Progress Report

Yes, I'm still blogging. Though it may be sporadic for the month of December since I will be working hard to finish The Enclave by the beginning of January. I've already decided to postpone our annual Christmas trip to California until February (since there's really no way I could work at the level I'll need to be then from a hotel room). I am not thinking about all I have to do, or how it's going to be done. I am relying totally on the Lord to see it done. (The alternative is mindless panic, stress, guilt, sin, frustration. Did I mention panic??)

"For it is God who is at work at you both to will (proper motivation) and to execute for His good pleasure.

I will cry to God most High; to God who accomplishes all things for me.

Faithful is He who has called you and He will also bring it to pass."

I'm taking him at his word, claiming these promises utterly.

Classes lately have been all about not being occupied with sins and failures, not trying to do better and fix ourselves, but to fix our eyes upon Jesus, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, and the fact that we are seated there with Him, positionally. When you claim this fact and look down at it all as finished, that does change things.

The other thing to focus on is doing His will, not mine. I'm not going to worry about whether I'm failing to be diligent or self-disciplined. That's God's problem, because those are fruits of the Spirit not the fruits of Karen.

Staying home from the conference as great and I am more certain than ever that's what I was to do. This last holiday, Thanksgiving, though, I did not work a lick, beyond a random hour here or there to consider the next sequence, which for awhile seemed hopelessly wrong without alternative. (I am currently working on chapter 25, which in the "first" draft was chapter 19).

Thanksgiving day also completely wiped me out. I was a zombie on Friday, and really sore on Saturday, especially in my hip joints (possibly from being pulled to the ground in the attempt to restrain Quigley the night before). That made it hard to sit and concentrate. There were myriads of other distractions as well, since my son was staying with us (ie, in my writing room). Granted he was not in the writing room all that much of the time, but just having him here, and all the other things going on made it hard to focus. Plus it's hard to focus when you're a zombie.

Tomorrow (Monday) I have only to go across town to pick up my replacement sunglasses clip, which was ordered a month and half ago, I think, got lost in the cracks and came in last week. That could work into a good time of thinking. We'll see.

As soon as I finish this blog post I'm going to turn my attention to The Enclave, and maybe do something easy like put in changes on an earlier chapter. We still have dinner and Quigley walking to do, too. Oh, and ironing...

~~~

How Obama Got Elected

Hey! I'm actually focusing on writing. It's still slow going, but a lot of stuff is happening in the places where I am. If that makes any sense.

So. Short blog posts or, in this case, a video are the order of the day. I first saw this a couple of days ago. Some say it's about "stupid" Obama voters, but I think it's more a picture of the influence of the media, the state of our culture today, and something of an indictment on our public educational system, which I don't think stresses the importance of knowing what's going on, how government works, etc., nearly enough.

It's part of a project by John Ziegler to produce a documentary called How Obama Got Elected. On election day 12 Obama voters were interviewed after they left the polls for the purpose of learning how media impacted their knowledge. They were chosen, says the website, "for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience." Ziegler also commissioned a Zogby telephone poll of 512 Obama voters using the same questions (you can read more about those results on the website.) In most cases the questions were multiple choice among the 4 presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

The video, below, is about 9 minutes long, but quite fascinating. (Feedblitz subscribers: I think you'll have to click on the blog post title to take you to the blog itself to view the video)




What's especially striking to me today, is, as important as the presidential election is, even more important is knowing who God is, and I suspect if a similar sort of poll were conducted involving basic questions regarding God's essence and nature the results would be even worse. And for the same reason, which is that mostly people are involved in themselves and the small details of their own lives, content to accept without question information that affirms their pre-existing ideas, and not terribly interested in investigating information that doesn't.

~~~

The New Star Trek Movie

I remember (this will surely date me) when the original Star Trek TV show came out. My friends and I had seen the trailers for weeks, read the articles in TV Guide and the newspaper and could not wait. I believe I was in the seventh or eighth grade (I could go research and figure it out exactly but I'm not going to take the time; this isn't a legal deposition, after all).

I was already a big fan of science fiction and fantasy. For years I'd watched those weird movies on Saturday afternoon which today are mocked and ridiculed on things like Mystery Science Theater. The Giant Behemoth. Godzilla. Frankenstein. Dracula. The Blob. It Came from Outer Space. The Creature from Black Lagoon. All in black and white and cornball as can be. The special effects were ridiculous. The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were better, but they worked more on suggestion and less on actual special effects.

But as we had nothing else to compare them to, they worked. Books, of course were better and I was already a voracious reader of Andre Norton, Heinlein, Asimov...

The night of Star Trek's premiere, one of my friends hosted a special Star Trek party, and we all went over and watched it. In color. When it was over, everyone just sat where they were. Awed. That was SO COOL!!

I loved Spock. I think we all did. I loved Kirk in a kind of amused and tolerating way. McCoy for some reason was my favorite. I couldn't stand Nurse Whatsherface (with the crush on Spock and the basket hairdo) or Chekov, but Sulu was cool. That first season was just awesome. I audio taped the episodes and played them back repeatedly "watching" the show again through my ears alone. I memorized a lot of lines. ("Captain! Lt Sulu is on deck 4 attacking crewmen with a sword!").

The second season was good too, but then it began to get silly. I only watched the final season off and on and was put off every time I did. The movies resurrected to some degree the original tone and quality and I enjoyed all of them. The characters were by then old friends.

Maybe that's why The Next Generation just never clicked with me. (Or maybe because I'm of the Last Generation...) I liked Pikard and Data, but everyone else drove me up the wall, particularly Capt. Riker. I liked the third series, the one with the woman captain, even less. So I approach the notion of a new movie, with new actors playing my old favorites, telling the story of their youths before the Enterprise with some trepidation.

