L. Jagi Lamplighter's Blog, page 32

Caption This Winner

A lot of good answers, but the winner, hands down, was:

Monsanto does it again. The sheep that herds itself.

Wright’s Writing Corner: The Diamonds, the Piano, or the Chicken?

 

Diamonds, piano, or chicken,

which will the space pirates pick? 

 

What does your character want?

This is one of the number one things aspiring writers leave out of their manuscript. They tend not to tell the reader what the character wants. In particular, the reader needs to know: What is the character’s goal? What is his motive for his action? What are the stakes if he fails?

Why is this important?

If a character achieves a goal that the reader is unaware he desired, it means nothing to the reader.

If I don’t know what a character wants, I, the reader, can’t want it either. So I am not capable of caring about whether he gets it.

Even if I really, really want to care.

To illustrate this, imagine the following scenario: A damaged pirate ship captures a freighter. The freighter contains as cargo: a piano, a chicken, and a thousand diamond.

Scenario 1) – The pirates arrive. They look around. They see the diamonds. They chuckle and hi- five each other. They go on to their next event.

Was that satisfying?

Hmm.

Let’s try:

Scenario 2) – The pirates arrive.

“Look sharp,” said Jake. “Look for anything we can salvage. A chair. An old wine bottle. With our base gone and our ship damaged, if we can’t find enough for a little repair work…” He trails off.

“What’s it matter, Captain?” said Tuck, rubbing his stubble.  “Even if we scrape together enough for a few repairs. We’ve lost the diamond mine. Without weapon-grade diamonds, we have no weapons. Without weapons, we’ll never break through the barricade.” The old pirate pulls his pocket watch from his tattered coat and rubs the initials on the tarnished silver cover. “Sorry, Ma.”

Swishing beside him, as beautiful as she was deadly, Shari threw the trail of her pink and yellow sari over one shoulder. In her thick accent, she murmured sweetly, “I am so sorry, Tuck. We worked so hard, for so many months, to gain the antidote…and now we will never be able to deliver it in time.”

Tuck glared at Dek, who was dawdling in the rear. “If the kid hadn’t burned out our final crystals on his infernal invention…”

Dek hung his head sheepishly, “Sorry, guys. How was I to know that we would lose the mine? The worse thing is….it actually works. I fixed it. We could be using it. Selling it…making millions. But now…when will we ever even have a chance to demonstrate it to somebody?”

“Lotta good it’ll do us now,” growled Tuck. His face fell, glum. “Lotta good it will do my mom.”

“Boys…” Shari’s jaw dropped. She jumped up and down rubbing her palms together in joy, “Look…”

Around the corner, next to an old piano and a chicken–shimmering like a dream–rose a huge pile of shining, glittering, weapon-grade diamonds.

 

Scenario 3) The pirates stumbled off the ship. They were scarecrow thin and haggard. They rushed around the freighter, searching, peering. One found a water spout and drinks thirstily.

“Guys, diamonds!” called one pirate.

The rest of the crew stumbled into the room, too weary to care.

“Big deal,” said another sitting down on the piano bench. “We won’t live to make it back to market to sell it. We…”

He stopped. There was a noise. From around the corner of the diamonds shuffled a chicken.

“Food!” cried the pirate, leaping to his feet. 

The pirates fell upon the chicken and dragged it back to their kitchen, feathers flying. One twisted off the bird’s foot and started gnawing on it, even before they reached the other ship.

With food, they would live long enough to make it back to civilization, where they could sell the diamonds and repair their ship.

They were saved.

 

Scenario 4) Kirth Gerson* stepped onto the freighter and looked around. The crew was dead. There was little to salvage. The cargo hold was filled with diamonds. His experienced eye glanced over them calculating their value—about as much as his magazine brought in during a single month of circulation.

He circled the diamonds. A chicken ran by him. He ignored it.

Then he saw it. Sitting in the corner.

His grandmother’s piano.

Slowly, Gerson walked across the room and ran his hand across its dusty but polished surface. It was exactly as he remember it. He ran a finger along the scratch he had put in the side the day he crashed into it when pretending to be a space ship. How Grandpa had walloped him. He remembered Grandma playing at the keyboard, her face suffused with joy.

She had been playing when the Five Demon Princes descended upon Mt. Pleasant and slaughtered everyone.

