Justification

Ex. 23:7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.

After reading yesterdays post, this one is going to be about justifying my actions. Just like when I drank and thought, ‘It’s okay, I don’t have a problem.’ I DID have a problem, one that needed nipping-in-the-bud. (pun intended here) After all, it made Bud wiser?

Well it made me wise enough to know that alcohol is poison that enters your system and your body fights to restore the normal flow, a defense mechanism, if you will, yes after one sip. No different than a bee sting, a mosquito bite, or snake bite. Your body goes right into fighting to get the poison out of your system. That is why after too many drinks, you throw up, your body knows poison when it enters its system.

Being of sober mind not only means, no alcohol; nowhere does it say, ‘one drink and you’re okay’, in my warped mind. Keep in mind, as a RECOVERED alcoholic, one drink is a fall, a fall I’m not willing to take because we live in a society where everything goes! Everything is justifiable!

I’ve come across a blog that shares what a sober mind is and it’s worth a read. Not about alcohol at all!

Home Living

This post isn’t about alcohol and its poison, it’s about justifying your actions. Yesterdays post about web addiction, and admitting it, was my first step of releasing the poison the web dishes out, and nipping the problem before it gets out of hand.

I DO mostly use the internet for writing and research but too often I find myself straying into social scenes like facebook, and giving too much playtime to my web interactions! Maybe you all are content with that, but I’m not. As I search within myself for a better day-to-day living, something needs to be trimmed so that I realize my full writing potential! I’m not bored with life; I’m in awe of it and think it needs some TLC! I don’t think I have enough friends to even care if I’m away awhile. So no, they WON’T miss me… Maybe two or three, but they’ll have others to cling to and stalk. I’m a mere afterthought; I guess that’s better than no thought at all right?

Social playtime has to be trimmed to posting my blog post, maybe a spirit-filled post, here and there, but just not a continuous flow of posts throughout the day. I think the twitterfeed is set, so that’s a good thing when posting my blog. The only tabs open will be my dictionary/thesaurus, RhymeZone, and MS Word, where I write!

I always seem to get in a reflective mode as the season changes. It’s like Fall is a call to put old baggage to rest; to prioritize; to let the leaves fall where they may, and pile them in a slush pile so winter can do the cleaning of my soul that is necessary.

We can all justify our actions as a means to feeling good about ourselves, but justification is just a warm blanket we carry around like Linus, it’s our safety net. We hide under the blanket masking our true identities. Something gets lost along the way, your vibrant soul! God is my only safety net and justifying my actions is in a sense a betrayal to His plan for my life.

In a world where tuning into the net is full of the news of the day; killing, fires, floods, tsunami’s, hurricanes, and then there’s the lovely political hate filled posts, it’s enough to make you shudder and want to retreat back to bed, there certainly is another way of facing the world’s tragedies and faults, and that is certainly not by justifying the pebbles you ripple across the lake. Those ripples affect EVERYTHING, so choose wisely.

I just want to write!

The WINDS of Change

“The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?”
~ Christine Feehan

Waving Hi, from the windy state of Nebraska. Sure Chicago can claim “the Windy City” but I am here to unofficially lay claim to the name Windy State of Nebraska! As weather forecasters will lie to you and say, it’s going to be breezy, I’m here to say, 25mph sustained WINDS with gusts to 45mph does not make it ‘breezy’; where I come from (Baltimore, Md.) that is downright WINDY!

The winds have been sustained for more than a week now, I’m sure of that, which hinders any time in the garden even though I’m loving the cool temps. Last week we had record-breaking heat with temps reaching 97 and in some places 100-104! A few days before that we had SNOWFALL and today it is struggling to reach 60!

These crazy weather shifts gives rise to tornadoes and some storm-wreaking havoc. It’s made me think of the winds of change sweeping over my life as well as this lovely state of Nebraska. Living out here in isolation – yes, a closed down turkey ranch with one other house is sheer isolation for me. While I love the beauty, solitude and quietness of the place, it sure can elicit a solid empty feeling of loneliness.

An overly friendly person I am, who sees the outside physical world maybe once every two or three weeks (that being a trip to the food store or church, twenty miles away from my house) can sometimes feel the isolation as smothering. This is where my writing garden comes into play. And to think ten years ago I never TOUCHED a computer, I have now taken up one of my beau’s famed addictions and that is, life on the computer!

In this windowed world, there is no wind! There is a collage of friendships to be had and thus I find myself clinging to the writing world and the sites that have anything to do with writing, and the daily dose of facebook, mind you.

THIS is why I chose to dive headfirst into f2k again. Even IT has taken on the winds of change. Once a free writing course, now a FEE writing course, which will enable serious writer’s to take the plunge into the writing frenzy that they so desire. F2K is the birth of a silent muse. That’s right folks, as your muse lay dormant, f2k can fire up the silence with seven weeks of active writing.

Whether it is making new friends, feedbacking and critiquing others, f2k is the place to put your money where your words are. You’ll suddenly feel the winds of change in everything from writing, confidence, all the way through to a finished short story.

You too will see why I find inspiration in a fallen tree (due to winds), sprouting seeds, flowers bursting forth, the aroma of newly fallen rain (when we get it) and the humming of tractors to the hissing of pivots making their rounds.

Isolation can bring about the winds of change, as well as a lost feeling of loneliness but that is why my only ties to the enormous outside world lay right here…at my fingertips.

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”
~ Mervyn Peake

Learn from the Past!

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.
Natalie Goldberg

I know as a child, had it not been for the mistakes that my parents made, would I have ever learned right from wrong. We learn from other people on the road of life, and it is through them that we decide what we’re going to do or where we’re going. Right or wrong, we’re going to step into the unknown, make a choice, and stand firm in our decision.

I read something that was quite funny yesterday from a student. “What can we learn from the ancients. Times have changed. Move on.” After I readjusted my jaw after it dropped and hung there for a spell, I replied gently, but firmly. This person wants to be a writer, but doesn’t want to learn from writers that have gone on before him/her??? How logical is that?

This person’s exact words were this and I quote: “You know what? I thought this class was to help us become better writers. Not, to learn how to intrepert writers from hundreds of years ago. Hello, times have changed. Our understanding of ancient writers is NOT going to help us attract the interest of that potential agent. Are you REALLY here to help us??? We're not here to be impressed by the accomplishments or knowlege of your experience.”

After you get over the grammatical errors, learn something quite pivotal from this statement. This person is in writing for the money. Not the knowledge they can gain from writers and accomplished writers who came before them who achieved greatness because of their skills in the writing world. How does this young student EXPECT to attract that potential agent, if that person has not gained one bit of insight from from those ancients such as James Joyce, Shakespeare, and Sorry Mr. Bradbury, but you’re thought of as an ancient tool in the writing world.

I cannot imagine a world of learning not being shaped by the thoughts and techniques of men and women who have gone on before me. I learned to write poetry, not by some new aged rapper, but from the elders in the field. First Shakespeare, Frost, Tennyson, Byron, Dickenson; just to name a few. They didn’t teach me, but reading them and dissecting their work, I gained knowledge of the flow, the artistic stance in their words, the paint they used to place a portrait in my mind. Had I not read them, where would I get my information? Knowledge? Know-how?

Are we expected to learn from the new age and times? Sure times have changed, and I haven’t seen much in the way of, for-the-better, either. So what am I to take away from the statement, “What can we learn from the ancients?” You will learn this my friend, just what your FUTURE holds!