Translating a World on the Edge

Mary’s Mountain, my novelette is FREE on Kindle TODAY thru Friday; June 8 -12. It’s a short read, so I hope you’ll take me up on my offer, and I would very much appreciate a review on Amazon!

Mary’s Mountain is a story about Tolerance taken to the extreme. It is Paul Dunaway’s struggle to re-shape his affluent but joyless life, while the opposing forces in an out-of-control, politically correct America he helped to create, threaten to take him down.

A description of the infamous Institute of Tolerance found in the novelette: Today, inside its progenies, rigid rooms are covered in fiddle-faddle flowers and sentimental hearts beating warm and fuzzy pizazz into nearly every state of the union. Outside each building, a neon sign blinks: Tolerance Today, Tolerance Tomorrow, Tolerance Forever! The signs have fingers, virtual reality, to motion the people inside. The signs move. The lights move. And the people inside are moved, to tolerate anything.

Mary’s Mountain is somewhat futuristic, but not entirely. Already our history is being revised, and we accept it. Already Truth is being debunked, and we swallow it–especially if what is replacing Truth agrees with our personal opinions, or tickles our indulgences. Already our religious faith is being challenged. Already our right to privacy is being meddled with by our own government…think IRS scandal and more.  Already, our country’s enemies are at our throat, and yes, they are called terrorists.

Why don’t we fight back against any of this? 

We have become tolerant cowards, we have become tolerant of coarseness, we have become tolerant of laziness, we have become so tolerant that whatever we are fed by the media, entertainment industry, and the government, we gobble up like a favorite dessert.

We are supposed to be flesh and blood human beings, on the lookout for ourselves and others; but instead we’re becoming dry sponges.

We once considered wrong as some action against the commandment of God. Now many of those wrongs have been propagandized to seem right. And worse, we’d better put up with it, or else be called bigots, or racists, or religious zealots. In other words, we are being asked to tolerate the intolerable.

What is honest tolerance anyway? And what is intolerance?

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen said: “The important point here is this: Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error…America is suffering not so much from intolerance, which is bigotry, as it is from tolerance, which is indifference to truth and error, and a philosophical nonchalance that has been interpreted as broad-mindedness.”

G.K Chesterton said: “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”

The question in Mary’s Mountain, is whether Paul Dunaway will continue to indulge in his so-called broad-mindedness, or return to his honest convictions, enough to become a white-knight for America.

I do hope you’ll read Mary’s Mountain while it’s FREE this week, and let me know what you think.