M.J. Neal's Blog, page 2

Chasing Chariots

This one is for you. 
The one rolling out of bed and lifting the shades to reveal a sky draped with January, the month of hope and despair. 
The heart that's following the echo of eternity tugging them into another year. 
The brave soul where war-torn thoughts struggle between bright faith and the bitter cold of a land frozen by a winter that lingers in shades of ice and gray.    
Emerging from the advent of Christmas plants a beautiful but difficult reality in the last days of the year.  Though the truth and the majesty of Christmas has renewed our spirits once more, the real waiting goes on.  For citizens of heaven still upon the earth, the true Advent and the longed for arrival of Christ once more continues.

Time dawns another year, and we continue to hone our earthly calling in the light of the King’s appeal to the world through us.  Sharpen resolutions upon the stone.   
Upon the surge of eager newness wiping clean the year’s canvas with a dusting of snow lies the battle line.  Drawn anew, the giants rise to oppose us.  Perhaps struggles born out of years of fighting, or maybe the glinting steel of new enemies who seek to destroy, but this is where we find ourselves. 
This is where you find yourself, brave soul watching January roll in once more.    The world goes not well, yet the kingdom comes. 

I see you at the kitchen table, sipping strength from a coffee mug and sleepily dusting off a dream, that talent-tool God once placed in your hands.  You wonder what to do with it, how to make it holy.
  Your limbs long to crawl back into bed and maybe slip safely under the sheets of last year and forget about the challenges marching to meet you across the months toward another December. 
But fragile pages of the holy pen resolve upon your heart, a soul-resolution to depend even more deeply on Him and to administer grace with what has been given so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 
Gift of days.  Lord of Years. 
Fallen foundations drag us earthward, and the only strength and endurance that allow us to climb the peaks ahead with joy lie in our very weakness, where his increase is mighty.   
Dreams may glint foolish to earth-veiled eyes.  I know because I’ve worn false lenses many times.  Distortion warps illumination and skews the light.  It makes cheap the meaningful, and at the foot of January, my mind whispers aimless. 

Of God, my heart says "Seek his face."  But how to make prayer the weapon that drives back demons rising to face me once more on the battleground of the new year?  How to refine strengths into sacred heralds that declare the hope of Christ and his return, inscribing not with ink but with grace that etches itself onto the very fabric of the human heart?
Renewed mercy recurring at dawn, his faithfulness wakes the world, and I, like you, put my hand to the mountain of the year to move it and be moved. 
The story of love descending cleanses anew the ransomed soul, clothing it for the days to come.  And a voice scatters the aimless strains with a song of beauty and a vision of resolve. 
Hallow gifts multicolored from heaven.  Draw deep in my soul, my hands inspire.   O Lord, send me out into your world.
Bring me a chariot of fire.  

Dream with me, you hard workers and travelers, prophets and saints who haunt the January morning struggling to don hope against the cold.  Let us climb the heights that await and the take the adventures set before us.  Let the mountains stir our spirits to a place of prayer that fears neither height nor opposition.   
Of course, it might be proven true in the end, that once more I’ve thought too deeply about things.  I’m too much among the clouds and not enough upon the ground, where struggle and sleeplessness drive home the harshness of reality. 
Then again, that’s the thing about elevation, it brings you closer to the sky, and a heart nearer to Heaven finds not only star dust and snow but truth, and that—with clarity.
Here’s to the climb of 2016.   
It is a gift, and this one's for you.     

Images via:  Huffingtonpost.com, tumblr.com, amazpic.com, mbart.com All work subject to copyright by the author. Use by permission only.  2016.  

Mighty

It’s been awhile since I’ve been on here.  As some of you know I was participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) throughout November, which roughly translates to me spending every possible scrap of a second trying to write fifty thousand words of a story before midnight on the thirtieth.  Suffice it to say, I have emerged from the self imposed prison victorious.  The sky never looked so blue.    
But what did I find when I returned to civilization?  Newspapers bleeding red and headlines shaking their fist in rage.  I saw mud flung from one side to the other, missiles of blame aimed at parties, people, and ideas in response to the continuing groans of a world simply staggering under the weight of sin, of brokenness.

