Friday Night Date Place – Embracing the Truth

Continuing our conversation from last week, I know it’s not easy to free ourselves from a lifetime of false lessons and beliefs about ourselves. It’s easy to get trapped in a mire of “woe is me,” a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuation spiral of self-hate. I don’t live under any illusion that we can just flick a switch and change.

But you don’t have to be who you are.

The overwhelming majority of folks I talk to know exactly when they are doing this emo dance of self-delusion and pity and simply can’t get out of their own way to stop it. It’s their default setting, a comfortable response to help them cope with the reactions they’ve come to expect from people. It’s the flip side of the chip on the shoulder posturing.

So I can’t say just stop it. I will, however, start by saying … stop it.

You are a precious creation of God. Precious. Accept yourself. No, better stated, accept the truth of yourself. Recognize that you, too, are an eikon, an image-bearer of God; worthy of respect, value, and love. We participate in the Divine Being, meant to partake in the Divine Life and Happiness*. We were created in love, for love, and are to open ourselves to the possibility of love. Embrace that love.

Draw on the love already in your life. I have several people in my life who are “sick” of how I see them. Because they don’t see themselves the way I see them. People of value, who deserve to be esteemed and appreciated. Whom I’m thankful God brought into my life and have made my life all the richer for knowing them. You know what makes them most uncomfortable? The idea that they don’t know if they can live up to how I see them … because they had had it so drummed into their heads that they weren’t beautiful or were somehow unworthy of being loved.

I’m ready to cut someone again.

Sometimes the only way we can really see ourselves is when we are reflected back in the eyes of someone who truly loves us. It gives us courage, strength, and a sense of worth we may never have known that we had. Find it in God, find it in the overflow of His love in your friends and family, and let that love begin to transform your thoughts.

Embracing the love and finding freedom and empowerment in it to love and be loved is a good second step. The next is to demand it. You DO deserve better. It’s okay to have high standards for yourself, to try to live up to them, and in so doing, help others to have higher standards. It’s okay to demand to be treated better.

In the end, part of the transformation is a matter of faith. You see, it takes a lot of faith in yourself to make such a step and make such a transformation. Confidence is little more than faith in yourself and that’s hard to teach. But embracing your value, that much of a step I think we can handle. As a start.

Because you deserve better.

*Special thanks to M. Basil Pennington’s True Self/False Self


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My First Publication

Today’s writing related question: Your first publication - which market, how you found out about the market, how it felt to finally be published, and how many rejections you racked up along the way.

Well, I figure for the point of this discussion, we’re not talking about letters I got published in comic books or the first story I ever wrote (back in fifth grade). The first three stories I wrote once I started taking my writing seriously—the stories that were published as “Soul Food”, “Nurse’s Requiem”, and “Dark Knight of the Soul”—were originally written as creative writing assignments in college. “Soul Food” will always hold a special place for me because it was the first time a story of mine saw print. But, as will become a common theme in my life, it wasn’t exactly the usual route.

My last year of college, a professor I was working with encouraged me to send out my stories. He suggested this fledgling magazine called Cemetery Dance since it looked like the solid kind of market that would give good exposure. I thanked him for his advice and promptly trunked my stories. A few years later, I dug them back out worked on them some more and thought maybe I ought to send one out. I don’t know how I heard about this market (though I believe it was after I stumbled across a market magazine called Hellnotes), but I screwed together what courage I had and sent “Soul Food” off. A month or two later, the editor called me with an acceptance.

Called me.

New to the game, I figured this was how things worked: editors want your story, they just call you. He told me how much he loved my story and that he looked forward to working with me. I sat in my bed, stunned, and then proceeded to call several friends of mine to share the news. Of course I immediately became insufferable because I was now one for one is submissions and acceptances and figured I was going to corner this writing thing.

Months went by. I didn’t know what came next in the process. We hadn’t discussed payment, no contracts had been signed, no clue when it was coming out or if the editor wanted me to make any changes (though he CALLED me, so my so my words were obviously perfect as they were), so I continued waiting. Well, the anthology comes out … without my story.

I dug out any contact information I had and contacted the editor, all full of righteous indignation (read: on the verge of “why, Lord, why?!?!” tears). Turns out the project originally had two editors and one walked away from the project (guess which one?). My story fell between their communication gap.

Of course that anthology went on to massive sales and critical acclaim, with everyone published in it getting a huge career shot in the arm.

So I send my story off to the next couple of markets, and after one rejection, it got accepted. A start up (and now defunct) magazine called Hoodz. And I got to see my story in print.

Still … published on my third try … two acceptances in three tries … not too bad. I’ve not enjoyed that track record since.


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Bingo Day - Cultural Appropriation Edition

Since I've already written on Writing the Other (which, if there's been any evolution in my thoughts it's been the realization that everyone is other to me, including other People of Color)--and for that matter, my thoughts haven't changed much since I wrote on Sexism in the Genre--I've decided to forego this latest round of hand-wringing over cultural appropriation.* Two years from now during the next go around, I'll try to add something new to the discussion.

Instead, I'll leave you with today Bingo (joining the "Fantasy and Science Fiction Bingo" and "Stupid White Folks Bingo"): Cultural Appropriation Bingo!

(thanks elusis!)

*To get caught up on this round of the debate, see the redux and the redux continued.



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Nip/Tuck (Season 5) – A Perfect Lie

“Make me... beautiful. Perfect soul. Perfect mind. Perfect face. A perfect... lie.”

