Category Archives: Wesley

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, poetry, Wesley, Writing

The June Report

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Although I did not set any goals at the beginning of the month, I think I should give a report on my stewardship as a writer during the past month. If one is called, one should be a steward of that call. This month I accomplished the following in my writing.

My main activities were following up on the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference in May. This included: a large number of e-mails to faculty and fellow conferencees; recording of expenses and proper filing of receipts; filing of conference materials.

I worked on two of the three proposals requested of by an editor and an agent. One is down to final edits (tonight, I hope); another is almost complete. The third one I will start on tomorrow. This will be a main project for July. The other requested item, a couple of page outline of a mystery series I have in mind, will follow the last proposals (translated: nothing done on these last two items this month). However, I did finish the research for the third proposal subject matter.

I found a new critique group and began attending this month. It meets every-other week; I attended both weeks available, and received good feedback on the two chapters of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People that I shared.

I wrote two poems: one haiku, which I posted for critique and pretty much finished; and one rhyming, metrical poem not to any pattern. This one is simmering, waiting for additional self-editing, then posting for critique.

Critiqued seven poems at Absolute Write poetry forums. Each of these was a thought out critique, with a fair amount of time in it.

Read in several books that will add to my writing efforts. This included: The Letters of John Wesley, The Lost Letters of Pergamum (re-read), the letters between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, Dune by Frank Herbert (about 1/3 the way through), and several on-line helps for writers.

And, blogged here quite a few times.

All in all, a productive month.

Macaulay, Wesley

Not Without Cheerfulness

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Continuing from yesterday with the John Wesley letter. Here’s the applicable part.

You seem to apprehend that I believe religion to be inconsistent with cheerfulness and with a sociable, friendly temper. So far from it, that I am convinced, as true religion or holiness cannot be without cheerfulness, so steady cheerfulness, on the other hand, cannot be without holiness or true religion. And I am equally convinced that true religion has nothing sour, austere, unsociable, unfriendly in it; but, on the contrary, implies the most winning sweetness, the most amiable softness and gentleness.
Wesley writing from Savannah, Georgia to Mrs. Chapman, somewhere in England, on 29 Mary 1737

Down through the years so many people have thought that being a Christian meant giving up joy. Macaulay wrote how the Puritan would ban bear fighting not because it was cruel to the bear but because it would give pleasure to man. No doubt he was exaggerating, possibly misinformed about the full nature of Puritanism. But the view he expressed was by no means uncommon.

Wesley strongly disagrees. A relationship with God, which is what Christianity is, should give pleasure, not sorrow; joy, not depression. Wesley said it well in the letter. I can’t write much to add to it, and certainly not to improve on it. I have often prayed for joy, or myself or for a loved one I was concerned about. It seems to me that loss of joy in serving Christ is the first sign that something is amiss in the Christian’s life.

Pray for joy, for yourself and others, and practice it.

reading, Wesley

Friendship Stronger than Death

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I thought I had one more post I wanted to write about the message of the unsaid, but whatever it was escapes me right now. I have a few minutes before I start my work day and want to write. As before, I find inspiration in a letter of John Wesley.

True friendship is doubtless stronger than death, else yours could never have subsisted still in spite of all opposition, and even after thousands of miles are interposed between us.
…
You seem to apprehend that I believe religion to be inconsistent with cheerfulness and with a sociable, friendly temper. So far from it, that I am convinced, as true religion or holiness cannot be without cheerfulness, so steady cheerfulness, on the other hand, cannot be without holiness or true religion. And I am equally convinced that true religion has nothing sour, austere, unsociable, unfriendly in it; but, on the contrary, implies the most winning sweetness, the most amiable softness and gentleness.
Wesley writing from Savannah, Georgia to Mrs. Chapman, somewhere in England, on 29 Mary 1737

Looking at the first paragraph in this post, how I have found this to be true in my own life. I have lived a vagabond existence, of sorts. First was the move to Kansas City upon graduating from college; then the move to Saudi Arabia in 1981; then to North Carolina in 1984; then to Kuwait in 1988; back to North Carolina for a few months in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion; then to Arkansas in 1991–where I remain, though likely not where I will retire. I am the only one in my immediate family who has wandered so, drawn by employment and advancement.

The bad part of all these moves is leaving friends behind in each place. The good part of these moves has been leaving friends behind in all these places. It’s a two-sided coin. Rhode Island friends from school and college remain, most still in Rhode Island, though some scattered. I found one in Louisiana in April, the man with whom I was in an auto accident junior year in high school. I found him through the miracle of the Internet. In December I found a preacher-friend I had last seen at his wedding in Kansas City in 1975, and have re-established a little bit of correspondence with him. How I would like to make contact with the expatriate group we were friends with in Saudi. We keep in touch with one of those families, but what of the six or seven others? What of those we were close to in Kuwait, with whom we shared the survivors’ bond?

