. You don’t have them, right?”

She frowned. “Your people mark you. So?”

“Not my people, Ananda. My Father. It means I belong to Him.”

Ananda reached for me again, stroked her fingertips along my skin and her touch made me lose my focus. “I don’t care,” she said. “Your father is not here, is he? He was not there when I found you.”

“He is! He’s always there!” I snapped and pushed her hands away. “Let me,” I breathed, “just let me get this out. I’m not the man you think I am, Ananda. I’m not,” and I faced her now, “I’m not a man at all.”

A look of confusion and amusement covered her face. “You don’t make sense.”

I tried to stand. “When you pray, who do you pray to?”

“There are many gods,” she began. “There is not just one I pray to.”

I frowned at her in the dark, lowered my voice, “There is one god. One Father. One creator of all you know, all you see.”

“You don’t know that. My people aren’t wrong; perhaps yours are—”

“I was forged in His hand! I was made by His whim! You don’t know what you’re talking about, woman! You are the dust of this world and the gods you pray to, the ones you kneel before, these are idols that do not exist. When you pray, you pray to the Father,” I looked at her now, looked deep into her eyes. “When you pray to your gods, you are praying to my Father. The ones you pray to are one—only one—and He’s the one who gave me these. He sent me here.”

“The gods send many things, Raphael. You are a blessing to us as much as we are a blessing to you.” Ananda was smiling at me. “Your big news is that we worship different gods?”

I grabbed her, placed strong hands on her arms and lifted from her feet. I don’t know where the strength came. My eyes glowed in the dark and I spoke in voice that wasn’t mine. “Listen, woman!” I said, and the flames flashed. “My name is Raphael. I am the Archangel of the Lord, the only God. The God of Adam, the God of Eve. I am His son as much as you are His daughter. I was before you ever were and I will be long after you are gone. Do you understand?”

I dropped her and she crumpled at my feet, murmuring whispers of prayer and clutching my ankles.

“No!” I sank to my knees, thumbed tears away. “No. Do not pray to me. Do not worship me. I am nothing special.”

But Ananda backed from me, scrabbling in the dust, eyes down. It was a frighteningly human pose and I realized how different we were. I didn’t like it. I grabbed her hand, made her face me.

“Look at me, Ananda. It’s just me.”

“Don’t,” and she snatched from me. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to be my Chosen.”

“Chosen?” Her eyes hardened. “You are a demon! No messenger of any god would come for one woman.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said. “Don’t call me a demon. You have no idea what those are really are.”

“I know. I know the legends. I know what you are.”

“Do you?” I turned from her. “You think you know us. You think you know me. But you don’t know anything. All you have are stories and legends and myths. You don’t know what we are; you don’t know what we we’re capable of. You think it’s all good and evil, right and wrong.”

“It is.”

“IT ISN’T!” The flames roared again and Ananda cowered from me. “Nothing is that simple. The ones you call demons are angels, angels I have known since before this world was made. You think they’re after your souls. They couldn’t care less about you. You’re just in the way.”

“Let me understand: my gods do not exist, demons are only angels, and you’re one of them. You’re an angel of the one true god?”

“Stop calling me that. You know my name. And I’m telling you the truth, woman.”

We stood in the dark. I waited for her to turn and scream, to run, to push me away. But she stood there, setting her jaw and folding her arms. Then she said, “Prove it. Show me.”

“Show you?” I said.

“Show me. Do…something. Surely making flames rise and your voice louder is not all you can do. Do something divine, angel.” Ananda wore a mischievous grin, showing her teeth.

“I’m not what I used to be. This place has done something. I…can’t.”

“You can’t? Hmm,” she said, and she sounded like Lucifer in that moment.

“I speak the truth.”

“I don’t believe you, Raphael. You were wounded. You bleed like a man. I carried you here. Surely the angel of the One True God is stronger than that.” She came toward me, touched my face and smiled a condescending smile. “This is trickery and magic, nothing more. I believe you are a man making play as an angel.”

“I do not lie. I am what I say I am,” but there wasn’t any conviction in my voice.

“I believe you think you are. I believe you want it to be true. But it isn’t. Look at yourself.” Ananda put a hand on my chest. “Feel your heart beating, your chest rising with your breath.” She brought my hand to her breast. “Just like mine. They beat the same, Raphael. We are the same.”

I was quiet for a long time, listening to the rhythm of our heat beats, feeling the warmth of her flesh beneath my palm. Feeling the warmth radiating from my loins. I smelled her scent, breathed this woman in until I could taste her presence on my tongue. The sigh of her breath made harmony with my own; gooseflesh rose on my skin where her fingertips landed. Our bodies worked in concert. Man and woman. The same.

