Jan Dunlap's Blog, page 3

Beyond the fence

Deer often visit our yard.

“You’ve got to come see this,” my husband called to me from around the corner of the house one morning. I followed his voice and found him pointing at our front yard fence. A large section, newly installed, had been pushed in overnight. But before I could express my dismay, my eyes wandered beyond the fence…to see the 200-pound Axis deer that lay dead between the fence and the road. Clearly a victim of a speeding car on a very dark night, the buck had apparently been fatally hit and knocked into our fence, where it had left a large, lasting impression.

Later, as I reflected on my first glance at the scene, it struck me that despite the deer’s size and its proximity to our fence, the big animal was not the first thing I’d noted – instead, I had focused on our damaged fence. Rather than immediately looking at the bigger picture, I’d zoomed in on what I expected to see: our fence. My mind had automatically narrowed onto the familiar.

Look for the big picture

I suspect that is a very human response – to focus on what is known, to see what is expected. Yet Christ repeatedly exhorts us to welcome the unexpected, to look for the big picture, to stretch beyond our fears in a complete trust in God. “But I tell you,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:44, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Could any instruction have been more unwelcome than this to the oppressed Jewish community of Jesus’s time? But by obeying this command, “you may be children of your Father in heaven,” Jesus explains in the following verse.

In other words, when we try to see the big picture that God sees, and do as He directs, we become most fully His own people.

Push beyond the familiar

Perhaps the most famous example of someone being pushed beyond the familiar into the bigger picture of life in God is St. Paul. Fanatically focused on persecuting Christians, he was literally knocked off his horse and blinded by the light of Christ. (Read about it in Acts 9.) When he regained his sight after his conversion of heart, mind, and spirit, his vision of his own life and the life of the early Church grew into the big picture of God’s plan for salvation through Christ. His former narrow focus on wiping out Christ’s followers totally transformed into an all-encompassing attention to advancing the Kingdom of God. Now, that’s seeing WAY beyond the fence of the familiar, wouldn’t you say?

Lord, help me to see the bigger picture of your will in my life and learn to welcome the unexpected in faith. Amen.

(This reflection originally appeared at https://wichitafalls.faithhappenings.com/soulcare/devotional/60632. I often contribute devotionals to FaithHappenings.com and if you like what you’ve read here, please check out the site online. It’s a clearinghouse of Christian inspiration, books, speakers, events, concerts that offers you local information across the US, and you can subscribe – it’s FREE – to receive daily reflections.)

 

 

 

 

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Regrets of an author

A decade ago – before my first novel was published – I read about the promotional events of established authors with more than a touch of envy. For a while, it seemed like every best-selling novelist was going on a Caribbean cruise with their most devoted readers, with the author’s expenses paid by the cruise lines. Other famous writers were paid to host ski weekends at glamorous resorts, or welcomed their fans to a luxurious spa vacation. I even heard about a relatively unknown novelist who got paid by a tour company to spend a week touring Ireland with her readers.

Erin Go Bragh.

One of these days, I used to assure myself, I will be published, and the requests to accompany readers to exotic destinations will come pouring in. Hawaii would be nice. Or Tahiti. I’d even consider a cruise down the Nile or a trip to Australia’s Outback.

 

When dreams come true…

And then in 2008, North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc. published my first Birder Murder Mystery, The Boreal Owl Murder.  Lo and behold, within six months, I did indeed receive my first invitation to go on a cruise as a guest author.

To the Arctic.

In January.

Very funny, I thought. One of my friends had clearly set up the invitation as a joke. After all, I lived in Minnesota at that point – any time I wanted to experience bone-biting cold in January, all I had to do was walk to my mailbox at the end of our driveway.

Two weeks later, I had an email from my publisher. They’d received an inquiry from a Norwegian tour company asking to verify my email address because they hadn’t heard back from me about their Arctic trip invitation.

It wasn’t a joke. I was invited to go on an adventure cruise to the Arctic in January. Sub-zero temperatures, rubber rafts, and stormy seas. Probably icebergs and polar bears, too. Maybe even killer whales.