Nip/Tuck is one of those shows that I started watching then lost track of after season two. Season five came out on DVD and despite having not watched the show in a while, it was as if I hadn’t missed an episode. The season has the feel of being a jump on season and the show takes advantage of the opportunity to reinvent itself.

It retains its over-the-top sensibilities. Our two stalwart plastic surgeons, the brains, Dr. Sean McNamara, and the body, Dr. Christian Troy, have relocated to Hollywood and have experienced a bit of a role-reversal. Sean gets some play, landing on a television show that mirrors—more ridiculously over-the-top than—Nip/Tuck while stealing Christian’s spotlight, the spotlight Christian assumes he deserves. In one move, the show gets to skewer reality television and Hollywood’s obsession with deeply superficial beauty.

“Where did this idea come from?” –Sean

We put on masks, masks that become part of us, ones we wear in order to interact with others and the world. Before too long, we become trapped by these false ideas of ourselves. These false selves, these lies of who we are and how we see ourselves, start developing when we’re young. How our families shape us, how we let our friends define us, the fronts we put up in order to appeal to potential mates. We may derive our self-worth from what we do, we’re of value because of how we behave or what we have. Or how we look. We have so lost sight of true beauty that the idea becomes twisted up so that one patient of McNamara/Troy can remark, “Beauty is an Olympic ideal.”

“Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.” –Sean/Christian

Each person walks through the doors of their clinic searching for something or trying to bring themselves back to life. They want to become real, find happiness, like themselves, find something to take away the pain, look for perfection, or search for something to make them feel complete. They want to be whole.

“We all make mistakes, right? We all just try to do better, be better people, overcome our weaknesses.” –Sean

One of the things that I wrestled with for a long time, even without realizing that this was crippling my spiritual walk, was the idea of perfection. The Bible seems to not only demand perfection, but it seems to imply that perfection is attainable now. Then someone pointed out to me that I had a screwed up view of “perfection.” When we read the word “perfection” through our modern mindset, we see the Greek ideal of perfection. We can’t attain that. Yet for most of my spiritual life, I was tormented by the guilt of failure because I couldn’t reach this goal of perfection. My life was littered with seemingly endless failures. But when you read perfection more through the eyes of the original audience, you find the Hebrew idea of wholeness. Being complete is something that we can attain.

“I feel like I’m being authentic for the first time in my life.” –Julia

The rest of the cast of characters are still floating around, little changed. Julia, the third figure in the Sean/Troy/Julia trinity is now gay(ish). Perennial hanger on Kimber goes from meth head back to her porn days. Sean’s son, Matt, continues his disastrous relational streak. Nip/Tuck continues to ride high on our cultural misogyny and sense of self-hate, taking a scalpel to the rotting underbelly of our unhealthy fascination with false ideas of beauty. It’s both uncomfortable and ridiculous. Just like the old days.


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[BIB/ReadersRoom] Online Billboards?

You remember when we were told that everyone had to have a website? Then participation on message boards was a must. Then we all had to have a blog. Now life is all about the social networking sites. I’m having a hard time believing that all of this stuff is worth putting my effort into. I have precious few hours to write as is, yet I find that when I sit down, I have to do a lot of what amounts to maintaining my online presence. It varies from checking in on a few message boards (my own included) to e-mail to the various social networking places … and eats up hours of my life. Is it all worth it?

JA Konraths blogged about fixing your online billboards and casting your net because to him, the answer is yes. Online billboards, as he defines them, are places “on the Internet where you have a little bit of property people pass through.” Your online presence may not directly translate into book sales, but it is a way for new potential readers to find you and for you to interact with them. So in short, your online presence, whatever they might amount to, is designed to attract new readers.

So I made a list of my online presence:

My website – which I’m preparing to re-vamp a bit

My Blog – where I touch on a lot of my favorite themes: race, spirituality, pop culture, and writing

Twitter – for the record, a lot of gibberish runs through my mind

My Message Board – my main interaction with folks

MySpace – I mirror my blog over there

FaceBook – this can be a sink hole of time, but other than my message board, I hang out here the most

The remainder of my billboards I need to do more with:

Goodreads

LinkedIN

SmallerIndiana

RedRoom

So, I have a few, some I’m more active on than others. I can think of quite a few writers who have made names for themselves with absolutely no web presence and I know I’d rather be spending my time writing (cause, wow, have I mentioned how FaceBook and MySpace can be time sinks if you let them be?) Whether this effort translates into sales is debatable. At the very least, you’re out there talking to new potential readers. Don’t get me wrong: FaceBook alone has destroyed any hopes of a serious professional image on my part. (Yay Broaddus Christmas party pics!) However, the more signs you have pointed to your books, the better. And a little bit of effort goes a long way.

At the very least, if you're already on one of these sites, come friend me.


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Bougie* Down Productions

“No one ever means bougie as a compliment. It’s never ‘Oh, you’re so bougie!’ It’s ALWAYS a negative trait.”

I guess this starts with a confession: I’m a black nerd. A Dungeons & Dragons playing, Magic: the Gathering crushing, comic book loving, occasional Dream Theater listening nerd. I’ve been thinking about some of the “iterations” of blackness (no worries, this isn’t another round of my Ontological Blackness series). I know how so many folks, within and without of the black community, like to define blackness by some sort of standard of ghetto crackery. But class plays as much a role in defining a culture as anything else, and there is the burgeoning folks whose blackness strays to something more middle class. And for our troubles, we enjoy a different epithet: Bougie.

