Love Life Word Work

I found a new web app called Write or Die. It “encourages” you to keep on writing and not stop. Here’s what I wrote on it:

Yeah, I think it’s time for me to stop messing around and start writing. That’s the way I’ve been feeling lately. This is an app that forces you to do that if you want to be forced.
I think I might want to be forced.
Now for some writing.
Now for some writing.
Once in a lifetime a person arrives at the point of now. Now is the time that has arrived at this point in time and no other. It is a very exclusive point in time because no other point is it exactly.
Although it is exclusive it is also common because every other point in time is like it. Maybe exactly the same in generic quality. But different in content. I see it’s quite a punishment that comes your way - first the color of the bg changes, then the sounds start. The babies crying.

Here’s the site:

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lab.drwicked.com

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I wrote a review of three books on a common theme. The authors are Booth Tarkington, Harold Bell Wright, and the team of Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman.
The article is posted on my dotlove website, which is devoted to Christianity, love and the media.

The reason why so many false effects are credited to the moon is that there are some true, as the tide.
Blaise Pascal, in the Pensées

I got a copy (from a yard sale) of a beautiful book by Harold Bell Wright. Shepherd of the Hills was his second book, and was followed by others I haven’t read yet that sequel it. It’s a story of love, regret, atonement, but mostly, in my view, love. Of course I tend to see love everywhere.
I was amazed by the writing skill of this author whom I did not previously know much about. This book was originally published in 1907 and has become an important part of the story of the Ozarks and Branson area, where the story is set. Not that he was perfect—he had some wordy paragraphs that didn’t need to be so wordy and some flowery phrases that didn’t need to be so flowery, but his story-telling skill made up for these weaknesses. It held me closely attentive until I finished, particularly toward the end.
It had mystery, unexpected twists and turns, sorrow and grief and, of course, a beautiful love story.
Harold Bell Wright grew up poor in New York and Ohio, became a minister, then reached out to the wider world by writing novels.
You can read the story for free online or I would be thankful to earn a few pennies if you buy it (or anything else) through my amazon picture link here.
Here’s a quote I like from the character Dad Howitt:

“Here and there among men, there are those who pause in the hurried rush to listen to the call of a life that is more real. How often have we seen them … jostled and ridiculed by their fellows, pushed aside and forgotten, as incompetent or unworthy. He who sees and hears too much is cursed for a dreamer, a fanatic, or a fool, by the mad mob, who, having eyes, see not, ears and hear not, and refuse to understand.
“We build temples and churches, but will not worship in them; we hire spiritual advisers, but refuse to heed them; we buy bibles, but will not read them; believing in God, we do not fear Him; acknowledging Christ, we neither follow nor obey Him. Only when we can no longer strive in the battle for earthly honors or material wealth, do we turn to the unseen but more enduring things of life; and, with ears deafened by the din of selfish things of life; and, with eyes blinded by the glare of passing pomp and folly, we strive to hear and see the things we have so long refused to consider.”

Good quote, good character, good book, good author. I would like to be more like each one of them myself.

From Augustine’s Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love:
In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is rightly ordered and kept in its place, commends the good more eminently, since good things yield greater pleasure and praise when compared to the bad things. For the Omnipotent God, whom even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme Power over all, would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good? In animal bodies, for instance, sickness and wounds are nothing but the privation of health. When a cure is effected, the evils which were present (i.e., the sickness and the wounds) do not retreat and go elsewhere. Rather, they simply do not exist any more. For such evil is not a substance; the wound or the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a substance, is good. Evil, then, is an accident, i.e., a privation of that good which is called health. Thus, whatever defects there are in a soul are privations of a natural good. When a cure takes place, they are not transferred elsewhere but, since they are no longer present in the state of health, they no longer exist at all.
Augustine’s Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love, chapter 3, paragraph 11. Full text here.

Of course, that was not really about yin and yang, but about good as reality and substance, and evil as an absence of that reality. Good comes from God and evil corrupts wherever that fact is forgotten.