I tried to smile at her. “Maybe I’m an angel making play as a man. What about that?”

“And why would you want to do that?”

I prayed she couldn’t see my eyes water. “Because I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here. With you.”

“Then stay,” she said. “It’s you and me now, here in the dark, Raphael Peace Keeper. Just you and me. Simple, isn’t it?”

When Hell or High Water Won’t Come

Tags

Adam West, Michael Keaton

Yep, it’s like that.

Over the last few months I’ve gotten a few inquiries about the next installment in the Heaven and Earth series, Come Hell or High Water. About 6 months ago, I posted a pic of the completed first draft and I was all boosted: it was 315 pages of angelic goodness and demonic awesomeness.

Or so I thought.

Then I read it. And I had my beta readers read it.

We all arrived at the same conclusions: it was good. Not great. Good. And full of potential. See, what we all realized was that the story was good, the character arcs were good, the plot points were solid but the execution was…meh. Here’s the best way for me to explain it: a comic book reference. Well, a comic book movie reference.

In 1989, Warner Bros debuted a cinematic version of Batman unlike anything we’d seen before. Michael Keaton helmed a darker, crime-noir rendition of the Dark Knight in a movie that abandoned the campiness of the Adam West series, and featured the musical stylings of a fledgling guitarist named Prince, an AWESOME Batmobile, and Hollywood’s favorite crazy man, Jack “Here’s Johnny!” Nicholson as the Joker. It was Incredible! It was funny and deadly and twisted and weird but, in 1989, it was groundbreaking. Where there were detractors about Michael Keaton’s ability to wear the cowl, Nicholson left us no doubt about his insanity—he had fun with the Clown Prince of Crime (impressed that I know those nicknames, huh?) and was, for me, the best, truest rendition of the Joker I’d seen.

Until 2008.

You already know where I’m going with this, don’t you? In 2008, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight comes out and we get something the comics have been trying to present for 60 years—and we get it IMAX. Where Nicholson’s Joker was a murderer who enjoyed it as art, who found the humor in the horrible, Heath Ledger gave us a “psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.” In 1989, the Joker was trying to make art and causing chaos by throwing money in the street and infecting all the cosmetics; in 2008, the Joker held an entire city hostage by attacking its law and order, from killing cops to turning the district attorney into a criminal to making Batman corrupt himself and ending his career as a hero in Gotham City.

1989: Good execution. 2008: Excellent execution.

Which brings me back to Come Hell or High Water. I can’t give you good enough. I can’t give you 1989 Joker when you obviously need 2008 Joker. I can’t do it. I know the deal lately is to whip your books out as fast as humanly possible, especially in this day and age of self-publishing. I respect that and I don’t knock anyone’s hustle. But I think you deserve better than that. From me you do. And truth is, so does the story. As much as each of you have invested yourselves into the trials and tribulations of your favorite angels, I owe it to you to do it right.

And it is coming. Soon. Promise.

But I won’t leave you empty-handed. I’ll make you a deal: if the Seahawks win on Saturday, I’ll drop you an excerpt on Sunday. If not, you get to wait a week. Because I love you, here’s a taste:

I grabbed her, placed strong hands on her arms and lifted from her feet. I don’t know where the strength came. My eyes glowed in the dark and I spoke in voice that wasn’t mine. “Listen, woman!” I said, and the flames flashed. “My name is Raphael. I am the Archangel of the Lord, the only God. The God of Adam, the God of Eve. I am His son as much as you are His daughter. I was before you ever were and I will be long after you are gone. Do you understand?”

I dropped her and she crumpled at my feet, murmuring whispers of prayer and clutching my ankles.

“No!” I sank to my knees, thumbed tears away. “No. Do not pray to me. Do not worship me. I am nothing special.”

But Ananda backed from me, scrabbling in the dust, eyes down. It was a frighteningly human pose and I realized how different we were. I didn’t like it. I grabbed her hand, made her face me.

“Look at me, Ananda. It’s just me.”

“Don’t,” and she snatched from me. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to be my Chosen.”

See ya!

The ‘Fallible’ Word of God?

I have a Bible that was given to me by my church when I graduated high school. It’s 23 years old, has a little wear and tear on it, some evidence of use—light use—and love. And it has a typo.

It’s not a big deal: there’s a letter missing in the beginning of the Book of Daniel. It’s something that could easily be overlooked, doesn’t detract from the content. No biggie, right? But my Bible has an error. Ironic, isn’t it? The infallible word of God develops errors in the hands of Man. There is a fly in the ointment, so to speak.