Gerson touched the instrument once more. Then he turned and walked toward the bridge. Somewhere, there would be a record as to where the crew of the freighter had taken on the piano. He need only follow it backward and yet another clue as to the whereabouts of the remaining Demon Princes would be his.

As he strode purposefully, a ghost of a smile quirked at his grim lips. He was one step closer to his final revenge.

* Kirth Gerson – the hero of Jack Vance’s Demon Princes series. His home town of Mt. Pleasant was destroyed by five super criminals. He and his grandfather are the only survivors. His grandfather raises him with the soul purpose of hunting down the culprits and taking revenge. (If you have not read the series, run out and get it! It’s excellent. Though it does not include a scene with a piano, a chicken, and diamonds.)

 

When you write a scene, you want to clue your readers in so that when they reach the cargo bay, they know whether to cheer for the diamonds, the piano, or the chicken.

It’s that simple.

So, next time you sit down to write remember this and clue in the readers in such a way that when you finally reach the character's goal–when he seizes the diamonds (or the piano, or the chicken)– your reader will stand up and cheer.

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Caption This!

I will eventually post the winners for previous weeks, but can't access them at the moment.

This week's pic:

 

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Wright’s Writing Corner: Redeeming Villains: How Not To Do It

 

There has been a trend of late that I find quite disturbing. It is the “Let’s Redeem A Villain” movie.

Now, keep in mind, I am all about redeeming villains. Were I not, would I have married one of the Evil League of Evil? No. Certainly not.

In fact, I love redeeming villains. I have spent the last 25 years playing roleplaying games where I spend all my time, yes, you guessed it: redeeming villains.

Real villains, too. The kind that it actually take 25 years to redeem.

So, you think I would be part of the natural audience for movies like The Grinch and Malificent. Well, I would have been, had they been done right.

What do I mean by right? I mean: Had these movies been about a villain who was redeemed.

They weren’t. They were something much less interesting and much more demeaning to the villains. To quote Malificent….the real Malificent, these movies are:

“A disgrace to the powers of evil!”

Why is this? Let us take a look at these two movies and compare them with the work of a real master, the man who invented the villain redemption genre.

One Bad Day!

In the comic Batman, the villains all have origin stories. For the most part, the story is: they had one bad day. And this one bad day led to them being evil.

The Joker had one bad day. He fell in a vat of acid and couldn’t stop smiling. This turned him evil.

The Clock King had one bad day. Everything went wrong in his life due to time related issues. This turned him evil…with a clock theme.

You get the picture.

Modern villain redemption movies mix the one bad day idea with the notion of: “Why can’t we all get along?” This means that the villains are villainous to begin with because…aw, better go get your tissues…they were tormented or betrayed in love.

After all, anyone who was bullied or hurt must turn evil, right? I mean, they couldn’t help it. Why we’ve all been bullied, and we’re evil, right?

Huh…

So, the Grinch is no longer a grumpy, green hermit in the mountains. Now he’s a guy who was abused by the folk of the town he came from until he turned away in pain and fear.

And Malificent isn’t an evil fairy filled with graceful and glorious malice. She’s a sweet fairy who fell in love with a young thief who claimed to give her love’s first kiss…only to tear off her wings in order to gain a throne from some evil king.

This betrayal, of course, causes her to turn her back on love and becomes…evil.

But that is not the offensive part of both of these films.

Oh, no!

The Offensive Part

It was not enough for the filmmakers to turn these villains into sympathetic saps, they also have to demean the good guys.

When I was young, I remember thinking what a noble thing that, when men molested women, people now wanted the courts to condemn the men, rather than to blame the women as they might have in the past. They wanted the courts to:  Not blame the victim.

Taking the good guys, whom the villain abused, and making them the bad guy is: blaming the victim. 

This is despicable and shameful.

In the book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch attacks innocent villagers called Whos and steals all their Christmas gifts and decorations. However, these Whos are so filled with Christmas spirit that this theft does not dim their joy one wit.

Their amazing ability to celebrate Christmas joyfully without presents is what brings about a change of heart for Grinchy Claus.

But in the movie The Grinch, the Whos are the grubby, grabby, capitalist pigs. It is their materialism that hurt the poor, wittle, pathetic Grinch, and it is the Grinch who, by his act of revenge, teaches them the meaning of Christmas.

In Sleeping Beauty, the good and noble King Stefan has his daughter cursed by an evil, wicked creature, because of the tiny oversight of not having invited the evil fairy to the christening. Hardly a crime that should result in LOSING YOUR CHILD!!!

