The Hole on the End of the Bible Belt

As I type this post I have brought coal into Newcastle. I came to the library to wait on a phone call for about an hour. I decided I’d try to catch up on a few things (because I do not have anything resembling down time) like some of my reading. I haven’t finished On Writing, and have added to my “I’m going to carry this around until I read it” list And Another Thing, the sixth book of the trilogy by Douglas Adams written by Eoin Colfer (of Artemis Fowl fame). Eoin has been channeling Douglas so far as I’ve read (about 10 pages) so it is enjoyable. However, the book I’ve decided to read while waiting is Jeff Goins‘s You Are A Writer.

This gives me the added odd feature of bringing not only books into the library but an eBook into the library. Who can resist the irony there. With so many predicting the eBook industry bringing an end to the traditional print book world I couldn’t resist.

Jeff’s eBook was just released (by the time I post this blog) last week. It is a wonderfully easy read that I’ll be putting a complete review of soon. It also has been an Amazon Bestseller so far, too.

Some people bring coal into Newcastle week after week. My former church has this happen as an example. Many on-fire Christians come in for Sunday School, services, or both every week (or twice a week, or even three times a week) to get re-charged. Others come in and leave with the same coal-free existence they had. The fire can spread from one piece to another, yet so often fails to do so. Those who bring in coal every week take more home than they came with. Some of us coal-carriers hope that more people walk out with coal than those that walked in.

The wonderful thing about the church’s coal is that it doesn’t matter how much we take out, there’s always enough to go around and there’s always more.

And another thing, Dr. T never got mad at me when I tried to hit other people in the church with His coal.

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PS I took more coal out of the library, too. I checked out one of CS Lewis’s greatest books The Great Divorce because I need a bolster to my faith since my self-imposed exile from church.

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A few days ago I read one of my favorite blogs by the author of Dilbert. While he often says things that some would find surprising to come from a comic, that is merely one of the reasons I follow him. In this post the thing he said that most stood out to me was: “I prefer to divide the world into two groups: People who are trying, and people who aren’t.”

It would seem easy to identify people who aren’t trying on the poor side of the scale. Or at least one would assume. Those that come to mind would be the illiterate, dropouts, and perennial welfare/food stamp recipients. That would be wrong to automatically classify them all as people who aren’t trying, but there are people from that group in those groups.

Assuming that all who aren’t trying are on the disadvantaged side could not be more wrong. Some disadvantaged try the hardest. And some of the most privileged try the least. Talent doesn’t define it, ability doesn’t define it, money doesn’t define it, the only thing that defines those who try are the fact that they try. They fall down seven times and stand up eight. The world gives them lemons and they make lemonade, lemon squares, and cherry Coke just to make the world wonder how they did it.

It also isn’t right to assume that just because you said a sinner’s prayer or walked the nave of a church that you’re good, either. Showing up to church every time the doors open won’t do it either. You can still divide the people into those who are trying and those who aren’t. Doing so might just surprise you from time to time, too.

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My mom pointed out that the link to download my novella wasn’t working right. This is for subscribers, either email or RSS Feed. I think I fixed it, and would have fixed it sooner if I had known I needed to. If you tried before, try again. If it still doesn’t work, drop me an email and let me know. Then, when you read it, post a comment and tell me what you think.

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Literary writers use metaphors. It’s not a secret. What the metaphor is, what it means, and how it was intended sometimes is. More often than not it is explained by either the story (if it’s a good metaphor) or intense overanalyzation. My good friend from Cincinnati calls it mental fornication. Sometimes the metaphor is the basis for the story. Sometimes the story was started and the metaphor added in a fit of epiphany or as the Muse directs if you prefer. Sometimes the metaphor as intended becomes more, more appropriate, more than desired.

And sometimes it shows you what you didn’t want to admit.

There were issues boiling in and around my family’s church attendance, desire, and committment. It was boiling over when my wife informed me that we would prove my dad wrong and make our youngest a middle child. Nothing says someone neglected to disconnect the plumbing like a 12 year gap between kids.

Names have always been a big part of our 3 kids. Obviously, anyone who loves words and worries about words (including mental fornication about which to use) would take great care to choose words wisely. Children names were no exception. Our first child was named after her maternal grandmother. For a middle name (the one I could choose) I selected her mother’s middle name before she changed her middle name to her maiden name. It was 6 years before the one-time opportunity appeared. The primary was to honor my wife, but when my daughter announced that she was Uh Byrd (chosing the alternate pronunciation of A) it was all worth it.