Fortunately – I mean, unfortunately – I couldn’t make the trip because I had a previous commitment…to survival. I passed on the Arctic cruise.

 

Maybe I should have given it a bit more consideration

Now it’s years later, and I’m more experienced as an author. Book events and speaking gigs are a way of life when I’m promoting a new book. No one has yet offered to give me a free vacation in return for my hosting readers at a secluded tropical location, but I can still hope. In retrospect, I realize I probably should have gone on that Arctic cruise to connect with new readers. I can handle a little cold.

Of course, it’s also August, and I now live in Texas, where I’m sweltering in 100-degree heat. Icebergs don’t sound all that bad.

Maybe the email address for the Norwegian tour company is still somewhere in my files…

 

 

 

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Is death your greatest fear?

Not to be morbid, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about death. (Yes, it’s very hot and dry right now in central Texas, but I’m not finding skeletal remains in the front yard – yet – so my ruminations about death cannot be connected to the weather.)

I’m reading a book, and it asks the question: “What is your greatest fear?” Not surprisingly, death ranks as the second greatest fear for most people; speaking in public snares the Number One spot on the list, according to the author.

(Not for me – I love speaking in public. From the first time I gave a humorous reading at a ladies’ luncheon when I was in high school, I’ve been addicted to making people laugh; getting chuckles from an audience gives me a rush of power that is second only to successfully parking parallel.)

Fascination with life after death

When I try to pin down my greatest fear, though, it’s not death, either. Call me a fatalist, but I have always believed that when my number is up…well, it’s up. I’ve never doubted that I’m going to heaven to be with God, and I know it’s going to be wonder-full. So why would I fear death?

According to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, I’m not alone. In their study, 72% of Americans believe in an afterlife, and that number includes ‘non-religious’ respondents, among whom 37% say they believe in the existence of heaven, a place where they are rewarded for living a good life. Interest in an afterlife has also fueled phenomenal sales for books and memoirs about near-death or after-death experiences and led to popular TV series and scientific research projects. My own conversations with my sons about my Christian faith and the intersections of science with the supernatural/spiritual was the seed that eventually resulted in my thriller Heaven’s Gate (which, by the way, has now been nominated for a 2017 Christy Award in the suspense category! Have you read it yet?).

Where are all the do-gooders hiding?

So, here’s my question: Given all the attention that heaven receives in our culture and a wide-spread profession of believing in it, why aren’t more people making a concerted effort to get there? In other words, if you believe heaven is a reward for doing good, why aren’t more people actively seeking to do good?

I think the answer, in part, is because ‘doing good’ doesn’t make sensational headlines. ‘Doing good’ is often a quiet, secret thing. Contributing to a community in positive ways is such a way-of-life for so many people, that they don’t consider it anything special, when in fact, it really is. I know that when I consciously look for good, I see it happening everywhere, so, whether or not the media reports it or our culture celebrates it, I think there are tons of people doing good because they believe in heaven. Like I do. And when I let the reality of heaven influence my daily behavior, I act differently. I work at being more generous, kinder, more grateful.

So why would I fear death? In my mind, in my heart, I believe that death will be the door to the Kingdom made perfect that I will inhabit forever. My audiences will always laugh. My parallel parking will be effortless. What’s not to like?

Do you believe, every day, in heaven?

 

 

 

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Awe-full at the Houston Space Center

Not something you see every day in the parking lot: a 747 with a space shuttle on its back. Talk about a traffic-stopper.

Next stop: Mars!

My husband and I visited the Space Center in Houston this week, and it renewed my wonder and respect for everything NASA has accomplished since its inception. To be able to touch a rock that came from the moon, and appreciate even half of what that represents in human effort, imagination, and sheer guts, is an awe-full experience! One of the exhibits we especially liked modeled the surface of Mars and reviewed NASA’s projects that are aimed at putting humans on the planet. After seeing the exhibit, it’s clear that the movie The Martian borrowed extensively from accurate information collected by NASA scientists. The idea that I might live to see a person on Mars is mind-blowing…and reinforces everything I’ve ever believed about the incredible power of imagination to create new realities.

