The following is the text of a speech I am giving this Friday at Westmont College's chapel:

"One of my favorite song lyrics of all time comes from the hymn “Blessed Assurance,” where the chorus declares, “This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior, all the day long.”  The story of Fanny Crosby, the woman who wrote “Blessed Assurance,” is living proof that the Author of Life is busy writing remarkable stories using the conflicts, characters, and events from each of our lives.

Fanny Crosby was born on March 24th, 1820 in a village north of New York City.  Like many stories, her life began with great conflict.  When she was six weeks old, she caught a cold that caused inflammation in her eyes.  The doctor who treated her used questionable methods, and when his treatment destroyed Fanny’s eyes and blinded her for life, he left town.  It was later discovered that he was an unqualified physician who had deceived her parents.  Despite this tragedy, Fanny was not a bitter girl.  At the age of eight when doctors in New York City confirmed that her sight was irreparable, she wrote the following words in her diary: “Oh what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see, I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be.”  Fanny had a perfect auditory memory and was able to memorize entire books simply by hearing them read aloud.  Despite her genius, her school teachers did not know how to teach her, so they covered up their inadequacies by calling her stupid and ignoring her in class.  When she was fifteen, she was accepted into the New York Institute for the Blind where she quickly excelled as a scholar and became the resident poet of the school.  Notable officials often visited the institute, and Fanny was always asked to read a poem for them.  Over the course of her time there, Fanny read to twenty-two American Presidents from John-Quincy Adams to Woodrow Wilson, and one of them, James Polk, became a close friend.  At the age of twenty-two, she was hired onto the school's faculty.  A year later, she became the first woman in US history to be invited to speak before the US Congress and Senate to advocate for the rights of disabled citizens.  Up until this time, she had pursued secular poetry only, until tragedy struck again.  When a cholera epidemic ravaged the school, she lost many close friends and almost died herself.  This experience shook her to the core, and she surrendered her life to Christ wholeheartedly.  An unquenchable passion for the Lord was birthed from her broken-heartedness, and she began to write hymns, often writing six hymns a day.  By the time she died in 1915, she had written over 10,000 hymns.

One of those hymns, "Blessed Assurance," swept across the nation after it became an anthem for revival meetings.  According to Fanny, the hymn was written as a meditation on Hebrews 10:22, which says, "Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience…”  Each verse of the hymn describes a different element in the experience of surrendering to God.  The chorus shows us the end result of that surrender: a life story written by God Himself and a heart that praises Him daily. This hymn urges us to lay the pen on the table in surrender and let God write our story, beginning first with surrendering our hearts to the cleansing blood of Christ, and then surrendering everything else to His Authorship.

Whether it is movies, novels, or TV shows, stories only interest us if the characters experience great conflict that transforms their world within and without.  If Fanny had written her own story, she would not have chosen to be blind from infancy. And yet, that tragedy was the twist in her story that led her to her destiny, which included everything from befriending presidents to writing hymns to advocating for the rights of the disabled before Congress.  This hymn reminds me that it is much better if I stop trying to write my own story.  It is better if God writes my story, even if that means I will face great conflict.  As we see in the Cross, God can take the most painful moments in our lives and turn them into our greatest victories.  In the face of great tragedy and conflict, Christ is indeed our “blessed assurance.”  As we sing this hymn, I encourage you to surrender everything in your life to Christ and let the Author and Finisher of your faith write your story."

In an age of spoiled superstars and professional athletes who are arrogant, self-serving, and habitually carrying guns, someone like Tim Tebow is just plain refreshing.

Saturday night's game against the Patriots and the Broncos is going to be so much fun to watch.  For one thing, I am also a Tom Brady fan because he is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest quarterback to ever play the game, and he is always a joy to watch. Like watching Monet pain. He's done more with so little than any quarterback in history. He can take a scrub squad of receivers that no one's ever heard of and make them look like Hall of Famers. Unlike many other great quarterbacks, Brady has never had a Jerry Rice or a Reggie Wayne or a Marvin Harrison or a Calvin Johnson or a Greg Jennings -- with the one exception of the season when Randy Moss came to town, and in that season Brady broke many NFL all-time records and he almost achieved a perfect undefeated season.

So I'm not a Brady hater, in other words. That's not with this post is about. I'm just overjoyed to finally see such a classy athlete like Tim Tebow in the spotlight for once. Just sick of reading about whiny professional athletes or thugs who shoot themselves in the leg at nightclubs.

So, I just can't help myself, I will be cheering for Tim Tebow on Saturday night.

Tonight will be a good night: Bible Study and then some R & R with my favorite shows: Parks and Rec, The Big Bang Theory, and The Office. I don't watch much TV, so this is a rare treat.