In Malificent, the thief who seduces the sweet young fairy and then cuts off her wings for personal gain is…none other than King Stefan!

The good, innocent king, whose daughter was unjustly cursed with death, is now a despicable cad and betrayer who deserves the bad things that happened to him.

These movies turned impressive villains into unlikable heroes, and likable heroes into unimpressive villains.

Watch The Real Master

Just in case you are thinking: yeah, well, how else would you redeem a villain? How else could you sympathize with a bad guy except to make him pathetic and actually the victim?—let us take a look at a real story of redemption by someone who gets it right.

I am speaking, of course, of the Mother Of All Villain Redemption Stories: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

In Dickens story, we are shown the past of the horrible Scrooge. We learn that he was poor and abused by his father. But Scrooge does not become wicked and swear revenge because of this offense. No. Instead, we see how the hardships of his youth lead him to choose sin.

Freely.

Of his own free will.

When the choice arises between marrying his beloved Belle or grasping for more money, Scrooge makes the wrong choice. He makes it again and again and again.

Eventually, Scrooge had grown into a horrid, unpleasant man. But he does not turn his coldness on his father. No. His victims are innocents—his nephew, Bob Cratchit, the poor in his neighborhood.

People who have done him no wrong.

He is a villain because he inflicts harm on those who have not offended him.

If A Christmas Carol had been written by the modern film writers, it would have gone something like this: an innocent man, who was dreadfully in love, was on his way to his wedding, where he planned to marry his true love, Belle.

On the way, a little rapscallion named Bobby C. ran up and kicked him in the family jewels. Scrooge was so embarrassed by this injury, which he feared would impede his wedding night, that he fled, jilting his bride.

This shame and sorrow led him to become the horrible man that he is today…the cruel boss of—oh ironies of ironies—the very same Bobby C, now Bob Cratchit, who brought him to this sad state of affairs in the first place. And, by the end of the story, little Bobby Cratchit would have learned the error of his hooligan ways.

That is not the story of a villain redeemed. Because in this version, Scrooge is not the villain. Bobby C is. The Grinch is not the villain in his movie, the Whos are. Malificent is not the villain in her story, King Stefan and the evil king he served are.

Which leads to the question: When Disney inevitably makes the movie excusing actions of the evil king who was responsible for a young’ fairy’s wings being torn off…what is his excuse going to be? That Maleficent hurt him when he was young?

These are not movies of redemption. They are movies of victimology. They turn noble villains into saps, and noble heroes into cads and…yes, villains.

As Malificent would say—the real Malificent:

They are a disgrace to the forces of evil!

  

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New Book By John — 50% of first month goes to Stillbrave!

John has a new book out, City Beyond Time, a collection of his Metachronopolis stories, plus a new one. 

50% of the profits from the first month is being donated, by a joint effort of ourselves and the publisher, Castalia House, to Stillbrave — a charity to help families of children with cancer. (For more information about Stillbrave.)

To see City Beyond Time on Amazon: click here.

Caption This!

Trying to get back on board after having other responsibilities for a month or so.

 

Wright’s Writing Corner: Guest Post by Katie Cross

Today we have a nice treat: a post by Katie Cross, author of the new YA fantasy Miss Mable's School of Girls:

 

Christians Writing About Witches

Publishing a book about witches brings a lot of boys to the yard. Just kidding. It brings a lot of Christians to the door.

 

 

Also kidding. Kind of.

Here's the thing: I was raised a Christian and I am one now. If you have any questions, I'm a Mormon. You can see stuff 'bout it here, here, and here

I'm an old fashioned kind of gal. I don't drink, smoke, and didn't do the pre-marital sex thing.

I also write fantasy about witches.

When Miss Mabel's first came out, my friend Terry, as a kind of aside, mentioned that I'd probably have people who refused to read it because, well, it's about witches. JK Rowling got it in spades, right? Nobigdeal, guys. NO BIG DEAL.

Yes, that happened as Terry predicted. A lot. Which is totally fine with me.

Seriously.

As Miss Mabel's School for Girls continued to do better and better, (check out an awesome Barnes and Noble article that included Miss Mabel's here) I had more people emailing me about the book. Some of them were really excited . . .

. . . until they found out it had witches. 