We’re the folks who get compliments like “You speak so well” or “You’re a credit to the race.” We enjoy that tension of being accused of forgetting where we’ve come from vs. remembering where I’ve come from … but wanting to get the hell out. Look, my soft bougie behind wasn’t built for the streets. Me trying to “be real” would only end up with me being real dead, real quickly.

It’s rare that I’ve actually been labeled bougie. Mostly I’ve escaped that because 1) I’m England born, with Jamaican roots and therefore excused due to cultural differences; and 2) I’m given room because I’m just so much the weird one to family and friends and just about any community I’m dropped into.

Bougie, as an epithet, strikes me as a reaction to the idea of betraying community, a term to keep us in line as we’re policed by other bougies projecting their black insecurities. The Blacker than thou crowd demonstrating their superiority by shaming us back in line. It’s bad enough when I don’t live up to people’s idea of true blackness from inside the culture, but then it can also come from those outside (which strikes me as “you’re not black like the hip hop guys I see on MTv”) which then borders on the ridiculous.

This all points to a class fall out issue as I maintain that we have more a class problem than race problem in country. A middle class white guy has more in common with a middle class black guy than a trailer park living white guy. And don’t get me wrong, I’m barely clinging to middle class as it is. But the “policing” does serve a positive role: it’s a reminder to not separate. It’s a call for all of us to remember that we share the same fate as we are bound by community.

It all comes down to what “being real” actually means. Being real doesn’t mean clinging to some sort of ghetto aesthetic and value system. Allow me to say that me doing down would make me a minstrel, not being real because that’s not close to who I am or what I’m about. And as I look at many hip hop videos, I see enough minstrels to last us for years. No, it boils down to be personal authenticity. Putting on airs, if that’s my attitude, I can take my bougie ass to the back of the bus.


*Bougie as in the short form of Bourgeoisie, taken to mean that someone has a bourgeois personality. By rights, bougie should be “bourgie” - but I can’t stand the r, and if we are going to bastardize the term I would rather bastardize it phonetically. A variation on bougie is siddity.


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Friday Night Date Place – Believing the Lie

After my "dating teh crazy" blog (which mind you, wasn't meant to be the most serious of posts), I was troubled by a recurring theme among some of the comments. It was as if they were battling against some sort of image forged in high school or something which they have carried with them well into adulthood. An image of themselves that tells them that they aren't worthy of "doing any better."

We are the fruit of a lifetime of listening to voices. Such formative listening too often results in us listening to lies, many of which we tell ourselves or allow ourselves to believe. We’re told we’re crap by enough people that we start to wonder and doubt; then we become quick to leap onto any bad appraisal of ourselves and end up in a self-defeating loop. That’s why it is so important to choose carefully the voices you choose to speak into your life.

This false idea of ourselves begins in small ways. You may have well-intentioned parents or teachers who trade on their love, attention, and/or favor to get you be behave a certain way. You may have grown up among peers/friends who constantly judge one another on who’s the funniest, has the most stuff, the prettiest, the most athletic. The take home lesson absorbed through all of this: you only have worth if you behave a certain way. What you are amounts to what you have, what you do, and what others think of you.

Too many of us have had life beat us down and feed our insecurities like a bulimic at a buffet to the point where we don’t think much of ourselves. We believe the lies these “lessons” have reinforced. We live in a closed off place, afraid to let others into your life because you secretly believe they might find out that we are what we believe ourselves to be: ugly, unloveable, unappealing, and unworthy of attention. suddenly we not only can’t see why someone else would like us or see anything of worth in us, but also think we better take whatever comes our way and be grateful (even if it means dating teh crazy).

You deserve better. Stop believing those lies. Self-destructive and self-hatred are not cute. There’s no need for you to keep putting yourself in “relationships” or situations not worthy of you. You deserve better. You have the right to be picky. You have to put to death this lie you’ve created of yourself. You deserve better.

Show me who’s been filling your head with those lies. Don’t make me have to cut somebody.

You deserve better. You are loved and worthy to be loved.

Next week I’ll talk about what it means or might look like to accept the truth about ourselves.

Because you deserve better.


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Ten Random Things

Since faithful assistant Lauren David tagged me with sixteen random things and grumpy old geocacher Mark Rainey tagged me for six random things. I’ve decided to split the difference and go with ten random things.

1) I first started writing in fifth grade. I carry a notepad with me constantly because I'm always writing. At any given moment, I have 20+ blogs in progress.

2) I collect salt ‘n pepper shakers, comic books, dvds, and three sets of China.

3) I have both a British and American passport. You never know when you’re going to have to flee a country on short notice.

4) “Voodoo Chile” by Jimi Hendrix is my theme song. I’ve been known to burst into my bedroom at three in the morning spouting the lyrics. My wife loves this as much as my Mojo Jo Jo impersonation as bedroom banter.

5) Though I’m not one for life verses … John 15:1-2 has been a theme: “"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

6) I always wanted to be a tap dancer. In fact, I daydreamed that my brother and I would grow up to be the next Nicholas Brothers



7) I love grape Nerds and white gummy bears. Yes, I will pick through a bag of gummy bears and only eat the white ones.

8) I refer to my church, and my small group in particular, as the Island of Misfit Toys.

9) I have a plastic rod along my spine to correct severe scoliosis. When it’s about to rain, my bones ache.