Warren Henry (a character in Winds of War, by Herman Wouk) decried how his family had grown apart as the three siblings moved into adulthood, freeing the parents to take an overseas assignment without them. Torn apart and blown away like tumbleweeds by the winds of war. I see much truth in that in my own life.

Yet, re-establishing relationships with those old friends is a hard thing. They haven’t seen or heard from me in 20, 30, or in one case almost 40 years. They have a life full of relationships, of activities. Is there time to get to know again a Rhode Island vagabond who now thinks he’s an Arkansas? I must hang on Wesley’s thoughts, that “true friendship is…stronger than death” and can subsist despite when “thousands of miles” and, I add, decades of life “are interposed”.

Pray, Lord, let it be so.

Wesley, Writing

If you find a good metaphor

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I found John Wesley’s “arrow through the air” metaphor in a letter he wrote to Anne Granville in 1730. After writing my first blog post on this, I decided I should see if anyone else had written about this. This resulted in numerous hits (including this blog!), but in reading a great many of them, I found they referred to a different passage in Wesley’s writing, to the Introduction to his printed sermons from about the year 1759. Here’s the passage.

“To candid reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God, just hovering over the great gulf; till a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven, how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end He came down from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God!”

So twenty-nine years later, Wesley is still using his metaphor, still seeing in his life a comparison to that rushing shaft on its way to a target, momentarily disturbing those invisible gases it encounters and leaving no mark during the passage. Only at the target does the arrow have impact. Wesley refined the metaphor over time. Here’s how he used it in his earlier writing:

“Strange, to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark behind them, without our being able to trace them in our improvement!”

First the metaphor was concerning personal improvement, looking ahead to a life that should be full of impact, and fearing that will not be achieved. Later he wrote of the temporary nature of human existence on earth. Different concerns; same metaphor. Wesley’s use of quotes around it leads one to believe this is not the first time that metaphor has been used in print. Perhaps he read it and appropriated it for a sort of life motto.

I’m not sure I’m quite ready to draw life-changing conclusions from all of this. I like the original use of the metaphor better than the latter. The latter, however, gets much more attention in the post-Wesley world, and who am I to dispute the scholars? In fact, ‘twould not surprise me to find this popping up several more times in the writing of this great man. “As an arrow through the air”; how apt a metaphor.

Wesley, Writing

Move The Target

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Today I continue with thoughts gleaned from John Wesley’s “arrow through the air” passage in the 1731 letter to Mrs. Pendarves. I plan on one more post with this passage, and will move on to other things as soon as possible thereafter.

In the letter, one of Wesley’s main concerns was that his life seemed to have little impact on the world. As I said before, he saw himself passing through life like that arrow, moving invisible gases, no apparent effect on the world. That would be true until…

…he hit a target. This is what Wesley doesn’t say. An arrow eventually lands somewhere; it hits a target. In the battles of old, such as depicted in Braveheart, the target was a long way off and sometimes unseen. As depicted in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the targets were visible, and significantly closer. The archer could see what he aimed at, and quickly know if his missile had the desired effect. How satisfying for Legolas to be able to count his kills.

As a wannabe writer, the target—publication—seems a long way off. And unfortunately, they (i.e. the publishing industry) seem to keep moving the target. First it was write words so compelling that no editor could turn them down. Then it was promotion; you, the writer, have to promote your own books because the publisher won’t. Then it was must develop a promotion plan before pitching your book. Now it’s platform; you must have a ready-made market for your book before pitching your book. All I can ask is, What’s next?

But I have one thing I can do to overcome this. I can move the target myself. I can move it closer; that is, I can aim at something much closer than a book. Perhaps my newspaper column, which is ready to go but for which I have hesitated putting in the marketing time, is a nearer target I should aim at. The reason for my hesitation? Fear that the time commitment, to research, writing, and marketing, will swallow up all the time I have for creative writing, leaving no time to write books, let alone market them. The same would be true for freelancing. That would be a closer target, much closer, but again would swallow precious time. Still, in terms of clips, platform building, networking, maybe those are the targets I should be shooting for.

My decision? Give me a minute, or at least until after the writers conference next week.

Health, Wesley, Writing

On losing strength

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My morning reading over a cup of coffee, at my desk at the office, after my devotions and before beginning the grind, continues in John Wesley’s letters–as it will likely do until retirement, which is just 8 years, 7 months, and 18 days away. I found a new passage in one of his letters today that is worth commenting on, but I will put that aside to a future post and continue with the 1731 letter to Mrs. Pendarves that has been the subject of other posts. Repeating the quote, with a new emphasis:

“…I am afraid of nothing more than of growing old too soon, of having my body worn out before my soul is past childhood. Would it not be terrible to have the wheels of life stand still, when we had scarce started for the goal; before the work of the day was half done, to have the night come, wherein no one can work? I shiver at the thought of losing my strength before I have found [it]; to have my senses fail ere I have a stock of rational pleasures, my blood cold ere my heart is warmed with virtue! Strange, to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark behind them, without our being able to trace them in our improvement!”

