Passionate pursuit, or passionless platitudes?

The path to God’s pleasure in life is not to have less fun and serve more.

The path to God’s pleasure is to follow our Lord into the passions He has given us and use them deliberately to glorify Him and to bring others to meet Him there.

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The above quote was an easy pick: it doesn't quite fit with our preconceptions, does it? Too often, worship and praise fall under the label, "Less fun, more work at things that don't wow me." Platitudes of praise are exactly the opposite of what God wants for us. "We are destined and appointed to live for the praise of God's glory!" Eph. 1: 12. Too bad we don't look/feel/act like it.

The real question that needs to be asked is, "Well, what does wow you?"

And, next, "What are you gonna do about it, to please your Creator?"

Beautifully open-ended, isn't it?

My answers include: I love to read and write and sing. I love to learn, to teach, to preach, and to encourage others. As I pursue these passions, I hope that I am pointing others toward the Giver of these gifts...tell me about the passions that you are pursuing.

In Pursuit.

God wants us to grow and discover...and He accompanies us as we pursue deeper knowledge and understanding of Him and His world and His people.
     --Loyola Press, daily retreats.


"...but we have the mind of Christ." (1 Cor. 2:16.) So what? If we don't hone and use the wisdom that comes from spending time in Christ's presence...I repeat, so what? Making any diff in your life? In anyone else's life?

In growing we discover, and in discovery, we grow. If, that is, our internal compass has us pointing in the right direction. Otherwise, our "discoveries" are weeds in the garden.

Okay, and what is the "right direction"? To me, that which creates order out of chaos and logic out of a heap of facts. And, since we know that this universe is running down like a clock you could only wind up, once...then, the order must be imposed, from the outside. Logic only then emerges from order. Otherwise, we're asking that order magically appears out of disorder, that chaos somehow "learns" to organize itself rather than, like your unattended cupboard, closet or garage--it only tends toward one direction: ever-increasing disarray.

Huh? But, I thought evolution was the way order arose from chaos.

Count me a doubter that blind chance, multiplied by any number of years, would somehow result in complex order emerging from raw ingredients. Nope, disorder breeds disorder. Period. Only way to organize anything complex is for an intellect that is even more complex to be there, supervising the order.

When I write, I am taking the disordered thoughts and observations, the daydreams and experiences, the sounds and the smells and the tastes that I can only imagine, and I endeavor to impose some creative order upon them. The thoughts do not sort themselves into a plot, and the letters do not sort themselves into words.

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Ahhh, that reminds me of a story.

   The story is true, and, delightfully, involves monkeys and typewriters. Okay, more accurately, macaques and word-processors.
   A researcher decided to actually put to the test that assertion that if you put enough monkeys in front of enough typewriters over enough time, eventually Shakespearean plays would emerge as a product of sufficient randomness over time.

   First, the researcher had to stop the monkeys from destroying the machines with rocks.

   Then, he had to stop the chimps from urinating and defecating on the machines. After eventually training the primates to not destroy the machines, their marvelous output, not unpredictably, looked like this:

q]0ijknqmg vcsz-]j[kpnoqdgasv xz]ipjknqdwafsj'nqdfwk-a;sfnmqrt-]khqdg'jlqt2g2a4gd
jnq3reli4q3-o83iughoafdbn[j{)HIPO*UIE
")FPv
1\FjhÓ14RIT

   But, later, the chimps had a breakthrough, and were quite taken, nearly mesmerized, in fact, by pages and pages of:
    eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Um, so much for order emerging from disorder...the experiment was halted.

Isn't it funny--one assumes monkeys would only type characters, and that randomness would only involve letters and words and not rocks and urine and feces. You see, true randomness is not at all predictable or orderly or productive...and that is why I believe that the order we see in our universe is derived from an Organizer. Indeed, a Creator.


[For more info on monkeys and typing, try page 190 and a few pp before and after in this ref in Google books.--DS]

How Do I Look?

Survey everything with "beginner's eyes," as experience may numb and blind.
--Nikki Heat.

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A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
---Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.


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Sometimes I start writing just by sitting down and starting.
     I poke and prod at my idea from one angle,
         then mentally stand up,
             move around,
and poke and prod and ask the same questions,
    then any different questions that the same questions just provoked.

Sometimes, after looking at things from several angles, the overlapping of my views is rather high...which may mean I'm encountering a good idea and need to run with it.