Honestly, it's never bothered me. In fact, that's their right. I turn away erotica books because I don't enjoy them or their content. In fact, I totally admire people with that conviction to stand up for what they believe. I know how frightening that can be, so I'd never judge another person for turning away my book because it may clash with their spiritual beliefs.

That being said, I've had a lot of readers ask me what it's like to write about witches as an active, go-to-church-every-week Christian.

So, for those of you who have asked, here it is:

What it's like to be a Christian author writing about witches:

I sit down.

I write about imperfect people trying to do good things.

I find things that I struggle with, or I see other struggle with, and I put it to paper.

I infuse magic into my writing because to me, writing is magic.

I eat a couple pounds of brownies. Just kidding. 

I have a few books about Wiccanism that I've skimmed and studied and genuinely enjoyed learning from. I celebrate other people's beliefs. I am not a practicing Wiccan, but I find that their closeness to the earth and seeking to be good and do no harm very inspiring.

I go to church every Sunday.

I still pray everyday.

I put characteristics in my imperfect characters that I wish I could embody. Bianca's pretty tough, and confident, and I wish I could be as brave as her. 

Yep. That's pretty much what it's like.

So . . . how do I feel about the book as a whole? 

I feel great about it. Amazing. I'm proud, my husband is proud, my mama is proud. I don't mention God. I don't create a Deity for the Antebellum world. I don't have a Christ-figure in the work. Neither do I have a spiritual warfare kind of battle where God helps Bianca overcome her evil teacher. Bianca overcomes with inner strength, which is also something I believe that God asks of us.

Do I feel like that takes away from my belief in God?

No, I still feel like God's okay with how I've handled it. I think expanding my talent, living the way I feel I should, and staying close to my Christian beliefs is as acceptable to God as it would be if I wrote a spiritual warfare book.

Am I saying that one or the other is good or bad?

Nah. I'm just saying that as a Christian, I write about witches. 

AND IT'S AWESOME.

Have you turned a book away because it clashed with spiritual or moral beliefs? What was your experience?

 

Comments

————

Katie Cross's info:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Miss-Mabels-School-Girls-Network-ebook/product-reviews/B00J6AF12C/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
 
Goodreads: 
 
Official website for the book: www.missmabels.com
 
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/missmabels
 
Twitter: @kcrosswriting
 
My website: www.kcrosswriting.com
 

 

Part Two: Seeing With Eyes Unclouded With Hate

Here is the promised conclusion to: The Ones Who Walk Away From Washington.

At the end of part one, you may recall, I decided to withdraw from politics, to no longer throw my weight with one side, argue the issues, etc.


 


Once I did this, a funny thing happened…

Some (or all) of you may be familiar with the movie Princess Mononoke, from the fabulous Japanese animator Miyazaki. In it, a young man is sent by his tribe to observe a struggle between humans and nature (represented in the movie by huge beast-gods who inhabited the forest the humans need to cut down if they are to mine the iron ore they need to survive.) The young man, Ashitaka, is told to go and observe the struggle “with eyes unclouded by  hate.”  To look and see the needs and shortcomings of both sides without prejudice.


 


Well, this is what began to happen to me.

I began to listen more closely to both the Liberals and Conservatives I knew, and I discovered something astonishing: they were not even talking about the same subjects!


 


Oh, they were certainly arguing about conflicting conclusions, but those conclusions stemmed from entirely different premises. The result of this was that nothing either side said to their opponents was persuasive, because they were never addressing the issue that caused their opponent to take his stance in the first place.

 

Let me use an example:


 


Let’s take war. Say a war is brewing and there are some good arguments for going forward and some good arguments for holding back.


 


The Conservative looks at the world, and he sees a challenge that needs facing. Something daunting is on the horizon, but he knows that sometimes you need to take a stand for Right. You need to be brave and willing to face the fire to protect what it is that you value in life. Sometime violence is necessary. You’ve got to punch the bully back, or he will just keep bullying you.


 


What is called for in this situation, then is courage. Only those who lack this quality would not be willing to do what needs to be done.

Liberals must be cowards.


 


 


The Liberal looks at the world, and he sees how often violence is misplaced. How applying force can damage or break something that would flourish so much better with an application of patience and hard work. True violence tends to produce a quicker outcome, but the long term effects are often messy and much worse than the problem was to begin with.


 


All this is so clear, if one merely takes the time to look at it. Only those who are too slow-witted to comprehend these simple truths could think otherwise.


 


Conservatives must be stupid.