But through the aching and the dissonance I caught the haunted strains of a familiar joy stubbornly weaving its way through the tears.  Frost dancing, splintered diamonds in the morning sun.  Evergreen sprigs studded with holly gems of red.  Lights strung throughout darkening streets.  Stockings, and crinkling paper, and laughing fireplaces, and all wrapped around by the heartbreaking melodies of carols that cry, “Love has come!”  Christmas is here once more. 
But sometimes in the whirlwind of traditional preparations, doesn’t something about it strike dull and hollow?  For certainly the cries of the starving and the iron-crush of evil seem to grind away at the merrymaking, to call the bluff of the voice that sings peace on earth and goodwill to men.  Is it foolish to dance joy on the surface of a planet decaying under the tread of violence sown with disease, and hunger, and lead?  Is joy to the world merely a desperate myth perpetuated to stave off the raw truth beneath the hem of Santa Claus’ robe?    
One of the oldest known Christmas carols was born over five hundred years ago, and the familiar lyrics begin, “God rest ye, merry gentlemen.”  Unlike the official church hymns sung in Episcopal Latin at the time, this was carried by the laymen, the common folk and sung in their own speech.  However, the layers of years have since eroded the language of the time and overlayed the words with new meaning.   When we hear “merry,” we are tempted to think gay, happy, and carefree.  But a truer translation of the original term would be “mighty.”  Thus Robin Hood’s merry men were called as such not because of their lighthearted nature, but because they were warriors, they were mighty men.  Digging deeper, a full decoding of the first verse of the carol would run something more like this: 
God make you mighty, gentlemen!  Let nothing you dismay!  Remember Christ, our Savior,Was born on Christmas Day To save poor souls from Satan’s power Which long time had gone astray,And it is tidings of comfort and joy! 

But can it all be true?  Is this joy tangible, is it real?  To some it might look as though we’re merely binding glittering tinsel around a grievously gaping wound, as if sprigs of holly and a few greeting card sentiments of good cheer were enough to staunch the flow of blood just long enough to pretend we aren’t really dying.  As one recent newspaper even put it, “God Isn’t Fixing This.” 
The truth is that the sixteenth century poor might have known better.  We are not dismayed, because the love of a perfect and infinite God came to this earth to wrest all dominion from sin, and pain, and death.  It is great joy, because Christ came.  And it is tidings of comfort, because it is true.  God came; He did fix it.  And Christmas is a time that we set aside to actively remember, to cling to it, and to let grace hold the hurting in nail-pierced hands. 
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish...but finds God in the midst of it...what matters is the joy that has overcome. It alone is credible; it alone helps and heals.” 

The heart of the undismayed does not bear the mark of naïve optimism, but rather their laughter is a measure of their merry faith—of their mighty faith.  For the true foundation for joy is not mortared with optimism but hope.
Joy always exists in spite of something else; that’s what it means to live in a fallen world.  But we can embrace the hope and peace of Christmas even in the midst of immense suffering, because the unbreakable truth is that the power of God is strong, it is present, and it is mighty!  Hear the good news, He has come and his love alone shatters the fetters of bondage, and only the death and resurrection of one who fully knows our sorrows can heal the scars of darkness with the light of his presence.    
Peace be with you this Christmas, and may your burdened soul sink down beside the manger, where God came not to ignore the heart-rending tears of sin clawing ugly gouges across the world, but to embrace it, to feel it, and to take it upon himself so that it might be swallowed up forever by his fierce and unfathomable love.  God make you mighty this season.  Repeat the sounding joy now and always, walking in the assurance of the greatest and truest reason for joy that ever has been, ever is, and ever will be again. 
Now to the Lord sing praises,All you within this placeLike we true loving brethren,Each other to embrace,For the mighty time of ChristmasIs coming on a-pace.And it is tidings of comfort and joy. 


