May is Halfway Over

These are Desert Marigolds. They are common desert flowers. Most all the desert flowers are yellow because yellow is easiest for the bees and other insects to see so they can come and pollinate things. Yellow also goes splendidly with our blue skies and purple mountains!

Alas, spring is very nearly over now. Today it was 96 degrees according to my car thermometer. It was still 90 when we took Quigley for his walk at 6:30pm (three miles round the park now).

This has been a crazy month. Mother's day, the death of a friend's mother, a doctor's appointment (that shoots a morning's worth of time to work), a graduation reception, and last night my son's official graduation from the Eller Business College with a Master of Science degree in Management Information Services. Last week he was flown to San Diego to interview for a job, which he decided on Friday to take and will be leaving in about two weeks. On... um... June 1, in fact, which is also my deadline for this book. That cannot be coincidence!

It also means that get togethers we'd have put off until June can't be put off, so we're tending to do whatever comes up now because we know it may be a long time before we can do it again.

We also have an anniversary, a birthday celebration, and I'm on temporary duty watering my mother's yard while she visits my sister in New Mexico. Plus Quigley, who has settled down a great deal, though he's still AWFUL with visitors and still needs some sort of serious outing every day. We alternate between the two mile walk, the three mile walk and an hour or two at the dog park, where he is extremely friendly to all the people and really quite nice, except for the jumping up. They are mostly dog people though, so they aren't too bothered and he's not too intense about it, either.
Anyone who comes to our house for a visit, however, will be assaulted and mauled in his exuberance. He seems to think people enjoy being punched in the stomach by his paws, and also that they like to have their arms held in his mouth. We are having trouble getting through to him that they do not...

As for Enclave... I finished chapter 26 last week, then went back to address 24, which meant I first had to go back to chapters 2 and 5 to put in all the changes I'd decided they needed. That done, I finished 24 and am now about halfway through ch 27, lost in the chaos of all the possible things that could happen, trying to figure out which things will happen, and how they all interelate in terms of cause and effect. It's very fluid. I'm determined not to get all upset when the chaos comes, just take it in stride and wait for it all to settle out.

I am close to the end now, but I still don't know how far, exactly. Things are combining and telescoping in ways I hadn't anticipated, so what had a week ago looked like chapters and chapters worth of material, doesn't look like quite so much now. And it IS only a first draft!

Have a great week
Karen

Flies, Flyswatters and Flying

I started chapter 26 today, and here's the nonstop I wrote (slightly edited) about 2:19pm trying to get myself jumpstarted:

Okay, here goes. I’ve been dinking around, doing everything but writing. I’ve been... I don’t even know what I’ve been doing. Fooling with Quigley. Looking up reviews of Charlie Wilson’s War. Because I thought it was lame and wanted to know if someone else did too. Apparently not. All the reviews I found were very positive.

So. I ate lunch. And I don’t know what else. Frittered. Oh, I wrote in my journal. Killed flies. Melted the flyswatter. Got the snail mail.

So. (Again.) Here I am. I’ve at least been thinking about ch 26. Oh yeah, and the cover for The Enclave they’re working on at BHP has come through. I don't know what I think about it, yet, except that it features the top of a woman's face and Cam is turning out to be the stronger, more central character of my male/female pov's. Even though Lacey starts the story.

So... (for the third time.) "So" is some kind of conjunction, isn’t it? A summarizing? A leading to? Well, I can see that even here nonstopping I’m going to just ditz and be blank and accomplish absolutely nothing. I thought earlier that maybe it would be better to try to work through editing chapters that I’ve already drafted than to just do what I’ve been doing today. Kill flies... melt the flyswatter -- Oh, and I looked for the source of the flies, too, because there are way too many and I’m convinced something is manufacturing them. Last time this happened, it was a bunch of dog food kibbles that had gotten knocked under the refrigerator. First I had discovered a stream of maggots on a march across the kitchen floor from the fridge to the freezer, then found the dog food kibbles under the latter and in a dark corner, riddled with holes! Gross!

So today I immediately used a flyswatter handle to knock the kibble out from under the fridge. There were only a couple kibbles, but they weren’t riddled with holes. Nor were there any maggots. I think I’ve gotten all the food sources out from under the the refrigerator, and also the freezer, and under the garbage can. I can't think of any other place. So where are all the flies coming from? Oh, and I melted the flyswatter by putting it on a still-hot burner (one of the disadvantages of having a ceramic cooktop stove). Then I had to clean plastic off the burner and cut off the burned parts of the flyswatter's swatter.

So.(Number 4) This is really and truly blither today. Could I at least try to address the subject? Lacey arrives at the party...

And from there things took off. I got on a roll, the timer went off, I ignored it and now, two hours later I have 7 pages of sketch/draft for chapter 26. How about that?

Grace,
Karen

Annual Bassett Hound Olympics

The Annual Bassett Hound Olympics was held in Ocean City New Jersey last month. I thought this video was good for a laugh, or at least a smile. Though I think it's unfair to compare their athletic abilities with other dogs. I mean, their legs are short. Their bodies are almost as long as Quigley's. Their ears are longer. It's not fair to expect them to be able to jump and run when they don't have any legs...

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4750189

I'm not surprised that I might enjoy watching such laid back hounds, sort of a break from the totally unlaid back hound I live with.

We took Quig to the dog park tonight. He was going nuts in the yard and car. Had earlier been fighting with his big Milk Bone can, digging random holes and eating the bermuda grass roots (Bear used to eat the grass; Quigley digs it up and eats the roots. How weird is that?) So he gets in the dog park and instead of running madly around like the little Weimaraner who's only a month younger, he trots from person to person (jumping on them happily), and spends a lot of time in contemplative sniffing. C'mon, Quigley! We brought you here to romp, not sniff. Admittedly at home he can't smell the smells he's smelling there, but still... He really likes all the people, and the people mostly like him.

Finished ch 25 today. More or less.

Karen

What Happens Next

I reached chapter 25 last Friday. Then the weekend came. We had a work party on Saturday afternoon, and then Communion and pot luck on Sunday, so I didn't get much work done either day. But today I got back to work... staring out the window, lying on the couch watching the penguins, trying to figure out What Happens Next.

My agent called me last week, just to touch base. It's been awhile since we've talked and for all he knew I could have suddenly started writing Prairie Romances. I assured him that would not happen.

We talked about my process, and he said I write with outtakes. I just get these snippets of scenes -- a few lines of dialog, an image, a situation -- but I have no idea where they go, or what they have to do with each other. I just sense that they are supposed to be there. It's much more intuitive than logical or linear. Which is not the easiest way to do things. But I like that observation. I've been dealing with my "outtakes" today, writing around the edges of them and slowly but surely they are expanding into something.

Like when a character I thought was somewhere else began to intrude on the sequence I was writing today, and by the end he was the whole point of the scene. He and Cam even had a conversation that took me totally by surprise.

Back to my agent, though. Because we also talked about the next book, and I learned that Bethany House is waiting for me to send them a synopsis. Imagine that! Well, I have a book I already started developing back right after Arena sold, but it's a lot different from what I'm doing now. I'm quite intrigued by it and would love to write it, but maybe I should do something more along the lines of what I'm doing now.

Like I have time to be thinking of that, when all my brain is used up trying to figure out What Happens Next in Enclave. But that's God's problem, not mine. Mine is chapter 25, and I now have almost 12 pages of that written. Only a few places left to figure out before the chapter's done.

Grace,
Karen

Alcore Life Extension

Today I did a bit of research on the Alcore Life Extension Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Scottsdale, AZ (an upscale community near Phoenix) that for 20 some odd years has been freezing bodies in ten foot tall steel tanks. Well, technically "freezing" is not what is done.

First a person must be declared legally dead. At that point the Alcore team moves in, artificially maintaining circulation and respiration to ensure "brain viability" until the "patient" can be cooled safely. Medical personnel (doctors?) attach the patient's large blood vessels to a perfusion machine which slowly replaces the blood with a chemical that will protect the cells and tissues from rupturing as they are cooled over the next four days. At that point they will be submerged in a tank of liquid nitrogen. Technically this is called "vitrification" which is solidification without freezing. Even though the... um... patient will be held at at a temperature of 320 degrees below freezing, they are not considered to be "frozen."

There are two options for those who hope to cheat death at Alcore: whole body patients, which are placed head first into the tanks (in case there is loss of liquid nitrogen from spillage or evaporation -- the head will be the last to be uncovered) and "neuro" patients. These are the, um, heads only.