My second child was 27 hours old before we settled on a name. The name I selected ended up being first because it sounded better that way, but we call her by her middle name. I chose my paternal grandmother’s name and she has inherited Mama Byrd’s musical ability (see also any post here by The Frequently).

Little Doodlebug was another matter. I pushed hard for Scarlet Grace, that is a powerful name indicative of so much. In fact, I added a major role in my work in progress for Scarlet Grace to play. It is so critical I have no idea how I was writing it without her, but I digress. Faith was selected for my youngest because I realized that my family was having a faith issue and hoped that subconsciously all of our faith would grow as all of ours Faith grew.

She is, it is, and the metaphor became deeper then I first imagined. Every time we brought Faith to the nursery she got some illness or sickness. None of them were bad, but our Faith was being affected by going where we were. It is harsh to say, but our faith was being affected by going where we were.

After posting my recent, somewhat vague post about Jello I passed along to one person the symbolism of the post. Neither of my other readers commented to me to explain that they caught what I meant. That is the problem of literary writing, some may get all, all may get some, some will get none, none will get some. I don’t apologize because I have to write. Just because we don’t fit doesn’t mean others won’t or that the Jello is tainted. I loved our church, I love many of the folks in it, but it was time for the Byrd Pineapple to become dislodged. 

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 An unfortunate problem I have passed on to my offspring is that of being difficult to read. I suppose it is a uniqueness, just like everyone else’s uniqueness that we appear to be so easy to read and yet are read incorrectly. The worst part is that we are so easy to read because there are no subtle signals, it’s just out there. I will illustrate with an anecdote from several years ago.

I switched my cell phone provider to Nextel because everyone I talked with had the du-doop connection. Eventually they all migrated to providers that were less proud of their service and I ended up with the incredible iPhone with less than lackluster service I have now. Before all that happened though, Nextel was bought out by Sprint.

Sprint was well-known for the pin drop commercials in the early to mid 90s, and their call quality was that good. A few months after I started with Nextel I received a call advertising a “hybrid” phone that had Nextel for the du-doop and Sprint for the phone calls. This gave me the odd ability to du-doop in some places I had no cell phone coverage and call people in places where I had no du-doop coverage. With free incoming minutes, it also allowed me to forward my work cell phone to my personal cell phone number. This wouldn’t seem to be beneficial until you realize that when it went to voicemail callers heard my personal number. If they didn’t know me well enough to know I did that, they thought they called the wrong number and hung up without leaving a message–so I didn’t have to call back.

About the same number of months later, Sprint began an every other month call asking me how I liked the service. Now, the unspoken question they really were asking was if I wanted to upgrade my phone (which of course would extend my contract with them). When my contract ran out they began calling every month. Every time they called until I got rid of the service (and the month after when they still called) I told them I had a complaint and paused. That got their attention. Then I told them my complaint. The quality of the phone calls was so good that I couldn’t tell when the phone dropped the call. The silence in the conversation matched the sound of simply holding the phone to your ear.

How would you take that? Compliment? Complaint? Me being me?

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Jello is a strange substance. Especially when you add fruit. Most fruit can be added without trouble. But on occasion you try to add pineapple.

Pineapple is a wonderful fruit. It is part of the reason the United States has Hawaii as a state, and it always gives an air of sunshine and freshness. But it doesn’t always mix well with Jello.

The instructions say to allow the Jello to congeal a bit before adding. Obviously you can’t wait too long or the fruit will never sink in, to early and it will simply sit on the bottom and not be surrounded by the Jello. If the pineapple has too much acid the Jello never gels around it.

No matter how long the pineapple sits, the acid won’t allow the chemical change to occur. Other fruit can be added later. The other fruit may congeal completely becoming one with the mass of Jello inseparable from the Jello, yet the pineapple still remains.

There’s geologic time, man’s time, New York minutes, and time for Jello to finish. When you turn the Jello on its side it jiggles. The fruit jiggles, but the pineapple falls out. Right now, the Jello is on its side and the pineapple is Falling. Despite a decade in Jello time, it never fit in, it didn’t become a part, and now it is gone. No longer causing a problem to the Jello’s chemical reactions, no longer trying to fit in, no longer being stung by the “pain” of not being supported, loved, and held on to by the Jello.