Note:  History of “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman” found in the book Stories Behind the Best Loved Songs of Christmas, by Ace Collins.
Images via: tumblr, remodelista, 
All Work Subject to Copyright by the Author.  Use by Permission Only.  2015.        
           

Cheese on That?

“Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be Hope.  It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain.”  (Terry Pratchett)   

The Hobbit made me do it.      
Once upon a time a fatal page of fiction transformed me into a nerd, and this means that I quote J.R.R. Tolkien, I named my Jeep after a Batman vehicle, and I keep a waterproof notepad in my shower (amusingly, this is often where book inspiration usually strikes).  And if any of you somehow happen upon my browsing history just remember, I'm a writer, not a serial killer.  But despite my affinity for fantasy, I sometimes I look back and wonder where all of this authorial madness started.    

Most writers begin their journey at varying stages of life.  For some, it wasn’t until a college professor wrote glowing remarks on their term paper that they picked up the proverbial pen.  For others like myself, it generally stemmed from the reading of fairytales as a child.  But I didn’t actually set out to become an author until the advent of what I at the time perceived to be a gross injustice.      
Television was a limited and monitored commodity in my house growing up.  At eleven years old my favorite TV show was a quasi-anime series about teenage superheroes battling for truth, justice, and the last slice of pizza.  I’d never seen anything like it.  But…in a cruel twist of fate, said show was put up for parental review, found to be somehow unwholesome, and subsequently banned.  I was crushed. 
I don’t remember exactly what went through my mind at that point except that my imagination refused to relinquish this well loved story, and so I did what any irritated pre-teen would have done.  I created a superhero universe of my own and starting writing a book. 
This first “novel” was written in faded pencil and madly scrawled in a cast off green notebook with half its pages missing.  And if I had to describe it in one word it would be:
CHEESE. 
Pure, unadulterated, melting-off-the-pizza cheese. 

This book had it all, egotistical villains, impractical costumes, a mouthful of clever quips and one liners to wittily toss at the bad guys, and (because I was an eleven year old church goer) Christian clichés.  Somewhere inside, I still felt a deep yearning for a super human world I could fully immerse myself in, and in creating something of my own, I felt like I was building an even better dream than the TV show had ever been, something braver, something deeper, and something true.  
Twelve years and many many novel drafts later, I still have that notebook.  I take it out and flip through it when I need a good laugh, and I and a dear friend of mine still write short stories involving the same characters in order to unwind and keep our creative juices flowing.  Because despite my cringe-worthy child’s writing skills crippled by pre-teen angst, I find myself still in need of a little of that cheese.  I think deep down we all do. 
You see, superheroes and fantasies are indispensable to our lives, because underneath all the cheese lies a refreshing simple question, good versus evil.   In a culture so woven with a discordant and complicated tangle of gray, it’s difficult to make out the threads of truth weaving a hidden hope in its midst.  When flipping on the news tempts our minds toward cynicism, faith is numbed.   When watching political debates makes us want to put an angry and hopeless axe through the TV screen, we become jaded.  This leads many to pursue that allure of fiction and fantasy.  

Now, people often criticize the escapism of books as creating an ultimately false reality, but I don’t believe that’s accurate.  As Bryan Davis puts it, “Fantasy is not a lie, because it doesn’t pretend to be true.  It is a vision, the mind’s dramatic sketch of what we were meant to be.  Good fantasy is a blend of survival and worship.”   
Now I know what you may be thinking.  Why take serious advice from someone who once wrote a college assignment titled Ode to the Cliché? (Note:  For all the haters out there, it was a smashing success by the way).  While not everyone may share my nerd’s affinity for Star Wars and Spider-man, I still maintain that we need those kinds of narratives to be present and active in our culture, now more than ever before. 
What models does our world hold up as exemplary?   What kind of stories typically make the evening news?  “Politician caught accepting bribes!  Reality TV star admitted to hospital for drug overdose!  Quarterback arrested for DWI!”  It’s an army of fallen angels that demands our adoration, marching to the drums of wealth and self.  When these things garner more press and viewer response than starving children, is it any wonder that we find ourselves yearning for something more? 