Today I found the trailer they've just put online. And... it looks pretty good! Simon Pegg as Scotty, though? He'll probably be fun, but ... And the guy they got to play a young Spock looks pretty... baby-faced, I guess and one thing I never thought of Spock as being was baby-faced, not even when he was a baby. And the young Kirk, is, well, not Kirk but... A sexy romance between Kirk and Uhura? That doesn't seem right... But I admit those are the usual sorts of objections from ancient fans like myself -- we only like old things! LOL. Maybe. Because despite all that, I'm intrigued.

Anyway, here it is, for those of you interested in this sort of thing.

The Daily Mail Online article ("Star Trek gets a sexy makeover in new film with love scenes, motorbikes and hunky stars") with still pictures and a bigger sized video if you scroll down is here. I don't know how long it will be up.

Just the video, but much smaller, is here.

Enjoy!

~~~

A Private Retreat

Well. I was supposed to go to the San Francisco Bible Conference last week, scheduled to leave Thursday and return today (Monday). I had my plane ticket, my hotel reservations, and had even gotten my suitcase out in preparation for packing. But Enclave had not been going well, and distractions just weren't ending. We had a birthday celebration for my mother on Tuesday night, during which Thanksgiving and Christmas were discussed. Maybe that triggered it.

Or maybe the Lord just used it. I don't know. Whatever the case, I was awakened at 4:15am Wednesday morning by a hot flash (not unusual) and was flooded with the sense that I should not go. That I needed to stay home and concentrate on the book.

Lately the Lord had been dealing with me on the matter of taking this part of His calling on my life more seriously. If you've been reading this blog for any lenght of time you may have noticed that I've been struggling to apply some of the principles I've been learning -- most notably the concept of rest. I have never been sure how to rest and at the same time do the work. Most problematic of course was that horrid deadline. Should I completely ignore it and just live my life like a normal person, doing whatever came up, writing as I could and let the Lord handle it? Well that was one way to maintain rest.

Sort of.

But over the last few weeks I think I was being shown something else. Not that I need the deadline, but that I have an unusual calling, one that seems to require solitude, and much time for contemplation. The sheer number of things that had crowded into my mind compromised my ability to concentrate on the word. And maybe I should be taking that work more seriously. Not to the point where I obsessed about the deadline, but where I started choosing for it over other things.

So there I was Wednesday morning, faced with the sudden conviction that I should stay home. Yes, it's a good thing to go to the conference and fellowship with the other attendees, to build them up, to encourage the pastor(s). I've done any number of them. I'd sacrificed time to work on the book just last August for one. Maybe it was time now to sacrifice time at the conference (for I absolutely love going to them) for the sake of the book.

It was one of those choices where both seem right, but you can only choose one. In the the end, talking it over with a friend, she pointed out that I was only seeking to do what God wanted me to do. Whatever I decided he would bless it, because the motivation was right.

I had already decided that I would go and work on the plane and in between lessons... so the whole idea of fellowshipping was already curtailed in my thinking. To go, to have to spend Wednesday preparing, then Thursday traveling... and how could I gather my material properly to work on it somewhere totally outside my comfort zone, as one of the pastors taught over the weekend? Not just out of my comfort zone, but on an old laptop I never use, with a different program, a flat keyboard, no printer. I wouldn't have my files, my papers...

So I decided to stay home, looking at it as a matter of caring for my own vineyard, which is a concept we've been repeatedly exposed to of late in our Bible classes. I canceled my flight (I love Southwest -- didn't lose any of the money, and have it for the next conference I need to fly to. Maybe Florida???) and my hotel reservations. Except for the one friend I talked it over with, and one other, I kept my decision secret, deciding to act as if I was out of town, still get the lessons, but beyond that devote all my time to writing.

Wow. That level of concentrated focus really made a difference. What I thought I would work on, I didn't. What I did, was very difficult. I became enmeshed in a dilemma of which of several scenes to put in what order, and what day should I start them on. Should I begin the narrative on Monday and just do a summary til I got to Wednesday, or should I start on WEdnesday. Should I start with Cam? Or Lacey?

In the end I had to go back to chapters 19 and 20 and redo the endings on them, putting in material I was trying to stuff into 22 and 23. It's made 19 and 20 much stronger. A lot of things emerged over the weekend, time which I had mostly to myself, since my husband had other activities that kept him away most of the days. I really started learning how to listen to the Lord.

It's been so cool to be blank and just go to Him and say what should I do? Then I listen and He tells me. It's step by step. Moment by moment. I am not thinking about the deadline at all. I've given it over to Him. Again. I've also given over myself to Him, too, since I have been so utterly incompetent at managing myself. He'll have to do it. The cool thing is, he's eternal and omniscient so in His perfect plan He's already factored in all my screw ups.

So this marks the end of my little "retreat" but it's been very enlightening and I think I will be doing a lot more guarding of both my time and my mind in the days to come.

Good Man, Bad Rap

I've for the most part left politics behind, now, but have just a couple more things that I found of interest which I'd like to share over the next couple of days.

The first is an article in the Washington Post by Staffwriter Dan Eggen, that appeared on Sunday, November 2, 2008. Yes, the Sunday before the election. I saw the headline on Drudge and it caught my eye immediately because it echoes how I feel. It's called, 'My Heart and My Values Didn't Change' -- In Bush, Loyalists See a Good and Steadfast Man Who Has Gotten a Bad Rap

It starts:

On a cold, gray morning a week before Election Day, President Bush briefly emerged from the White House for an unannounced visit to the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Southeast Washington.

Outside the RNC building, Bush continued to face record-low approval ratings and a presidential campaign focused on his failings. But inside an overflowing conference room, he was greeted with roaring applause as he urged his fellow Republicans to keep pushing for the finish line.

"His general message was to thank the staff for everything we've been doing and encourage us to keep working hard all the way through Election Day," said one person who attended the closed event. "It was upbeat and very exciting."

Read More...
~~~

In Whom Do You Trust?

