The Pontifications of Maurice Broaddus

God’s Failed Ambassadors

2009-06-29T06:02:00.000-04:00

Or Don’t Trip … He Ain’t Through With You Yet

While I was thinking through what I was going to say about “The Story of (My) Christianity”, I was left with a bunch of issues that I struggled with. It's the whole idea of God sending us to be His ambassadors and then seemingly not being able to equip us adequately for the job. I see it in my church. I see it in my life. I see it in my heart. Shouldn’t there be a more demonstrable difference between “us” and “them”? Why are we still so broken?

A friend of mine put it this way: “If God is to be the all powerful diety he is, why does he not do more to change us when we confess his Lordship over our lives? Yeah, yeah, free will and all that, but still what are we saying when we are calling him "Lord"? Isn't part of that an invitation for Him to change us? Sure, it takes work on our part, but I could use some help and, if you believe the surveys, so does everyone else. When I look at the Christian community, I see epic fail and it's really hard for me to just say that it's all our fault. If we are to be representing Him, and if we are calling Him the Lord of our lives, then I would think we would get more help...and if He isn't then how can we say the blame is all on us?”

We were created in the image of God and declared “good”. Good. We forget that part of things, that as image-bearers, we have inherent worth. We don’t always live up to that potential, what we were created to be. We could look at our place in the greater scheme of things as a matter of us not being able to save ourselves, but that’s not the whole story. We’re invited into a way of life, a life of transformation. We don’t have to remain as we are, mired in the mess of our lives. We can seek a path of wholeness, become humans to be restored in all the dimensions of humanity.

Probably points more to our misunderstanding of God and our relationship with him. We don't have to be perfect to be dispensers of God's grace. Martin Luther spoke of Christians as being simultaneously saints and sinners. It has taken me quite a while to understand that God’s not interested in fixed vessels. We have it in our heads that we need to be perfect, have our act together, be the “best” representatives that we can be because how else can we be used by God.

This idea of perfection has crippled my spiritual walk. 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.

We are no more immune to sin and temptation than our neighbor, as much as I (and many in the churches) would like to believe otherwise. We’re sick and we need resurrection, divine healing. He calls us to join with Him, to be set free of the lives we’re imprisoned in into a new world, a new way of living. In our imperfection, in our brokenness, we know each other’s pain and weakness—without room for judgment—and can best be there for one another. We can be the consoling arms of God for one another.

Our actions define our eternity. The strongest, most impactful message you can have about your faith is the one we speak with our lives. If we aren't living it out, it invalidates anything we have to say on the subject. If what we say and how we live don't match, we've probably already lost the battle. There’s the heart of my struggle. I’ve tried to follow Jesus and it’s hard. There’s nothing simple about it. It’s paradoxical. It’s counter-intuitive. Often I feel as if I know the truth, but have no experience of its reality or fail to fully live it out.

God is engaged in a gentle dance with us, wooing us to Him not wanting to force Himself on us, but rather wanting us to freely choose to love Him; to join with His redemptive mission for each other and for creation. He chooses to work through a failed people for reasons we may never understand. We are cracked vessels, works in progress. God doesn't give up on us … we give up on ourselves. We aren’t defined by our failings and stumbling. We’re defined by how we get back up, bruised knees and all, dust ourselves off, and keep on our journey.

[BIB/ReadersRoom] Our Bi-Directional Assumption of Trust

2009-06-26T06:19:00.002-04:00

When a publisher of any repute buys a book from you, it’s a bi-directional assumption of trust. The author trusts that the publisher will do their best to edit, publish, and market your title. The publisher trusts that the author will do their very best to see that their book is a success by taking it on themselves to do a respectable amount of self-promotion.

We tend to forget that when we get published, we writers join with our presumptive publishers in a peculiar relationship, this “bi-directional assumption of trust”. There are certain things I want the publisher to do for me, the things I might not necessarily be capable of doing for myself (or which they can do better) as we partner in the promotional efforts for our project. Because, indeed, my book becomes “our” book, as their advance indicates an investment in me/it.

Small press or large press, when you are considering who to go with as a publisher (especially if you are weighing the traditional route vs. self-publishing) there are several things you want to consider. Better said, there are certain things you want the publisher to do for you.

Here are some of the things I expect from my Publisher (even small press ones):

-distribution (my book into as many venues as possible)
-getting my book into libraries
-getting my book into book clubs (especially not forgetting urban book clubs)
-trade advertising (Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, Shroud, Publisher’s Weekly, etc)
-press releases (Gila Queen, FearZone, Weird Fiction News, Hellnotes, HorrorWeb, etc.)
-advertising on book specialty web sites (CushCity is a site recently brought to my attention)
-full support on the publisher’s web site (you think would be a given, yet …)
-sending out review copies
-in house street team efforts (for instance, message board announcements)
-tip in sheets, bookmarks, postcards, and other promotional materials.