No, it’s not a story about desert. The pineapple is gone and I never even sat in the Karmic Christmas Gift.

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As mentioned previously, I view Providence, Serendipity, Karma, Luck, and Coincidence as synonyms. Recently another blogger I follow was thinking and posted on a subject that was similar. Mike Duran’s post was a complete thought on a different tack, but parts of what he wrote described some of what was going through my mind while I was in a recent phone conversation.

It started out heading towards a topic of particular interest to me that I have posted on before. Namely Third Choice in a Two Sided Argument and the accompanying Flawed Thoughts (Part 1?). This topic is one that I was headed towards early in the summer and thought I’d have covered by now except for my split-personality life has not gone at all as I thought it could.

 My fellow conversant is an old friend I call an Evangelical Catholic. He has been trying since 1987 to get me (and everyone else) to leave our religions and just come back to Catholicism as it was the first. He wrote the first 5 chapters of what I call a Catholic Apologetic that was very deep and steeped in tradition. Like most Catholics he believes in Church and then Scripture (Mike Duran’s spot on words). He has recently begun to go back to college and is living with a retired professor who is (I believe an avowed) atheist. This is the often expected religious leaning of college professors, though it is usually of scientific types rather than English scholars.

As an engineer, I am a practicing scientist–engineers put science principles into action. One of the worst people groups to try to minister to and reach are engineers and scientists because we try to prove everything. This is a related flawed thought to the previously mentioned Flawed Thoughts.

A difference between scientists and religious types is that each has their own language, if you will. Each tries to explain the other in their terms. Scientists try to explain and “prove” God, religious types try to just believe (or more often not believe) scientific endeavours. It is like translating a book from Greek to English. In this case science speaking one language while religion speaks the other. At some point there is a word that exists in one language and not the other. At this point the translator has to take what I call poetic license with the word (e.g. agape translated to love and without displaying the true depth of agape). This is the point at which science and religion lose each other. This selection of words is where religion requires us to simply say it is a matter of faith. Science has no equal point. The translation breaks down.

Religion says it’s a paradox, live with it; science says it can’t be proven so it’s false. 

Links to posts:
deCompose by Mike Duran
First post on the matter Third Choice
Second post on the issue Flawed Thoughts

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Last week I had a training session in Spanish Fort, Alabama. Enroute from Southern Mississippi I decided to stop off for breakfast and got the urge for a waffle, so I drove past where I was headed and went to a Waffle House in Daphne. Of course I had a waffle, you don’t go to a barbecue joint for a salad (unless it’s a bbq salad, yeah we make those) and you don’t go to a restaurant with waffle in the name to order a hamburger. Another customer came in complaining about the cold. Another WH standard. I talked with her a bit, then she asked me if I was a minister.

The question caught me off guard, as I like to hope I make a good impression with my Christianity without being a blatant Bible-thumper, but I was fairly sure that wasn’t what she was talking about. She asked because she mentioned most people aren’t very friendly anymore–except ministers. I laughed and blamed growing up so far into the South you couldn’t go further South without getting your feet wet. She also laughed when my waffle arrived and I told her I was a Baptist but say Catholic prayers over my food because they’re shorter. After that I put the brief conversation out of my mind until later in the day.

A friend of mine (who will remain nameless as he may or may not read my blog) has been going through an estrangement with his wife. Early on he told me about it and I told him that if he ever wanted to talk about it that he could bring it up. I had lots to say, but I would only offer it if he wanted to broach the subject. Earlier in the week he went to talk with his pastor.

Now, he isn’t a very regular church attendee. In fact, I’m not real sure when he last went, but the preacher was still more than willing and happy to talk with him. I am chomping at the bit to talk with him about it, but didn’t because of my previous statement. On the same day I had a waffle for breakfast, he commented that of the only 4 people who knew he went I was the only one who had not asked how it went. We didn’t go in depth into the talk, though we will later, but we did talk about the fact that I offered to only go into his situation when he wants to but others don’t.

Without deliberately trying, I had 2 conversations that reminded me of my latent rather than blatant form of ministering. It was an odd juxtaposition because at the start of the day I heard a radio ad discussing how we need to plant seeds and not worry about watering them. Either they’ll take root or they won’t. This on top of a conversation the night before with a friend on pretty much the same thing. What we do with our gifts (be they money, talents, or talk) are between us and God, what the person we share them with does with it is between them and God. And that talk, the one that started it all off the night before was with a friend that works for…Waffle House.

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