When the results came out on election night, I was pretty bummed.

I was appalled that our people had come to the point they had elected a man who could not get the security clearance to serve as his own bodyguard, nor even to do my husband's job;

a man that our enemies wanted us to elect, and are now dancing in the streets and slaughtering animals in celebration over;

a man who said he wants to bankrupt the coal industry with global warming carbon emission fines and cause our energy prices to skyrocket;

a Marxist who thinks if you don't want to redistribute the wealth you are "selfish," and who in all likelihood shares the view of Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va) who regards as "simplistic" the notion "that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it," and thinks it's obvious that wealth should be redistributed (LINK);

who plans to do away with our "unproven missile defense systems," take away our guns, and establish a civilian security force that is as strong, powerful and well-funded as our military.

Who promises sweeping and fundamental change -- for one of the most prosperous, powerful, successful nations on the planet, a nation full of active sin natures, yes, but still the best in our lifetime.

How could this be? I didn't understand. Why would people want any of that? Why couldn't they see the truth? Yes, they have elevated Barack Obama to messianic status... but why?

One woman was excited because now "I don't have to worry about putting gas in my tank any more. I don't have to worry about paying my mortgage. Obama's going to take care of that."

Others were enraptured. Ecstatic. "We're going to have change! We have hope again for better lives, a better experience, freedom after the torture and nightmare of the last eight years! We're going to have happiness, finally."

How could they believe all that?

Yesterday morning I picked up a little booklet I had lying around, the transcript of a sermon given by my former pastor, Col. R.B.Thieme, Jr, the day after Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993. It spoke directly to the issue and is called "In Whom Do You Trust?":

"There was quite a cross-section of people from this country attending the (Clinton) inauguration. Almost without exception, everyone interviewed expressed similar ideas. Some were eloquent, some spoke with hesitation, some with a measure of confusion, but they all centered eventually on one word -- hope. Their hope was not the biblical hope of confidence in the Lord and in the Word of God...

"In effect, their hope was based on unrealistic expectations -- a new face in the White House, a new administration, a political change. To the people who were interviewed, political change meant something better for them. Hope was the word they used. They were depending upon government -- a government that has failed to fulfill its functions and obligations and has the greatest indebtedness in human history. They were depending on Congress, on a president, on people...They thought the government either owed them a living or that change would bring something they wanted -- happiness. A better environment was just around the corner. ...

"Never have I seen...so many people from all walks of life who had such tremendous needs. Because they cannot define their needs in terms of values (from the Word of God), they are looking for a man to solve their problems. They are looking for government to do something for them. They are looking at people to wave a magic wand and give them what they want to make them happy."

It's eerie how accurately those words describe what we have seen from those who have elected Obama in the past few days. They want change. They have hope. They can do it. They can change the world and find happiness and peace and tranquility.

But it's all a lie. A delusion. I know it is, because the Bible says it is:

Thus says the Lord, "Cursed is the person who puts his confidence in man and makes people his strength, so that his heart turns away from the Lord, for he shall be like a tumbleweed in the desert and he will not see prosperity (the word can also be translated 'good' or 'values') when it comes; for he shall live in parched places."

Dried up places. Places of no hope, places where you are always searching, never finding, always learning, never coming to a knowledge of the truth, always craving, never satisfied. Those are the places of the world, which offers much, and delivers nothing.

"Happy is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust is in the Lord; therefore the Lord is is confidence. He shall be like a tree planted by the water and by a stream; he will send out roots. Therefore he does not fear when the heat comes, for his leaves are always green."

Jeremiah 17:5-8

Upon reading those words and the remainder of that sermon, my sense of anger and outrage drained away, replaced by something closer to sympathy. They are blind. Deceived and deceiving. They have rejected the only source of happiness -- God and His word -- and like Solomon in Ecclesiastes are running about searching for something to fill the hole in their hearts that only God can fill.

And until they stop and realize there's nothing there and turn back... they are doomed to repeat the cycle. Desiring change, achieving hope, disappointed when the man, the government, the project they pinned that hope on...doesn't deliver. Dispirited, depressed,angry, frustrated, they lash out with hatred, until the next cipher comes along and they can latch onto him -- or her -- and convince themselves that this person will finally do what all the others didn't. This one will finally make them happy.

Except he won't. Guaranteed.

~~~

In the Last Days

"But realize this, that in the last days, perilous times will come. For men shall be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconciliable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God;

"holding to a form of godliness though they have denied its power (the filling of the Holy Spirit; knowledge of doctrine); avoid such men as these...

"And indeed, all who desire to live godly WILL be persecuted. But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being decieved.

"You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them; and that from childhood, you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to deliverance through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

"All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate (mature, capable) equipped for every good work."


~2 Timothy 3:1-3; 12-17


~~~

Baraka

I find Barack Hussein Obama's name to be of interest.

First, because of the obvious: Hussein evokes recall of Saddam Hussein, while Obama is but a letter away from Osama, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden being two of our country's greatest recent enemies.

And Barack? That's the most interesting of all. It's a diminutive of Baraka, which is the Arab word for blessing, understandably very close to Berachah (roughly the same pronunciation), which is the Hebrew word for blessing. (And the name of the first doctrinal church I was a part of.)