Yes, in some cases the head is removed from the body and submerged in the liquid nitrogen by itself, on the assumption, I guess, that in time technology will figure out how to grow the rest of the body onto the head. The funny thing is that there is no clear reference to the fact that there are just heads in the tanks on the Alcore page, just this euphemistic "neuro patient".

Going the head only route costs about half as much as the whole body preservation, but at $50,000+ it's still a lot. There are now about 79 patients at the facility in Scottsdale and about 700 others who are signed up as members. Beyond the generally bizarre nature of it all (and my need for technical details for a scene I was writing), what I found interesting was the exercise in faith here. Faith in technology. Hope that this will give the people a second chance at life. In fact, one couple took out memberships not only for themselves but for their three young children. The oldest girl when asked if she wanted to be "frozen" said yes. It was better to "have a chance" than to have no chance at all.

I would guess these folks do not know Jesus as their savior. It's a bit astonishing to contemplate how vastly different my viewpoint is from someone who would go to Alcore. And I feel bad for them. No one has ever been defrosted. Alcore's chief administrative executive admitted they wouldn't be pulling anyone out of the tanks until they could cure the diseases that had killed them (to say nothing of the problem of regenerating the lost bodies on those "neuro patients").

Many in the medical field think there is no chance whatsoever of bringing people out of the deep freeze and back from the dead. It's purely a speculative technology, which is technobabble for "faith" -- faith in man's technology instead of God's omniscience and omnipotence and love and grace and mercy and provision... Faith that somehow someone is going to figure out how to fix everything still wrong with this whole system, and when they do, that the person's soul is going to still be there, having hung around for in some cases, 20 years. Or maybe they don't believe in a soul. But whatever --even if it all works, they'd still be in the same old fallen bodies, riddled with the sin nature. But they probably don't believe in any of that either.

Personally, I am looking forward to the new vastly upgraded model of human body to be distributed at the Resurrection. So upgraded it's not even the same species. I'm especially looking forward to it as I begin to age. :-)

Anyway, that research gave me a lot of stuff for my scene and I'm calling Ch 23 done. I have three scenes I'm considering next. What order should they be done in, and should they all even be done? One in particular I'm thinking of scrapping. Another is very vague -- I have no idea what is going to happen in it, which makes it hard to decide what order it should come in.

But that's for tomorrow.

Karen

A Picture of Me Working

A really cool thing happened today. It was Monday. The Monday after one of my husband's three day weekends, and those Mondays are always low production days for me. So I was doing my usual dinking around, going from thing to thing, unable to focus or concentrate on anything much, even as the voices of doom murmured at the back of my mind that the deadline was drawing nearer and I should be working, certainly much harder and for more hours than I was. In fact, I hadn't worked all morning, when I had ample opportunity.

Finally sometime around noon I persuaded myself it was time to really put my mind to the task of working on the book... and of course, there was the Blankness again. My familiar friend. So the first thing I did (the only thing I could think to do) was write a nonstop that ended up being a combination whine and prayer. Was I out of line for my lack of dedication and devotion to writing? As my calling and service to God, shouldn't I be treating it all more seriously? Shouldn't I just exercise self-discipline and plod on from A to B to C... The self-condemnation started in.

Then I asked myself I was thinking. I was thinking that I wanted some progress, that I was bad because there wasn't any. That if I’d just buckle down and pay attention, put my mind to there problem, there would be progress. But how did that mesh with the concept of resting that I've spent the last three weeks learning about? With waiting for the Lord to provide?

I ended up all confused and frustrated again. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I realized I had a form of how a writer's day should look, but that was someone else's form. Was that consistent with whatever God's form of it would be for me? What does me working on the book look like from God’s point of view? I had no idea. So I asked Him.

About half an hour later I decided to check blogs, and went to Robin McKinley's wondering if she had put up more pictures of her "hellhounds". She hadn't so I went to her website to see if there were some there, and instead I stumbled upon her FAQ's and the question of how many hours a day she spent writing. Her answer? "Two to twelve." Then she elaborated.

And described how I work almost exactly. It's two hours in the beginning when it's so darned hard. When you are "spinning substance out of nothing." When on a good day you know not just the next word but maybe the next sentence or even paragraph. Which is, as I've said before and she reiterated, "an incredibly exhausting process." But once "the book gathers momentum -- and pages and drafts -- I can work on it for longer , because there's more there to work with." Exactly.

Once you have some idea where you're going and how things fit together, those things breed more ideas and more connections and it just takes off. That's when you start putting in the 12 to 14 hour days. I'm just not there yet. So doing 5 pages of virgin draft, which is what I did today, is extremely draining for me and it's okay. It's how it's supposed to be for me. I just need to remember that.

Her discussion, which you can read here if you want (you'll have to scroll down to the second question, although her answer to the first question was very descriptive of my experiences as well), was so exactly what I go through that reading it set me free. I wasn't just being a lazy sloth. This really is a pattern and a way of working. And it occurred to me as I came to the end of it that God had just given me a "picture" of what me working on the book looked like.

And that, too, is very freeing. As for how I'm going to make my deadline if I only write six pages a day... I'm not going there. We're to live one day at a time, and I already know there's a point in the writing of the book when things begin to go faster. But even if not, the end can be rough. This IS a first draft... so, that's for Him to work out. I'm not going to try to decide what the number of tomorrow's pages is today. I'm just going to be thankful for the number that I wrote.

And also for how the scene that was little more than a few lines of dialog transformed itself without warning into something I'm finding very interesting. So. That's cool, too.

Grace,
Karen

Plugging Along

Where has this last week gone?

Well, I thought I had ch 22 in the bag, but turns out I didn't. So last week I spent a good deal of time figuring it all out. I also wrote a lot of ch 23, and reworked a bit of 21. And more or less decided what would happen after ch 23.

Only now those plans are sort of mushy. I had thought I would write a scene where Cam is brought to a security level, but beyond what I just wrote, I seem to have no more ideas on it than that. So I guess I have to sit around and wait to see if there will be any (ideas) or if I should skip this bit and take things up the next night. I'm too tired right now to do any more.

I should probably just go to bed and hope to get good enough sleep I'll have a brain and some ideas to put to work tomorrow.

Grace,
Karen

Chaos to Order

Well, ever since Quigley was released from the cone, able to be put into the back yard, and life has somewhat found its way round to normal, I've actually been able to get some work done on my WIP. Imagine that!

On Thursday I got a late start on account of working in my journal a bit regarding the message we'd heard Wednesday night (still on rest and quite fantastic). I returned to ch 22 and the second main scene of the chapter, for which I'd just laid in a few notes the day before. At that point I had no idea what the purpose of the scene was. The parts I did have were side issues. So I started working and thinking and sorting...

Suddenly an image came into my head that had nothing to do with the scene I was trying to develop in 22, but involved some pods and told me where the black boxes came from. Oooh. Creepy. Cool... I LIKE it.

Now, which of my characters would be the one viewing the image I'd just seen?

One thing led to another and eventually I'd gone back to ch 16 and inserted the scene in Storyline 2, refined an existing scene in the same sequence and in the process added 4 more pages.

Friday I addressed the beginning of ch 21, another part of Storyline 2 that I'd only made notes on but hadn't written. I was overwhelmed by all the ideas that were floating about, and the way that trying to follow any one of them would lead me on very long thought trips that always ended up with me totally lost and confused. So I sat down and decided to try to come up with a very simple sequence of cause and effect using the central idea and/or material I already have, even if it seemed trivial.

I worked all day and ended up with a chapter. Only 7 pages, but I'm trying to keep Storyline 2 shorter, and 7 pages is about right.

Saturday I went back to chapter 22 where, once again, I was trying to figure out what the point of the second scene was. I have a sequence though and tomorrow I plan to pursue it. Who knows where that will lead.

This all fits right in with the lessons on resting. I might have to just put in some quotes from them, because they were so good. In summary it involves staying out of the future, not thinking about the problem, but thinking instead about God, the one who is in control, who knows all the details, who is FOR me, who is the one who will accomplish my work for me, who has promised me rest if only I'll believe Him...

This message is finally beginning to get through to me. I'm not sweating the writing and the blankness and the chaos, just moving along. And if I'm not working at a frenetic desperate pace, but taking a break to, oh, eat a cookie, stare out the window, play with my dog... I think it's okay.

Quigley has been ... wonderful. I'm loving him! I love his red coat. I love the way he moves. He's so sweet and loving now. He will stand there and let you hug him for a long time and no biting. Just licks.

He's still puppy, of course, and right now into swiping things, but it's cuter and funnier than it is disturbing. And we just go to him and ask him, "What are you doing? That (shoe/paper/bottle) is not yours. Give." We might have to repeat "give" a number of times but eventually he complies.