10) I’m not big on following rules. I also hate being tagged with stuff. Actually, Lauren knows this and specifically tagged me just to annoy me. I see her working. In that spirit, I’m not going to tag anyone. If you’re reading this and feel so moved, consider yourself tagged.

Oh, and since I was tagged in another "About You" meme, I've chosen to answer one question randomly:

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Yes, my dad's favorite drunk uncle.


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It’s Stoker Season

It’s that magical time of year. The Horror Writers Association goes through the machinations of gathering, collating, and nominating various works to be nominated for their Bram Stoker’s Award. Here is the 2009 Preliminary Ballot (I thought about reproducing it, but since I'm going to rant, I'll need the room. Yes, Orgy of Souls made the long list.).

For those who have even heard of the award, it is pretty much the main thing the HWA is known for doing (which, unfair or not, serves as a bit of its own commentary). The reason the award has sometimes been derisively called “the Strokers” is because of the perception that folks sit around and back-scratch each other. (As if a good chunk of most of our sales aren’t to other writers in the first place).

It’s an age-old debate, one that rages within the organization as well as without. The nominating process has the feel of backroom handshake deals determining the nominees. Here’s how it works (and I’m not betraying the secret handshake or anything here): for a year, anyone in the organization can make recommendations for nominees in the various categories. When the nominating period is over, a preliminary ballot is determined and the actives vote on who gets to be on the final ballot. After that, the actives vote on the winners. The first part is public to all the members of the organization which is good: often you can pick out the circle of friends who rec each other just by looking at the tally sheet. A lot of that gets sorted out between the preliminary and final ballots though (and there is an additions jury which weighs in on a few items in each category folks might have missed).

Don’t get me wrong, I'm not exactly complaining because Stoker season is when I get my dues money back out of the organization in books. This time of year, I’m offered all sorts of free books to read and possibly rec, which works out well because I rarely get a chance to buy as much as I’d like. Although, already you can see part of the problem with the nominating process: my vote is going to be skewed toward those books I’ve received free through campaigning.

In the interests of full disclosure, even I linked to story I semi-campaigned for, because I want the story read.

So I began a conversation with a fellow professional writer whom I will call Elvis on this topic. Mind you, discussing things with Elvis is pretty much me poking him with a stick then getting out of the way.

Me: So how are the Stokers doing more harm than good?

Elvis: No one outside the HWA knows what they are and those that do it’s because of the intense bitching over the Stokers as the public face of the HWA. All that cat-fighting takes a ton of time that should go to writing and leads to the kind of political bullshit that causes a fair number of people to either tune out or leave the organization. And did I mention the politicking?

Me: I actually don't mind the stokers. I look at it mostly as a peer award. If we have a peer award, a "people's choice" (The Black Quill or the Rondo Hatton Awards), and a juried award (the International Horror Guild awards and now the Shirley Jason Awards), I think all of our bases are covered. And if the Academy Awards are any indication, there's all sorts of politicking that goes into any award (for those who want it bad enough)

Elvis: There are a couple of things hanging off that argument. The HWA is a small enough group that a writer can gain prominence by derailing/controlling the process. The Stokers need to have a greater value outside of the organization. Mind you, I'm not saying abolish the Stokers. I'm saying making a concerted effort to make them useful and beneficial.

Me: Open up the voting to all horror pros, send out ballots industry wide (which doubles as marketing as the organization can put itself in front of a lot of different professionals).

Elvis: Even if King, Barker, Romero and Craven don't actually vote, saying they're part of the voting body carries weight. And limiting recommendations means that a lot of the back-scratching goes away. You have to think about what you're reccing.

One of the unstated points of the awards is to sell books, so why not make it easier for publishers to get the books into the hands of voters? Call it the Stoker Discount, or allow freebies, or whatever. Put a page up on the HWA website for PDF downloads of recc'ed manuscripts.

Me: a one-stop resource for recced material that's OUTSIDE of the message board. Because in the end, we want the stories read, not just by our fellow writers/friends, but by fans/book buying public.

Elvis: Which means that, again, it moves away from "who has the most message board friends"

When all is said and done, neither Elvis nor myself is turning one down should we get one. And winning one certainly wouldn’t stop us from plastering that fact on our book covers and in our bios until we quit drawing breath. Of course I wait until I get nominated to do this rant. Nothing like biting the hand as it feeds you.


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Not in My Lifetime

I watched an old black woman laughing. Crying. Laughing and crying and saying joyfully "I'm glad I lived long enough to see this! Oh God! I'm glad I lived long enough to see this!"

They looked like people taking their first breath and really enjoying it. I didn't see the haggard, submissive expression. I saw enthusiastic joy, free from restraint. If you saw it, if you heard it, there's no way that a human being couldn't be touched by it. How many people last night and this morning took their first real breath?

A friend of mine recently commented that she’s “just a white girl from a small town” but she just doesn’t get the near-messianic expectation surrounding Barack Obama being black and elected. Not why people broke down and cried, not why folks danced in the streets, or stayed up so late. Or why my cell phone blew up election night as every black person in my directory called or got called, all sharing a similar refrain. It boiled down to four words “not in my lifetime”.