Baraka is also the Kiswahili word for blessing, according to this article in Wikipedia. Kiswahili (or Swahili, to the rest of us) derives about 35% of its vocabulary from Arabic.

But back to Islam, whose Koran clearly instructs followers to kill both Christians and Jews whenever they can.

In Islam, baraka is said to be the "divine blessing that is normally associated with holy men or women," and can be transferred from one person to another. Or from an object or place to a person. Baraka hangs out at local shrines, but the strongest baraka is found in Mecca, at the Ka'ba. (That's the curtained, boxlike structure that Muslims march around when they do their pilgrimages at the time of hajj). There's a black stone outside its door that also has great baraka.

Interestingly, though we associate the Ka'ba with Islam, it is not, in fact, an Islamic creation, but predated the arrival of Muhammed by centuries. During those pre Islamic times the site was reverred as a place of worshipping demon gods of the sun, moon and stars. Since demons hang out around such centers of worship, and transfer themselves to the bodies of those people who invite them to do so (not always with conscious intent; another subject) I find this notion of "Baraka" to be very interesting, indeed...

Click HERE for source for information on "baraka."

~~~

Al Qaeda Web Video

I'm sorry...but the political scene just keeps turning up these bits that are so fascinating to me, they turn into blog posts.

Like this piece that appeared in Reuters today, reporting that al Qaeda wants Republicans and Bush to be "humiliated." Some guy named Libi put up a web video stating as much. (Interesting that it wasn't some guy named Osama) I know al Qaeda has long hated Bush, and thought him the Great Satan; I didn't realize the rest of us Republicans were included until now.

Here's the first part of the piece:

An al Qaeda leader has called for President George W. Bush and the Republicans to be "humiliated," without endorsing any party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to a video posted on the Internet.

"O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him," Abu Yahya al-Libi said at the end of sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, in a video posted on the Internet.

Libi, one of the top al Qaeda commanders believed to be living in Afghanistan or Pakistan, called for God's wrath to be brought against Bush equating him with past tyrants in history.

To read more (unless they take it down before you read this), click here.

Guidelines, not a Schedule

Hmm. What happened? How did I manage to "forget" to blog three days in a row?

My husband has been out of town for a few days, and last Friday I felt like maybe I should make a schedule. Not a schedule, really, more of an assessment. The problem with making a "schedule" in the past has been that after I make it, I turn it into a god. An idol -- it becomes my master. I have to obey it. If I don't, wrath and disaster will descend... etc, etc.

But what if they were just guidelines? And more than that, what if I do miss the deadline? Am I going to drop dead? Will the book tank because of that? Where does God fit in this picture? Well, He doesn't. I've not used a schedule for months now, because I haven't been able to figure out how to do it without getting all anxious and frantic. And also maybe because I hadn't reached a point where it would be remotely accurate.

I might have turned a corner. Or maybe it's been the Lord's guidance that led me to do it. I did ask Him if I should, and the notion remained. It was something I wanted to do. Maybe it really was time.

So on Friday I took the number of chapters I have left, plus 5, and plotted them onto the number of days I have left. If I complete roughly a chapter a day, I should reach the end by Nov 30, which was my deadline. I know that I will not do what my schedule has outlined, but that's okay. I can still use it. It's a goal, a guideline, I'll do my best to follow it and if I get too far off, I will make a revised schedule.

Right after I had decided to make this thing my editor called to say she was coming to town this week and we could go to lunch. I jokingly noted the coincidence that I'd just been thinking about calling her for more time, and here she called me! Right away she said that if I thought I might need another month, she'd speak to the powers that be before she left and... I have December now. That means The Enclave will not release until summer, but really that's not looking like such a terrible disaster. A disaster would be to publish what I have right now...

And anyway, as one of my friends said, "Is continuing to be published something you believe you have to maintain? If you lost all your contracts, do you believe that the Lord wouldn't give you a new one if He wants your books published? Are you afraid that you can blow this deal? Because I don't believe that if getting your books published is from the Lord that it's even possible to blow it."

I think she's right. After all, He's able to "equip me in every good thing to do His will, working in me that which is pelasing in His sight..." And wants to. It's a verse which has been repeated often in class over the last week.

So. I have some guidelines, I have a new deadline, one for the first time I actually think I can achieve, AND things have finally started to move somewhat consistently. Since my husband was gone, I could concentrate more on writing and completed chapters 16, 17 and 18 and today worked on 19 and began to think about 20. Which is a big reason why I forgot to blog.

Oh, yes, and I've, um, been reading news sites maybe more than usual with all that's been going on...

Lunch with my editor was wonderful. The weather was perfect. We ate outside on the patio of Tohono Chul, drank apricot tea and talked. Turns out editors really do get it that writing is not like picking peas or making pots. You can't necessarily force it. And when we can't make the deadline, they can handle it. In fact, I'm not the only writer who's having unusual trouble getting her book to move.

Other tidbits of interest:

Light of Eidon is actually still selling quite nicely.

There's a remote possibility that BHP might repackage the Guardian King books in new covers....

And female faces on the covers of books sell better than male faces do.

Or so I'm told.

~~~

Interview with the Palin's - NOT

Hey, it's election time. Politics is beating at the doors and windows. You can't turn on the TV without being told to vote for this one or don't vote for that one. Nor can you drive down the street without being reminded that some people are for Obama and (around our neighborhood) very few for McCain/Palin. So I guess I can be excused for putting up a few posts on the subject ...

Except that everything seems to be going wrong. Neither of my last two posts, the one Tuesday on Barak Obama as Messiah, and the one Wednesday on Biden's warning that if Obama wins he'll be tested, went out through Feedblitz. I didn't get either of them in my Inbox, and neither did one of my friends. Though of course it's always possible we were the exceptions, rather than the rule.