Okay, sometimes he tries to escape by fleeing under the coffee table, but we get him and then he has to "give." I like the way he does respond. I like that we tell him to "give" and he does, rather than forcing us to pry his mouth open and take it. He now knows how to sit, down, stay, shake, come, crawl, "take it," "get in your bed" and walk on a leash. None of those are perfect, and distractions do distract, but things are definitely getting better.

He's also lost all his puppy canines, and his biting is much more under control.

Time for bed.
Karen

All Done

We went to the vet Tuesday for our final, prepaid check up and stitch removal. And that was exactly what happened. The second stitch was removed, the eye was pronounced healed, and though there is a bit of a scar, Dr. Merideth was confident that with time it would thin out and be no problem at all.

Quigley had destroyed his cone Tuesday morning before we left and I had to put the other, smaller one on. I knew there was a reason God gave us two of them. But after the final check, no more cone. Hooray! Hallelujah! Wonderful.

Here's a picture of him without his cone, playing with a stick. I should try to do a video, because he is so funny with the stick. He throws it around and prances about the yard with it in his mouth. If I use it to make the wind chimes sound, then he's REALLY happy to get it.

Since I can now put him in the backyard again, that's what I did. I managed to get about 8 pages written of ch 22. And I got my deadline extended again, to June 1, though I'm hoping to be done before them. But then, I've said that before.

Grace,
Karen

Spring in the Desert

It's spring in the desert. The paper flowers, brittlebush and desert marigolds are blooming. The bees are buzzing. The snakes are out. The birds are nesting and singing. The wind is blowing with temps in the 70s and 80s... and clear blue skies with a bit of cloud for the sunset.

It's been beautiful.

Last Tuesday I took Quigley to the vet with high hopes the stitches would come out of his eye and the cone collar would come off. Alas, though the doctor looked in his eye and pronounced his healing to be much further along than expected -- "It looks GREAT!" -- and did take the cone off, he only took out one of the two stitches that were holding his eyelids together as a bandage. If Quig started to scratch it, then we had to put the cone back on. We could bring him out into the yard, but only if the wind wasn't blowing. (Several people have noted that our windy days started about when this whole thing with Quigley started -- and haven't stopped yet). And if we had him in the yard, someone had to stay with him to be sure that he "didn't get into any trouble." Whatever that means.

But at least he didn't have to wear the cone any more! I took him to a nearby park after our appointment and we walked around. Then I brought him home, put his sleeping crate back together, put the furniture back the way it was before the cone arrived, and called my husband. Two minutes into the conversation I had to hang up because Quigley started to scratch his eye. So I put the cone back on, disassembled the crate, put the furniture back into its cone configuration and sighed a deep sigh. It's 85% healed the doctor said on Tuesday and we don't want to lose that...

So we have continued as before, though with a few modifications. We don't have so many medications to give, and those we do are much reduced. I've stopped being so paranoid about taking him outside. We don't stay a long time but windy or not, he needs to be outside a little. I stopped using the leash when I took him outside into the back yard. I started barricading him in the dining room and removing myself from his presence when I felt the need for separation. I realized that I cannot keep a speck out of his eye, nor do what the doctor said whe should do. It's impossible with the dog that we have. I still can't really leave him alone, so that means I can't go anywhere during the week. And we've had to take lots and lots of walks. To the point that yesterday I got a cramp in my thigh and so have to cut back on the walks!

I also put the dog, his recovery, my actions, and the book into the Lord's hands and with varying degrees of success, left them there. And this last week, somehow through it all I managed to get chapters 19 and 20 written, and today I worked through ch 18. I have two separate storylines going and tomorrow I will continue the one from 18 into chapter 21. I've been asking the Lord if I should email my editor and ask for more time, but He's not given me a definitive answer on that, and since I'm not sure how many more chapters I have... it could be ten, which might actually get done in the time I have left. Or it could be more, which might not, I'll give it a few more days and see how things develop.

Of course, if some new crisis arises then that would change everything but for now... we'll see. We have only one more day of the cone and see the vet again on Tuesday. Maybe this time my hopes will be realized!

Karen

Sunday's Class...

Was on Resting! The Faith-Rest Technique, we call it: where you combine faith with the promises of God and you rest.

I have learned so much from this Quigley affair. The failure to put in the ointment on Friday was really a shock, because I'd been afraid I would fail, had no instructions or idea how to do it and was actively trusting the Lord to help me. When at the end of the fiasco it seemed He'd not helped at all, I was very upset. But then, once I calmed down and started thinking again, I realized I didn't really know if the ointment had gotten into the eye or not. It seemed as if it didn't, but for all I knew maybe some had...

More than that though, was the notion that God is not my personal genie, who hangs around waiting to make everything go smoothly for me when I ask. He gives us whatever we ask according to His will, not according to ours. And maybe it was His will for me to fail in ointment administration.
Well, I know it was, because after the failure I started asking myself why it was SOOO important that I get that ointment in. Did I think that God needed me to do that, because He can't heal the dog's eye without ointment? That's ridiculous. Besides, we're putting the stuff in 4x's a day so it wasn't like there would be no ointment. But that's not the point. The point is that I get caught up in thinking that I HAVE to do something or disaster will ensue.

We just had this really expensive eye surgery on the dog and now the Doctor has prescribed a certain regimen of treatment. I guess I'm just very rule oriented and very authority/obedience oriented, to the point that anyone who comes along claiming to be an "expert" gets my attention and obedience. (Which is why that business with the scientists admitting they were forcing everything to fit their belief in materialism was so important for me)

The doctor said ointment 4xs a day and it has to be that. But the doctor is a man, and God's ways are not man's ways, and God doesn't need us. I know that. But I wasn't applying it. So I failed with the ointment. Big deal. It's Monday, the dog is still alive and his eye looks fine. There was no need at all for me to throw a big fit of self-condemnation and weeping over that failure. IT DIDN'T MATTER.

And after that and Sunday's lesson I think that most of what we fail at in life doesn't matter. Because Sunday's lesson was on grace, and how everything we have is by grace, not works. As we have received eternal life, so we should walk in the Christian life. By grace. Resting. Knowing that everything we need has already been provided. I think we're given things to do so we can learn this.

How many times have you done nothing and God still blesses you? How many people have you seen who work way less than you, yet get paid more? He makes his sun to shine on the good and the bad, his rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The thing is, it really doesn't matter what we do, in the sense of all these activities we pursue. We can't earn one more iota of God's approval than we already have through Christ, and even if we do fail to do something, God's plan would not be thwarted, and no one would lose out. The activities are privileges.

But the idea that what we do doesn't really "matter" is not something the natural mind can readily receive. The idea that God is going to bless us when we do nothing, when we fail, even, doesn't mesh with human viewpoint. It makes no sense. It doesn't seem right. It seems unjust in some way. (yeah, because grace is about the justice of God satisfied by the righteous work of Christ, so He can give that same righteousness to whosoever believes in Him).

Which is why we have to do it by faith. I've been amazed over the last few days how many worldly "shoulds" I get caught up in. How many things HAVE to be done just so. Like today, when Quigley was bouncing off the walls and trying to tear off his collar for the third time since morning, and I had to do something with him to burn off the energy. The only option was a walk. But it was windy. Really windy. I didn't realize it until I was out there and suddenly -- oh, no, this is the very thing we're not to do. Now he's going to get something in his eye... I got all caught up in hurrying through the walk, trying to stay out of the wind, turning away from it ever time it got really fierce... and other silly things. When I should have just rested. Really, we're being asked to do impossible things with this dog, and it all has to be left in God's hands.

Oddly, in spite of everything, the block on ch 19 started breaking up. I wrote 4 pages of new stuff, which, given the fact I was on dog duty, was pretty amazing.

Grace,
Karen

SUPER High Maintenance Quigley

Here is a picture of the speck that was in Quigley's eye. See that tiny black dot at the end of the white arrowhead on the right? That's it. The ballpoint pen (on the left) is there for scale.

Today, Friday, I did about half an hour of very lame editing on some of the material I had in ch 19, Bible class, and almost nothing else. I was pretty much a dog nurse for the entire day. Or maybe the dog nanny.

He's not supposed to get all exercised and rambunctious, but all his chews that we use to calm him down, he can't chew without help because of the Elizabethan collar. So I have to sit with him and hold the chew. Then he can't go outside except to "eliminate". Since we are still working on communication about that issue, I have to take him out a lot, on the leash (which he keeps trying to bite now). Can't just put him out in the yard because we don't want to get anything into the healing eye. Dust, bits of grass, leaves, weeds. Our yard is very interesting for a dog, but not a very good hospital ward.