Being just a white girl means, directly or not, she’s lived in the comfort of being in the majority and of white privilege. It means she’s never had to worry about being excluded from a system or the feeling of being targeted by that same system. It means she never had to live under a government whose constitution saw her as 3/5 human. It means you haven’t had to exist in the toxic mentality of “you can’t do that if you’re black”, “white people are against you”, and limited opportunities leaving you half-defeated before you start. It means you haven’t had to deal with images of you, in television and movies, leaving folks saying/thinking things like

You gold-teeth, gold-chain-wearing,fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin',monkey, ape, baboon, big thigh,fast-running, three-hundred-sixty-degree-basketball-dunking spade Moulan Yan. Go the f*#$ back to Africa

It means that all no matter how false you think the majority of that mentality and stereotypes are, we’re still left with the reality of our history and experience: slavery was during my great-great-grandmother’s lifetime, segregation during my grandfather’s, the Civil Rights struggle during my father’s, the Tuskeegee Experiments during mine.

We still live in a world of rampant drug use/trade, a lack of educational opportunities, ghettos, and people incarcerated at alarming rates; however, progress has been made. At least my kids won’t have to face the dilemma of whether or not they should “pass” and forever hide and be tacitly ashamed of the fact that they are half black (“Daddy I’d be white cause it sounds easier.” –Malcolm Broaddus when I tried explaining to my six year old the idea of segregation).

Most important to the Obama victory was the long struggle of black Americans to be incorporated in the public sphere. No, President Barack Obama won’t redeem white people from the sin of racism (or whatever else some folks might imagine the import of his election might mean). But he represents a beacon of hope and the promise of change. His election might portend a true shift in our culture and how we see and treat one another. That is the root of the expectation: the hope of a better tomorrow in light of our many tragic yesterdays. Something many of us never thought we’d see in our lifetimes.

Edited to add this:

My Country
The Day Before, January 19, 2009
By Linda D. Addison

Here we stand, breath held,
sweet land of liberty
of thee we dream,
land where my ancestors
sleep easier now, freedom
will ring brighter in coming days.

Stars and stripes forever
red, white and blue
bringing us all home
finally, willing to be
responsible, each person finally
willing to be American.

History confronted, the stain,
violence, oppression faced
in the light of today, moved aside
for the Grace of Presence,
allowing forgiveness to begin,
the dissipation of karma.

Here we stand, breath held,
the day before liberty
dances, full and bright,
a land of humans, each
needing hope and peace,
willing to be American.

--linda


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Obama, The Rooney Rule, and the End of Racism

So Mike Singletary has been named as the coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Jim Caldwell has fulfilled the chain of succession from Tony Dungy with the Indianapolis Colts. Perhaps in President-Elect Barack Obama, we’ve embraced the Rooney Rule on a national level and have turned the page on racism. Haven’t we?



The Rooney Rule, established in 2003, requires National Football League teams to interview minority candidates for a head coaching opportunity. The rule is named for Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the chairman of the league's diversity committee, and is often cited as an example of affirmative action.

Coach Tony Dungy joined Chicago Bear’s coach, Lovie Smith, in making Super Bowl history by being the first black coaches to lead their teams to the Super Bowl. One more barrier broken, another cultural advancement achieved - and another step toward this not being an issue. Forcing owners to interview minority candidates smacks of affirmative action to some. In fact, I’ve heard some quarters ask if the Rooney rule meant that the 49ers or the Colts had to interview a white candidate.

Ending ways/legacy of racism (and dare I mention, white privilege) puts race front and center of the discussion. If I’m a team owner, I’m going to resent being told who I have to hire … but I’m also probably not going to change if I’m not “forced” to do so. If there’s a Mike Shanahan or a Bill Cowher available, any interview I do when they are part of the mix is strictly a matter of me going through the motions and everyone will know it. So will that do any good? Well, at the very least, any minority candidate interviewed now hits other teams’ radar and they get practice interviewing.

It’s a little too soon to declare racism dead based on the fact that a couple black coaches got to the head coach position without much of an interview process. You can’t even argue that the Rooney Rule is no longer necessary. At best, we can see recent developments as another hopeful step.

Now if we can only get the NCAA to realize we have a racism problem …


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Friday Night Date Place – Friend Custody Battles

I’ve mentioned before that we have a family way in our house. Well, I’ve noticed an awfully disturbing pattern among some of the pictures along the wall: some of them are covered. You see, we tend to have portraits of our friends’ families up spouse and children, but some of our friends have gotten divorced. So for the sake of the friend who still comes over to our house regularly, we cover up the picture of their spouse (which serves two functions: 1) it’s analogous to sitting shiva on the marriage as we mourn that relationship; 2) my wife wants a reminder for folks to send us updated pictures of them).

It’s tough because part of what the family wall represents is a running document of the people we allow to speak into our lives. Our children know our friends by sight and name, even ones we don’t get a chance to see as often as circumstance has caused them to drift out of the regular rhythm of our day-to-day lives. It’s also tough because for years we considered our friends and their spouse family. And it’s not like we’ve stopped being family.

All of this reminded me of question I received not too long ago: who gets the friends when you break up? It was asked by a friend who assured me that she wasn’t considering her options in case they broke up, but rather because as the friend of a couple who had broken up, she wasn’t sure where her loyalties should lay. I remember my friend’s words concerning mourning periods of relationships: “WE’RE NOT IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE, SO LET’S ALL ACT LIKE ADULTS, PAINFUL AS THAT MAY BE.”

(Although, let’s face it, all that we know about relationships we learned in junior high school and the bulk of us have progressed much further than that.)

