What to do in Isolation

Okay, since March 13, 2020, Canada has changed and most of us find ourselves with much more time in our homes. How do we survive mentally, physically, and spiritually in this present state of affairs? I do not claim to be an expert, but here are some things I have found helpful.

1.     Now is a great time to read that book you have been meaning to read that will make you better at your job. There may also be a novel or a self-help book that has been sitting on a shelf just waiting for a time like this.

2.     Do those job searches you have been meaning to do. Is this the time to choose to work at something for which you are passionate?

3.     Take an online course. Is there something that will make you more employable when you come out of isolation? Many schools have switched to online delivery. Perhaps now is the time to get on board.

4.     Rest. Most of us do not need this reminder but it is important to say, keep good sleep hygiene. Go to bed at the same time every night and especially get up at the same time every morning.

5.     Not only could you read, but you could write. Have you dreamed of having time to write a blog, a book, a song, or poetry? Now might be the time. Writing a blog, book, song, or poetry is not for everyone, but you could take this time to hand-write letters or cards to friends and family.

6.     Keep to routines. Not just sleep routines but all routines of the day: take out the garbage, check for mail delivery, walk the dog, and many more things can be part of your daily routine.

7.     Eat and drink in moderation. Remember, you are likely not getting your usual amount of exercise.

8.     Schedule times to talk with people in your home. Perhaps you might do this while playing a game together.

9.     Schedule times to talk with extended family through phone calls and video calls.

10.   Although we must maintain good social-distancing, watch for ways to help others. Is there a fragile person in your neighbourhood that could use something left on the porch? Can you put something in the window to encourage those who are out for a walk?

11.   If you have the supplies, build something.

12.   Stay spiritually healthy. Do the things that keep you connected with God. Listen to sermons online, read your Bible and good books, pray with others online.

There are a few ideas. I am sure we could all add more. Let’s do our best to stay heathy in a complex world.

Art and Argument

“Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.”

- Rebecca West

This sentiment is one to which I want to pay close attention as I write a second book. Since the author provides one half of the conversation and the reader provides the second half, I would do well to create an interesting exchange.

Stop and Think

Part of my morning routine is to read my Bible. This morning I read Job 4, Psalm 20, and 2 Corinthians 5. There is a natural progression to the words I found this morning.

“Stop and think! Do the innocent die?
    When have the upright been destroyed?”

- The words of Eliphaz to Job (Job 4:7, NLT)

“Will you discredit my justice
    and condemn me just to prove you are right?
Are you as strong as God?
    Can you thunder with a voice like his?
All right, put on your glory and splendor,
    your honor and majesty.
Give vent to your anger.
    Let it overflow against the proud.
Humiliate the proud with a glance;
    walk on the wicked where they stand.
Bury them in the dust.
    Imprison them in the world of the dead.
Then even I would praise you,
    for your own strength would save you.”

- The words of God to Job, Eliphaz, and all who will listen (Job 40:8-14, NLT)

“For the king trusts in the Lord.
    The unfailing love of the Most High will keep him from stumbling.

You will capture all your enemies.
    Your strong right hand will seize all who hate you.
You will throw them in a flaming furnace
    when you appear.
The Lord will consume them in his anger;
    fire will devour them.”

- The words of God to all who would trust in Him (Psalm 20:7-9 NLT)

“I know that you can do anything,
    and no one can stop you.

 You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’
    It is I—and I was talking about things I knew nothing about,
    things far too wonderful for me.”

- The words of Job to God (Job 42:2, 3, NLT)

“So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him. For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.”

- The words of God to all (2 Corinthians 5:6-10, NLT)

“So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

- The words of God to all who would follow Him (2 Corinthians 5:20, 21)

In Job 4, Eliphaz is saying that Job is missing a point because “God never allows the innocent to die or the upright to be destroyed.” God’s words to Job and Eliphaz, in Job 40, make it clear that God is a God of justice. God will always be on the side of the innocent and upright; but this does not mean that the innocent and upright will not suffer or die. In Psalm 20, God makes it clear that, one day, all will be made right and the enemies of the innocent and the enemies of the upright will be judged. In Job 42, Job recognizes that his understanding is limited and that no one can know the complete mind of God. God’s mysteries, still hidden from humans, are like the mysteries of the depths of the ocean and the far reaches of the universe.

The New Testament passages remind us that even when the innocent die, they are only trading their earthly bodies for eternal bodies. We can trust that all will receive justice and those who have trusted in the sinless Son of God will be made right in Him. That is good news worthy of telling a hurting and broken world. Praise be to God.