He's also supposed to have ointment put in his eye every 4 hours. Stu did the 6am one, but my attempt at 11am was a complete disaster. I tried three times, wrestling and fighting to restrain him til I was panting with the effort. And since I couldn't restrain him with one hand and put the ointment in with the other, especially with the collar in the way... it was a disaster, as I said. I know I got the outside of the eye well-covered; unfortunately the ointment was to go in the eye, not outside. Worse, after that, now he's all weird with me.

Well, everything is weird. Our entire routine, all his usual things, are gone. He can't sleep in his crate because of the collar, which is too big. So last night Stu sort of stayed up/slept with him in the living room. He kept trying to take the collar off, insisted on sleeping with Stu on the sofa... and I don't know what else.

It's like all our efforts at training him are also going down the drain.

In between the bathroom trips, holding the chews, and the war over the ointment I tried to figure out other things to distract him from getting all excited about pulling his e-collar off, or fighting with the sleeping bag in his disassembled crate... Like filling the kong toy with treats so he could work them out of it. And take him on short walks in the street, which they said we could do, as long as it wasn't windy.

The eye doctor did say we might have to use sedatives for him, if he's too rambunctious. In his defense, he did sleep for three and a half hours straight this afternoon. And then another half hour a little while after that. And I think he's lying quietly out in the living room right now, but earlier there was nothing quiet about him.

And at the end of the day, we're trying to decide: is his eye more swollen than it was or isn't it?

Karen

PS. We see the doctor on Tuesday morning when hopefully he will take out the stitches and say we can quit with the e-collar.

Post Surgery

We're done. The surgery went well and here is Quigley in his e-collar, with his left eye sewn shut to serve as bandage. It's even harder for him to deal with than it was for Bear, because Quig can only see out of one eye right now. We see the doctor again next Tuesday

Quigley's Splinter in the Eye

Well, today I had planned on reporting my progress with The Enclave : I spent an hour and half working on the last scene in ch 19 (or the first in ch 20 -- I haven't decided yet.) Around and after that I spent the day dealing with the latest Quigley crisis, and so that's what I'll report on.

When I took him out of the crate this morning, his left eye was squinting . So I called the vet and she said he wouldn't be doing that if it didn't hurt and there was probably something in it. So I went and put the crate into the car, and at 1:45 left to travel 20 minutes across town to the vet.

Turns out he did have something stuck in his eye, poking into the cornea.

They had to sedate him (which hadn't had any effect they said, but I could see it when they brought him back) to stain the eye and flush it out and see if she could brush off the object (hey, it's another foreign body somewhere it shouldn't be! And this time there really is one). The problem was, she didn't have the equipment to see it well enough to determine what it was and if it went all the way through the cornea, in which case surgery would be needed. So she referred us to an ophthalmic specialist across town.

After something like a 40 minute drive, we arrived, and Quigley was really feeling that sedation by then. Slept in the crate, drooled all over the place, didn't want to get out of the crate -- I had to pull him and his bedding out to get a hold of him and lift him out of the crate and then the car...

The specialist looked at his eye with his instruments and immediately determined that the foreign body had probably been in his eye a few days, that it was a strange bit of plant matter that he'd seen a few times in other dogs around this time of year, but he still doesn't know what it is. It had worked its way halfway through the cornea, which meant it would not be easily removed, and he'd have to fill in the hole. With Quigley under anesthesia, he would remove the object and then either fill the hole with medical superglue, or have to do a graft of tissue from the conjunctiva, which is what covers the white of the eye. He was hoping for the superglue, but if the cornea beneath the foreign body was mushy, he'd had to use the graft. Which would be a lot more expensive.

Regardless of which, it's still wildly expensive. Also, there are only two docs in town who do this. Our doctor was leaving for LA on a 6am flight to do surgeries over there, and the other one had a full schedule tomorrow, so our doc is doing it as I write this. I left Quigley there about 5 as they were taking him to surgery, and came home. When he's out they'll call us and we'll go back and pick him up. Probably around 7. Thankfully, it won't be as long a drive as it was from the vet's office.

Then there will be the recuperative care. I'm guessing there'll be a cone involved, but beyond that... who knows?

The workers at the vet's office kept talking about how weird this is, and how could this happen and... I'm almost laughing. Wearily, but laughing, none the less. Of COURSE it would be weird. And now that I have a dog back in the picture, he can take the book-deadline hits instead of me. Even though I take them, too, when he gets hit.

But it was so weird today, so familiar, to be trying to concentrate on the book and yet my mind distracted by the whole health issue. At least we know what it is, now and have begun to treat it.

Oh well. God's gonna have to deal with it, like He's been dealing with everything else. And I have to remind myself that He is for me, that He has a plan and it doesn't necessarily line up with mine. In fact, more and more, I KNOW that it doesn't line up with mine at all, and I am almost at the point of saying, "Plan? You want me to plan? Why in the world would I do that?"

A Priori Bias

One last quote from Richard Lewontin in his review of Carl Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World. (see last two blog posts) This section comes at the end his discussion on the problems science has when it comes up against the common sense of the general public, who cannot on their own "retrace the intellectual paths that lead to scientific conclusions about nature," (such as the fact that cheese is made of mostly space, and everything living evolved from ancient slime molds in a muddy soup) and must therefore take what the "experts" say on faith. This part just reached out and smacked me between the eyes, for he openly admits to scientific bias against God.

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

And if you cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door, you have just shot yourself in your own foot when it comes to ever perceiving real truth. Particularly when it comes to truth that is outside the bounds of materialism. Like say, the nature of the one who created it all, who is outside of time and space. Who is spirit and who cannot be seen.

And yet, whose "invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made..."

A No-Brainer

Today, more from Richard Lewontin, reviewing Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark in The New York Review of Books.

Sagan's intent in his book is to present science as the only accurate source of "truth", not through analysis, but exhortation. And, "if the exhortation is to succeed," says Lewontin, "then the argument for the superiority of science and its method must be convincing, and not merely convincing, but must accord with its own demands...Unfortunately, the argument may not look as good to the unconvinced as it does to the believer."

"First, we are told [by Sagan] that science 'delivers the goods.' It certainly has, sometimes, but it has often failed when we need it most. Scientists and their professional institutions, partly intoxicated with examples of past successes, partly in order to assure public financial support, make grandiose promises that cannot be kept."

He cites the War on Cancer as an example of one such grandiose promise "which is as yet without a victorious battle." Despite all the money spent, and all the new and great discoveries touted as the long-sought after cure, we still, years later, can do no more than treat the disease.

"Second, it is repeatedly said that science is intolerant of theories without data and assertions without adequate evidence. But no serious student of epistemology [the study of the nature of knowledge, in particular its foundations, scope, and validity] any longer takes the naive view of science as a process of Baconian induction from theoretically unorganized observations. There can be no observations without an immense apparatus of preexisting theory. Before sense experiences become "observations" we need a theoretical question, and what counts as a relevant observation depends upon a theoretical frame into which it is to be placed."

In other words, they are biased. They have a pre-concieved framework that guides their conclusions. The scientist on the panel who sought to "make the data fit" the conclusion she "knew" was right, was not unusual at all.

Lewontin continues: "Repeatable observations that do not fit into an existing frame have a way of disappearing from view, and the experiments that produced them are not revisited..."

So basically then, he's saying that they throw out the stuff that doesn't fit the notions they are trying to put forth. Rather like the news media, and polititians. Probably other disciplines as well. So much for the noble search for truth.

The standard form for scientific papers is to first state a theoretical question, followed by the description of a proposed experiment to answer it. After that comes a description of the actual observations the experiment produced and finally, a section that discusses those observations and the conclusions they lead to. It is here, says Lewontin, Harvard professor of Zoology and Biology, that "a great deal of energy is often expended rationalizing the failure of the observations to accord entirely with a theory we really like, and in which proposals are made for other experiments that might give more satisfactory results...

"Nor is this a problem unique to biology. The attempts of physicists to explain why their measurements of the effects of relativity did not agree with Einstein's quantitative prediction is a case no doubt well known to Sagan."

Finally, Lewontin addresses the claim that "that there is no place for an argument from authority in science," which is, as I mentioned yesterday, a joke. Though there may be much self-criticism within a particular discipline, "when scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty," admits Lewontin, "they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan?"