Anyway, I’d say that the situation depends largely on two factors: 1) the independent relationship you have with each partner in the relationship and 2) the nature of the break-up. Sometimes you have two friends who decide to date. Those are “hold your breath” dating scenarios because you KNOW if they don’t work out there are difficult times ahead for you/your circle of friends because human instinct if things go terribly wrong is to choose a side. [It’s nice to play Switzerland if you have that luxury, though typically one friend or the other is going to feel slighted with such a choice.]

If it’s a case of a friend of mine dates someone I don’t know, it’s a matter of if I’m able to establish independent friendship with the partner outside of my friend or if I’m friends with them solely through Significant Other. Most times the latter which makes it easier to go with my boy (or girl) should things end. [There was one notable occasion where one of my dearest friends introduced me to her boyfriend. He collected comics, loved sci-fi, and introduced me to this game called Magic: the Gathering. She knew when they split that he’d get me in the custody battle, so she opted to take the house instead.*]

In terms of the nature of the break up, cheating, abuse, generally being mean or what have you messy wise with my friend as the victim, I’m gonna support my boy (or girl). That simple. If it’s my friend that’s being a jerk, well, they get to hear about that, too. Friendship doesn’t mean blind loyalty.

As for your circle of friends, it shouldn’t be much of an issue. You give the couple space and be sensitive to their healing. There’s no reason why it has to be an either/or situation of the group choosing one friend over another. As long as you have independent relationship with folks and the break up wasn’t messy to the point of deep lasting hurts, time can heal many wounds.


*It was an ugly break up and complicated occasions like wanting them both in my wedding, but now things are just fine between all of us. Navigating that was a delicate dance on eggshells, however … for years.


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I’m just praying …

When you think about many of the typical Stephen King stories, The Mist and 1408 being two recent film examples, what do we have? Interesting characters living life in the ordinary until the transcendent, the unknown, bursts in on them. I have always thought that was one of the strengths of horror, how it not only acknowledges a spiritual dimension to life, but that we also have to wrestle with that same transcendent reality when it picks the most inopportune times to break up our routine.

Which, in my own convoluted way, brings me to the idea of prayer. I envy the prayer warriors in our church. There are some folks who are quick to fall to their knees in prayer, who are in regular conversation with Him, and who have no problems going through any of the prayer postures and meditations that are a part of our gathering. Can I be honest with you? I’m not always there. Prayer scares me in a lot of ways. In fact, my fears boil down to two issues, what does faith filled prayer look like and who are we praying to?

The idea of faith-filled prayer, really believing what we say we’re talking about, really rocked me as I thought through the implications of the question. Think of how often we hedge our bets while praying. Look at how tepid our prayers often are: when it comes to people being sick, we pray for God to guide our doctor’s hands (all of whom must have the shakiest hands on planet the way we keep praying for them). We rarely pray for supernatural healing and I think one reason is that we don’t know what to do with it, either in the praying or in the receiving of it.

Think about the web site “Why won’t God heal amputees?” That’s an interesting question to ponder. What do we do with unanswered prayer? We struggle. God doesn’t exist. God doesn’t care. We’re left feeling as if the whole time we were talking to our invisible friend. We then get to wrestle with the idea of God’s silence, possible non-existence, or the sense of abandonment (leading to what some call the dark night of the soul).

But what if He did? What if God burst in with full revelation, as He was often recorded doing in the Bible? I don’t think we could handle it. Look at those same stories in the Bible: after every miracle, it was like people embraced a type of amnesia. They either forgot what they just witnessed or became blasé with a “yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” attitude. Either way, an encounter with supernatural would rock our worldview to its foundation (and that’s even if you already believed in Him in the first place).

We walk in tensions and paradoxes in our lives. Too often I think we have this schizophrenic view of God: half the time we treat Him like this cosmic genie doling out blessings like He’s the great Santa in the sky. The other half, we think of God like He’s a guy who hides behind the bushes waiting for us to screw up so that He can leap out, yell "ah ha!", then heap plagues into our lives.

We want a God we can control and understand, but by losing the idea of what it means to have a fear of the Lord, we end up trivializing God. God is God. I don’t know how He chooses to answer or not answer prayers. Maybe something else is going on that I don’t get/know. Maybe there’s a bigger story in play than the one I’m writing in my life and mind. I do know that I pray to create a rhythm to my life, to quiet my thoughts, to align heart and connect it to God’s. Prayer exposes my heart, allows me to commune with God in relationship, and is ultimately a surrender to His authorship.

And as anti-intellectual as this may sound (my personal tension being a man of faith as well as a man of intellect), I follow even when I’m frustrated, angry, confused. The point is to stick with Him, praying full out, and then dealing with “no” as an answer later.


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Friday Night Date Place - A Question ...

I know I usually spend these Friday Night Date Place blogs opining about one thing or another, but this week I need a favor. I'm thinking about the whole idea of a postmodern relationship. So I turn to you to ask: what might a postmodern relationship look like?


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Missional Expectations

The Dwelling Place has always defined itself as a missional faith community. Granted, we’ve been labeled an emergent church which I don’t care about because people love their categories and will use them to embrace and vilify you. Defending the emergent church or being missional is not part of my mission. In fact, arguing over the emergent church, its theology, etc. sounds like arguments that few but the inside care about (I get that arguments like these and things like the “ontological Christ” are important in some circles—and I know it’s hard to get our missiology correct if our theology is suspect—but in the final analysis, the bulk of my conversations are not with inside folks).

