Merry Christmas

“…and so God did not send Jesus as a king, or as a benefactor; He did not use CNN, or ‘Independence Day’: He chose a different way. A slow, gracious, but dangerous, difficult way. He incarnated into our reality, and he dwelled among us.”     -Oscar Muriu, Urbana 2009

The meaning of Christmas has come home to me more than ever before this year.  It has hit me in a whole new, amazing way.  It is a story that shows such incredible love.  God wanted to have a relationship with us that much.  For Jesus, it involved giving up all the glories of Heaven.  Imagine that!  Angels bowed before him– he was in a sinless, perfect place, surrounded by glories we can’t even imagine.  And he willingly gave all that up.  For what?  To come to earth as a mighty warrior, born into riches and wealth as he deserved?  No.  He was born not to a rich family, not to a middle class family, but to a poor family.  He was not even born in a house.  He was born in a stable, and laid in a manger, where animals fed.  That was his welcome to this world. It is hard to imagine how Mary and Joseph must have felt, knowing who this baby was, and what he deserved– he deserved the very best– and he received a stable, and a manger, and swaddling clothes.  The contrast is incredible.  But Jesus did not come the way most people expected him to, as a warrior, as a prince, as a mighty man.  He did not come to be served, “but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for all.”  That’s how much he loved us.  And instead of lamenting the circumstances into which he was born, there was rejoicing because he had come.  God desired reconciliation with us– He desired relationship with us– and now, the way for that to take place had come to this earth.  Jesus was here, Immanuel, “God with us.”  It was so wonderful that he shared it with us– in the angels who appeared to the shepherds, in the star that the Magi followed.  He was greeted by regular people and by princes.  This baby, this baby was no ordinary baby.

It gives a whole different perspective to think about God the father, as well.  To think about His love in sending Jesus to us.  The awful pain, knowing what Jesus must go through– the incredible love– the great joy, knowing that through Jesus, we would be reconciled.  It is so amazing to think about that moment– how God must have desired reconciliation with us– and how Jesus was born into our world, and God knew that through him, at long last it would be accomplished.  And at that moment, there was joy.  Knowing what Jesus had come to accomplish, and that it would be accomplished soon.  It was such exquisite joy He shared it with us, in the heavenly hosts.  Wow!

Jesus grew up here, again, with a family that was neither rich nor high-born.  He worked with his father Joseph in carpentry and lived and walked and felt all that the people around him lived and walked and felt.  God incarnated into our reality, so that He understands our reality in an incredible way.  Jesus walked faithfully the road all the way to the cross.  And he bled and suffered and died.  Then he rose again on the third day, and ascended into Heaven.  It was finished.

That’s what Christmas means.  It is a special remembrance of God’s gift to us.  His incredible gift of love– His son.  It is a celebration of that exquisite joy.  ”Peace on earth, good will toward men.”

“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”  -Corinthians 9:15

NaNoWriMo Progress

I have reached and passed the 30,000 word mark!  This feels very momentous for me.  It is a lot of words, (109 pages so far) and it is also as far as I reached the only other time I really did NaNoWriMo, in 2008.  In ’08 I started six days late, had a busy semester at school, and hadn’t really explored the story idea at all before I started writing it.  I did the proverbial “flying by the seat of your pants” method, and when I look back on it now, am amazed it went as well as it did.  I started with a simple question out of which flowed a whole host of characters and scenarios.

This time around I went about it much more methodically.  I picked an idea I’ve had lurking in my mind for a very long time, but that I’ve never really done anything about except write an outline.  I thought about it a lot in the weeks leading up to November 1.  I thought about the characters, the storyline, the structure, the point of view, the directions it could go, why I wanted to write it, what the main theme was, etc etc.  I began thinking out the story from chapter one.  I didn’t “think out” the whole thing, but about a third or a half of it.  I figured from there I would get other ideas to carry on with.

All of this made it much easier in the long run.  The first day I wrote three-thousand words (almost twice the daily quota) simply because it was easy, having thought out the story so much beforehand.  After that things slowed down a bit, and since that first day I haven’t been much ahead but have been keeping up with the daily quota.  The ideas I had developed beforehand I’ve used now, but the story is by no means wrapped up and I am using what I have written to carry on with the rest of it.  It still helps having thought the story out so much beforehand and especially having gotten to know the characters.  That simplifies things a lot now.