A little bit ago, my wife and daughter watched 12 Years A Slave. If you don’t know the movie, it’s the true account of Solomon Northrup, a free black man who is duped and sold into slavery. Moving from plantation to plantation, master to master, he chronicles this 12-year nightmare and all its abhorrent realities before finally being given his freedom. One of consistent images, regardless of plantation, was that the slaves were given church religiously (heh heh) every Sunday. The slave owners would use the Bible, use the word of God to not only validate this existence, but sanction its inherent brutality. There is one scene where Michael Fassbender, as Edwin Epps, uses scripture condone the “stripes” he delivers. He quotes scripture while whipping people, like while the whip is moving.

I was asked recently if I believed the Bible is the infallible word of God. The right answer is “Yes”. The true answer is “Yes but…” I believe God spoke to the writers of each of those books. I believe God speaks to us through them. I believe His words have been misconstrued. The Bible has been used to sanction wars, slavery, torture, polygamy, prejudice, bigotry and death. The Crusades were a holy war, started by the Pope in the 11^th century. The Ku Klux Klan used plenty of biblical references along with its cross burnings and lynchings. So did Timothy McVeigh.

Kind of a downer, huh?

What I’ve learned is the Word is pure. It’s like light: brilliant, consistent, unending. The Word of God works for all of humanity; it’s like a roadmap for the human condition. But I’ve seen people get lost while holding the map. I’ve seen folks unable to read a compass. It’s all in the interpretation. Maps don’t lie and a compass always points north but, if you don’t know how to read them, they’re worthless and neither will ever get you where you’re trying to go. The error isn’t in the tool, it’s in the man.

Merry Christmas everybody!

What’s Your Whale?

I want you to understand the life of a writer: we see and hear things that do not exist. We talk to ourselves, the walls, the dog, nobody. And we hear back some amazing things. Everything has a story tell, everything has something to impart.

I’m no different.

So I’m at a Christmas play at my church. You’ve seen church plays before: they’re cute, ugly-sweatered presentations of love, forgiveness and family. It’s a good time and tonight’s production was no exception. They had an orchestra, a choir, the requisite blond child dressed up as an angel, warm and fuzzy Jesus Christ imagery and humble beginnings.

And angels screaming in my head.

Yeah, you heard that right. I heard something screaming in my head and it ruined the entire second act.

I’ve been poorly doing these rewrites on Come Hell or High Water for over 4 months now. You know the story by now, don’t you? It’s the story of the angels’ response to the fall of man, from Adam and Eve to the Great Flood. It’s a sinfully rich love story, ambitious and bold and…disjointed. It’s a good story but needs some work to make it right.

But I don’t want to do it.

I haven’t wanted to do those damn rewrites for a while now, to the point of just accepting the self-imposed writer’s block that went with this standoff. Tonight, while watching a grown man dressed like an elf slide down a firehouse pole (it made sense on stage), I heard a voice much deeper than mine yell in my ear, “I can forgive anything you have done. But I cannot forgive you not doing what I sent you to do. I cannot forgive disobedience.”

Well, now I’m listening. Frowning, but listening. And still convinced: I hear people in my head all the time. I don’t always listen.

And in the middle of this Christmas play, I hear Tony Stark in the Avengers say, “You ever hear the tale of Jonah?” (shut up—movies work for me) and see a vision of a man swallowed by a whale. Now, I’m sure you know about Jonah, right? You know he got swallowed by a whale (like Pinocchio). But do you know why?

History lesson: Jonah is a regular dude who God decides should be a prophet. God tells him to go to Nineveh, which is a major city managed by the Assyrians (who were some RAW conquerors), and prophesize against them, telling them God is gonna destroy the city. Have you ever thought it was a good idea to go somewhere and talk crazy about the place you are now in? Doe sit sound like a good idea? No? Yeah, Jonah didn’t think so either.

So he bails.

My man says to hell with this, jumps on a ship and tries to flee. But you actually can’t outrun God (go figure). While on the boat, God sends a horrible storm that threatens to kill everyone. Now, you know people, when things start to go bad, folks start looking for someone to blame. Jonah falls asleep, the guys on the boat pray, talk, and point fingers. At him. They decide he is the problem and confront him. And Jonah goes with it: Yep, it’s me, God’s mad because I won’t do what He wants me to do. If you throw me into the ocean, Jonah says, the storm will end and you’ll be good. Let me pause right here: Jonah decided it was better to drown than to do what God called him to do. But, the folks on boat agree, beg forgiveness from their respective gods, and toss Jonah overboard.