Brave hearts

Touring the Space Center in Houston also reminded me of the intrepid nature of humankind. When you see a Mercury capsule up-close, how can you NOT marvel at the risk astronauts take when they launch into space? My husband, stunned by the fragility of the Mercury capsule on display, said that early space travel was akin to sending someone into space in a tin can. What were we thinking?! When you examine the capsule, it’s terrifyingly evident that mere inches separated a person from the enormity of outer space. Not to mention those first astronauts who walked out of their capsules into the infinite darkness…just trying to think of that experience rocks me to the core! How much trust would that require in the humans who enabled you to do it? How much faith in yourself, and in God? Another movie I’ve watched comes to mind: Gravity. In that film, I caught a glimpse of what it might mean to experience total aloneness, floating in space, with only the bare resources of mind, body, and spirit at hand. The concept still sends shivers down my spine.

Touching the stars…or the moon, at least

In a similar way, I went speechless when I saw the Apollo module on display. It had actually traveled in space, to the moon and back, its skin beaten by cosmic radiation and the raw forces of nature. As a life-long astronomy fan, I’ve always been fascinated by the stars, the limitless frontiers of the universe, so to stand next to something that had physically entered those reaches of space was a humbling moment for me. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t resist the exhibit’s invitation to touch a tiny sliver of rock from the moon – it, too, had been somewhere I could only imagine. In a way, it felt like touching a dream, but one that has become very real. I have no intention of ever walking on the moon or Mars, but knowing that it has been – and will be – done, expands my own horizons, as well as the world’s.

Because I spend a lot of time outdoors, enjoying and appreciating the natural world, I don’t often think of human accomplishment as something of awe. NASA’s Space Center changed that for me. When I look at the star-studded skies tonight, I’ll be giving thanks not only to God for a magnificent creation, but for the amazing character of good women and men who have led us to explore and claim that creation more deeply.

 

 

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Get the Batmobile ready, Alfred…

“We need some bat houses,” I told my husband one evening after spending a few hours in the backyard donating blood to hungry mosquitoes. “I’ve never been crazy about bats, but if they could make our yard habitable for humans in the evening again, I’m willing to roll out a welcome mat.”

A few days later, we found exactly what we needed at a nature store in a nearby town: wooden bat boxes.

“This one will accommodate up to 150 bats,” the store’s owner informed us, holding up one from her inventory. Then she picked up another. “And this one will house 300.”

I looked at the relatively small boxes, no more than about five inches deep and eighteen inches high. I imagined hundreds of little bats stuffed in the box, ready to swoop out and devour mosquitoes.

“Let’s get these two boxes to start,” I said to my husband. “I need to work into this whole bat landlord concept before we host a colony of thousands, however. Four hundred and fifty? I can do that.”

“And you need guano to attract the bats,” the helpful woman added. “It comes with the houses.”

I gave her a look of disbelief, not to mention disgust. “You’re going to give us guano?” I tried to figure out how we would be able to breathe in the car on the way home.

“It comes in dry packs,” she said. “You just add water.”

Okay then, I thought. We could do this, even though somehow, I’d just never imagined myself paying for bat sh….guano. But I’ve been working at expanding my horizons since we moved to the Texas Hill Country to live closer to nature. Rehydrating guano was simply going to be another new experience.

Imagine that.

Or not.

“The guano is free,” the store owner assured us with a big smile as she rang up our purchase.

Good to know. I was not going to have to pay for dried bat excrement after all. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, that didn’t especially make me any more excited about the prospect of reconstituting and actually applying the stuff.

A few days later, my husband nailed the bat houses into place among our trees and (may God bless him richly all the days of his life!) prepared and spread the guano on the little roofs. So far, I haven’t actually seen any bats enter or exit our houses, but our neighbor has observed bats flying around our yard, so I’m optimistic that we’re on the bats’ radar now, and that by next mosquito season, we’ll have our own squadron of airborne vigilantes.

Which leaves only one thing missing in our newly-friendly bat yard: the bat signal.

I’m checking online for it now…

 

 

 

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A thought for you

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Welcome to my new website!