Basically, I want to see that I’m being taken seriously as a product. On my end, I tend to bring my marketing plans to the table so that the publisher knows what to expect from me. Even when I publish with the small press, I put in the work:

-I will make convention appearances, schmooze and do signings
-I specifically target black bookstores with my marketing efforts
-I give full platform support (my blog, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter)
-I personally send out review copies (again, with a focus on black reviewers and places my publisher my have missed/not thought about)
-I do podcasts and interviews.

Ultimately, it’s about protecting your brand. And yes, cries of the struggling artist aside, you are a brand. One that deserves to be treated specially and promoted seriously, by you and your publisher.

My Sister’s Keeper – A Review

2009-06-25T06:19:00.002-04:00

“A Rain of Tears Under a Piece of Blue Sky”

Directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook), Jodi Picoult's dense and melodramatic 2004 novel about a family struggling to save a terminally ill child comes to tear duct exhausted life on the big screen. Brian and Sara Fitzgerald (Jason Patric and Cameron Diaz) customized their second daughter, Anna (Abigail Breslin), in utero to be a perfect biological match for her sister Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who was diagnosed with leukemia at an early age.

With each of Kate’s relapses, Anna’s parents drag her to the hospital to harvest her blood, lymphocytes, granulocytes, and bone marrow. With the final relapse, she’s asked to cough up a kidney. So she takes her life savings and hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) asking to be medically emancipated from her parents

The Fitzgerald family and movie itself wrestle with unanswerable moral questions from can parents force their child to become an organ donor for a fatally ill sibling? to the meaning behind such tragedy and pain? And the audience is left wondering how will the family heal from not just the ravages of the disease, but also the splits caused by the courtroom battle.

The movie mixes some interesting POV jumping interwoven with flashback sequences which sort of confuses the narrative at the beginning until the viewer gets used to the rhythm of the movie. A counterintuitive choice, Cameron Diaz desperately tries to act her butt off as Sara Fitzgerald, playing a mother who had basically quit her life (as a lawyer) in order to fully care for her stricken daughter. And despite the height of melodrama, we buy her performance despite how shrill she gets in her more overprotective moments.

“At any moment, our whole world could come tumbling down.” –Brian

It’s easy to dismiss events as “life is life, death is death, and no one understands either” though we try to find meaning in both. Even in the living, prolonged sickness can have various effects on a family. Among the many possible emotions it can elicit, it can make you hard, weary, battle hardened. It can produce resentments and reveal cracks in your life. There can be such a black hole of need within the family, in this case Kate, others can get over looked: Jesse’s dyslexia or Anna not necessarily wanting to be an organ donor.

“My whole life is a pain.” –Kate

We’re only here for a finite period of time. The stark reality of our lives is that we’re all going to die we just never know when. Be it by disease, accident, age, or random crime, death adds gravitas to life. By thinking about death, we focus on what’s important in the time we have. It causes us to re-prioritize and make us realize what is really important. Yet in the living, we have to find a way to feel and navigate the pain of life in a fallen world without numbing ourselves from it.

“Most babies are coincidences … I was engineered. Born for a particular reason.” –Anna

Anna is essentially a donor child, conceived to be spare parts for her sister. In some ways, she’s no different than any of us. We’re all donor children, here for one another. Rather than being genetic saviors, we’re relational saviors. We’re more than just accidents to one another. People aren’t an interruption of our lives, they are the reason for our living. The things and people that interrupt us are the reason why we’re here. We’re God interruptions: the interruptions are the point of life. We DO have a choice: we choose to be donors of our time, resources, and emotions.

Family and friendships are a blessing from God, opportunities to both share and receive His love through another. We must live in the midst of a caring community. Love must be shared. Life must be shared: taking care of one another, spending time with one another, fighting our battles for one another, taking care of one another, and building each other up. All relationships have a measure of inherent risk to them and we have to be willing to risk being vulnerable.

“Once upon a time I thought I was put on this earth to save my sister … that that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had a sister.” –Anna

My Sister’s Keeper avoids being overly manipulative, but the word subtle is not in the movie’s vocabulary. Between the family angst, courtroom drama, and the story of terminal illness ripped from the heart of every other Lifetime movie, it creates a jumbled stew of tonal unevenness which almost can’t be helped. Also, the movie pulls no punches in showing the reality of a disease eating away at a body as well as the toll of caring for the sick and dying, driving home the human condition (read: Nothing says tear jerker movie like copious buckets of vomit). Its saving grace, though probably adding to the tonal unevenness is how leavened with a gentle humor the movie is.

It’s an interesting counter program against the launch of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen this weekend.

Warning to my sister: yeah, you will cry through this whole thing.

The Community of Building (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition) Pt. II

2009-06-24T06:20:00.001-04:00

[click here for part I]

“You remember the story of Nehemiah?” Rev. Martin asked. “Before he got there, no one was doing anything. But when he got there, the whole city got together and started working. The people had a mind to work.”