 


 


And, if you listen to the two sides, that’s just what they say. The Conservatives I know call the Liberals cowards. The Liberals in the press call the Conservatives stupid. (The Liberals I know personally are mainly too polite to go in for this kind of name calling, but it is done often enough by their fellows.)


 


I could give other examples. (Clinton’s impeachment – the sanctity of the law (no perjury) vs. the right to privacy (i.e. “they should not have asked that question to begin with.”) In each case, the concern of the Left differs from the concern of the Right.


 


All this reminded me of an experience I had years ago. Back in high school – junior year Social Studies, we were studying American History. Each time a new time period came up, I had a lot to say about what was happening at the time did another member of the class, a young man known as Misha the Commie.


 


Now, Misha was known as a Commie, not because of his politics, but because he had a Russian name and a red mailbox. As far as his politics went, Misha was to the right of Archie Bunker.


 


What happened that year has always fascinated me. Back then, I was a Liberal, and no matter what subject came up, Misha and I were on opposite sides. Banking, slaves, immigration; we were always instantly at loggerheads. Even when the subject was completely different from what we had discussed before – a subject I had never encountered before. Never had an opinion about before – Misha and I were still on opposite sides.


 


We lived in a rather conservative area, so the class divided with my best friend on my side, and everyone else on Misha’s side. (This did not dim my enjoyment of the process – but it did make it so that I was rather surprised when I later moved to places that weighted more heavily to the Liberal side and discovered I was not always alone. )


 


Seventeen-year-old me found this mind-boggling. Since I was only aware of my individual opinions, not of the principles that informed my beliefs, I kept expecting that sooner or later, Misha and I would agree on something.


 


We never did.


 


That was my first introduction to the idea that our opinions are colored by a world view that has a logic to it. If you want to convince someone of your position – or even to bring them around to being sympathetic to your position, even if they don’t agree – you need to approach the premises of these world views, not the rhetoric that is the conclusion. (As John did when he slowly pointed out how my goals were not in keeping with some of the premises of the Liberal position.)


 


I look around today and I see many of my friends are filled with hatred toward members of their political opposition – as if these people are robbing all the good from the world and about to bring about the fall of civilization. Conservatives bemoan that all the decency of Western Christian culture has been lost, and we are assuredly heading for a godless and lawless tomorrow, while Liberals assure me that the Fundamentalist Christians have won and we are on the verge of being forced to live in a totalitarian religious state.

Both of these people cannot be right.


 


The reason for it, of course, is that each side sees the success of the other side as a sign of the triumph of the vice they abhor. Conservatives think that cowards are taking over and ruling the country, while Liberals think that we are now under the thumb of the ignorant and hateful.


 


Like Ashitaka, who had little power to sway either side of the struggle he was observing, there is not a great deal I can currently do with these observations. I try to gently share the opinion of the other side with those around me, but often they are too bitter or too fearful to listen clearly.

My one hope is that some of what I have learned will someday trickle into my writing, to help me better shape the characters I write about, and maybe through that medium, some reader might be led to have a better and more compassionate understanding of his fellow man.


 

The Ones Who Walk Away From Washington Reboot

It came to me to repost my Seeing With Eyes Unclouded By Hate posts. Here is part one…just as I wrote it some years ago:

The rainbow leading to the crock of gold…or something…in the Capital Building

Photo by Cat Mihos

 

In my youth, I was a Liberal of the fiercest sort. I never went so far as declaring myself a communist, because it was clear to me, even at a young age, that communism would not work. However, I was for every other Liberal policy one can imagine.

 

When John and I got together, we had many discussions (and arguments) on economics and politics. John was a Libertarian at the time. I thought this meant, “he did not care about people.” In fact, I would have summed up politics as: Liberals care about people, and other political groups do not.

 

Then, one day – after many, many hours of fierce debate with my future groom – I had an epiphany.  All in a flash, I saw my philosophy in a new way. Up until that time, I thought that politics was a matter of trying to get the government to put in policies that would help people. Suddenly I realized that someone had to decide what these policies would be –  someone had to decide what they thought would help people. Who got to decide this?

 

Implicate in the Liberal mind-frame, I realized, was the idea that we, the elite, decided what they, the masses, needed. 

 

Close on the heels of this realization came three more:

 

1) The entire Liberal mentality was based on the idea that ‘we know better than you.’ (As in ‘we know better than you how you should spend your money, so we’ll make you pay for this with your taxes, instead of giving you a choice.’) Liberals were patronizing.