Nine years ago, my first Bob White Birder Murder Mystery was published, launching me as an author – a dream I’d had since I was five years old and first stepped into a public library. I was astounded at the sheer volume of books on racks and decided right then I wanted my name on a book’s spine in a library. It took me another 48 years to get there…

Since then, I’ve written six more Birder Murders, an international best-selling memoir, Saved by Gracie, about how our dog helped me overcome anxiety, and the first two books in my supernatural Christian thriller series, titled Archangels. Along the way, I’ve blogged on my own website, guest-blogged for many others, and contributed devotionals to FaithHappenings.com for their subscribers.

In the last two years, I’ve also experienced a major life change: my husband retired from his career in high tech in Minnesota, and we moved to the Hill Country in Texas. Life is different here in many ways, and I find it is changing me, as well, so I decided it was time to revamp my website to better reflect who I am now as an author. It’s pretty simple, really, because what I want to do with my life is:

Laugh.

Live in awe.

Practice gratitude.

Love God.

In the months ahead, I hope to blog on a regular basis about those four topics. Sometimes I’ll tell funny stories, and sometimes I’ll offer more serious reflection. As always, I hope to entertain you, my reader, and share with you the wonder and mystery of life. To that end, I’m even going to throw in photos for laughs, for inspiration, for sheer beauty. If you like what you read and see, please subscribe to the blog by clicking on the RSS feed on the right side of the page. If you really like it, please share and invite others to visit this website. Thanks!

 

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Facts behind the Fiction

I love doing research.
When I was in high school, one of my favorite assignments was writing research papers; all through college, I wondered how I could make a living out of weaving together facts to form intriguing narratives. I gave journalism a try, but it didn't satisfy my creative leanings: straight facts got a bit too dull.
Then I discovered writing fiction, and while I'm still not making a living out of it, every book I write involves extensive research. The creative task of pulling it all together - blending fact and fiction so seamlessly that my reader isn't sure where the fact ends and the fiction begins - is both why I write and my greatest creative satisfaction in writing.
Since my newest thriller, Archangels Book I: Heaven's Gate, draws heavily on cutting edge science, literary theory, and psychic ability, I thought it would be fun to clue readers into the fascinating facts that helped inspire the fiction.
1. The Unified Field Theory, or Theory of Everything (TOE), has been the quest of theoretical physicists for decades. As a single mathematical formula, it would explain how the physical universe ultimately worked, from the smallest subatomic particles to the inconceivably massive galaxies of the universe. String Theory is one contender for the TOE; it rests on the idea that the tiniest bits inside atoms can best be described as vibrating strings of energy, not particles. String Theory also predicts the existence of alternate universes.
2. Stephen Hawking, one of the most celebrated theoretical physicists alive today, once suggested that his work was driven by “the desire to know the mind of God.”
3. Albert Einstein devoted the last two decades of his life to formulating the Unified Field Theory. He became increasingly reclusive, focusing only on his quest for unification. He began to speak in philosophic terms, talking about his “cosmic religion,” the “big picture” and the “perfect harmony of the universe.” Many of his colleagues began to avoid him, afraid he was losing his mind.
4. Kirlian photography is a photographic technique that documents electrical discharge from an object subjected to a high voltage electrical field. The print that is generated by the process displays colored waves of energy frequently referred to as an aura. Kirlian photos are often used in alternative medicine research.
5. In 1995, at the String Theory conference at the University of Southern California, Ed Witten, one of the world’s greatest physicists, introduced M Theory, a new slant on String Theory. M Theory solves many of the problems that are inherent in String Theory; as a result, its discovery has launched theoretical physicists into new areas of inquiry.
6. Susy Smith was a medium, psychic researcher, and author who joined Dr. Gary Schwartz in his lab at the University of Arizona as he conducted research into the afterlife. Her role in the research is recounted in Schwartz’s book “The Afterlife Experiments.” Prior to her death in 2001, Susy set up a secret code and a $10,000 reward for the first person who successfully received the code which she would attempt to communicate after her death. To date, no one has broken the code and the money remains unclaimed.
7. Invented by Erno Rubik, the Rubik’s Cube is the world’s best-selling toy. Rubik, a professor of architecture in Budapest, used the Cube to teach his students about spatial relationships. According to the official toy website, there are 42 quintillion possibilities of arranging the 26 squares that make up the Cube, but only one correct solution (which you can find on the website if you get tired of trying to solve the Cube on your own).
8. In the 1970s, literary critic Jean-Francois Lyotard developed his Grand Narrative concept, claiming that all thought and meaning was relative and narrational, a ‘story’ about the social nature of the world that was dependent upon the story-teller’s agenda. As a result, the story-teller chooses what will be revealed and what is hidden. By manipulating information, the story-teller (be it a corporation or a political pundit) effectively creates ‘reality’ and controls what people think, since they only have access to what the story-teller wants to provide. In light of this model, information is power, and truth is malleable. (Being an election year, I find the Grand Narrative concept to be especially chilling given the antics of biased news outlets. Does the media control what we think? I don't think there's any question about it.)
9. Some of history’s most talented scientists have been Christian ministers and priests. Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest who was ordered silent by Rome because his work dealt with the evolutionary sequence of the universe. Since his research conflicted with the official Church stance on creation, he was exiled to China, where he focused on paleontology fieldwork. His scientific and religious works have since been published and are still very influential; some people even credit him with prefiguring global communications and the Internet because of his insistence on an emerging global consciousness. You can find priests and ministers among the roster of scientists in almost every discipline - the idea that science and faith are mutually exclusive is, I think, hogwash.
10. Psychics have helped police locate missing children. Noreen Renier, one such psychic, lectured at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia in 1981, although her work with police detectives was considered controversial. Since then, she has become a well-known psychic detective who has worked on over 500 unsolved cases with city, county, and state law enforcement agencies in 38 states of the U.S. and six foreign countries.
You know that old saying that "Truth is stranger than fiction"? Now, THAT I believe.Heaven's Gate