Then tonight, when I went to post the bit I'd already written about excerpts from the People Magazine interview with the Palin's, Todd and Sarah, which I'd enjoyed, I discovered that it had been really excerpt-ized and they didn't even have the pictures that had been half the fun.

I'd really liked the things she said. I like them both, actually. And while some people say that with politicians you can't believe anything they say, there are some politicians that say things I can't stand, totally disagree with, find abhorrent and evil -- especially when they say them as if these are great and good ideas or policies -- and others who say things that I totally support and affirm. So whatever lies behind, at least I can support the surface.

Anyway, I wanted to share it, but now it's gone, and the only place I could find it was here, on People's site where it was broken down into ten pages of teeny snippets surrounded on all sides by ads, other links, pictures of other people, other stories... very distracting and annoying. And no pictures.

To make matters worse, when I tried to see if someone else had posted it, I only found the blogs of snippy liberals making fun of it. It's a "puff" piece, heaven forbid. "Can you believe she actually thinks she's intellectual? Ha! She couldn't even name one magazine or newspaper she read!" (She named the book she was reading, and probabaly had she named anything else the blogger wouldn't have heard of it anyway) "She says she's only bubble-headed when she acts like Tina Fey.Ha!" Their arrogance and condescension really is amazing.

In fact, so amazing that instead of the People interview, I'm going to link to another article I read recently in, of all places, the Boston Globe. It's on The Dangers of Liberal Bias by Joan Chevalier. It expresses a lot of what I just discovered.

---
Enclave update: I went back to ch 14 today, and reworked and reworked and reworked it, trying to get Cam's motivations right. Why does it all have to emerge sooooo slowly? But I've got it half done. Now just have to finish up the last scene to make it fit with the new stuff. Then I can hopefully get on with ch 17, which is what sent me back to 14 in the first place.

~~~

He Will Be Tested

You've probably heard by now that Democrat Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden said at a Seattle fundraiser last Sunday that, should they win the election, in the first six months of his term, Barak Obama will be tested by "a major international challenge." Could that be... terrorists?

"Mark my words, within the next -- first six months of this administration, if we win, they're going to -- we're going to face a major international challenge, 'cause they're going to want to test him, just like they did John Kennedy, they're going to want to test him, and they're going to find out this guy's got steel in his spine.

"He's gonna need help. The kind of help he's gonna need, he's gonna need you," Biden said, speaking to potential donors. "We're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community to stand with him 'cause it's not going to be apparent initially, it's not going to be apparent that we're right."

Wow. Of course, it's all over the Internet. McCain pounced upon it, Biden's been removed from campaigning for a few days...I have two thoughts about it -- yeah, I already figured we're going to be hit should Obama win. That's just logical. He's already said he'll sit down and talk to our enemies. He opposed the Iraq war. He opposed the surge. He opposed everything except talking. I don't really think our enemies -- terrorists, Iran, communist thugs from China, North Korea, and, more and more, Russia -- are going to be remotely swayed by talking. They operate more on a "taking" basis -- them taking shots at us, then taking over. Islam is hardly a peaceful religion. Their Koran instructs them to kill the Infidel. Which we are.

In fact, all our new presidents have been challenged. Here's a quote from Rush Limbaugh the other day that sums up the challenges and the results:

"Al-Qaeda has a history of testing all of our new leaders. At the World Trade Center, 1993; Al-Qaeda tested Clinton. We failed. Mogadishu 1994, Al-Qaeda tested Clinton. We failed. Khobar Towers, 1996; Al-Qaeda tested Clinton. We failed. The Kenya-Tanzania embassy bombings, Al-Qaeda tested us. We failed. The 2000 bombing USS Cole, Al-Qaeda tested Clinton. We failed. On 9/11, Al-Qaeda tested Bush; we passed. We haven't been hit since. March 11th, '04, the Madrid bombings; Al-Qaeda tested Spain. Spain failed. August 2008, Al-Qaeda tested Canadian Steven Harper, killed Canadians. He announced a pullout from Afghanistan in 2011; Canadians failed. August 2008, Al-Qaeda tested Sarkozy by killing 11 French paratroopers. Sarkozy passed and said he wouldn't surrender in Afghanistan."

So yeah, if Obama wins, we're going to be hit. It's less likely we will be if McCain wins, because he's already perceived to be like Bush. I don't think he'd take any guff, and they probably know it. Which is why they've endorsed Obama.

My second thought is that if we actually have enough people in this country to elect someone like Obama, who so represents the opposite of every one of the laws of divine establishment (freedom, marriage, family, nationalism), who will most likely turn on Israel, and who actually allows his followers to make those disgusting Messiah comparisons... we are heading into apostacy, if not already there. Which is something the Bible says will happen in the end times.

If the Rapture is indeed coming very soon, and the Tribulation right behind it, then God in His grace will do everything He can to warn and persuade people of their need for salvation so they can avoid the latter, which is said to be the most terrible time to be alive on the earth. Another hit like 911 will do just that.

"In the last days, difficult times will come. Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy..." It will even extend to the church, where people will "hold to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power." How much of that is already in place?

~~~

False Messiah

I'm starting into Ch 17 today, and it's the slow going phase again. I got in my four hours of concentration, but no more, really (maybe a little less, if I were able to accurately account for all the hours.) But today after I did my stints I spent some time on the Internet and turned up a couple of interesting sites about people who are promoting the idea that Obama is the Messiah. Now I've heard Rush refer to him jokingly as such for some time, and was aware of the over-the-top orgasmic type reactions some of Obama's supporters were having toward him early this year, but I didn't realize that they actually call him Messiah.