After bemoaning about growing old too soon and not having his soul fully developed, Wesley continues with a similar thought: that strength may wane much too soon, well before he could enjoy what pleasures the body could afford. Or, might Wesley have been thinking of the whole man–body, soul, and spirit? Surely if bodily strength and pleasures exist, so to do spiritual and intellectual.

At a college graduation once (I attended four straight years, and am not sure of the year), the speaker encouraged the new grads to “peak at eighty.” That is, as bodily health decreases the power of mind and spirit should increase, with the result that our most productive years should be somewhere around our eightieth on earth. That seemed like good advice. Of course, when I reach eighty, perhaps I’ll change that to “peak at ninety”!

Now 56, my body sure doesn’t work like it did even a few years ago. Why, back in 1995, on a pleasurable Saturday afternoon in August I raked an acre of cut grass and added it to a huge compost pile of leaves, thoroughly mixed the whole thing, then picked up and moved about 10 wheelbarrows full of dead fall apples to the same pile and mixing them in. I was exhausted, but not spent. Now, thirty minutes of weed eating leaves me ruined for the rest of the day. How did this happen? Surely thirteen years could not have reduced my strength that much.

Yet, I sense my mind able to grasp concepts that only five years ago would have been unfathomable. Writers like Emerson, Carlyle, and Macaulay speak to me in a way they once could not. New meaning in Scripture jumps from the page, and preparing Bible studies and Sunday School series is more than mere wishful thinking. Five years ago I had one book on paper an none in my mind; now I have at least twenty in the gray cells, patiently waiting in a disorderly queue for their turn to move to paper or pixels. Even as my body loses strength, my intellect–and hopefully my spirit–give me increased pleasures, increased productivity.

I’ve not given up on my body. I hope at 58 to be younger than I am at 56. I am determined not “to lose my strength before I have found it.”

Wesley, Writing

Self-starter stuff

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Writers write, right?

Somehow I’ve got to carve out some time each day to write; posting on this blog might be that only time for a while. I’ve got to leave the television during this fascinating election season, leave the political readings and writings, leave the silly little writings I do now and then, and focus on my writing “career”. Hopefully I’ll post here more frequently, even if only short posts.

I want to go back to the quote from one of John Wesley’s letters, which I wrote about in a couple of post recently. Here’s the quote, with particular part I want to focus on today highlighted.

“…I am afraid of nothing more than of growing old too soon, of having my body worn out before my soul is past childhood. Would it not be terrible to have the wheels of life stand still, when we had scarce started for the goal; before the work of the day was half done, to have the night come, wherein no one can work? I shiver at the thought of losing my strength before I have found [it]; to have my senses fail ere I have a stock of rational pleasures, my blood cold ere my heart is warmed with virtue! Strange, to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark behind them, without our being able to trace them in our improvement!”

“Before the work of the day was half done”–that is written for me. I feel like so much of my time is not productive, is not seeing results. It is the true “arrow through the air”, doing nothing but move invisible gases. At work, much of what I do now is self-starter stuff. I work alone, waiting for people to call of come by my desk with their most difficult engineering problems. Yet almost all the people who came by on a regular basis, who cared about learning how to solve their problems, have been laid off. Now, with few exceptions, I only see those who want me to solve their problem for them, not teach them how to solve it. When waiting for these problems to come my way, I have my own residual projects with soft, self-imposed deadlines, and I have work to keep our corporate engineering standards up to date. It is all self-starter stuff, and I find myself not self-starting the stuff.

My writing is all self-starter stuff, except for this Life Group study I’m developing, writing, and teaching; well, I guess that is self-starter stuff, cause I self-started it. But all the other stuff I want to write, I have to make myself do it. In the words of Emerson, “the good world manifests very little impatience” for my writings. If I don’t go after it, I’m not even moving invisible gases.

In all this self-starter stuff, especially the non-vocational stuff, something must yield to make way. Yet, with a fixed number of hours in the day, little is left to yield. While in my mind I embrace that “there is time enough for all that I must do”, reality is that the days are clicking off toward that time when the night comes, “wherein no one can work.” The road to publishing is so long and arduous, that right now I truly fear “the wheels of live [will] stand still” long before my self-starter stuff is done.

An arrow through the air.

Carlyle, Engineering, Wesley

It’s been an even more turbulent week

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More than a week has passed since I last gave the “weekly report”. Sorry for my absence. Many of the days during this time were chock full of what I can only describe as turbulence. Much of that was at work, but some was personal, especially yesterday. I can’t say anything publicly. The immediate crisis has passed, but a long term crisis looms.