So, in the end, for all the claims that science is the "correct material" and "the only begetter of truth," "the unique pathway to a correct understanding of the natural world," it really boils down to faith for most of us. And who will we put our faith in? The word of fallible men, demonstrated far too often to be unreliable, or the infallible, unchanging, eternal word of God?

To me, it's a no-brainer.

Karen

Faith in Science

Last week I did a lot of reading of evolutionist and atheist viewpoints and came away from it rather surprised. We're always being told that science says this, and scientists say that, that their viewpoints are based upon facts, logic and a rigorous application of the scientific method. They are today's seekers of truth, we are told, and their conclusions are the result of rigorous and impartial investigation.

Years ago at a science fiction convention I attended a panel discussion wherein some scientists first expressed a different approach -- "You know how you get hit with an insight," one of them said, "and you just know what the truth is and what the answer to your hypothesis is going to be? Then you have to just make the data fit." I sat there agog. Did she really just say that? That went against everything I had always believed science to be. So strongly did I cling to my belief that science really was an honest endeavor to find the truth of the natural world and its functions, that I chalked the remarks up to one eccentric individual.

Apparently she's not as unusual as I believed.

My reading of last week included Richard Lewontin's review for The New York Review of Books of Carl Sagan's 1996 book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. (Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University, and the author of several books.)

Sagan's book, from what I can tell, is basically a treatise on how people need to think right in order to know the truth. Not surprisingly, I agree! However his idea of "thinking right" and mine are not the same. He is trying to convince people to stop believing in "superstitious nonsense" and accept science as their new god and religion. Of course he doesn't use those words, but almost.

Here are some quotes of Lewontin's review (with my comments):

"First, no one can know and understand everything. Even individual scientists are ignorant about most of the body of scientific knowledge, and it is not simply that biologists do not understand quantum mechanics. If I were to ask my colleagues in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to explain the evolutionary importance of RNA editing in trypanosomes, they would be just as mystified by the question as the typical well-educated reader of this review."

(So then the implication is, we must take it on faith when Scientists assure us that this "proves" evolution)

"Second, to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads we must first get an incorrect view out. People believe a lot of nonsense about the world of phenomena, nonsense that is a consequence of a wrong way of thinking. The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of, for that vast project is, in its entirety, hopeless. Rather, the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth.

"Sagan's argument is straightforward. We exist as material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena are the consequences of physical relations among material entities. The vast majority of us do not have control of the intellectual apparatus needed to explain manifest reality in material terms, so in place of scientific (i.e., correct material) explanations, we substitute demons.

"Most of the chapters of The Demon-Haunted World are taken up with exhortations to the reader to cease whoring after false gods and to accept the scientific method as the unique pathway to a correct understanding of the natural world. To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test."

And yet, in his earlier paragraph, Lewontin said that the vast majority of us lack the knowledge to really understand the specifics of whatever a discipline of science is telling us. Even scientists in other disciplines remain ignorant and must accept the claims of their fellows as fact purely on faith.

Again, he says himself, toward the end of his review:

"Carl Sagan ... has devoted extraordinary energy to bringing science to a mass public. In doing so, he is faced with a contradiction for which there is no clear resolution. On the one hand science is urged on us as a model of rational deduction from publicly verifiable facts, freed from the tyranny of unreasoning authority. On the other hand, given the immense extent, inherent complexity, and counterintuitive nature of scientific knowledge, it is impossible for anyone, including non-specialist scientists, to retrace the intellectual paths that lead to scientific conclusions about nature. In the end we must trust the experts and they, in turn, exploit their authority as experts and their rhetorical skills to secure our attention and our belief in things that we do not really understand.

And they denigrate Christians for having blind faith! Then turn around and say it's okay, so long as you're believing in "science." I don't think I've ever seen so clearly the spiritual aspect of the science belief system. Nor have I seen so clearly that it is indeed a belief system.

Karen

The New Priests of Materialism

To continue my answer to the friend who asked me how I reconciled the natural record with the Biblical account of Creation...

On the one hand, I believe the Bible lays out a timeline in which the creation of the earth precedes the creation of man by an unknown, possibly very long time which could account, to some degree, for the geologic ages science hypothesizes. That's not to say I believe evolution was the mechanism by which the plants and animals have developed. Frankly I think that takes more faith than believing God's word.

My thought, and what I told my friend, is that ultimately it depends on what you are going to make your final authority for truth. Is it going to be the Word of God (rightly divided and taught from the original languages) or will it be the natural record?

Antagonists protest that the word of God was "written by men". I would respectfully submit that the natural record has been observed and recorded by men, as well, the facts that comprise it having been observed, assembled and evaluated by men. If the word of God is not to be trusted or believed because it was "written by men," why should we trust or believe the natural record which has also been written by men?

Furthermore, while the Bible claims to be the word of God communicated through men who were believers filled with the Holy Spirit, the natural record makes no such claim. Yet I am being asked to believe, by faith, that it is true. In fact, I'm being asked to believe a number of things by faith:

1) That all the pertinent data needed to answer the question of where we came from can be gathered by men -- souls in fragile bodies of water with such severe limitations we not only can't leave the planet without dying, we can't even live on the greater part of its surface area. Men who are subject to disease, dementia, aging, etc, limited in their five senses and who live only a century at most, yet presume to make assumptions and draw dogmatic conclusions about events that occurred billennia ago.

2) That all the pertinent data has indeed been gathered.

3) That that data was gathered in accordance with proper technique and scientific method.

4) That man is able to correctly evaluate that data because he has the necessary frame of reference and understanding to do so.

5) That the men who have assembled the information and have evaluated it and come to conclusions, have done so from a totally unbiased desire to know the truth, whatever that may be.

6) And that they have arrived at their conclusions from an honest review of data that is actually there, not just that which they wish was there. Or believe one day will be there.

Even without considering any of the so-called "evidence" this seems like a lot of things to take on faith, especially coming from a discipline that denigrates faith and likes to put forth the deception that everything they say is based on hard fact. Well, even if it is -- and I don't believe so -- much of what they claim "proves" evolution, makes no sense to me. I really don't know what they are talking about, and cannot follow their justifications.

For example, scientists have calculated the precise moment of the Big Bang, we read, down to the very second. This is an event they say occurred BILLIONS of years ago. Common sense resists the claim that because some man manipulated a bunch of numbers, this now "proves" not only that the Big Bang occurred, but when. And how.

The mathematician/physicist may believe the accuracy of his calculations, and others of his discipline may agree, but not being a mathematician or physicist myself, it's all gobbledygook to me. Thus I can only take their word for it. I have to believe, by faith, that they know what they're talking about and that they're right, because I have no ability to determine the soundness and accuracy of their calculations for myself.

Ditto paleontologists' assessments and claims regarding the fossil record. I'm not a paleontologist, so I don't know what the fossil record really has to say. I can only believe that those people who are experts in the matter, have done everything right and are therefore correct.

Which draws a very neat parallel with the insiders of a religion -- eg, the temple priests who served the pagan gods. Or the oracles who would tell people what would happen or what did happen as they supposedly heard from the gods. The people couldn't prove otherwise. They had to take it on faith.

We're in the same position today, only now it's scientists and "experts" who have become the priests of the new religion of materialism. And evolution is a part of that religion. Which many of its proponents freely admit.

Evolution and Creation

A fellow believer called me awhile back, one who also has a degree in the Life Sciences, and asked how I reconciled the natural record of science with the biblical account of Creation.

Let me state my view on the world's origins first. I believe the seven day account in Genesis to be a literal account, not of creation but of the renovation or rehabilitation of the earth. I believe that God the Son created the heavens and the earth in the blink of an eye long before the account that begins in Genesis 1:2. Some call this the Gap "Theory". I don't consider it a theory since it's been demonstrated through scripture quite satisfactorily for me.

My timeline then is that in an instant of time God created the heavens and the earth as stated in Col 1:16. Some time previous to that He had already created the angels, inferred from Job 38 where it says, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth...when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of god shouted for joy?"

The greatest of those angels, Lucifer, son of the dawn, the morning star, was the Lord's right hand man, guardian of the throne of God (Eze 28). He was and is the most beautiful, talented, clever, personable and intelligent creature ever to come from God's hand. That was not enough for him, though, and even though everything he had came from God, even his place above the other angels, arrogance crept into his heart. He wanted more. He wanted to take God's place, says Isaiah 14:12. He started a revolt and the scriptures indicate that he persuaded not just a third of the angels but all of them, to follow him.