I have faced some writer’s block, but it hasn’t been debilitating.  Walks, it seems like, are the best way to move past them for me.  I will take a walk and think to myself, “okay, where does the story go from here?  what happens next?  what is this or that character going to do after this?”  and those questions will put me in that character’s shoes, and I will begin walking in the characters shoes and see what they do next, who they talk to, what happens, etc, and it seems like events and scenes and conversations naturally unfold.  Then I get back and write the scenes I’ve thought out, which is usually about 1500-2000 words worth.  Then I will either think of where the story goes from there based on those scenes, or I will go through the same process in some form the next day.  So far it’s working pretty well.  I know where I want the story to ultimately end up, but there’s some things that need to happen yet before we get there.  Oddly enough, I think this story idea is almost perfect for the length required.

So it’s been an adventure, but a good one.  I am enjoying the story and have high hopes for it.  It keeps you busy, too.  If you miss even one day of writing it can be difficult to catch up, and it’s easy to miss days on weekends or whatever.  I already discovered that during my period of discouragement a week or so in.  But I’m caught up now, a little ahead, and enjoying it.

I have now tried both methods and in the future would greatly prefer the plan-ahead method to the flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants method.  I tried to do that last year but the story idea didn’t go anywhere.  I guess that’s part of the danger of that method, too.  You can get really excited about something that really isn’t as exciting as it first seemed.  It really helps to know your characters beforehand.  Saves time thinking them up and getting to know them along the way.  My first year of NaNoWriMo, I think I got very lucky.

On October 30 I attended a NaNoWriMo kickoff party at the Placitas Library with my mom (she is not doing it, but was interested in finding out more about NaNoWriMo.)  It was fun to fore-gather with other writers and perspective writers, and afterwards we milled around and chatted with each other some.  We all shared what previous experience we’d had with NaNoWriMo, and afterwards I was talking to another lady and she asked me what I did or was going to do with my 30,000 words from ’08.  The truth is, after writing that story a lot of things happened in my life– big, life-changing things– and as a result, I changed a lot.  Because I have changed so much, when I look at that story now I see it needs to change a lot.  I am not the same person I was, so I can’t look at that story in the same way.  It’s hard to explain.  But there are a lot of changes that need to take place to that manuscript, and that story, before it will be ready to have anything done with it.  I have grown a lot as a writer, too, and there are many glaring faults.  So for the present, I have set that story aside.  I am still interested in the idea but there are changes that need to be made and making those changes has been more complicated than I expected.  Maybe I’m just too close to the story and need some distance before I can properly tackle it again.  So that is what I am giving myself here– by now focusing on a completely different idea.  I am excited about this novel, so I am going to devote my time and energies to it for the time being, and maybe later on I’ll be able to go back to that other one.

NaNoWriMo Update

My parents have a new dining room table, and it has become my base of operations for my novel-writing.  There are other places around the house I use: the sofa, my favorite arm-chair in our office, our bed, the kitchen table.  But I think this is my favorite so far.  I can leave my mouse, mouse-pad, flash-drives, and computer power cable set up most of the day without having to clean them off for meals or because they are in somebody’s way.  Plus it’s in a little nook away from the other side of the house that is mostly used, and next to a window with an exquisite view.  I spent an enjoyable few hours here earlier today, listening to music and working on my novel.

Speaking of the novel… I’m making good progress.  After a steady few days, the busyness picked up and I got a little behind.  Plus I went through a phase of discouragement, as all writers go through now and then.  Feeling like it was no good, and not worth going on-with.  But after a break and some encouragement from my mother-in-law, I picked up and went on, and I am fairly happy with my progress.  This is a first draft, so it’s not going to be the greatest quality, but the main thing is I get the body down– the main body of the novel.  Then I can edit from there.  But this is just about writing, even if it’s not very good.  That’s actually a really good thing.

And so the story progresses and I haven’t hit too many snags yet.  The main obstacle has been my computer, actually.  I have Ubuntu, an operating system from Lynux on my computer instead of Windows.  It has worked really well thus far, but a few days ago we updated to the new Lynux 11.10, and after that my computer began locking up randomly.  So we took it off and tried an off-shoot of Lynux called Xubuntu, which my dad has on his computer and he really likes.  Unfortunately that system didn’t like my computer either, and I had the same problem.  So finally James re-installed the version of Ubuntu that came out before 11.10, and thus far, it seems to have fixed the problems.  Hopefully they’ll get the bugs worked out of 11.10, but in the meanwhile, I am happy to have my computer back!  It may just be my particular computer that didn’t like 11.10… but at all events, this works for now.

