QOTD: How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

Point of reference: QOTD is an acronym for "quote of the day."  

Today, I was working through How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro.  A recent Christmas gift that turns out to be an appropriate read to cap this nutty year.  I would like to share this excerpt from the end of Shapiro's introduction:

"Every piece of connective tissue in American life is being stripped away by Disintegrationists.  This is happening constantly, all around us.  We cannot watch a football game without confronting Disintegrationism; we cannot pick up a celebrity magazine, attend a church event, or go to a restaurant without first considering politics.

This is effective.

It's effective because it's exhausting.  It is meant to be.  It is meant to convince Americans to throw up their hands and simply comply with the dictates of the Disintegrationists, or to force Americans to divide up every element of daily life politically.  Either solution is unworkable for a country that wishes to remain united.  Unionism suggests that despite our differences, we are, at root, Americans.  Disintegrationism suggests that despite our American passports, we are, at root, different."

There is so much to unpack here, but one of the chords that was struck while reading this particular passage is how poignantly Shapiro paints the weariness that many people have encountered this year.  I am still near the beginning of this work, but looking forward to seeing what Ben Shapiro makes of this divide we are seeing in America today!  

Stay tuned for an eventual book review.

"There's a Reason Classics are Classic. They're Classic."

"There's a reason classics are classic.  They're Classic." - Mark Frost.

Classic is defined by the Webster dictionary as, "serving as a standard of excellence: of recognized value."

I do realize that my blog is starting to feel like it's been turning into a movie/book review blog.  Mostly because my most recent post I did was on Christian movies, and then I did one on a new book that just came out.   And it is a little different from what I usually do.  But.. I've really wanted to branch out into new areas.  Which can include giving my thoughts on movies like this, or wrestling with recent cultural issues.  I started this blog because I wanted to begin learning more about myself as a writer.  And writing on many different subjects is a very good way of accomplishing that.  

As a young adult preparing for college, I get asked the age-old question: "What are you going to do with your life?"  But, it is more along the lines of, "What are your plans now?" "What are you majoring in?"  "What do you want to do after college?"  And to that question I generally reply with, "I really would like to be a history teacher and author."  (Lord willing!)  And that may change, you never know.  But I really enjoy writing, and already have different ideas rolling around in my noggin.. and one that is already halfway invented.  If you have followed my meanderings and wanderings on this blog for some time, you may have caught it in the past.  If not, it was basically me just running with a story that I first found while writing for my Comp. 1 class.  (Go figure.)  

But as I said before, this blog was for me to learn and grow, and I was learning as I started writing The Sterling Prophecy.  Now this is the first book in The Sterling Trilogy, and I did end up posting the "final chapter" on this blog.  So, I guess you could say that I finished it.  But as time has rolled on, I found that there was more that I could add and flesh out.  I could give the characters more depth and character.  I could add more storyline here and there.  My picture that I was striving to paint had the raw essentials, but I really want it to be more vibrant.  

 I recently watched the movies Gladiator and Braveheart.  And in my estimation, these are classics.  These are movies that others should strive to be.  And that has been stirring in my mind.  If I'm going to somehow publish this book or a book like this, I want it to be the best that it can be.  And that takes time and editing, adding and subtracting, and persevering and pushing.  And so that is why I'm looking up to the classics as I'm writing.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think I could ever even reach the level of classics like The Chronicles of Narnia or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but I definitely want to set this as the goal.

"Imagine a poem written with such enormous three-dimensional words that we had to invent a smaller word to reference each of the big ones; that we had to rewrite the whole thing in shorthand, smashing it into two dimensions, just to talk about it.  Or don't imagine it.  Look outside.  Human language is our attempt at navigating God's language; it is us running between the lines of His epic, climbing on the vowels and building houses out of the consonants." - N. D. Wilson

This is me.. running between the lines of His epic.

Notes from Underground

I've been reading through Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky for my Humanities class, and I came across this passage below today.  It is a very sad and broken example of fatherhood:

'If I were a father and had a daughter I think I'd love the daughter more than a son really, I would,' I began obliquely, as if on another subject, to divert her attention.  I was blushing, I do confess.

'Why's that?' she asked.

Ah!  So she was listening!
'Well, I don't really know, Liza.  You see, once I knew a father who was a very strict grim kind of man, but he used to kneel before his daughter and kiss her hands and feet.  Really, he couldn't stop feasting his eyes on her.  She'd be dancing at a party and he'd stand in the same spot for hours without taking his eyes off her.  He was besotted with her - that I can understand.  At night, when she was tired and fell asleep, he'd wake up and go and kiss her in her sleep and make the sign of the cross over her.  He went around in a greasy old frock-coat, was tight fisted towards everyone else, but he would spend his last copeck on her, buy her expensive presents - and the joy it brought him if the gift was to her liking!  Fathers always love their daughters more than a mother does.  For some girls home is a very happy place.  But I don't think I would let a daughter of mine get married.'

'But why not?' she asked with the faintest of laughs.