There was a big battle, God won and offered a form of salvation to them all. Two thirds of them came back. (Jesus is said in Rev 4 to be the only holy one in heaven. If any of the angels hadn't fallen, wouldn't they be holy, too?) Those who refused were tried for their rebellion, found guilty and sentenced to the Lake of Fire. (Mt 25:41)

At that point Satan appealed his sentence and God fixed the ruined earth as a place for his new but lower creation, man. Using man God would reproduce the entire conflict on this theater we call earth, and demonstrate to all the angels that He was indeed just in his actions. This is inferred in part from the fact that the sentence has already been pronounced (see above) and yet will not be carried out until the end of human history. (Rev 20:10)

(This is a vastly oversimplified summary of the doctrine of the angelic conflict and all the scriptures that point to it. If you are interested in a more rigorous -- and convicting! -- study, I recommend the 57 hours of teaching my pastor has given on the subject, which you can find here.)

All this to say, on the one hand, that since there was a time when there was no man on the earth, yet there were cities, and a time when the earth was perfect before it became tohu wa bohu ("without form and void," the phrase found only one other place in the Bible and that's Jeremiah 4:23 describing a ruined battlefield) there is plenty of room for a lengthy natural history predating man's entrance on the scene.

To be continued...

Have a great weekend
Karen

Creative Brains

I came accross this article in Science Daily the other day on creative brains, and how there may be a biological basis for linking creativity to mental illness. Not that I'm excited about that sort of linkage but there was another aspect in the article that fascinated me and that's the notion that we have differing levels of "latent inhibition".

The Harvard University study, which appeared in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, said the brains of creative people appear to be more open to stimuli from the surrounding environment than other people's, whose brains shut out this same information through a process called "latent inhibition". Latent inhibition is "an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs." According to the researchers, creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.

"This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment," said one. "The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities."

Low levels of latent inhibition may be a good thing if the person has the capacity to think about many things at once. "If you are open to new information, new ideas, you better be able to intelligently and carefully edit and choose. If you have 50 ideas, only two or three are likely to be good. You have to be able to discriminate or you'll get swamped."

And getting swamped, obviously would not be a good thing. Apparently having many things tumbling through your mind at once is also a precursor to schizophrenia, among other things. (Which is the aforementioned link to mental illness.... but we won't go there.)

I think I might be able to classify myself as a creative individual. I know that I relate strongly to this idea of latent inhibition. I do tend to struggle with all the things that come into my periphery -- in the sense that I am aware of them and sometimes feel overwhelmed by them. They are all interesting and I want to think them out, or they bug me and then I really want to think them through. Or maybe it's not that I'm so open, just that there's a lot of stuff out there bombarding all of us all the time.

I have 100s of ideas for Enclave, but I'm definitely experiencing overload and the sense of being swamped when it comes to discriminating. At least if that discrimination must be performed right away. If I give myself time to niggle it, as one of my son's English teachers put it, then it's not really overwhelming at all.

But it just shows, again, how different we all are, and what different paths we take through life and thus, the specifically different plan God has designed for each of us.

Grace,
Karen

The Puppy We Wanted

It's been awhile since I said anything about Quigley. How's he doing? He's improved A LOT. In fact, since the weekend when I truly gave it over to God, and quit thinking this was something I had to figure out and do right, much has changed. My husband said after the first week that he thought we'd finally gotten the puppy we wanted rather than the tasmanian devil doggie we got. (Sorry, Aussie Fletchers, but really, it fits.) He still wants to bite things, and he goes through phases where he gets REALLY excited and falls into shark mode -- or is it tassie devil mode? -- his gaping mouth darting wildly back and forth... Here is a picture of a real tasmanian devil and its mouth looks just like Quigley's! Except it's still, of course.

But he's controlling himself more and more. Many times he confines himself to licks rather than the teeth.

For the most part he does fine in the crate, and we've started taking him on evening walks. Stu holds the leash, because we haven't yet taught him not to pull on it as he forges ahead. Though as the walk progresses he does that less and less. I've taught him to sit, lie down, stay (30 seconds is his tops) come and most recently, shake.

He's still absolutely horrid when people come over. He goes completely bananas, dribbles pee in his excitement and throws himself at the end of the leash if he's on one (or against the fence or barrier if he's behind one), trying to get at the person. Stu and I are using the knee trick when he hurls himself at us, but you have to get the timing right because he does it fast and hard, and guests can't be expected to have to do that. From there he goes into the flying mouth stage, and eventually, if the person stays long enough, calms down enough they can pet him.

I've been hiding treats for him to find in the yard and throwing the ball for him daily, plus bringing him into the house midday to give him practice lying on his bed quietly or with a chew rather than attacking and humping it. (I put away the new fleece bed, and brought out an old, but still in good shape twill bed and that seems to work better)

I have no new wounds today, and have had very few for a couple of weeks. Those I have sustained, I got when I was doing weird things with him -- throwing a ball, working with the grooming glove (which for some reason he is convinced he must attack and bite), etc. So, overall things are settling down. But he is still a huge distraction to my simply focusing on writing Black Box... er... The Enclave...

He is, as my husband says, "a whole lot of dog." I found an article on redbone coonhounds on Wikipedia that agreed. It said redbones "are very affectionate, but can be overwhelming to small children or even adults if not properly trained." Also, "young coonhounds are energetic (ROTFL) and need lots of activity, or they will become destructive. This can lead to acting out in the form of chewing and baying. They take a longer time to train than some other breeds, because they mature more slowly both physically and mentally."

"Like many hunting dogs, they have an independent intelligence especially well suited for problem solving. This can be an issue if the problem they want to solve is their backyard fence or the dog-proof garbage."

And finally, "They are all loud, loud barkers."

Oh, amen to that. Now that we have Quigley I think I might have to attribute some of my hearing loss to living with Bear. And Quigley's not helping. And to think I worried about having a silent coonhound. If you want to read more about the breed, the link to the article is HERE.

Grace,
Karen

10 Proofs of the Resurrection

The body of evidence for the actuality of the Resurrrection of our Lord can be grouped into 14 categories of proof. Below are ten of them:

1. Jesus Christ predicted it would happen.

2. He really died and was buried in a known, accessible tomb (He was put to death by professional executioners who knew what they were doing and were expert in making sure their charges were dead. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea certainly thought He was dead and spent a lot of time preparing His body for burial. His enemies in Mt 27:62-64 believed he was dead, and feared that the disciples would take away the body, thus they established elaborate security measures to guard it.

3. The facts of the empty tomb (known and accessible) and the condition of the grave clothes.

4. The post Resurrection appearances of Christ. He appeared for a period of 40 days to many different people. On one occasion to at least 500.

5. The tacit recognition of the resurrection by His enemies. Powerful people in Jerusalem had participated in His execution and certainly would not want stories of His resurrection getting out. They had the ability to take action, to access to the tomb, the witnesses, etc. If it was a hoax, surely they'd have been able to prove that.

6. The character of the witnesses to the resurrection.

7. The dramatic change in disciples after the resurrection. Peter went from denying the Lord and hiding in the upper room, to literally getting in Pharisee's faces: "Let it be known to all of you (Annas and Caiaphas and others), and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead...He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the very cornerstone. And there is salvation in no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved". Acts 2:10-12

8. The origin and perpetuation of the Christian church. (ie that it was started in hostile territory, Jerusalem, where everyone would know if the resurrection was a hoax.)

9. The persecution of the disciples (why continue to proclaim a lie in the face of continued persecution? And if the persecuting authorities had any evidence this was a lie, why not just produce it?)

10. None of the apostles recanted their claim the resurrection was true, though most of them died violent deaths for their beliefs. And they died alone, when they could have recanted without the others' knowledge and lived. None did.

Unexpected Research

Tuesday I applied the principles I've been posting about this week. I came into the office, rebounded, asked for guidance, thought maybe I'd start by tidying up my desk and then reading what I'd written the day before. And somehow, I'm not sure how, I ended up going through my collected articles on evolution, then reading some material online and...I spent pretty much all day on it. Not at all what I thought I'd be doing, but it's changed the direction in which I was planning on going with the scene I'm facing. I'm not sure exactly where I'm headed now, just not where I had planned. I am confident, however, that the book will be better for it.

I am also pretty blown away by some of the things I read. But more on that next week.

Grace,
Karen

More Disciplined

So what, I wonder, does the "more disciplined" I harangued myself with yesterday look like?

Not reading blogs? Not playing with the dog? Not… what? No housecleaning? No writing in the journal? No Bible class? That’s ridiculous.