The spirit of community and mission appealed to the best in the Hoosier community. There was a holistic approach to restoring the neighborhood and you didn’t exactly have to twist arms to get folks to participate because the virus of generosity spread quickly as folks got caught up in the “what can I do?” attitude. There were can food drives to stock food banks. Different vendors pitched in where they could, from J. Ennis Fabrics donating fabric then wanting to go on to teach sewing lessons at the donated community center; to AV Framing Gallery donating pictures to be hung inside the home.

Though prepped by the producers a few weeks earlier, no one knew for sure which house would be selected. All they knew was that the streets would be blocked off and folks would be given the option to stay in nearby hotels during the duration because of the noise and inconvenience. Mark Smith, a student at Martin University, had lived in neighborhood for four years. “At 6:30 in the morning, our house was shaking when all the people marched down the street. It’s been a positive impact and will hopefully be an incentive for people to keep their property up.”

Some residents had been in the neighborhood for over 32 years, seeing things like this on television but never expecting to see it in real life, much less in their neighborhood. Everyone pulled together to continue to improve the neighborhood. The Estridge led crews landscaped the property of Martin University. Wheelchair ramps were built for houses who needed them. The entire neighborhood was equipped with wifi and Dell donated computers to all of the IPS students who live there. Marian College will be providing tutoring and literacy training at the local elementary school in Martindale-Brightwood (IPS School #51) and also at the new community center. Crews painted some of the surrounding houses, paved the alleys, and cleaned up the trash. Over 1200 trees, six miles worth, were planted.

“Thank God for the Rain”

This experienced even changed how people spoke about neighborhood. Everyone had stories. Neighborhood children baked cookies for the production crew. There was a story of a little girl bringing her “Jesus money” to donate to the project. Even inclement weather became an opportunity to serve. That Sunday, the weather was awful during one of the “hurry up and wait” moments before the volunteers could do their “Braveheart march”. The Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church opened its doors and welcomed the volunteers in from the cold and rain. The crowd filled out the balcony, the choir section, and the basement. Jessie Hickman admitted that they were “caught a little bit off guard, but the people were so friendly and then they wanted to hear some singing.” The church stopped teaching their Sunday School class and started a prayer service for them which included prayer, dancing, and singing. Everyone was invited to tap along to a rendition of “Let it Rain” which gave goosebumps to the listeners.

“I think the church had a profound effect on them,” Jessie Hickman went on to say. The collection plate was a little fuller than usual. The church remained open all week, servicing the needs of whoever walked through its doors. The Estridge group re-sided it and also did some landscaping. Says another parishioner, Kathy Griffin, “they were an answer to prayer. It’s truly a blessing coming down from God.”

Reverend Martin summed up the experience this way, “God is a God of restoration. He’s restoring hope in this neighborhood. He’s restoring lives. He’s restoring dignity.”

All of this started with one man, Bernard McFarland, a school teacher going about his business, trying to make a difference one child at a time. His life caught the attention of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition production team. Their mission coincided with Paul Estridge’s and a community was forever changed. As the wave of beautification extended out from the McFarland home, everyone’s hope is that it continues to spread. No one wants things to stop with this project but want to see it replicated in other neighborhoods.

“With the revitalization that’s going on, you’re seeing a spark. People want to try to do what they can for the neighborhood. It can’t help but rub off,” Jessica Hickman said. “I know people are going to keep up. If you see it beautifying, what are you going to do? You’re going to pick and help at least maintain it.”

“Shout all you want to!”

April 4th, at 2:45 p.m., Bernard McFarland, his sons, his family, and his neighbors yelled “Move that bus!” and finally saw the results of a community pulling together. It was a cathartic celebration, the payoff moment, for a community rally and neighborhood family coming together. Not only had Bernard leapt out of limo at his return to his neighborhood, but ran up the street once he saw his new home for the first time … so that he could high five his neighbors. “Shout all you want to!” some cried out. At one moment it looked like Bernard was going to runoff with Paul Estridge. Then came his grand shout: “Thank you community!!!”

The house at 2356 N. Oxford St is like the proverbial city on the hillside, a light in the darkness. It serves as a beachhead to reclaim the rest of the neighborhood. Both a point of pride and a symbol of community cooperation, it illustrates the power of transformation.

In many ways, we’ve lost the community spirit of sitting out on our porches. It seems like we are determined to keep moving away from each other (in the name of “escaping the crime” and “those people”); and if we can’t move, we build fences from one another. Maybe we ought to answer our own question of “who is my neighbor” by sitting out and getting to know them; learn the comings and goings of our neighborhood and maybe keep an eye out for each other. We need to take ownership of our neighborhoods, even in the tiniest of ways.

Caring about our neighborhoods means spreading a viral concern to “love thy neighbor.” Not just keeping a vigilant eye, but having a proactive mindset, one that fixes problems as we see them. If we are truly to be lights in a world of darkness, the least we can do is start by fixing a broken window and being a good neighbor. That’s the work that Paul Estridge and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition began and the residents of Martindale-Brightwood hope to continue.