My mother used to say, “There are people who’ve lived their lives so bad, they can’t even die.” I never understood that as a kid. I get it now. Jonah is one of those people. He tries do die but he’s unwilling to make ANY moves on his own, right or wrong. And God won’t let him die because Jonah has a mission. So what does God do? Makes Jonah an offer he can’t refuse: a whale saves Jonah’s life, swallows him whole, and Jonah has to sit there until he decides to get his head out his butt and get with the program. Which he does, kicking and screaming, pouting and cursing. Jonah finally does what God tells him to do. The people of Nineveh listen to Jonah, God spares their lives (all 120,000 of them), and Jonah learns a particularly tough lesson about mercy and obedience in the process.

The belly of the beast freaking sucks. It’s dark. It stinks. It separates you from the ones you love and it is an endless rollercoaster ride of emotion. But it’s a crucible of sorts. The stomach of that whale is a metaphorical chamber designed to make you face whatever is holding you back, be it a fear of failure or a fear of success, doubt or disaffection, the weight of responsibility or the weight of worthlessness. You can’t out think it or outrun it. Whatever it is, you can only face it. In the belly of the beast, it is just you and that thing you fear.

I know what I have to do. And fine fine fine I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’m gonna take the majority of my day tomorrow and get into the thing I’ve been trying to avoid. I’ll do it. But that’s me. What’s your whale? And what are you going to do about it?

Back to Basics

Tags

batman, christian bale, communion, heath ledger, joker, lucifer, Michael, Raphael

I took communion today for the first time in a long time. Like years.

I’m not proud of that.

It’s not that I didn’t care or didn’t think it was important. It was just life, my day-to-day, earthly, customer-driven life of questions:

Why didn’t you do your homework?

When do you need it?

Baby, can you grab me a vanilla cappuccino?

What is in her mouth?

Did you put on deodorant?

Why—just why?

You know what I’m talking about…it all got in the way. I took for granted my one on one relationship with God. I languished in my own achievement—hey, I wrote a God-centered book, doesn’t that buy me some Heaven points? Don’t I get a bunch of Bedside Baptist services credited?

I don’t think so. Guess it doesn’t work that way.

What I didn’t realize was how far I’d drifted from the person I was when I first wrote The Road to Hell. I also didn’t realize what an impact a steady diet of Bible study and sermons would have on my writing. If you’ve followed either of my blogs, you know that bringing Come Hell or High Water has been a tough row to hoe. It’s been one of the more difficult endeavors I’ve ever undertaken, fraught with half-hearted beginnings and shoddy execution. I tried to rationalize it out, saying this lost feeling in my life really mirrors the lost emotions of the angels I’m writing about—and it does—but it shouldn’t. I should have been lost. I chose to lose myself.

As much fun as Lucifer is to write (and he is, enough that I’ve wondered (a lot) if that is who I really am), and as much as Come Hell or High Water is really about Raphael and his capacity to love, Michael is my favorite character. I find the brutality of his morality to be the most curious and interesting idea to explore in a series of novels about the gray areas in our moral code. To best sum up Michael in the beginning of Come Hell or High Water, think about the scene in The Dark Knight (because we both know you saw it), where Batman and the Joker are having a wonderful little discussion about the whereabouts of Batman’s friends (and his secret girlfriend) inside a jail cell. The Joker is being “uncooperative” so Batman tries to beat the answers out of him, only to receive laughter and this little nugget from the Joker:

“You have nothing to do with all your strength.” That’s Michael and, curiously, that’s me.

Writers are curious creatures. We engage and interpret life through the lens of the written word (you like that visual imagery pertaining to reading as a way of ingesting input, huh? Sociology major, baby). We act as translators, turning the universal truths of the human existence into specific stories as a way of understanding the universal. Storytelling is the most basic form of human communication—it is how we understand the world and our place in it. As a writer, then, I use that same translation to understand my own life and am often surprised by what I find. I put the wilderness I was experiencing in my life into the characters I was writing so I could understand my own listlessness. Does that make sense? I had to write my feelings into characters so I could understand myself.

The reason the Come Hell or High Water rewrites have been so exhausting and so difficult is I was too stuck in the specificity of my own situation to see the universality of the story from end to end. I became a character in my own narrative without the perspective to see how the story should end. Deep, huh? And if I’m a character, so to speak, then the only one who can tell me how the story ends is the author Himself.

So I went to the source.

Going back to church is the latest in a series of steps I’ve been taking to get back in touch with what matters. I’m becoming more introspective with myself, sending letters to my wife on a daily basis, trying to be a better father and husband all around. Trying to be what I’m supposed to be. I have to say, I’ve certainly heard the Author speaking in ways I haven’t heard in months. In ways I haven’t heard in years. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed His voice. How much I missed Him. And, thankfully, the story’s starting to make more sense to me now.