Translating a World on the Edge

It is a fact. Each of us will die.
But is death the end of us?

We come into this world innocent, and nothing can change that we’re made in the image and likeness of God. Part of each one of us is spiritual, like it or not. And it is that spirituality that draws us to God.

But we’ve also been given a free will by our Creator. We can make choices, and some of those choices are wrong ones that steer us away from the inborn likeness to God set in us, and toward a dead end, where we often have no desire to change, or even acknowledge God. Many of us are fine with our lives as we’re living them.  And some don’t think about change, or God, at all until we are faced with death.

Yet we want eternal life.

Holy Week is all about eternal life. This past Sunday, the final Sunday of Lent, begins Holy Week for Christians. It commemorates the triumphant arrival of Christ in Jerusalem, days before he was crucified. Palm Sunday is known as such because the faithful will often receive palm fronds which they use to participate in the reenactment of Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem. Following days are Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and finally the Resurrection–Easter.

On Holy Thursday, Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist–His real presence at Mass. This is my Body. This is my Blood. Do this in remembrance of me. On Good Friday, He showed us how to suffer through the worst of all deaths, the excruciating death of an innocent man through the conniving of greedy and selfish human beings; a suffering He allowed–only for us. And on Easter Sunday, He rose from the tomb into which human evil cast Him.

He rose because no grave could hold Him. No grave could silence Him. No grave could keep Him from us, each one of us, His beloved.

Jesus Christ showed us the way that any one of us can be resurrected as well. First, by our sincere desire for it. Second, by repentance of our sins and a decision to change our behavior. And third, by being open to the Mercy of God, our Father.

But are we striving for a life beyond our earthly grave?

Do we want to be resurrected?

Resurrection is defined in the dictionary as the act of causing something that had ended or been forgotten or lost to exist again.  The ultimate Resurrection is a promise from our loving God if we truly desire it in the here and now. When we  attempt by our free will to overcome our sinfulness–and through faith, rely on the overflowing mercy of God, we will have eternal life.

So that no grave can hold us.
No grave can silence us.
No grave can keep us from our God who loves us.

I am a writer. But why?

It’s certainly not for the money. Some people have said I could make more money cleaning houses. Oh sure, there are a sparse few who get rich from writing. So far, I am not one of those.

I don’t write because writing is easy; it isn’t. It is totally time-consuming, and you have to choose to do it–i.e, self-discipline. And sometimes it messes up your mind for days when you are dealing with the problems of your characters–lots of problems because if your characters don’t have problems worth solving, the story isn’t worth writing.

And writing can be lonely–because it must be done alone. There are things you miss. When you are writing, you must focus only on writing. And what happens then? Well, for sure your house does not get cleaned!

So why do I do it?

Maybe because I’ve always been someone who likes to “get to the heart of the matter.” I like to know why and how we human beings love, have compassion, understanding, peace and joy. And also, I like to know the opposite: how we as human beings can hate, have no mercy, and make no attempt whatsoever to understand another.

These are the opposing human traits that battle in my stories. I know those traits well, because at one time or another, I have experienced each of them. Perhaps this is why I write–to become more aware of the battle between those opposing traits in my own life. I know that when my story or novel comes to resolution, I feel personally laundered.

As with every human being, a writer must respect her characters enough to give each of them at least a chance of success whether they take it or not.

I do believe the ability to write creatively is God-given. A spiritual gift in which the author perceives a bond between people, indeed between all living things, that comes from God’s much higher authority. A thing to reach for, always with human choice involved.

In essence, as a writer, I give away all my personal life secrets in stories that are hopefully fulfilling, and in doing so, shed light on a little bit of truth.

So—if you’d care to—tell me what you want to read about. 🙂

Recently, in the midst of publishing two new novels, I have been doing genealogical research on my own family. I took the DNA test from Ancestry. com and since I had already developed my family tree, I found loads of new relatives who belong to it as well.

But you don’t have to research to know that there are many who have gone before each of us, or that our lives today are built by the struggles of others who deserve our respect.

Some of them led hard lives, filled with sorrows we can only imagine. Others seem to have led uneventful lives–and yet if we look more closely, these related people are important links to us, to our personalities, to our inherited strengths and weaknesses.

This is all God’s magnificent plan. This is a plan without time or space, or whininess and ridicule for others in the time we are on Earth. For we are all wanderers through life–and our life is a short one! We will all have our Good Friday’s. But we will all have our Easter, too–just as those who went before us.

So, how are we making the best of our time here? Do we see ourselves as part of the divine, or not?

Many of us live as if we will live forever, not giving much thought to death. Others overthink death, worried about what it actually means. But in the big picture, death is not death at all, but only a crossing, only one more step into the divine for which each of us is made.

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We all shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.–Isaiah 50:1-2

“The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and soul.” — Mark Twain

Freedom is a big word. A weighty word. A lengthy word. The locomotive of Freedom is championed by words, like Liberty and Independence. But the locomotive’s steam is often the lack of any restriction or inhibition.

The train of Freedom runs two ways, and on conflicting tracks. One is a track of lies, the other a track of truth.

Before you buy a ticket on one train or the other, there are questions to ask: Where does it come from? Where is it going? And most especially, who is its engineer?

The lying train of Freedom can be very long and black. It can come from jumbled and defective thinking. It can take us to foolishness and death. And its engineer can be a faulty entity of propaganda.

Do we really have the freedom to kill innocent babies? The engineers of society and our government say we can.

Do we honestly have the freedom to forget our marriage vow, or steal another person’s wife or husband, or to have sex with whomever we want? The engineers of Hollywood say we can.

Do we truthfully have the freedom to knock ourselves out with dope at the expense of the life of our family and our own life as well? The enormous drug trade says we can.

Who is your engineer? Who is driving your Freedom train? We do have a choice. On which train will you buy a ticket?

For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters.
But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh;
rather, serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.– Gal 5:1 13-18

Love is the greatest virtue. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.–Colossians 3:14

Too often, we get down on ourselves and those we profess to love. We feel less than we are, and treat them less than we should. We may even get tired of our everyday lives—always so much of the same thing, we can’t even call it love.

And so, we long for something different, something more alive, fresh, and vibrant. But how do we go about finding or creating this kind of love in our lives?

The answer to that question lies in the answer to this one: What is love, really? What should we expect from it?

Love is not a fairy tale–don’t we all know that! Yet, it truly is meant to bring delight. It is a story that’s meant to have something like a prince and princess; a knight who would die for his lady if he had to, and vice versa.

Our Love is meant to change the other person in such a way that they are better than they would have been without us. If it doesn’t do this, if it makes the other worse, we ought to question what sort of relationship we actually have–because it’s probably not love.

Love’s expression is tied with the virtue of kindness. In our own love story, are we kind to the other person? Many times we’re much kinder to strangers than those we say we love. Is this because we take their love for granted? Taking someone for granted is another way to ruin a relationship.

You may be surprised to hear that love and suffering go together. When we truly love another person we can expect to suffer. That’s because people are fallible and can hurt us, yet true love continues to love.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.–G.K. Chesterton