The Community of Building (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition)

2009-06-23T06:14:00.001-04:00

[Remember when I was tweeting from the set of Extreme Makeover? This is the unabridged version of the article I wrote about the filming of the episode filmed in Indianapolis which appeared in the May/June issue of Indy Magazine.]

The school bus rumbled along, carrying the next groups of spectators and volunteers from the State Fairgrounds down to the staging area. Though hot and cramped, there were no complaints. Instead, the ride was filled with pleasant chatter. “What are you doing?” one passenger would ask. “Whatever they tell me,” another answered.

Such was the spirit that charged the site of the latest episode of the highly rated television show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. For those unfamiliar with the show, it typically featured a race against time to finish a complete renovation of a house, from its redesign to landscaping to decoration, with a team led by Ty Pennington. Usually changing the lives and fortunes of the families they touch, its viewers were left in shared tears or heartwarming uplift. In its 6th season, the show filmed its season finale with an unusually ambitious project. At its heart lay a forgotten part of our city in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood, the home of Bernard McFarland and family at 2356 N. Oxford St (re-dubbed McFarland Drive) around a new home and its (new) Pack House 2000 library, not to mention all of the changes in the surrounding area.

While Extreme Makeover gave them the means, most of the vision came from one man. Paul Estridge, president of the Estridge Corporation, is the patient zero, the Typhoid Mary spreading a virus of generosity. Befitting the nature of the project, the orchestrating had to have been an organizational nightmare (“organized chaos” was the phrase of the day). All about the staging area walls were various Estridge mottos: Serve and Enrich. Continue to Grow. According to Biblical Principles. We Build Together. Time. Talent. Treasures.

There have been a couple of places where Extreme Makeover had painted a few additional houses, but no one had done anything on the scale of what Paul did in terms of a whole neighborhood. With the redressing of alleys, manicuring of streets and lawns, repainting of homes, and demolition of an abandoned home, over 198 acres were affected by the revitalization. With his greater vision of investing in neighborhood and community, his heart for the city rallied community leaders from councilmen to businesswomen, from artists to clergy.

The business philosophy undergirded by Christian values—to give back and be a blessing to the community—may partly explain why the community responded the way it did. Over four thousand volunteers descend upon this part of the city most would have avoided any other time. Carpenters, dry wallers, and unskilled hands, running the gamut of races and ages, volunteered their time, passion, and sweat. Some volunteers arrived from as far away as Texas. Some volunteers worked days that ran from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., with no job being too small for them to lend a hand.

Fueled by a sense of mission and a camaraderie of common purpose, crowds gathered to literally watch paint dry. Everyone pitched in and become involved. Neighbors hosted dinners. Neighborhood folks picked up brooms to sweep up adjoining areas. The common cry was that “we’re supposed to give back” and “we’re either going to be a part of the problem or try to be a part of the solution.” The renovation of a house, of a neighborhood, transformed the volunteers as well as the community.

IPS School #37 was gifted to the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood association to serve as a community center for the neighborhood. Amy Harwell, a member of the neighborhood association, loved the fact that School 37 will be put to good use as a community center. “School 37 is a landmark and I’m glad there’s someplace for neighborhood kids to go. Mr. McFarland has been taking kids into his house forever and now he’ll have some help. We’re proud of our neighborhood.” Built in the 1920s, the 50,000-square-foot school building had 20 classrooms, a gymnasium and food service area (but no air conditioning).

Before, the neighborhood was neglected, if not written off. People had given up on the neighborhood because it seemed that everyone else had. Pizza places wouldn’t even deliver to it. For your safety, you had to pick and choose the streets to carefully travel. “A lot of the crime and the drug selling came from people outside of the neighborhood,” former resident Jessie Hickman said.

Some streets had older people living on them, so they were fairly quiet. Other streets, however, had trouble brewing. You couldn’t even drive down the street without people running up to your car asking if you were looking for drugs. “I wouldn’t be caught up in here by myself. When you roll through you better lock the doors and roll up your windows.” Reverend John W. Martin, Sr, of the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church said. “but for the first time ever, this week I walked down this street.”

As Mary Catherine Grau, director of marketing for Estridge, admits, “Estridge has always been a pretty philanthropic company, but when this opportunity presented itself, it was a wonderful way to do what we’ve always done except do it on a much grander scale.” Paul Estridge had two conditions before he decided to partner with Extreme Makeover: 1) he wasn’t going to do a home so grandiose that families in the area couldn’t aspire to build one also; 2) it couldn’t just be the home, the project had to be much more involved in the neighborhood.

[to be continued ...]

The Faithful Wrath

2009-06-22T06:04:00.002-04:00

I don’t know why Wrath James White can’t simply say “Hey Maurice, I miss you. Why don’t you give me a call sometime?” Noooooo, instead he has to go all passive-aggressive on me and write a blog specifically designed to pick an argument with me. (Right, because we all know Wrath’s passive-aggressive … when he’s not being, you know, aggressive-aggressive.)