On to the World Series

It has been a very interesting post-season.  Starting off, the St. Louis Cardinals came from behind to take the Wild Card in the last few games of the season; that was a close race.  Then the Tampa Bay Rays overtook the Boston Red Sox and won the Wild Card on the last day of the season.  That was exciting– that race almost ended up requiring a tie-breaker game to decide it.  On the last day of the season the Red Sox were leading into the ninth inning, then they brought their closer out, and he blew the save.  Meanwhile, the Rays were playing the Yankees (who had already won the AL East) and losing by seven runs.  Then in the eighth inning they scored six, in the bottom of the ninth Evan Longoria hit a game-tying homer, and the game went into extras.  In the bottom of the eleventh Longoria homered again, giving the Rays the victory, moments after Boston lost.  That’s how the Rays won the Wild Card.  Wild finish!  They would go on to face the Detroit Tigers, while the Texas Rangers battled the Yankees.  The Rangers won their series, and the Rays lost to the Tigers.

Meanwhile, over in the National League, the St. Louis Cardinals were slated to play the Philadelphia Phillies, arguably the best team in the major leagues right now, due to their formidable lineup and even more impressive pitching rotation.   That rotation will probably go down in history as one of the best ever.  And St. Louis won, in five games.  Nearby, the Milwaulkee Brewers were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks.  I don’t care for Milwaulkee, so I was hoping the D’Backs would win.  However Milwaulkee took that series in five games.  So there was some interesting irony in the end, that two division rivals faced each other for the NLCS.  Milwaulkee and St. Louis had already played each other five or six times during the regular season, so this was something of an old hat.

The Rangers and the Tigers went six games.  All but one game was decided by one run; several of them went into extra innings.  Finally, the Rangers were leading 3-2 and game six began.  It was a blow-out.  The Rangers won 15-5.  The Tigers fell apart early and began making errors– at one point two outfielders crashed into each other and the ball dropped, allowing several Ranger runs to score.  Nelson Cruz hit his sixth home-run of the NLCS, setting a record for most homers ever hit by one person in the NLCS, and winning the mvp award.

The St. Louis/Milwaulkee series was also interesting.  The games fluxuated a lot more between the two teams, with first one then the other scoring a lot of runs.  St. Louis was leading 3-1 and were at home, but Milwaulkee stole a game from them and then they headed to Milwaulkee for the last two games.  That was a little scary, but the Cardinals came out in fine fashion last night, hitting a bunch of homers and winning the game 12-6.  They chased the Brewers starter early and never looked back.

And so it’s a St. Louis/Texas World Series.  I’m pretty excited about it.  I like both teams and they aren’t the “typical” winners, like the Yankees.  Both teams have a lot of great players, including strong Christian players who are leaders on and off the field.  For St. Louis, there’s Albert Pujols who is arguably the greatest baseball player ever; certainly the greatest of our time.  He has incredible talent offensively and defensively and an amazing eye for the strike-zone.  If you throw him something hitable, he will hit it.  Better not to try.

Then for the Rangers there is Josh Hamilton.  He has a pretty inspiring story of how he struggled with drugs and has come all the way back.  He is a strong Christian and is always talking about his faith.  One thing I really like about him is that when the Rangers won their division last year, Hamilton celebrated with Ginger-Ale instead of champaign.

I was also surprised this morning to read a quote from one of the Brewers players.  One reason I don’t like the Brewers is that they are division rivals of the Cubs; another reason is Prince Fielder, their slugger.  He is pretty much the opposite of Hamilton and Pujols– he is a great hitter but very negative and not a good leader, I feel.  I would far rather see Hamilton and Pujols in the spotlight.  But I found out recently that another of the Brewers best players, Corey Hart, is a new Christian, and I was impressed by this quote from Ryan Braun that I read this morning:

“They’ve [the Cardinals] been playing phenomenal baseball.  They were clearly the better team in the series, and ultimately, I think the team that deserved to win, did win.”

That is a very cool thing to say after losing the NLCS.  And it downplays the Brewers own run a little bit; they had an impressive run in the last month of the season.  I don’t think anybody expected them to win the division by as much as they did.  I respect the Brewers more than I did, and I appreciate the gracious way they are taking their loss.

But when it’s all said and done, I do think the Cardinals are a little better team.  For one thing, Pujols is a better all-around player than Fielder; for another, Tony Larussa is one of the smartest managers in baseball, and for a third, I think the Cardinals have a really good, well-rounded lineup.  The only questionable element is pitching.  Their starting pitching (besides Carpenter) can be a bit iffy at times, but the bullpen was magnificent in the NLCS.

I think it’s going to be a great ‘Series.  This time, I honestly don’t know who to root for.  I like remaining loyal to the National League, but I like the Rangers a lot, too, and I’m obliged to them for knocking out the Yankees.