Here's a book I'd like to read someday:

My friend Todd Pulliam took this:

I have recently discovered a band that has reminded me why I love music so much. I purchased "In the Fire" the newest album by Funeral Club. Joe and Jenny Andreotti formed the band, and they are carving out a sound all their own.  It's as if the Parisian sound of singer Edith Piaf of "La Vie en Rose" fame has relocated to the dusty plains of Americana. Or maybe it's the other way around: the gritty banjo-playing Dust-Bowl characters from John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH have invaded Paris, joined an indie rock band, taken over an old jazz club from the Roaring Twenties (like La Gerny), and have become the back-up band for a famous French singer whose vintage-like vocals swirl and float around the room in a sea of reverb. There's something very special about this group, and I hope they make many more albums.

I'll get to the subject of this post in a moment, but first some thoughts about Ernest Hemingway's writing.

If you've read my blog a long time, you'll know I'm a fervent Hemingway fan. There are many depths to his writing style, especially with the masterful way in which he uses a technique called "ommission," whereby a writer purposely leaves out details, commentary, or plot points, but hints at them just enough so that the reader feels them. It is the same principal behind the idea where you feel someone's absence more keenly than you feel their presence: "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." In a literary context, the reader can feel the absence of things that the typical writing might include; and yet the brain cannot tolerate such gaps of information, and it instinctively works in the background connecting the dots and missing pieces until it understands what was ommitted. Therefore, the reader perceives what Hemingway ommitted, and it creates this sense of confidentiality, as if the reader has pieced together a little secret and now has an inside connection to the inhabitants of the page -- like being let in on an inside joke or a family secret. This reading experience is also a truer depiction of real life. We don't go into each day having a perfectly whole narration of the world around us. We see little strains of lives being lived out on all sides of us, and we get little bits of information of what's happening, and our brains piece things together into what we call "life." Even the experiences and interactions that directly involve us don't come complete with all of the information. You receive an email from a co-worker, but there's a certain tone in it that hints that something more than what they're saying is going on, and you see it in their face as you walk down the hall; and after speaking with another co-worker, you discover that there indeed IS a serious problem happening in their department. Each day of life is a puzzle we must put together with sources of information arriving at our senses from all directions. Hemingway understands this experience and replicates it with artful beauty in his novels. When you read Hemingway, you get to engage your imagination just like you do in real life, and look for clues as to why a character did or said something because the author won't tell you outright; and in fact, he doesn't even tell you the events that contributed to a comment made by a character: you have to read their comment and work backwards and FEEL the absence of what was ommitted from the description of that character's personal life. And then as you begin to guess correctly and use your sleuth-like deduction to rightly perceive what is happening in a character's background world, you become more personally and emotionally invested in them because you've worked away into the inner circle of their lives without them having to say a word to you about it.

I'm currently reading Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS which is a love story between a WWI ambulance driver and a British nurse that takes place on the Italian front during the war. I am always fascinated by WWI history, so this book is a delight to read. It also has some beautiful and haunting descriptions of what that setting and time of history was like. People often say that Hemingway writes with a very sparce, dry, sort of minimalistic way.  But he is actually capable of some stunning detailed decriptions that make you feel the environment of the story vividly.

And now on to the post's subject. Sometimes life brings the most surreal delights. Lorian Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway's granddaughter) is a wonderful writer whose prose is quite poetic. She certainly has carried on the legacy of her grandfather. What is so wonderful about her is that she has a heart for undiscovered writers, and she runs an annual short story contest for unpublished writers ONLY. She and her daughter personally read each entry. It is truly a wonderful thing because being an unpublished writer can be a long, discouraging, exhausting, daunting process. Lorian's writings and concern for new writers inspired me so much that I decided to send her a personal note thanking her, as well as sharing some thoughts about the experience of an unpublished writer.  She wrote back!  A personal message to me by name! It was wonderful. One of the things she said was that my kind words "made her evening as bright as the full moon." How delightful is that? I just received the message this morning, and it was such an incredibly encouraging thing to stumble upon on a Monday morning.  It is beyond surreal that Lorian Hemingway knows me by name, and that I was able to write something that encouraged her.

I think Ernest would've been pleased by that.  And that has added an entirely new dimension to my reading experience of his novels.

Wow.