In the foreward of Orgy of Souls, I wrote that “faith is that sometimes tenuous, sometimes stronger than we think thing that keeps our world in order. [Wrath and I are] both men of faith in our own way, be it faith in ourselves or faith in God. We each are on our own spiritual journey. My faith follows a story, something that especially resonates with me as a writer. However, Wrath’s faith is every bit as rich and varied as my own.”

Why have I described both Wrath and I as men of faith? Because of one of the definitions of faith he cites: complete trust; something that is believed especially with strong conviction. Faith is an intuitive leap to what you choose to believe and how you choose to process the world around you. Any choice of a worldview requires a leap of faith, to believe that your worldview is the “right” one. I believe quest/knowledge journeys begin with a leap of faith, that is, what we choose to put our trust in. For some, it is ourselves (the individual or humanity). For some, it is science (the determination of our senses). For some, it is the spiritual (under the assumption that there is more to this life than presented, both in terms of the spiritual and in terms of after this life). To quote from the blog of my friend, Rich Vincent:

“Christianity does not consist in a series of verifiable and interlocking hypotheses. Nor is it a philosophical system consisting in satisfactory, mutually consistent propositions… the way that truth is sought and engaged with is not through detachment but through a living relationship of faith and love with the object we seek”. The Christian seeks more than “objective truth,” facts, or information. “The goal is not to find information, or even to discern fact, but to bring ourselves, as living subjects, into engagement with reality, culminating ultimately in a participation in the ground of what is real”.

Also, Christians don’t have a monopoly on truth. As Christ himself says, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (John 18.37). In my faith worldview, Christ is the universal truth and all truth leads to him. Faith doesn’t always make sense to me, I think that’s one reason why we’re told to work out our faith in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). I can only work out my faith in the doing. I have always seen myself as a soldier, someone who dives in to do the work. Your faith should drive you to action. It has its own dangers as I’m prone to working hard FOR Him, or doing good works for their own sake, rather than working hard to KNOW Him. And it’s the knowing of God that’s at the heart of my faith. Again, to quote from Rich's blog:

An authentic encounter with the living and eternal God touches both our hearts and our hands. God calls us to nothing less than complete spiritual transformation. Those who desire to simply dabble in religion will get nowhere. Only thoses willing to submit to the rigors of regular acts of self-examination, confession of sin, and deeds of repentance can know deep and lasting change.

An authentic encounter with the living God will never leave us as we are – it will challenge our lifestyles, attitudes, actions, and motivations. The reason is simple: God regularly calls us to change – to repentance. If we are unwilling to change, we harden ourselves to spiritual transformation. Only a humble heart, open to God, ready to admit mistakes, willing to start again can know the fullness of what God desires.

Religion needs to be more than a get out of hell free card and church needs to be more than a collection of folks who huddle together to debate theology and revel in their rightness. The point of Christianity isn’t to make it into heaven, but rather the story we find ourselves in: we’re lost, dying, and in need of new life. Through Christ we’re found, saved, and given a model for a new way of living.

I believe that we’re all people of faith in our own way, it’s just a matter of what we choose to put that faith in, be it in ourselves, science, humanity, or in God. As such, each of us are on our own spiritual journey. There will be times when science will clarify matters of faith just like there will be times when faith can temper our sometimes irrational admiration for the rational. I think we can do more than just make “a” decision and hope that we’re right. We can continue to test what we believe and say we’re about and live out our lives accordingly.

It's Official

2009-06-15T10:22:00.002-04:00

ANGRY ROBOT IS PRESENTED TODAY BY THE LETTER “M”

Hide us! Something seriously spooky just happened. Today, the planets all being in the correct alignment, we are announcing the signing of not one, not two, but three authors whose names begin with M. Only our devious Robot overlord master (you know, him, whose name begins with… M! Aye caramba!) knows how the hell that happened, but check this trio out:

Maurice Broaddus* is one of the real good guys, so why the hell his fiction is so terrifying is beyond our understanding. The three books of the KNIGHTS OF BRETON COURT series is a modern retelling of the King Arthur cycle, set among the drug gangs of inner city America. Told through the eyes of King, as he tries to unite the crack dealers and do the right thing, it’s a stunning, edgy work, genuinely unlike anything we’ve ever read. Cheap movie analogy for you: Gilliam’s Fisher King meets The Wire. The first volume will be published by Angry Robot in summer 2010, with the remaining parts at six month intervals. Extraordinary.

continue reading to see whose company I'm privileged to be joining!

*All author pics taken by Surreal Image Photography

RaceFail '09 - Feedback II

2009-06-12T06:10:00.001-04:00

I've received a couple of really interesting responses to my RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant blog. I thought I'd share a couple. Today is from a comment left on my blog a while back which I wanted to give further exposure to. As always, I look forward to your comments:

Hello, Mr. Broaddus,

I have been keeping a somewhat distant eye on Racefail '09 and found your blog and the relevant bingo cards via a simple google search. I am not a writer of any professional leaning, nor am I immediately aiming to be.