World Net Daily ran a piece last week primarily on a February 24, 2008 speech given by Louis Farrakhan, the current leader of the Nation of Islam (which is apparently repudiated by the "real" muslims as not really being muslim. But that's another post). It's title? Farrakhan on Obama: The Messiah is absolutely speaking

"You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn't care anything about. That's a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking."

Apparently the man Nation of Islam followers refer to as "the Savior," Fard Muhammad, had a black father and a white mother, just as Obama did. Which somehow makes Obama a savior, too.

"Would God allow Barack to be president of a country that has been so racist, so evil in its treatment of Hispanics, native Americans, blacks?" Farrakhan asked. "Would God do something like that? Yeah. Of course he would. That's to show you that the stone that the builders rejected has become the headstone of the corner. This is a sign to you. It's the time of our rise. It's the time that we should take our place. The future is all about you."

The article also references a blog called "Is Barack Obama the Messiah?" which is rather stunning. It's subtitled with a quote from an Obama speech given in Lebanon, New Hampshire on January 7, 2008.

"... a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama" - Barack Obama

It also has a really creepy beatific poster of Obama with a halo of light rays streaming away from his head, with the words "The Dream" underneath his portrait.

If you scroll down a bit, there's a picture of Obama, the man who is so concerned about the little guys and "spreading the wealth" at a fundraiser (he's raised more than half a billion dollars -- no typo, half a billion -- which is more than any other candidate in the country's history) at the HOME of Steven and Judy Gluckstern... which is quite a home... where he appears to be descending on a lighted stair from on high... The title of this post is "The Transfiguration."

The next post says "I'm Asking You to Believe..." and then a picture of graffiti saying, "Obama is God."

It goes on from there. "He is the Alpha and the Omega," and there's the video of the creepy youth brigade chanting/marching/dancing in unison to him. Next comes the creepy video of the "precious children singing to our leader." Then a photo of a scene at Obama Campaign HQ where workers are grasshopper-ized by a humongous picture of Obama's face on the wall, rather like those gargantuan portraits of Lenin and Mao looming over crowds of followers. I was shocked to see it, but then realized that since Obama is closely aligned with avowed communists, why be surprised?

There are quotes alongside the text from various celebrities such as Halle Barry, Gary Hart, Deepak Chopra, Toni Morrison, and Chris Matthews. Here's one I find especially intriguing from Ezra Klein (who is a writer for the liberal American Prospect) (though I had to Google his name to find that out):

"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves."

So... his finest speeches don't excite, inspire or inform... but they elevate? What is that supposed to mean? The words mean nothing, but something else is at work? And that stuff about him not being the Word made flesh, but the word triumphing over the flesh? What does that mean? How is he triumphing over the flesh? I'm not sure he even knows what the flesh is.

It's an interesting, but creepy site and I couldn't figure out if it's supposed to be a joke, a parody of Christian beliefs or genuine adulation. Though why there would be so much use of familiar words and phrases that specifically refer to Jesus Christ being used by people who mostly don't believe in him, is befuddling.

But back to the original article at World Net Daily, which also quotes a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford, who says,

"Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity," Gladnick says. "Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence -"

Hmmm. That's pretty creepy too. Almost makes you think Obama might be demon-possessed... But more than anything it speaks to the matter of end times. This sort of fake Messiah thing is telling. I don't think Obama is the Anti-Christ (since as far as I know he's not a Jew) but the word does say that in the last times there will be false Christs and false prophets galore. And advises:

"Then, if anyone says to you, 'Behold here is the Christ,' or 'There He is,' do not believe him." Mt 24:23

~~~

Chutes and Ladders

Last Thursday I woke up down in the dumps, filled with a sense of futility, frustration, apathy. I didn't know why. This has been happening relatively often over the last few months. I go to bed fine, and wake up depressed. Once I get up and get working it tends to go away, but sometimes when I get ready to start writing, it comes back...

As I lay there asking God why I was feeling this way and what was wrong, He drew my attention to the dreams I have been having. I don't often remember my dreams, but lately I had been, and they were all the same: I was trying to go somewhere and/or do something and being hindered, pulled away, obstructed, distracted. I never managed to get to where I was going or do what I was trying to do before I woke up.

There are many things in my life I would like to change and cannot, and some of that is probably reflected in the dreams. I read about a dream study once that suggested we have several different types of dreams that can determine our mood when we wake up. In one type, we wrestle with a problem and finally solve it. In that case we wake up feeling good. In another type, we just cycle through the same situation (which may or may not bear resemblence to our conscious problems), never solving it. In which case we wake up feeling down.

Well, the latter seemed to apply to me. Obviously I wasn't having dreams of any kind of resolution. But I thought I had handled the frustrations and obstacles that were so often cropping up to hinder my day. Why, then, was I still having the dreams that go nowhere, and waking up depressed?

The Holy Spirit suggested to me that dreams come out of the subconscious, and thus, somewhere in my subconscious I had this viewpoint that there should be no obstacles or hindrances in life. That those were all "wrongs" that needed to be made right. A "right" life was one that had no problems, obstacles or hindrances.

Well, I knew right off that was ridiculous, especially for a Christian. The Bible teaches the exact opposite. We are going to suffer, it's been appointed to us to suffer for His name's sake. We do it for our growth, blessing, perfection, and to bring glory to God.

At that point I was reminded of the children's game Chutes and Ladders. The chutes are designed to be there. You are supposed to go down them. Yes, it's a setback, but without them, the game would be boring. The problem is that when I played Chutes and Ladders, my focus was so strongly on the goal of winning, that the chutes were not fun parts of the game. They didn't seem to me even to be necessary parts of the game, but rather great threats that had to be avoided. It was a "terrible" thing if you happened to land on a square that sent you sliding back down to another row.

I had the same underlying approach to life. I wasn't really seeing the obstacles and hindrances and frustrations as an integral part of the plan. Instead, they were "wrong," something outside the plan that needed to be avoided or "fixed." But we know that all things work for good to those who love God. All things. We're constantly being delivered over to death for His sake.

The obstacles are not things that keep us from getting anywhere, they are the things that actually take us where God is trying to take us. To conform us to His image. We should embrace them, not look at them as things designed to keep us back, or down, even though they might be implemented by the Kingdom of Darkness for this purpose, or though the people sent by that same kingdom might have this desire. Regardless, it's God who's allowed it. Not to keep us down, but to conform us to the image of His Son, and to bring us to new life.

I barely had time to jot down the above notes about this new understanding, before I had to go about my day. But I was more relaxed, throughout and The Enclave was (and is) really starting to move.

That evening (Thursday) I had the ordeal of preparing for the colonoscopy then the procedure itself on Friday, which left me loopy and very tired so I had no time to write my thoughts out. I even missed my usual Friday night message and didn't listen to it until Saturday. But when I did...

Wow.

You know those pictures where someone opens a door and a violent wind and light rushes out at them, almost knocking them over? That's what it was like. It addressed the very things I'd started thinking about on Thursday, and tens of other questions and issues I'd been struggling with over the last few weeks and months. An amazing message. I took 8 double-sided sheets of paper worth of notes, stopping the recording every few seconds to get the whole thought noted. Then I went back and highlighted the "really good" parts. That was nearly the entire eight pages.

The link is here, if you want to hear it. In the upper right corner are options to watch it as video, download the video, listen to audio with class notes, or download the audio. It's 90 minutes long (there's a 10 minute break in the middle which you can let run or fast forward through). I know there's been a lot of groundwork laid for this material over the last few months so it probably won't have the impact for everyone the way it did for me, but I was just... set free.

~~~

Marketing Questionnaire

Well, the colonscopy went very well. I have a normal colon, complete with pictures. The preparation for the colonscopy is something I am glad I will not have to repeat for ten years, by which time, I suspect that procedure will not be something I'll ever need to bother with again.

Got in some good work on Saturday. I'm now to ch 16 and for the first time ideas are starting to flow. Today I had to work on a Marketing and Publicity Questionnaire for the Bethany House M&P Department to use in selling my book.

I've had to trust the Lord to guide me on this. As may be obvious to consistent readers of this blog and my books, concise and pithy summations are not my forte. Here are some of the questions:

1. Why did you write this book?

2. How did you develop the initial story idea/plot line for this book?

3. Did you encounter any interesting challenges while writing/researching for this book? Please explain if so.

4. Did the book involve special research? Please explain if so.

5. What is the underlying theme/message of the book? Is this what you set out to write?

6. What is the take-away message you want readers to receive after reading your book?

7. Almost every author puts a little of themselves into their stories—what did you put of yourself into this one? (personality traits, life events/jobs, settings, characters based on people you know, likes/dislikes, etc.)

There are twenty of them in all. As I was pasting them in here, I thought... hmmm. Maybe my blog readers would also be interested in the answers I gave. Perhaps I should use these as blog posts...

I'll have to think about that. I already have my post for tomorrow written, however, so it won't be till after that.

~~

Modern Medicine

Tonight I am preparing my colon for a colonoscopy tomorrow (my first). What fun. Not. But I can't help thinking what a strange world we live in, that we will deliberately drink a solution designed to give us diarrhea.

I guess there've been worse things in the past -- trepanning, blood-letting, leeches...

I have to drink it in two sessions, one today (at 5pm) and another tomorrow, when I have to get up at 4:50am to do it. I comfort myself with the reminder that long before this time tomorrow, I'll be done with the whole thing.

Despite the weirdness of being on a liquid diet all day, it was a good one. I am very slowly learning just how it is I'm to trust the Lord, in all areas, and relax. Just let Him take my hand and guide me and when some giant rears up to threaten me, not to run away but stand there, letting all the confusing, conflicting thoughts swirl around me until finally they fall away and He shows me which one I need to focus on. I've wanted to know which one too soon, I think. Anyway, I've finished chapter 14 and am on to 16 (skipping 15 for now to attend to when I work through the other plotline/pov)

So it's off to bed. More or less.

~~

The Hound

Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.

I cannot tell
The hound's intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.

Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event

~Robert Francis

A Splinter and Other Things

I made my 4 hour goal of (mostly) 100% concentration on writing. Considering I pretty much had the whole day to do it, that's fairly pathetic, but I did it. Despite the fact that things went awry at the start. I had chores left over from yesterday to do, which included mopping and vacuuming. Before I did those, I noted that the porch connecting the back door to the back yard needed sweeping. In the process of doing that, I picked up a rough wooden block in order to move the door mat and a splinter slid into the middle finger of my left hand.

So then I had to get it out. By myself. It was teeny. I had to have a magnifying glass to see it, but I had to hold the magnifying glass in the same hand I was digging the splinter out of, and still see it. This was a challenge. I wrapped the handle in a towel, which helped to position it, but the splinter was in there pretty deep. Pretty soon I had a small, bloody excavation, but the splinter was still in there. Then I found a spot of sun by the window and brought my little operation over to the window sil. Not exactly comfortable.

After a long time (15 minutes?) I began to think I wasn't going to be able to do this alone. So I went to the Lord. I can't do this alone, Father. I need some help. I don't want to wait all day for Stu to come home, so could you please do something now?