Here's another excerpt from my novelette THE WOODS ABOVE THE WORLD (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006HTP3KK):

To his greater astonishment, several creatures appeared in the stomach with him. His eyes had trouble deciphering the shapes because of the blinding light of the fire, but somehow his vision adjusted. Seven lions lay in shallower parts of the pool with him near the rimmed lining of the stomach. They lay with their noses nuzzled against each other, like cubs sleeping around their mother in an overlapping bundle of paws and fur. They slept in a circle around Country Boy. They seemed not to notice the fire, and the fire seemed not to notice them, or singe even one whisker. One of the lions behind him was not asleep. As Country Boy turned, he saw the lion happily gnawing on something – perhaps a bone or a morsel of meat. But as he looked closer, he saw that the lion was not destroying the object, but merely playing with it, kneading it, and fidgeting with it in its mouth and tongue. Country Boy swam closer towards the lion and gazed into the mouth. He gasped in alarm. A heart! His heart, perhaps? Somehow, he knew the heart belonged to him.

“This is a strange thing to see after one has died. What could this mean?”

As if the dragon had heard Country Boy, a great voice rumbled from every direction. The surface of the acidic pool rippled from the vibration.

But it was not the dragon. Since I am the king of my realm and the narrator of this story, I happen to know exactly whose voice had spoken. It was a being known as Bright Star. I named one of my poems after it or he or she or whatever or whomever Bright Star is. This being has great power over the universe and over the kingdoms that populate the Other Side beyond the Great Facade. And Bright Star favored Country Boy for a reason I know not. Before the flames could kill Country Boy, Bright Star sent seven lions to protect Country Boy. Unfortunately, it did not come without a price. These particular lions require the heart of anyone they protect. And so, they took Country Boy's heart from his chest as their own, and yet there was no scar, and he lived on as if nothing had happened. It is one of many mysteries that still baffle me to this day. Regardless of what does or does not baffle me, that is what happened. And in so many words, Bright Star explained these facts to Country Boy.

“You are not dead. My lions protect you. Though you stand in a great furnace, the heat withdraws its fingers from your skin, for fear of my lions. Two arrows shall fly into the dragon’s belly. Take them and climb up his throat until you reach the mouth and drive one of the arrows into the top of the mouth where a soft patch of pink flesh trembles likes the chest of a newborn baby.”

Country Boy knew not what to say in reply. After a few awkward moments, he spoke.

“I’m growing rather fond of your lions, sir. Or madame. Whoever you are.”

Wow, it only took about three years, maybe four, but I finally finished "The Woods above the World."  It started as a gargantuan, over-written beast that was almost 400 pages long.  I edited it down to about 150 pages.  It's more of a novelette.  Short and sweet.  Here's the plot: three strangers investigating the same kidnapping discover an enchanted kingdom ruled by the English Romantic poet John Keats and other famout literary figures from the past.  You can buy the eBook at Amazon Kindle for $2.99.  You don't even need a Kindle, you just need a Kindle app (which is free) downloaded on your phone or other device.  Anyhow, here's the link to Amazon, and below is the art for the book cover: http://www.amazon.com/Woods-above-World-ebook/dp/B006HTP3KK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323103369&sr=8-1

John Keats openly admitted admiration for Shakespeare and recognized the Bard's influence in his poetry.  Literary critics of Keats's time (who hated Keats, to their discredit), were kinda over Shakespeare, and they didn't like how Keats emulated that style.  This merely provides more evidence that the critics of Keats's time were quite silly.  So, it's no surprise that there are similarities between Keats's Bright Star and Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.  I stumbled upon this correllary on this fellow's blog (click on highlighted words to go to link).  In case you're curious, below are these two sonnets back to back.  I love both of them.  I savor every word.  Such fine poetry!

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,    

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This morning, in between nun chuk swings, I chatted with my kung fu instructor (called "sifu," which means "teacher" in Chinese terminology) about writing.  When I told him I write novels, the first image that came to his mind was someone sitting in the quiet room of a home in the countryside and writing.  Sort of the rustic image of a writer in solitude. 

We then discussed how the federal government thinks nun chuks are as dangerous as machine guns.  Nun chuks are on the same "Illegal weapons" list (unless you practice the nun chuk in a certified school of martial arts).  The real question is why aren't my FISTS on that list.

Getting back to topic.  It's interesting how people associate writers with a life of solitude.  Perhaps because many writers have been known to escape to far away, solitary places to write their masterpieces.  Or maybe my instructor thought of that image because he himself is a quiet fellow -- an introvert, I'm guessing.  Kung fu is a quiet, sort of solitary martial art.  You don't scream or make a big show of it.  Just watch the movie "Ip Man."  You'll see what I mean.  I practice the same branch of kung fu that is displayed in that film (called "wing chun"). 

Personally, I don't need a solitary space to write.  It's nice.  But not necessary (for me).  When I write, whether it's in a crowded room, on a bus (writing on my iTouch), or in a cabin, my mind kinda creates its own solitary space.  LIke a force field or something.

Practicing kung fu and writing have the same calming effect on me.  It's interesting.  Both are powerfully therapeutic.