What I am is a woman of the Indian/Caribbean diaspora who spent some time teaching in Japan. While I was there I was immediately adopted into a tea ceremony club when the teacher decided I was just the right size for her to practice tying kimono with. She gave me lessons and my first yukata and I gave her saris in return. I wear my yukata on occasion and my teacher wept tears of joy when I gave her the first sari, so there's no doubt about appreciation on her part. I can eat with chopsticks, knife and fork or just my fingers and view the respective table manners as useful skills under my belt.

There are things on that Bingo card that I might say myself and racefail has raised uncomfortable issues for me. Is it only cultural appropriation if it involves caucasians? If there's a history of exploitation between groups? How much effort must go into understanding another group before people can agree it is actual cultural exchange and understanding rather than appropriation? Where is the line drawn, who draws it and why? Should I have said something to that African American girl I saw on the bus during college, wearing a bindi upside down?

My own heritage is a mishmash and a jumble, thrown together on an island and forced through a sieve of colonialism. For better or worse, borrowing and lending, adopting and sharing, adapting and evolving has been my cultural experience. Everything I am says there must be some avenue to explore this varied earth, that an upside-down bindi is a chance to educate rather than rail, but the sentiments arising from Racefail seem to acknowledge no possibility at all. Along with that is the sneaking suspicion that my post-colonial education brainwashed me better than I thought.

I hardly expect that you'd have all the answers but I am interested in any thoughts you might have on the matter. Thank you for your time.

RaceFail '09 - Feedback I

2009-06-11T06:03:00.000-04:00

I've received a couple of really interesting responses to my RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant blog. I thought I'd share a couple. Today is from the mailbag. As always, I look forward to your comments:

My name's Hunter Eden, and I'm a young writer just new at this whole "forging the English language into something meaningful" thing. You and I corresponded very briefly a year or two ago on this same issue of race and horror, but I think I dropped the ball in responding to you, for which I humbly apologize. Point is, I had no idea that there was some kind of speculative fiction-based dust-up over race (or perhaps lack thereof).

Facts up front: I'm a white male of mixed Jewish/German-Norwegian (Hebrew Viking) descent. I don't actually write about that many white characters, though. I finished a novel (currently with an agent but no publisher) describing the war between two ancient Mexican gods in a world where Europe didn't conquer the Americas and Aztec gangsters smuggle contraband alcohol into Incan Cuzco. The only white character is the reanimated corpse of Charles Darwin, who probably isn't (within the context of the story) actually human. My first story appeared in City Slab and was written from the perspective of a Mexican cabbie in a very Cancun-like city. I've got a story due out in Weird Tales about samurai fighting dinosaurs.

I'm not trying to brag or show off when I say all this, just that I wrote these characters because I wanted to. I hate when writers pull the Last Samurai card and go to the trouble of researching a whole different culture, but then don't have the courage to actually go ahead and write someone from that culture as the main character (The Last Samurai particularly pissed me off in this regard because Tom Cruise becomes a better samurai than the Japanese characters).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm conscious of race (who in today's world isn't?), but I think the key (and I'm really not trying to land on any bingo squares here) is to remember that in the end we're all human. That's not to whitewash, but just to say that whether I'm writing a character who's Mexican or American or even a Jewish Aztec mob boss, we're all motivated by the same needs. I think a lot of speculative fiction pussyfoots around race. I especially hate the way that fantasy, even fantasy written by American authors, always seems to go back to the same Anglo/Norse/Celtic pseudo-culture. Reading Imaro by Charles Saunders was great not because it made me feel like a Racially-Enlightened Young American but because it was something new. I loved the fact that somebody had taken a part of the world as vibrant and culturally complex as Africa and given it a fantasy treatment. (The fact that Imaro is a hardcore Maasai bad-ass who fights demons and necromancers was just icing on the cake).

I think a lot of speculative fiction's difficulty with confronting race is based on two factors in writers and readers very much contrary to the spirit of the genres--cowardice and laziness. I guess these points have been made before, but they bear repeating. I think a lot of white authors and readers are scared to step out and confront the Elephant because they don't want to be labeled as racist themselves. But then, there's also the tendency to fall back on the same garbage we've grown used to. If there's a fantasy culture, it'll be based off somewhere in northern Europe because Tolkien did that. If there's a non-white culture, it'll probably be based off Japan or China or some fusion of the two. Maybe, if we're really working, we'll get some kind of distillation of the Arab world filtered through a heavily fantasized verneer with genies and carpets and sultans with veiled concubines. But Zanzibaris or Aztecs or Australian Aborigines? Not a chance. If Aztecs appear, they exist to either be heinous blood-sacrificers or a conquered and oppressed people (don't get me started on Apocalypto). It angers me profoundly as a writer, and I'm not in the least bit Hispanic in my descent. It's an affront to the imagination, and frankly, an extreme marginalization of a powerful and advanced culture.