There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Am I condemning myself here? Or is this the Holy Spirit? I think it’s my sin nature because there’s fear and urgency connected to it:

You’ve GOT to get more work done! That deadline is approaching and you’re nowhere near done. You have been undisciplined and bad and you need to work harder and stop being so distracted. This all depends on you. Yeah, fine to trust God, but you have to set your behind down in the chair and write.

Do I? This all sounds more like the legalistic, old sin nature-taskmaster than the grace and mercy of God. The Holy Spirit convicts rather than condemns. When He’s done, you feel good, you know what you’ve done wrong clearly and what to do about it. Condemnation from the sin nature just leaves you feeling rotten.

And what about that dead, blank-headed time when the creative part is working behind the scenes?

What about God revealing the story in His timing and not mine? What about me waiting on Him? Being patient. Not striving, just confident that He will move me as I need moving. Sometimes reading blogs and such sparks an idea… so it’s not always bad.

Striving, self-condemnation, anxiety, getting all afroth with impatience and worry… It doesn’t look by sight that I will ever finish on time, that this will ever work out… But that’s just the kind of situation God likes to put His children in, because we’re not supposed to be walking by sight but by faith. I think this must be a really hard lesson for me to get, because I keep going back over and over it.

It really is diametrically opposed to the world’s way and to the sin nature’s way -- to just relax and rest and trust God to move me at the appropriate time and in the appropriate ways to get the work done He wants done. His plan, not mine. His work, not mine.

There’s always time to do the Will of God.

Grace,
Karne

Undicsiplined Lout

From a Nonstop I did a couple weeks ago, in the throes of blankness:

Lord, I need your help! I’m totally confused, I don’t know where to go, I’m starting to get antsy and uneasy because time is passing faster than pages are accruing and even though yes, it’s come together before, the last time was so hard and so bad and I hate having to do that to my editor and everyone else. I want to be responsible and reliable, not the temperamental, undisciplined artiste who can’t meet her deadlines.

If I can't, then I gain a reputation as a sluggard and a person with no discipline which could well be the truth. It may be I don’t have discipline. But if I need discipline, what am I to do about it? Why can’t I make myself… hmmm...

Make myself. Lord, do you even want me to make myself set a time and get my butt in here at that time and write nonstops? I could do that. To a point. Until my shoulder starts hurting, which it is starting to now. So I just can’t go on and on and on.

And now I wonder, is all this idleness and distraction part of the process? After all it’s always been like this. For thirty years of writing it's been like this. Of course, maybe I’ve always been undisciplined. Or maybe… the whole creative function won't be controlled. I wish I knew what I was to do.

Don’t compare yourself.
In whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord.

Okay, yeah, I get that. But… how do I do that with this? What does "heartily" look like? Reading a bunch of stuff, making a bunch of notes, then making an outline from the notes, based on which event follows which, and finally sitting down and just writing it out from the notes? That’s the way I learned to write papers for school.

But this isn’t like that. I don’t really know how all the pieces of this book fit together. I don't think I even have all the pieces yet. And I can’t just go read and collect a bunch of facts to put into my book.

Furthermore, if I stop and look back, I see that there are lots of reasons why I am where I am right now. I have had a lot of distractions.

In March last year, when I began writing this book, my hard drive crashed and I had to get a new computer. Simultaneously, my glasses didn’t work for about three weeks and I kept having to drive across town to the eye doctor.

In April I had the blog tour for RotGK, where there were interviews and blog posts to write and comment on. All told, it took about three weeks of my time.

In May… I got the royalty statement and realized that Legends of the Guardian King was not going to be the wild success I’d hoped and dreamed for.

In June I broke my leg.

In July I recovered, sitting about with my leg elevated (which is not easy to do while at the computer).

August 1, I broke my arm and lay around on the couch with my arm elevated for six weeks straight. I read a lot but did no real writing.

In September I went to a Bible conference, got my cast off, and started therapy.

In October I continued therapy and tried to start functioning again – catching up on all the dirt and dust and mildew that had taken over the house during the summer when I was lying on the couch with my arm elevated.

In November the trigger finger problem began, and troubles with my shoulder. I had to learn keyboard techniques to avoid the mouse.

In December it's always crazy, we were out of town for a week and my shoulder really started hurting whenever I tried to use the computer.

In January we had our Arizona Bible Conference and got Quigley, the Tasmanian devil doggie. And my car broke.

In February I was still dealing with Quigley, while the trigger finger worsened.

So yeah, there’ve been a lot of distractions. That tells me this book is important spiritually speaking, but that doesn’t tell me if I’m out of line for not being more disciplined, even if I don’t know what “more disciplined” looks like.

Grace,
Karen

Peace and contentment

Continuation of the early March journal entry I posted in Constantly Vigilant, this part written at the end of the same day:

Quigley had another great day. I just decided to stop trying to figure out all the timing and arrange everything around him, and just put him in the crate when I needed to go somewhere. If he howled, oh well. So I went to the store and to the Y. And it was fine...

Bible class was great -- echoes and refinements of my conclusions this morning (see Constantly Vigilant below). Pastor is teaching on Abram and how he had to go "to a land which I will show you." He was given a general direction, but no specifics, and especially no specifics of blessing. "There are many commands we must obey without God telling us what type of blessings we'll receive if we do."

We desire happiness, peace and contentment. We think success (or marriage or a nice house or good kids or a well-behaved dog or...?) will provide it. So we want success (or the other things). We pray for it, strive for it. But success doesn't give happiness, peace and contentment. Nor do any of those other things. They're all time-oriented and therefore transitory. None are things we can control, but things God gives or takes.

Success can be taken. (Shaken?) So by definition, it cannot give peace and contentment because at the back of your mind will always be the sense that you could lose it. And if circumstances come where it appears you will lose it, goodbye peace.

Peace and contementment have to come from something stable and eternal and unchanging. Like God. Like His word. Like the fact that He is for me, not because of me, but because I received His perfect righteousness at salvation and will never lose it. When He looks at me, that's what He sees. He will never leave me or forsake me. He will provide my needs, because He has promised and He cannot lie. He loves me. He blessed me in eternity past. I can't begin to imagine the blessings that he has for me. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He's omnipotent, wise, cannot make a mistake, never wavers, never wanders, never for a moment loses control of the situation. All my problems have perfect solutions.

Let me say that again: ALL my problems have PERFECT solutions. In Him. I am nothing. I can do nothing. But so what? He does it all.

Grace,
Karen

Constantly Vigilant

From an early March journal entry:

10:30 am Today, so far, I've been constantly upset by things not going as I'd like them to go. Then I stop and think... but it's God's will and God's plan that matters. I serve Him, not myself. I'm here to bring glory to Him, not achieve my goals.

I think of Autumn Lightning (The Education of an American Samurai" by Dave Lowry), which I read some years ago. The samurai student had to constantly be on the alert, never knowing when the master would attack or set someone upon him -- in bed, walking down the hall, even on the toilet. No place was out of bounds. This is how you must be when at war, when you are a man-at-arms. You're trained to use your weapon for defense, thus you must always be ready to use it.

How like the Christian Way of Life, where we are soldiers in a war, too. (2 Ti 2:4) The weapon, of course, is God's word. And the attacks come at the master's behest for our benefit, to train us and make us stronger, quicker and more solid in our use of our weapon. They mostly are the small things in life. Things not going your way. The dog steals a sock when you're hanging out the laundry, then rips it in the ensuing tug of war as you try to get it back. People change schedule without notice and now all the things you'd planned to do, you can't. Distractions pile up until the morning's gone and you didn't get a lick of writing done...

But it's always your plan that's being thwarted, never God's. And this stuff isn't even suffering for His sake (Phil 1:29). It's just things not going your way. The kingdom of darkness will set up situations to get you out of fellowship. To get you to worry, to feel condemned and guilty and now, in my case... to get me mad and frustrated. For so long it's been fear and approbation lust I've had to deal with. Now we're moving into power lust as God probes ever deeper, challenging and grinding and stripping away the layers of arrogance.

So again, the thing to focus on is that it's God's plan, not mine. His plan moves on. My plan is nothing. My goals for the day don't matter at all in comparison to me staying in fellowship. And His goals for my day are unknown when I start out. I don't know what His plan is until I see it unfold. Because of that, I must trust Him continually, moment by moment, always getting my thoughts off myself and my situation and bringing them back to Him.

Which is exactly where He wants them.

Grace,
Karen

New Title is Official (I think)

My work in progress, Black Box, now has a new title, courtesy of Bethany House's Vice President of Marketing.