But, each cloud has a silver lining, right? The good news is that all the stress has about taken away my appetite. I’ve reduced to the lowest weight I’ve been at for two or three years.

Hopefully tomorrow I will find time to get back to the Wesley letter of recent posts, then to a Carlyle letter I began research on three weeks ago.

We can hope.

Bible study, Health, Life Group lessons, Wesley

Growing old too soon

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Continuing with that quote from John Wesley’s letter to Ann Granville, here is a shorter version of it:

“…I am afraid of nothing more than of growing old too soon, of having my body worn out before my soul is past childhood. Would it not be terrible to have the wheels of life stand still, when we had scarce started for the goal; before the work of the day was half done, to have the night come, wherein no one can work? I shiver at the thought of losing my strength before I have found [it]; to have my senses fail ere I have a stock of rational pleasures, my blood cold ere my heart is warmed with virtue!”

Wesley interestingly expresses concern about growing old in body, but not being mature in his mental development, of “having my body worn out before my soul is past childhood.” This is something we all need to be concerned about. The body grows old as a natural process. Development of our soul (i.e. our intellect, our emotions, our spirit) is NOT a natural process. This is something we need to be deliberate about.

Of late I have been very concerned about my intellectual development. The result is that I have chosen reading material that I feel will improve my mind. I suppose one could say that all reading improves the mind, and I would agree with that in part. Obviously some things we could read will improve the mind more than others. I’ve also been concerned with advancing in my spiritual development. It seems that this goes in fits and starts. For a period I will be incredibly focused on the Bible, and study it with great intensity of mind and find myself growing. At other times, secular concerns crowd out Bible study, and stagnation develops. Maybe that is the way it will always be. Maybe intensive spiritual study for too long a period can be draining–exhausing–and I must back away until mind-improving activities of a lesser intensity have a chance to give my mind a rest.

At present, the Elijah and Elisha Bible study I’m doing is a great springboard for Bible study. First with a general reading and selection of items to present to the class, then in intense reading of the selected passages along with a couple of commentaries, and finally to preparing a handout for the class to have each week, I have found this study quite meaningful, and have felt my mind, soul, and spirit growing. We just finished the fourth lesson today. Six remain, with most of the intense study still ahead. I guess by the end of May I’ll be ready for a breather.

But this part of the journey is certainly a joy.

Wesley

An Arrow Through the Air

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I’m slowly reading the letters of John Wesley. I found these on line at The Wesley Center. I have downloaded the first two volumes and formatted them for a maximization of trade-off between easy reading and concise printing, and printed them. I’m thus reading them from my printed copy. I found this interesting piece today.

“…I am afraid of nothing more than of growing old too soon, of having my body worn out before my soul is past childhood. Would it not be terrible to have the wheels of life stand still, when we had scarce started for the goal; before the work of the day was half done, to have the night come, wherein no one can work? I shiver at the thought of losing my strength before I have found [it]; to have my senses fail ere I have a stock of rational pleasures, my blood cold ere my heart is warmed with virtue! Strange, to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark behind them, without our being able to trace them in our improvement!”

Wesley wrote this on 27 September 1730 to Miss Ann Granville. This is part of the “Cyrus-Aspasia” letters, not printed in most early collections of his letters, which are believed to be coded affectionate (if not love) letters between Wesley and the young widow Mary Granville Pendarves. Ann was Mary’s younger sister, and Wesley wrote her as well. In these words by the founder of Methodism and, more importantly, the driving force behind the 18th Century revival in England, I find much to think about and much to inspire. I may take a few days to discuss this.

First up is his thought “Strange to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark….” Is that not a perfect description of the average person’s life? Oh, we all leave marks behind us. As a genealogy hobbyist who has found lots of these marks left by otherwise unknown ancestors, I know this. But for the most part most people have no impact beyond their immediate family and perhaps a few close acquaintances. How apt Wesley’s metaphor is. An arrow moves through the air at great speed and for great distances. It has an effect at the end of its journey, but the territory it passes through is not affected except for a momentary disturbance of unseen gases.

So could any of us look back on years passed and wonder, “What have I accomplished in the last [X years, or Y decades]? Has that much time really passed? They seemed full at the time. Why do I have such a sense of non-accomplishment?” Many people want to have an impact on our world: help someone, teach someone, train-up someone, create something, discover something, improve something. Yet, many more people don’t give a thought to any of this, worrying instead about eight hours work, dinner on the table, and television all evening. Quite a dichotomy. Unfortunately there are likely many more people who fit the latter description than the former. And many of the former devise no game plan for doing more than momentarily disturbing unseen gases

For those who, like Wesley, want to accomplish so much that they wish “the wheels of life stand still”, a game plan for accomplishing influence is necessary. I pray that God would help me to develop that game plan, and have that influence.