Extreme words, I realize (and don't get me started on Ancient Astronauts, either). I guess the reason I feel strongly about this is because it's just more evidence of total lack of imagination in what is supposed to be the most imaginative set of genres we have. I guess my thoughts on writing the Other is that this doesn't need to be some sort of birdwatching exercise. I've got friends from a wide spectrum of religious and racial backgrounds and I don't stay friends with any of them so I can write minority X better.

Sorry to carpet-bomb you with this, but I'm glad somebody is confronting the whole issue and doing it without kidgloves. Personally, I'd love to see more speculative fiction written by people who aren't white and JewCatholiProtestant. Thanks for confronting the elephant (or shoggoth?) in the room.

Sincerely,
Hunter C. Eden

The Hangover – A Review

2009-06-03T23:22:00.002-04:00

“Fellowship of the Strippers”

Finally, a raucous, raunchy comedy in the grand tradition of Porky’s, Anchorman, and director Todd Phillips’ previous efforts, Old School and Road Trip (and I’d say There’s Something About Mary, but I always found it over-rated as a comedy). Rife with funny dialogue with plenty of memorable one-liners, its flashback structure adds a sense of intrigue to what could have been a rather pedestrian movie.

We have the four stooges, Doug (Justin Bartha), due to get married in 48 hours, along with his two best friends, school teacher Phil (Bradley Cooper), and “just a dentist” Stu (Ed Helms), along with Doug’s soon to be brother-in-law, the not quite right in the head Alan (Zach Galifianakis). They perform that most ancient of rites, the bachelor party, in Las Vegas, in search of a night they won’t forget. They promptly have such a good time, they can’t remember a minute of it.

“Can’t you see the fun part of anything?” –Phil
The inherent mystery of their lost night, as they retrace their steps, figuring out where they went wrong, how they went so far astray, and figure out where they go from here. After all, such are the deep philosophical questions that naturally accompany a night of marrying strippers, naked Asian men popping out of car trunks, missing teeth, awkwardly walking chickens, Mike Tyson’s tiger in the bathroom, hospital visits, furniture still smoking, and finding a baby in the closet.

“Are you happy?” –Phil

So I’m sitting at my computer wondering if there’s a spiritual connection that I can make to this movie (cause I managed to find one for Borat and Slither). The “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” credo flies in the face of the reality of the fact that sin/secrets have a way of finding you out and following you home ... nope … that’s not going to work.

Friendship is best defined during times of adversity. It’s easy to be friends when things are going easy. Sunshine friendships. It’s when you have to walk through each other’s messes, even self-created messes, telling each other hard truths, that you can figure out who your real friends are.

We long for such friendships, sometimes believing ourselves to be “a wolf pack of one”, unloved, unlovable, and unworthy of being loved. Yet we’re wired for relationships, we want to be known. We desperately desire our wolf pack of one becomes a wolf pack of four, to find “the three best friends that anyone could have”.

Life constantly presents opportunities for us to love and to learn to love better. Difficult circumstances can cause relationships to dig deeper, driving each other to get to know one another on more significant levels. And there is a spiritual point to it all. Our friendships, limited, temporary, and transitional as they are, are meant to drive us to a higher friendship. If only to prove that we can’t live without love. Even the loneliness, the grief, the deficiencies of friendship prepare us for something more permanent, more eternal. We were made for higher companionship, an infinite hole within us that can only be filled with the Infinite. A love that does not pass away.

That’s as good as I’m getting.

“Just get me home.” –Doug

The Hangover, this ode to irresponsible behavior, basically finds boys masquerading as men, re-living their college days in a night fueled by alcohol, debauchery, and boobs. It pretty much delivers exactly what it promises: big laughs wrung from a whole lot of wrong. The entire movie pays off in laughs, one ridiculous moment following the next. The humor is unapologetically raunchy (the closing photograph montage being a fitting closing argument for that case). Though I did leave the theater wondering what was up with the chickens.

Away We Go - A Review

2009-06-02T23:22:00.002-04:00

“Are we f--- ups?”

Away We Go is an episodic dramedy about a couple, Burt Farlander (John Krasinski, The Office) and Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph, Saturday Night Live), on the verge of parenthood, drifting through life in a search for a place to call home. It’s half a road movie as they are on a journey of family. They leave their rural Colorado home (where his parents live) in a quest for the best place to begin their family. So they travel to cities where they have anything resembling a connection, from Phoenix to Tucson to Montreal to Miami, encountering different shades of domestic hell. For a couple of self-described f-ups, they certainly have enough money to travel quite a bit.

Krasinski plays a variation of his character from The Office and Rudolph brings a considerable measure of charm as they bring their characters to life. They are the normal painted against the backdrop of characters filling out portraits of bad marriages, worse parenting, and fractured adulthood. If these characters were my example of marital and familial bliss, I’d swear off getting married, too.