You might remember that I submitted 14 possible alternative titles to BHP a week or so ago. The editors and others batted those titles around and came up with a short list for me to review. From that list I sent back the ones I liked best in order of preference. They were:

This Dark Illusion
The Institute
The Enclave
The Longevity Code

I said I'd go with any of them. Because This Dark Illusion had been the one the editors thought sounded best and fit the story best, and because I agreed, I'd kinda settled into that being the final choice. Which shows the foolishness of settling on anything until it's settled.

After input from the head of marketing, Black Box will henceforth be known as

The Enclave

I think I can see why. This Dark Illusion is kind of vague. More artsy than The Enclave. The Institute is really pretty generic. There are probably a lot of other books, or at least places in books called "The Institute". The Longevity Gene is something that would get lost in other longevity books. It also sounds like it could be a science text. Of them all The Enclave is the most accessible and visual, while being somewhat intriguing as well. At least that's my assessment. But really, what do I know? Only that readers do indeed judge books both by their covers and their titles!

Grace,
Karen
P.S. Oh, my goodness. There really are a lot of Longevity books when you look it up on Amazon. Most are health books and one is even called The Longevity Code: Your Personal Prescription for a Longer, Sweeter Life.

Masdar -- Dharma

Yesterday's blog included an embedded YouTube video -- first time I ever tried it on Blogger and while it worked online, I wasn't sure what would happen when it went out through the Feedblitz email. Sure enough, the email I got this morning did not include the video because I don't have Active X something or other installed or functioning (and don't want to). If that happened to you and you'd like to see the creepy promo video for "The Masdar Initiative," you'll have to go to the blog itself.

This morning I figured out one of the reasons the name "The Masdar Initiative" and logo are so creepy to me. To any Lost fans out there: Isn't it an awful lot like "The Dharma Initiative?" Just add an s and switch the syllables and you've got "Masdar." (okay and take away the h, but you don't pronounce that) The Masdar logo is even vaguely reminiscent of the Dharma one. Is this a coincidence?

I doubt the Masdar people copied Lost, but maybe the Lost people copied Masdar... nah, probably not. (though I just read of two actual incidents in the non fiction book I'm reading now (The Biotech Century) which Michael Crichton used to model plot elements in his genetics gone awry novel Next after.) Anyway, according to Wikipedia, Dharma means the "underlying order in nature and life (human or other)...which makes the cosmos and the harmonious complexity of the natural world possible."

Spiritually it's said to refer to the 'right way of living', 'proper conduct', 'duty' or 'righteousness'. Which really kind of fits with the whole Masdar thing, especially if you look at it from the "environmentalism as religion standpoint." Living in Masdar will save the world, save mankind, be the pure and pious thing to do. Yuck. Masdar, by the way, is Arabic for "source." That's creepy, too. Especially as it echoes the "order that makes the natural world possible" part of dharma.

And since the source of all things is God, who is the source and orderer who makes the natural world possible... these both seem like words that express kingdom of darkness sorts of concepts.

Enough of the creepiness. I am working on chapter 19 of my newly titled book today (having skipped over chapter 18). Didn't get very far. Lots of sitting and staring and shuffling of notes. Or maybe I did get far, I just can't tell.

Tomorrow: the new title.

Grace,
Karen

The Masdar Initiative

Oh my. The following video about Abu Dhabi's planned supercity, The Masdar Initiative, is SO CREEPY! Such a clear indication of living in the end times. Remember the Anti-Christ is supposed to rule out of Babylon, which is not all that far away. Of course there's all the global warming stuff, and the international cooperation stuff, and the glory of man stuff... but even beyond that everything about this city and its plans just screams enslavement. Think about living in such a place, think about the rules there would HAVE to be. Think about the capacity to be watched and how well the mark of the Beast would fit into the whole thing...

Even the name and the music accompaniment are creepy!






Karen

A New Interview

Well, I've been seriously remiss in keeping up to date with Interviews, reviews, etc. Perhaps that's because the notice that this interview had been posted came during Christmas when I was caught up in the delusion that any day I was going to have time to deal with it, because after all, we didn't have the puppy yet, I wasn't up against a close deadline and... who knows? But it slipped out of the frame on my inbox into dreaded out of sight/out of mind land.

Recently I've been culling emails and it fell back into view.

Embarrassment! But better late than never and we are just about at the the one year anniversary of the release of Return of the Guardian King. So, without further ado, there's an Interview up at Australian Narelle Mollet's blog, Relz Reviewz Her questions include Why Christian Fiction? Why Christian Fantasy? If the series was made into a movie, who would you cast? What impact do you hope these books have upon the reader? And, Would you taste Vegemite if given the opportunity? Stop by for a read, and unlike with my blog, you can leave a comment if you wish. (And thanks, Rel, for putting the Interview up)

I believe I have a couple more interviews to do, and I'm afraid to look at how long it's been since I was asked to do them. Did you know that the closer you get to death, the faster time flies? LOL It's true, though.

Enjoy,
Karen

Poppies

The poppies are blooming! In some places, they carpet the desert with orange. Our skies are blue and clear. The breezes are gentle. The temps are in the mid to high 70s... It's dry and just wonderful to be outside. As one of my friends says, we live in paradise!

Have a great weekend

Karen

Dispatches from Iraq

I came across this essay from Victor Davis Hansen the other day called Dispatches from the Front, "a synopsis of dispatches from Iraq that appeared October 6-9, 2007, in Hansen's blog Works and Days." Hansen is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor emeritus at California University, Fresno, and holds numerous other academic positions and accolades. He's also a prolific writer of articles, book reviews, scholarly papers, newspaper editorials and 16 nonfiction books on matters ranging from Greek and military history to contemporary politics and culture to farming. The latter because he was also once a full time farmer before heading up the classics department at Fresno.

These dispatches are very well written, with lots of information gleaned from Hansen's trip to Iraq last year, covering not only what is really going on over there, but what our fighting men are really like. For example, "Three weeks after I heard a formal lecture on the history of Vietnam presented by Col. H.R. McMaster, a Hoover research fellow, at Hillsdale College, I found myself being led by him in full combat gear through Anbar."

It's a long essay as Internet pieces go, but rich and worth the time. You might want to read it in two or three parts (which is what I did).

Here's how it starts:

From Ramadi to Taji and in various hot spots in Baghdad and Diyala province, almost all the Marine and Army units I visited expressed the belief that there has been a sudden, almost inexplicable shift in the pulse of the battlefield. Sometimes, with little warning, thousands of once-disgruntled Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda, ceased most resistance, and begun flocking to government security forces and begging the Americans to stop both al Qaeda and Shiite militias.

Read More

Enjoy!
Karen

A New Title

Last week my editor emailed to let me know that the title of my WIP (that's Work In Progress) could no longer be Black Box. Apparently another novel called Black Box was published by a Christian publisher in 2004. It didn't do so well (it had to do with airplane black boxes) and marketing is afraid booksellers and readers will get my new book confused with this older one. So I've spent the last few days coming up with some alternate titles.

As I did so I realized that Black Box really isn't a very good title. For one thing, your title should use fresh and lively words. "Black" and "box" are not exactly either. In fact, there are several other books named Black Box out there besides the one I just mentioned and I have to admit, looking at them the title seems rather dull. If you have no frame of reference... well, a black box is just not that interesting.

Yes, it works perfectly for my story if you actually know which black box I'm talking about -- not the one in an airplane, but the concept of a black box, which is a thing whose actions or output are known but the mechanics behind them are not. "Something that is mysterious, especially as to function." So many things in life are like that, from living cells at one time, to genetics, to aging, to the human soul, to many aspects of the spiritual life. It's a perfect concept, but...alas, since for most people this concept is not going to be the first thing they think of when they see Black Box on the cover of a book, not the perfect title.

But coming up with something better? I don't know. I made a list and sent it off. Perhaps nothing on it will be the actual title, but hopefully one of the titles I brainstormed will generate the one that ends up on the book. We'll see.

Wanna see the list?

Here is some of my suggested titles:

Ziggurat
Illusions in Twilight
Veils of the Soul
A Storm of Darkness
Once There be Giants

I actually sent 14 titles, many of them variations on the above. It will be interesting to see how this develops. I'm really kind of hoping that one of these will spark something in someone else that will lead to an eventual title that I really like. Not to say that if one of the ones I submitted is chosen I won't end up liking it just fine. That's kind of what happened with Return of the Guardian-King. Where at first I was disturbed by the similarity to Tolkien's Return of the King, as time passed I grew more comfortable with it and it really seemed like the right title to end the series with.

Grace,
Karen

Quote of Note: Man in the Arena

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worse, if he fails, fails while daring greatly.

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." -- Teddy Roosevelt