Originality

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I owe a lot to C.S. Lewis. I have read most of his works and his imagination has influenced my imagination. Even as I have written an original novel, I know that my stories have roots in the writings of Lewis and other writers. At the same time, my work is indeed original because I have told truth in a new way. May God give each of us the gift of being ourselves as we seek to make a difference in this world.

View The Great Beyond in these two forms:

Kindle version
Paperback

Detour

I have been reading a preprint of Cam Taylor’s book, Detour: A Roadmap For When Life Gets Rerouted. The book has much to say to anyone who has ever faced adversity (and of course, that is all of us.) It recounts the “detour” his life took following a near-deadly motorcycle crash.  I am part-way through the book and have already found some gems of encouragement. The following quote is certainly one of the strongest statements made by Taylor.

When the world I knew was interrupted by the chaos and mess of the crash, it threw me into a tailspin. When the road ended, my mind avoided the present because it hurt. It was easier to dwell on the past, which looked so good looking back, or to fixate longingly on the future, when things would be “normal” again. I learned quickly, however, that now was the only reality I had. The past was in my memory, and the future was in my imagination. There is a time and a place to reflect on past memories and to dream of future possibilities, but that is only possible when our feet are firmly grounded in now. But I wondered, “How do I get there?” It started when I separated fact from fiction. (Taylor, 2017, p. 27)

It is easy to have a focus on “the past,” “what might have been,” and the “if-onlys” of life. Have you ever caught yourself feeling like you had been born too late? Do we not tend to think that former times were “the good-old-days?” When life throws us a difficult circumstance, our first reaction is likely to be to fixate on how it might have been avoided. Perhaps that is even a normal reaction.  But the insight Taylor brings is that, at a certain point, it is unhealthy to “dwell on the past” or “fixate longingly on the future.” He realized, and I too must realize, that “now” is the only reality we have. “There is a time and a place to reflect on past memories and to dream of future possibilities, but this is only possible when our feet are firmly grounded in now” (emphasis added).

I look forward to further insights from the book and will pass them along to the readers of this blog. Watch Taylor’s blog for the release of Detour. (http://camtaylor.net)

Works Cited:

Taylor, C. (2017). Detour: A Roadmap For When Life Gets Rerouted. Abbotsford: InFocus Publishing.

Of Hobbits and Books

Peter Jackson’s movies have done a great service in making stories come to life on the big screen. One of his greatest accomplishments has been his ability to make The Hobbit (also known as The Hobbit, Or There and Back Again) by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (J.R.R. Tolkien) accessible to all. He has created a trilogy of movies that are visually stunning; and, in doing so, he has opened the door to a world of wonder, adventure, battle, and the triumph of courage over despair. Yet, I can’t help but notice that some believe that because they have seen these movies, there is no longer a need to read the books. I have begun to ask people if they have ever read any of Tolkien’s books. Several, jokingly reply, “No, I don’t need to, I have seen the movies.”

I know that it is not easy to find the time to read nearly 300 pages of intricate prose in The Hobbit and over 1200 pages in The Lord of The Rings; yet, I do hope that people will continue to read these two books. For all of the hours of amazing film footage found in the 6 movies, there is still much that cannot be covered and much descriptive language that cannot possibly be brought to life in a movie of this nature.

Many years ago I introduced the Hobbit to my daughters as bedtime stories; and with them I relived the wonder as they pictured this world in their minds. We read many other books together including The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis). Recently, a friend told me that he was reading The Hobbit to his daughter and I felt a sense of nostalgia at this simple joy. Reading aloud to another person is an experience in itself and allows both people to enjoy the book at another level. I suspect that my daughters still remember the voices of various characters and the tunes we made up for the songs and chants. Tolkien’s prose is some of the most poetic and evocative in the English language and speaks to deeper realities than the simple world of hobbits, dwarves, trolls, and elves.

Lately, my wife, Maureen, and I have been reading The Hobbit aloud to each other. Tolkien continues to speak to us of simple pleasures, profound fears, and great joys. Last night, as we were ending our day with the author's description of “The Last Homely House” in Rivendell, these words describing Elrond’s house captured our attention. We had to go back and read them multiple times.

"His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley.”[1]

Movies are able to impress our minds with a glorious picture of a location and may even make us want to go and experience “The Last Homely House.” But as Maureen and I read those two sentences, we were aware that these sentences meant more. They made us want to make our own home a place that was perfect for food, sleep, work, story-telling, singing, sitting and thinking, and a pleasant mixture of them all. We desired to create a place where “evil things” do not enter.