We live in the age of the antihero, the jaded cynic who’s supposed to make us feel better about ourselves by being relatable.  I'm not referring simply to a flawed hero, a fallen man that chooses righteousness in spite of himself, because short of Christ, we are none of us perfect.  Instead I'm calling out the fence rider, the entertaining and morally ambiguous character who is held up as the new role model, a good guy for the postmodern viewer.  We like to sit back in our seats and breathe a sigh of relief as this protagonist lies and slides his way to the end of the film. 
Showdown. 
Shoot out. 
Villain dies. 
The End. 
The “hero” ultimately makes the right choice, and we pat ourselves on the back, because really, we’re not such bad people after all.  We don’t need to try so hard.  Why strive to be Captain America in a Kanye West World?   
I’ll tell you why.  Because black and whites aren’t always as bad as we've been trrained to believe.  And because when we refuse to acknowledge good and evil for what they are, we miss the absolutely crucial opportunity use their stories to create strong soldiers for Christ.  We have more than enough blurred lines winding spider silk around our souls.  We need the boot that drags a hard toe across the sand and says “this far, no farther!” 

 “We obtain comfort by seeing evil unmasked, condemned and destroyed.  We are offered hope through being shown that at least somewhere, even if it is in another world, good has triumphed!” (Richard Abanes).   
We need fantasy, because it inspires many of us toward holiness like nothing else can.  In this culture everyday heroism might look as unexciting and unappreciated as working graveyard at a hospital or relentlessly petitioning the government, or even teaching second grade.  When we struggle to serve it lifts our spirits to enter into the hero’s narrative, because here’s the real secret:  the fight against evil isn’t just make-believe.  There’s a real enemy, an ancient conspiracy, and a hard and honest battle being waged in solemn wars and bloody scraps all over this earth. 
What inspires us to keep wading through the trenches with hope is not the banner of the antihero with his “good enough” catch phrases.  We need warriors that though humanly imperfect, fight against their flaws and continue to proclaim the truth that cuts deep into the darkness of our time and shatters its chains.  Fantasy breathes life into the deep dreams of our hearts, where down in the marrow of our very souls we know that we were made for something more. 

We do not serve a tame God.  He is wild, dangerous, almighty, and—he is good.  So why should we pursue that which glorifies our comfort and safety.  Why should we take the easy road?  We have “relatable” role models in abundance.  They coddle us with their mistakes when they should be inspiring us toward what is hard but ever so much greater.  Yes, there are questions that have no easy answers, and shades of gray do not always harbor lies, but there are also many things that deserve our adamant and unwavering support.  

Defending the innocent.  Standing for the faith.  Courage, integrity, sacrifice, and love stand in stark contrast to this blurred world and we, like Martin Luther King Jr. must solemnly declare, "Despite all this, there comes a time."   There comes a time when men must choose, and when we do not give fantasy narratives their proper place we shut the window that might allow us to foster brave and merciful heroes rather than apathetic and self-seeking hearts. 
       So go ahead, sprinkle on a little cheese. Flip through your old comic books when the days get long.  Enter your closet and drop into Narnia from time to time.  Escape into that cheesy 80s TV show if you must, but never forget what really makes it good, the reason your heart thrills to know it.  It's the discovery that something so seemingly simple can contain that which is deeply profound.  There is good, and there is evil, so let your heart answer the call to holiness by reentering your own world armed with lessons from the fantasy realm. 

And, I’ll offer you what the film people like to call a Spoiler Alert.  The light is greater, and it does triumph over the darkness.  There is a mighty king who longs to rescue his beloved people.  
He is real.  He is good.  And He is coming back. 


Images via:  wonderhowto.com, myarmory.com, tumblr.com,All work subject to copyright by the author.  Use by permission only.  2015.