 

2) While I favored the system that allowed the patronizing elite to decide the fate of the masses, there was no guaranty that my ideas would come out on top. If they did not, then I was one of the masses who did not know better that the other guys to whom the other guys were being patronizing.

 

3) Treating someone in a patronizing manner often curtailed their freedom of choice.

 

Suddenly, I was at an impasse. Patronizing the poor was in conflict with freedom, and I had to chose which side I was going to stand upon. I could believe people were too stupid to take care of themselves or I could trust them and side with freedom.

 

It’s a very scary thing to decide to trust people, especially when the evidence around you suggested that they might not qualify to be trusted. However, I could not knowingly turn my back on freedom.  For I was convinced that to be happy, a person needed wisdom, and to be wise, a person needed the freedom to make mistakes.

 

So, bravely, I chose freedom, turned my back on telling other people how they should live their life, and joined the rank of the Libertarians.

 

John and I lived some happy years as Libertarians – happy for us. Not so happy for the poor souls we harangued. In general the philosophy suited me, for it required you to believe that if you did something you would often get the opposite result from what the general mass of humanity would expect (lower taxes brings higher revenue, for instance.) This fit my model of hoe the universe worked.

 

From time to time, I would balk at some particular idea. Once, uncertain about something, I asked John how he could be so sure. He pointed out that it could be logically deduced, so how could it be wrong? I thought he had a valid point, so I stuck to my guns.

 

After 9/11, John began to slide from Libertarian to Conservative. This really shook me, because I had believed his argument about the logic of it proving it, even when it did not seem to me it would work that way. When he began to temper logic with experience, we began to slide apart, because my experience told me that many of the policies he was leaning toward would not work. So, I began to slide gently back toward where I had started.

 

About the same time, two things happened:

 

A) First, I began to spend more time praying. Watching prayer succeed showed me that your state of mind – or the state of your soul with God – mattered much more in how the thing turned out than what you did. For the first time, I applied this to politics. I thought: If I am right about this, then if there were two Senators, and one prayed sincerely and the other acted out of a selfish or fearful goal, wouldn’t the first one produce a good outcome and the second one a bad outcome – no matter what policy they supported or what party they were a member of?

 

If so, is there any way I can tell a politician’s heart, which ones are acting with God and which are not?

No. There is no way for me to tell.

 

B) The Iraq War loomed, and I discovered that I had two friends, both well-educated and good at research, who stood on different sides of the issues. Curious to learn which side might be right, I shuttled comments back and forth between them….and I learned something I found terribly disturbing.

 

Even right then, at the time – much less looking at history years later –  there were no reliable sources. Each of them quoted sources, the other one discounted. Each of them quoted facts the other one disputed. Finally, it came down to original sources.

 

One afternoon, they began arguing over whether a certain politician had said a certain line. Being thorough, they both sent me a link to a site that had the “original transcript” of a speech…and original source. One site showed that the line was in the speech; the other site did not include the line.

And these were original sources.

 

At that moment, I became convinced that, while it may be true that “The Truth Is Out There,” I was never going to find it. There was too much information on both sides about any topic for me to find out the truth without traveling to examine it on my own, and I did not have the time for that. 

What nearly everyone I know seemed to be doing was not finding the truth, but deciding what they’d like the truth to be and then finding evidence for it.

 

So, I lay down my party affiliation, and I walked away.

 

I walked away from reading the news, from arguing about politics (I still slip and do this occasionally, but it used to be a major pass time,) from aligning myself with a particular party of thinking, from believing anything I read in the papers, from thinking I knew what was going on, and most of all, from thinking that a particular party platform was correct.

 

I still vote. Sometimes, I even have opinions. But nowadays, I decide these matters by praying. If it comes to me that I should do something myself (vote for someone, write a letter, etc.) I do it. If not, I try to refrain from having an opinion.

 

I cannot advice anyone else to take this course. For one thing, you have to have a lot of faith in prayer and not much faith in the world, and that’s not something a person can do by decision…

 

…but I will tell you that since I’ve walked away, my whole view of the world and my fellow polity-members has undergone an astonishing change.

 

End of Part One.   To follow – Politics Part Two: Seeing With Eyes Unclouded With Hate.

 

 

 

Caption This!

Hey all.

I took a few weeks off to pray for my son. Here is the new pic. Best caption wins!