I went back to my spot of light on the window sil, and shortly discovered it was fading. But a new spot appeared on top of some file boxes. Much more comfortable. Brighter. Within minutes I had the thing out. So. Some could say I would have gotten it out anyway, but I know I had help. In fact, I'm sure of it. I'm suspecting my guardian angel of having a hand in it, because the splinter was really tiny, really in deep, my hands were clumsy, I could hardly see and somehow, it just came out.

After that I did do the mopping and vacuuming, but left the bathroom for another day. By then it was 9:30 and I still hadn't eaten. I thought I would work while eating. And did. Sort of. Until I decided I needed to write in my journal.

Long story short, I didn't start until 10:17 and worked until 12:20. Then I did another stint from 2 to 4. Sort of. I think I did some Internet reading during that last bit. It was hard today. My brain didn't want to work. When I was getting ready to begin, the resistance was great: "It's too hard, I don't know what to do, I can't even think about it without getting a headache, I'll never get it done on time, I have to go faster, I don't have the vaguest idea how to fix anything... I just want to run away."

But I didn't. I told myself the old standby -- just read the chapter. You don't have to change anything. So I did. I changed some things, moved some things around, left some really awkward confusing spots because I didn't know how to fix them but I did work. Not fast enough. Or rather, I don't feel like I made as much progress asI would have liked, or as I "should" have (except only God really knows how much that is). But I'm going to be happy that I did work through it, and take comfort in the "Progress not Perfection" slogan of Flylady.com. I definitely made some progress. Now I'd better quit and go to bed so maybe tomorrow my brain will be clearer and sharper than it was today (Today was better than Monday, but I was still pretty foggy).

~~~

Not a Wasted Day

Well, tonight I'm even more tired than I was last night. I wrote the beginnings of a post this morning, but now I lack the mental clarity to edit it sufficiently to have it make sense.

Actually, I was tired most of the day, which is probably partly why my first day of trying for 4 hours of 100% concentration on writing was a total bust. I didn't even get in my former goal of two. Things did not go "right" this morning.

I had some spiritual issues to deal with. Also, Quigley started chewing on various fence boards which are in a pile in the back yard, some of which had nails and screws in them, so I had to take those out. (The boards are to stay there in the pile -- it's not my pile). In the process of taking the nails and screws out, I broke my hammer. :-( Had to find a new one.

I did a bit of dusting. Then decided that it was time to get to work (about 9:30) and I'd just let the other stuff go. But I couldn't get to work, was all out of sorts and had to address the spiritual issues, because what good is the work if I'm out of fellowship? It took me awhile to figure out what was going on.

Simply put, I had my eyes on the things of this world, rather than the things above. And since I didn't like the particular things I was contemplating and concentrating on, well, I was reacting to them. Which means sinning. Resentment, complaining, self pity, fault finding... arrogance... fear... Confessed them all, and recalled to mind that whatever my circumstances, ultimately they are the way they are because God has chosen them for me, decided in eternity past to place me in them and everything about them ultimately comes from His hand. Thus they provide an opportunity to bring glory to Him by acknowledging that fact and living as if it is true. If they are wearisome, frustrating and difficult, so be it. They're from God and I will accept them. Embrace them even, as an opportunity which is only available on Earth in time.

By the time I worked through that, I was hungry. While I ate lunch though, I went through my notes for Chapter 14. But then I got really tired. My brain felt scrambled. When I tried to think of what I was doing no thought led to any other logical thought. I went to take a nap. One thing led to another and that was the end of my writing for the day.

No matter. Tomorrow is a new day and I will try again. Four hours. I think I'll set 10 o'clock as my start time, and work til 12. Then try 2 to 4.

~~~

Autumn Memories

Where did the weekend go? I spent the day, after church anyway, finishing up my autumn cards and now I'm tired. So that makes it a great time to put up a picture of fall. This is one of my watercolors, done from a picture of my son on a camping trip to the White Mountains. Every year in October we would take my mother, sister, Adam's friend Ben and our dog/s and head up to Northern Arizona for 4 days of camping and to enjoy the aspen.

This picture was taken when we were still going to the Double Cienega area, near Hannagan's Meadow. The moutains were ablaze with the yellow aspen. We used to hike through groves of aspen where the leaves would fall around us like rain and turn the light all yellow. It was magical.

Which is no doubt why there's a scene in The Shadow Within that came directly from those experiences. On p 261, where Carissa is on her way south from Highmount Holding, her party has stopped at Owl Creek to drink and refill their waterbags. As she is standing beside the stream, Elayne assures her that Eidon will make them a way, despite the dangers they face.

At that, a puff of wind coursed down the rocky streambed, rustling the evergreens and showering them in fluttering gold leaves shaken loose from the aspen on the riverbank behind them. The world turned briefly golden, and for the first time in days Carissa felt that sense of promise she'd known so briefly back in Highmount, as sure and compelling as it had been that night...

I always look back on those times at this season. The blue sky, the chill air, the campfire. The cattle in the fields, the elk bugling in the night. One time, Bear's first in fact, it snowed and we had to stay in a motel. Another time the snow was so bad we kept driving to the next town and the next town to find a place to stay indoors and ended up driving a giant loop around the state and home again within a day.

We won't be taking any of those trips this year, I'm afraid. I have a book to finish! And today the Lord informed me that it's time to rev up my rate of working. I am going to try to go from two hours of 100% concentration/sacred time to four hours. This morning, for the very first time since I started writing this book, I woke up thinking about it. That's an excellent sign that things are starting -- finally! -- to percolate.


~~~