Generally, I’ve seen three models of what folks call emergent church. So most of the time we're trapped between the traditional crowd believing us to be "different" to the point of being suspect and emerging/emergent folks playing "more emergent than thou." Basically, the thing I’ve taken away most from the ongoing emergent conversation is the idea of rethinking what it means to be the church. As a faith community, is our chief responsibility to focus on how to teach and transmit faith? Are we to be a social service provider, a religious service provider, and follow a business model? Are we to build grand testaments to our empire and hope to attract people to our weekly production?

Basically I’ve been stung by two recent articles. The first by Alan Hirsch called Definining Missional. He recovers the roots of what it means to be missional this way:

Missional is not synonymous with emerging. The emerging church is primarily a renewal movement attempting to contextualize Christianity for a postmodern generation. Missional is also not the same as evangelistic or seeker-sensitive. These terms generally apply to the attractional model of church that has dominated our understanding for many years. Missional is not a new way to talk about church growth. Although God clearly desires the church to grow numerically, it is only one part of the larger missional agenda. Finally, missional is more than social justice. Engaging the poor and correcting inequalities is part of being God's agent in the world, but we should not confuse this with the whole.

A proper understanding of missional begins with recovering a missionary understanding of God. By his very nature God is a "sent one" who takes the initiative to redeem his creation. This doctrine, known as missio Dei—the sending of God—is causing many to redefine their understanding of the church. Because we are the "sent" people of God, the church is the instrument of God's mission in the world. As things stand, many people see it the other way around. They believe mission is an instrument of the church; a means by which the church is grown. Although we frequently say "the church has a mission," according to missional theology a more correct statement would be "the mission has a church."

On the flip side, I was equally chastened by Dan Kimball’s Missional Misgivings. Most on point was this criticism:

We all agree with the theory of being a community of God that defines and organizes itself around the purpose of being an agent of God's mission in the world. But the missional conversation often goes a step further by dismissing the "attractional" model of church as ineffective. Some say that creating better programs, preaching, and worship services so people "come to us" isn't going to cut it anymore. But here's my dilemma—I see no evidence to verify this claim.

… some from our staff recently visited a self-described missional church. It was 35 people. That alone is not a problem. But the church had been missional for ten years, and it hadn't grown, multiplied, or planted any other churches in a city of several million people. That was a problem.

Church ought to be put together in a way that makes sense. The missional model is more focused on deploying people, not attracting people. Drawing people out, finding their gifts, figuring out their callings, then sending them out to be a blessing in the world. In other words, we need to be about the doing.

The model of church that makes the most sense for me is family. Sundays are the family meeting, including the family dinner (Communion as our soul food). But we aren’t family just on Sundays, but have to be family during the week also. Families are hard and are re-defined with each addition. We don’t assimilate new members (to make them “one of us”) as much as add their gifts to our own. There is no privileged place and we learn and are taught in midst of life. We build communities of hope, full of hopeful possibility and people living from a place of hope.

And families grow. The goal of parents is to raise their children to be able to start their own families. It is anticipated, planned, and celebrated. You start your own family, you don’t take your brothers and sisters and begin a family.

Before I strain that analogy any further, I’d say missional churches operate from an organic paradigm , without a predetermined ministry method but rather letting their context determine their ministries. The environment should draw out people’s affinities and nurture people’s giftings. And the leadership should cultivate that environment. If you have the environment right, fruit happens naturally.

Believing in deep ecclesiology means that I’ve come to terms with the idea that there needs to be room for all kinds of church expressions, from the attractional model/mega-church to the niche church/coffee shop model. I know I've been quick to criticize mega-churches and touting how we're "not about numbers". At the same time, if we don’t grow, but rather remain static, we’re a collection of friends hanging out discussing spiritual issues, which isn’t bad, but not all we’re called to be.

I’m still waiting this wondrous conversation between the races promised by the emergent church, but I find that true across the board when it comes to the church. In the mean time, we’re to be communities of faith, hope, and love. We can have all the faith we want, but without love, it’s worthless. It’s sad that I have to remind myself that this includes loving my fellow Jesus people.


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Investing in People

One of the things driving me to weariness not too long ago was the idea and frustration of investing in people. Let me tell you, I had simply hit a personal wall. I was exhausted from pouring myself into people only to have them end up leaving me high and dry. It’s part of the cost of discipling or mentoring that we forget to count until, well, we’re paying the price.

Pastors, counselors, mentors, even just good friends, there’s a cost to investing in people. You pour your time, energy, emotional resources—often at the sacrifice of time and energy from your family or friends or other responsibilities—and frankly you want it to pay off. You want to know that at the end of the day you’ve made a difference. That people are better off from haven encountered you, from sharing life with you, than they were before.

So it’s doubly hard when they leave you. And people have a lot of ways of leaving: flouncing the faith, making poor decisions that wreck their lives, wreaking havoc on their friends and family. It’s difficult to watch them stumble, make self-destructive mistakes, or just flat out abandon you.

We do things for Christ, but still feel the personal sense of betrayal and it’s easy to burnout in the process. It’s hard to get up in the morning for another round of potential (and depending on my mood, the feeling of “probable”) abandonment. It’s hard to get up for investing in people who aren't going to be around for very long. It’s hard to face the prospect of going through the motions of making a friendship with someone you know in your heart is simply not going to be there. It’s hard to start a relationship in vain.