'I'd be jealous, really!  How could she kiss someone else, love a stranger more than her father?  The thought of it pains me.  Of course, all this is nonsense, in the end everyone comes to see reason.  But I think that before letting her marry I'd have exhausted myself with worry; I'd have found fault with every suitor.  However, in the end I'd let her marry the one she loved.  You see, the man the daughter falls in love with always strikes the father as worst of all.  It's always been like that.  It causes a lot of trouble in families.'

The Voice of the Oyarsa

Senior year has been anything but calm and sedate, and thus I haven't been able to post much, but I will have a post coming to you over the weekend.  In the meantime, here's an excerpt from Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis! 

"Be silent," said the voice of the Oyarsa.  "You, thick one, have told me nothing of yourself, so I will tell it to you.  In your own world, you have attained great wisdom concerning bodies and by this you have been able to make a ship that can cross the heaven; but in all other things you have the mind of an animal.  When you first came here, I sent for you, meaning you nothing but honour.  The darkness in your own mind filled you with fear.  Because you thought I meant evil to you, you went as a beast goes against a beast of some other kind, and snared this Ransom.  You would give him up to the evil you feared.  Today, seeing him here, to save your own life, you would have given him to me a second time, still thinking I meant him hurt.  These are your dealings with your own kind.  And what you intend to my people, I know.  Already you have killed some.  And you have come here to kill them all.  To you it is nothing whether a creature is hnau or not.  At first I thought this was because you cared only whether a creature had a body like your own; but Ransom has that and you would kill him as lightly as any of my hnau.  I did not know that the Bent One had done so much in your world and still I do not understand it.  If you were mine, I would unbody you even now.  Do not think follies; by my hand Meleldil does greater things than this, and I can unmake you even on the borders of your own world's air.  But I do not yet resolve to do this.  It is for you to speak.  Let me see if there is anything in your mind besides fear and death and desire."

Talk about a wake up call.

Some Milton for Your Thursday Morning

I've kicked off my senior year with a fantastic read in Paradise Lost by John Milton.  Thought that you would appreciate this excerpt.

"O thou in Heav'n and earth the only peace

Found out for mankind under wrath, O thou

My sole complacence!  Well thou know'st how dear

To me are all my works, nor man the least

Though last created, that for him I spare

Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,

By losing thee a while, the whole race lost.  

Thou therefore whom thou only canst redeem,

Their nature also to thy nature join;

And be thyself man among men on earth,

Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed,

By wondrous birth: be thou in Adam's room

The head of all mankind, though Adam's son.

As in him perish all men, so in thee

As from a second root shall be restored,

As many as are restored, without thee none.

His crime makes guilty all his sons; thy merit

Imputed shall absolve them who renounce

Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,

And live in thee transplanted, and from thee

Receive new life.  So man, as is most just,

Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die

And dying rise, and rising with him raise

His brethren, ransomed with his own dear life.

So Heav'nly love shall outdo Hellish hate,

Giving to death, and dying to redeem,

So dearly to redeem what Hellish hate

So easily destroyed, and still destroys

In those who, when they may, accept not grace.

Nor shalt thou by descending to assume

Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own.

Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss

Equal to God, and equally enjoying

God-like fruition, quitted all to save

A world from utter loss, and hast been found

By merit more than birthright Son of God,

Found worthiest to be so by being good,

Far more than great or high; because in thee

Love hath abounded more than glory abounds,

Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt

With thee thy manhood also to this throne;

                                                                Paradise Lost Book III 274-314

The sacrifice that Christ made can never be underestimated.

Plans for the Sterling Trilogy

I was glancing through at my book blog (The Sterling Trilogy)  and noticed that there were some gaps in my first books page.  So I have gone back and fixed that, so there are no more gaping wholes.  I apologize for not having realized this sooner.  I also noticed that I haven't posted on that blog in about a month, been very busy in all.  But now that life is settling down, I will try to be posting regularly.

My goals for the Door Between Worlds (Book 2 in the Trilogy):

1.  The Sterling Trilogy took about a year to write.  I finished it two days before Christmas last year!  And so I'm planning to have the end of the Door Between Worlds by Christmas this year.  And then the Rightful Heir will be given all of next year.  So a three year endeavor in all.

2.  I will be posting atleast once a week, so be expecting updates more regularly.

3.  I really hope you guys have been enjoying the Door Between Worlds!  It's been a learning experience, that's for sure.  Glad I started doing this, and thank you for all the encouraging thoughts and support.  That being said, I believe that this book will be a bit longer than the Sterling Prophecy, now that I have a feel for what the lengths of my books can be.  So bear with me.

Excited to see what's next?  Stay tuned!

Death by Living/Notes from a Tilt a Whirl

Live to die.  Live so that when it's time to run to the Creator God, you are like the ripe wheat that is pulled in for the harvest.  Live to send light into darkness.  The following videos are about N. D. Wilson's two books:  Death by Living and Notes from a Tilt a Whirl.  I would recommend his books!  They are incredible and really change your perspective on life..  He puts a spin on how to view life.  Life is a story, and God is the Author.

Enjoy:

Live to die.