The narrative of The Hobbit reminds us that,

“. . . it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”[2]

I think this may also be true of movies. The “days that are good to spend are soon told about” and painted in the scenery of the movie. The battles, that are “uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale” and fill the content of many a scene in the movie. I wonder, when we think of the movies, do we think of the scenes in Rivendell, or the scenes on the battle-field? What does one remember from reading the books?

C.S. Lewis, a man who made a living reading, writing, and giving lectures, had this to say about his emotions when it came to tea and books. “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”[3] Perhaps we would do well to recover this feeling. On this rainy day in Calgary, I think I will go and put on the kettle!

---

[1] The Hobbit, Or There and Back Again;  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; Random House, New York, 1982 Revised Edition; p. 51.

[2] The Hobbit, Or There and Back Again;  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; Random House, New York, 1982 Revised Edition; p. 50.

[3] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2467-you-can-never-get-a-cup-of-tea-large-enough

C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Many Books

"My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents' interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.” ― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy1

 

1. With thanks to Jennifer Neyhart (http://neyhart.blogspot.ca/2014/10/c-s-lewis-on-reading.html) for reminding me of this quote.

Tea and Christmas

My wife, Maureen, gave me a wonderful mug for Christmas. It has the following quote stenciled on it: “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”  - C.S. Lewis. It is the perfect gift on so many levels. I had never heard these words of Lewis; and yet, it sounds like something he would say. Merry Christmas and may you always find time to curl up with a nice hot cup of tea and a good book.

Follow-up to Recent Reading

One more book recently read: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. The following sentences are key to the story she tells.

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.” - Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna.

". . . that you can’t really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece: the birthday like an invisible piñata hanging great and silent over his head, as he stands in his slippers boiling the water for coffee. The scarred, shrunken leg hidden under a green silk dress. A wife and son back in France. Something you never knew. That is the heart of the story."  - Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna.

We Started Turning Feral

Tana French opens chapter six of Broken Harbour with two paragraphs of philosophical musing by her protagonist, Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy. He reminisces about the way things were and then he states that something has changed. Somewhere along the line "we started turning feral."

I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid's mind to tell an adult to f[***] off. There was plenty of bad there, I don't forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn't break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbours, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero.

Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it's spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the business-men shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can't have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.1

Tana French is writing about Ireland but could easily be writing about Canada or the United States. We recognize a truth in Scorcher's words. There is a sense in which the broadly accepted cultural philosophies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have led us to a more feral, survival of the fittest, mentality - with little hope. We are losing the ability to see past the immediate fulfillment of desires. We are losing the long view of a humanity which desires to improve civilization. We are losing hope.

I recently saw the movie The Shawshank Redemption on television and was struck by what this film has to say about hope. At one point, the character named "Red," played by Morgan Freeman, has this to say about hope, "Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane." Yet, at the end of the movie, we are given a very different picture of hope.

Andy: [in a letter to Red] "Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." . . . Red: [narrating] I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."2

The final scene of the movie plays like a metaphor of life and death and the border between this world and heaven. Might it be this kind of hope that is missing in Ireland, Canada, and the United States? Without hope of something more than just this world and all its joys, pains, sufferings, and triumphs, might we slowly become more and more feral? Maybe for just a moment, those who have no hope in a life beyond this world could try having that hope. Put your faith in a life beyond this world and see how it changes the view.

1 French, Tana. Broken Harbour. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012, p. 101.
2 The Shawshank Redemption. Directed by Frank Darabont. Performed by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. 1994.

Fifteen Books I Really Like

1. Til We Have Faces – C.S. Lewis
2. Perelandra – C.S. Lewis
3. The Great Divorce – C.S. Lewis
4. Night - Elie Wiesel
5. Going to Church in the First Century – Robert Banks
6. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard
7. Teaching a Stone to Talk – Annie Dillard
8. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
9. Highlander’s Last Song – George MacDonald
10. Phantastes – George MacDonald
11. Lilith – George MacDonald
12. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
13. Children of God - Mary Doria Russell
14. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
15. Flatland – Edwin A. Abbott
16. Girlfriend in a Coma – Douglas Coupland
17. The Celtic Way of Evangelism – George G. Hunter III
18. Exiles – Michael Frost
19. Forgotten Ways – Alan Hirsch
20. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Okay, twenty.