On the flipside, you can’t save everyone. Anyone, really. It’s not our job. It’s similar to the tension that parents have to walk with their children. Letting our children escape our firm, controlled grips and allow them to go their own way.Kind of like a parent with a teenager, how dealing with them is akin to handling a wet bar of soap: you want to keep them in your hand, but the best way to do so is in a loose grip because the harder you hold onto them the more likely they will just squeeze out. By holding on to them too tight, we don’t allow them to grow. You can’t teach your children from a place of fear. We have to learn to let go and give our mentees room to grow, even if that means grow away. We have to give them room to make mistakes and hopefully learn from them (guiding them if they’ll allow us).

The (humbling) truth of the matter is that I don't know when folks are going to be walking in and out of my life. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. So I can’t live in fear, protecting my heart and emotions, at the expense of loving others. And I can't put limits on how I love and invest in people.


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Some Writerly Related (Me) Links

Honestly, I sort of backed into the genre. I came to it through my Sunday School teacher, who had a secret love for all things Stephen King, EC Comics, and Hammer horror movies. I published my first short story, "Soul Food", in 1999 (reprinted in this year's anthology, Dark Harvest) and have stories out in Weird Tales, Horror Literature Quarterly, the Dark Dreams anthologies, and Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, as well as several upcoming projects. My novella, co-written with Wrath James White, Orgy of Souls, came out in June from Apex Books. I have a bias toward short stories.

Continued on MAURICE BROADDUS Must Read List


Also, Jay Lake posted a blog regarding a few semirandom thoughts regarding inventory. It got me thinking about my older stories still in circulation and the type of balancing of what kind of stories I want to be known for and what kind of career I want to have. A lot of what I'm doing now might be considered more fantasy than horror, as opposed to my older work which leaned more category horror. So am I giving fans of a certain type of story what they want in the given market that accepts them or am I sending out stories which simply don't represent the writer I am now? So Jay and I had a bit of a discussion about when to trunk inventory here.

What do you think?


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Kwanzaa Lessons 2008

Notable moments and quotes heard during this year's Kwanzaa:

Me: what is kwanzaa?
Boys: it's the brown people holiday ... and we're half brown.
Me: close enough.

Wrapping up today's Kwanzaa ritual in Broaddus fashion: watching Dr. Who defeat the daleks.

I love listening to the boys try to pronounce kujichagoolia (Kwanzaa day 2). Though Reese now has a harambee dance.

"No boys, unless ujima means 'have a huge meltdown and hide in my office', you didn't practice it during pack up day at church."

"No, ujamaa does not mean I get to spray paint 'black owned' on everything in the house. Not even your brother."

"I seriously doubt Maulana Karenga imagined anyone doing the robot to the Harambee song."


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Cooking in the New Year

Those who follow me on Twitter kept up with this Broaddus family ritual. I thought I would provide a few pics for the blog:

i'm drinking my appletinis, cosmopolitans, and amaretto sours in dirty mugs. cause i'm manly that way.
7 pm - cheese fondue (w/ too much champagne) and jamaican patties
8 pm - shrimp cocktail
9 p.m. - chicken in riesling (or whatever leftover wine i had)
10 p.m. teriyaki chicken w/ raspberry glaze, thai bbq pork loin, and a bbq-hoisin pork loin.
11 p.m. - spice-rubbed steak with sweet/sour, champagne, mustard, and honey sauce.
12 a.m. just set the chocolate fondue on fire! happy new year!!!
mental note: must remember next year to do the complicated dishes BEFORE all the appletinis and cosmopolitans

[okay, as a point of clarification, there was a whole lot of wrong jokes flying around. one finally killed me. blame my sister.]


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Writing Goals 2009

Continuing my tradition of looking back on my goals from last year (and how well I met them), I think I’ve done pretty well. I did end up revising my first novel (Strange Fruit, cut—no lie—40 K words from it, and it is now in the hands of a prospective agent). I also revised my most recent novel (Knights of Breton Court, which is now at a prospective publisher).

On the publication front, several stories came out this year. Snapping Points (available online at Magus Press), Broken Strand (in Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #12), Just a Young Man and His Games (Doorways Magazine), Dark Night of the Soul (Dark Harvest anthology), Orgy of Souls (Apex Books), A House is Not a Home (still available online from Legends of the Mountain State 2), Rite of Passage (Space and Time Magazine #105), and Night of the Living Baseheads (A New Dawn).

A couple of my older stories saw the light of day again: Soul Food (Dark Harvest anthology) and Just an Old Man on a Bench (available online at Apex Books).

I managed to make my goal of writing a half dozen short stories: “Warrior of the Sunrise”, “Bricks in the Wall of Shadows,” “House of Blue Lights,” “A House is Not a Home,” “Shadow Boxer,” “Collateral Casualties,” and “Long Live the King.” And instead of a novel, I produced a new novella (inspired by Nate Southard’s Just Like Hell. I read it and thought “dang, I wish I’d written something that hard hitting.)

Though I did lose my column for Indy.com after a near three year run, I have four projects scheduled to come out this year. No point in announcing them since a couple of them were scheduled to come out a year or two ago.

As for new goals for 2009, I want to write 6 new short stories, revise a screenplay, write a new novel (the problem is that I have three bubbling around in the back of my head with no clear favorite), write a new novella, and revise my second novel (Pantheon of Dreams) down to a novella. With any luck, I’ll be able to get back to doing more reviews and blogs so it should be a good year.


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