Can you spell 'idiot'?

Sometimes, I think I’m an idiot.

But sometimes, I KNOW I am.

Like today. I take two dogs for a walk – a 70-lb seven-year-old Gracie and our new 4-month-old puppy Michael – and cut through the woods on our way back to shorten the distance because it’s hot and humid. The woods are cooler, and it reduces our walk by about 30 minutes, so it’s a great idea.

Except for the fact that we’ve had a lot of rain recently and the streambed that is normally dry is now filled with a foot of water and it’s too wide to jump across at the point where I’m standing, not to mention that it’s about a six-foot drop from the edge of the woods to the stream bed. So I figure I’ll slowly work my way down, except that the rain has made the six feet of embankment very slippery and muddy, and I’ve got almost 100 pounds of enthusiastic dogs pulling me down towards the water (we LOVE the water, say the dogs!) since I’m trying to be a good citizen and keep my dogs leashed. My feet slide out beneath me, I try to catch my balance, scraping my bare arms on thorny bushes along the way, my rear hits the mud embankment and then I stand up in the crystal clear water of our spring-fed stream. I look down to see my hiking boots are completely submerged and the dogs are lying in the water, lapping it up and splashing with joy.

I thank God I didn’t slip and crack my head open on the limestone bed of the stream. I’m not even carrying my cellphone in case I needed to call for help. I am an idiot. My husband will shake his head in dismay at my stupidity. I think of all the times I accuse him of still thinking he’s eighteen years old when he gets hurt playing tennis or working in the yard, and here I am, acting like Dora the Explorer, who is, after all, a cartoon.

And then I laugh out loud because I’m having…fun! I got to slide down a mudbank and slosh through a stream in boots filled with fresh water and soaked socks. I haven’t done that in about 55 years! Other than some scratches on my arms (which match the scratches on my legs from our puppy’s sharp little teeth), I’m totally okay. In fact, I’m better than okay.

I feel great.

Maybe I should be an idiot more often…Saved by Gracie: How a Rough-And-Tumble Rescue Dog Dragged Me Back to Health, Happiness, and God