But, that may mean that my thinking is very narrow and I'm just attacking the problem with the same set of tools and expectations from a two-foot different starting point in what will turn out to be a marathon!

But, if my overlap is really minimal...then, there are probably several more good ideas or answers lurking out there, so I go back and mount another assault, starting again with a clean page and pretending I'm somebody else, say, some European great-aunt to whom all my dithering and doodling is profoundly a) interesting b) stupid c) completely off-target d) el bajar y subir de las ondas del mar que le hacen mareada.

Some questions only have one right answer--when tumbled to, all other answers pale into varying degrees of half-truths and out-right errors. Here lies the issue--what if the question doesn't have just one right answer? What if one singer sings a song fast and loud and the second vocalist is soft, slow, and compelling--is one "wrong" and the other "right"? Perhaps it's like a math problem with multiple variables (what did those kind of problems ever do to you to make you hate then so?)--there are sets of answers that are all "correct."

And so, stumbling forward, I look and listen. I look again. Later, I muse, I ponder, I write, edit, and re-edit. Then, all of us, work in hand (and as works in progress), we come together, merging our ideas, discovering harmony at sufficient points of overlap that the music of life emerges.

Don't be childish? But what is the alternative?

It took me four years to learn to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.
--Pablo Picasso.

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How true of many good things in life! We adults forget how to play like a child, nap like a baby, run/dance/sing with abandon, or...wait a minute. If it took Picasso that long to LEARN, didn't he have to work hard at learning for a very long time? Or, work at un-learning his bad habits, his hang-ups, his not-merely-unproductive but anti-productive self-criticism?

Gee, I think of writing as a craft that needs to be studied, learned, and honed like a fine knife that naturally loses some edge with normal use; I guess there's another side, a learned freedom to do "Gonzo writing," as the (nut-case?) writer Hunter Thompson did...no limits, less worry about the facts than the feelings--ahh, that brings things full circle to Picasso. Pablo Picasso didn't paint what he "saw," literally (I hope!) but he painted what he was trying to see, or, perhaps even more accurately, what he wanted you and me to see...and feel...and understand.

The painters whom I've long regarded as rather, ahem, dippy, to put it politely...are trying to make their audience see things from a different perspective: thus Picasso's cubism is a way of looking at life through more than one lens. But was it all "gonzo" for Picasso? One of his contemporaries said, "Picasso studies an object the way a surgeon dissects a corpse." (Apollinaire.) So, intense studiousness, but also intensely and intentionally breaking out of the customary ways of...painting, seeing, and doing.

Some writers (whom I deplore) are trying to do the same thing as the modernist painters...so, I'll keep reading widely and endeavor to keep my eyes, ears, and mind a bit more open to new ways of looking at things. I may even try to write a little more crazily--eek! And, start more sentences with "and" and end more a preposition with!

I'm selling...is anyone buying?

Selling it.

"A politician should have three hats:

--one for throwing in the ring;

--one for talking through;

--one for pulling rabbits out of, if elected." (Pulitzer Poet, Carl Sandburg.)

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"A writer should have three hats:

--one for creativity

--one for craftsmanship

--one for salesmanship." (David Smith, writer.)


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   Creativity: I cannot speak for most writers...but the creativity thing is usually not my problem. Focusing, fleshing out, persevering in the pursuit of the creative vision...ach, there's the rub!

   Craftmanship: hmm, this involves not only quality of craft but quantity...gotta have enough output to be visible, sellable, and intriguing. Whether it's writing or cooking, attention to detail and expertise, applied consistently and persistently--that is craftsmanship.

   Salesmanship: interesting thought...I discovered that a lot of what I did as a family doc was truly salesmanship! Not the oily used-car-salesman stereotype, but the friendly salesman who has an outstanding product and wants you to fully understand how wonderful it is--you'll want to buy once you're aware of the life-changing value of the product! If I didn't adequately sell my expertise in diagnostics and therapeutics, it wouldn't make any diff--the patient wasn't buying. My job was to change lives, true, but getting my "clients" to really buy into my ideas, my plans, to embrace them as their own--now THAT was my job as salesman. (And, as a teacher of young docs...I had to sell to them, too. Too much of passes for "education" is  equivalent to laying a stack of brochures out, reading them aloud, and thinking that's the end--I've delivered my product. But w/o getting my students to actually "buy" into my product...the brochures are just gonna sit there in the lecture room.)

   Met any true salespeople lately? Tell me about it.