“We are completely untethered, Burt.” –Verona

They are completely uprooted as people, starting with their own immaturity. They “don’t even have the basic things figured out, like how to live.” They want to be taken seriously as adults yet are trying to figure out how to be adults. They and their circle are twenty/thirty something teenagers, people who are emotionally in their teens but in big people’s bodies. Who carry their high school attitudes and personas long into adulthood. Who wait longer to grow up, get through school, move out, become independent. Who drift through life, unfocused, going from job to job, without a care or responsibility in the world. With no character defining rite of passage, they find themselves ready to bring a child into the world and making a family.

“I hate that attitude: everything’s already broken so let’s just keep breaking them again and again.” –Verona

Yet, they also aren’t as far behind as they think they are. They wrestle with their expectations and dreams for kids. They seriously think through the relationships in their lives (and who they want to model themselves after) and give serious consideration to the voices they want to not only speak into their lives, but also their child’s life. Yes, many of their surrounding relationships are broken and they are well aware of how their parents define them. But they recognize the patterns and which cycles need to be broken.

Despite being “stunted, confused, immature”, they know that what binds it all together—the glue, the mortar, the syrup of relationships—is love. It’s what binds us as people, as families, and what makes a home. As well as the patience required, as we have to be willing to make the family out of whatever you have.

“It’s like God’s trying to melt us down to make something better.” –Burt

Away We Go won’t go over well with the strictly Family Values set, as Verona refuses to consider getting married. It has a Sideways/strong indie film vibe to it. Both sweet and funny—surprisingly funny—it also has a realness and rawness to it. The characters tread that line of being eccentric without being over the top. It is a celebration of family, the true value and meaning of family, though in an untraditional manner, and is a pleasant journey for the audience to take.

Batman: What Happened to the Caped Crusader? – A Review

2009-06-01T10:37:00.004-04:00

Batman #686 and Detective Comics #853
Written by: Neil Gaiman
Drawn by: Andy Kubert
Published by: DC Comics

It’s always an event when comics legend, Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Eternals) returns to comics to do … anything. I can’t even imagine it being much of a discussion after “hi, I’m Neil Gaiman. I’d like to do a tribute to Batman.” This story harkens back to the classic Alan Moore (Watchmen) story, “Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” from Superman#423 & Action Comics #583.

“I guess I always knew this was how it was going to end. That we didn’t have him forever.” –Commissioner James Gordon

Gaiman manages to mine some of his favorite themes: childhood and storytelling and the magic and power of both. There’s not much action in this tale of Batman, but it’s more about someone mulling over their life and sorting through who he is and how he got there. There’s almost a bit of Canterbury Tales story structure to the story. Batman has apparently died and both heroes and villains have gathered for a funeral, giving eulogies about how they killed Batman. We go through numerous scenarios of how Batman could have died (including one version where Alfred becomes the Joker in order to facilitate Bruce Wayne’s obsession with dressing up as a bat. Every hero needs a villain to give him purpose).

“I fight until I drop. And one day, I will drop.” –Batman

The point of this story is that it really doesn’t matter how you die but rather that someday you are actually going to die. Your actions in this life have an effect that goes beyond what you may be able to see at the time. You don’t know how many lives you are going to impact, either positively or negatively. Some of the things you could learn from your funeral are: what was your life made of? Who did you impact? What did you accomplish? It boils down to how would you like to be remembered and how can you live the life to lead up to such a eulogy. And that’s something profound for anyone to mull over, even a Batman.

“Then one day someone comes along who makes sense of the madness. Who understand it. Who wants to fix it.” –Det. Bullock

To finish, strictly speaking, means to bring something to an end or to completion. In Acts 20:24, the apostle Paul writes that his own life didn’t matter to him as long as he’d “finish the race and complete the task” that the Lord gave him. For Batman it was a simple core belief, as he puts it, “I believe in laws and in right and wrong” and until he has finished the fight for justice, he lives by his credo of “don’t give up”.

The coolest part of “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” was seeing Batman from various eras. Kubert’s art matches Gaiman’s story perfectly. The abstracts and symbolism, the nods to the various continuities, create such an insider brew that what’s being said gets rather garbled in the metanarrative. The story didn’t quite come together perfectly for me. This is a fitting capstone, however, to not just the Grant Morrison run on the book, but also for the recent "Batman: R.I.P." storyline. Plus, it’s Neil Gaiman: even slightly off his game, the sheer weight of his ideas and narrative puts him head and shoulders above most everything else out there.

Black Panther – A Review

2009-05-30T10:37:00.004-04:00

Written by: Reginald Hudlin
Drawn by: Ken Lashley
Published by: Marvel Comics

I always pick up any new #1 of Black Panther. I just can’t help myself because part of me is always hoping that they’ll do the character right. The quintessential interpretation of the Black Panther was Christopher Priest’s classic run on the book. In it, we saw a king ten steps ahead of anyone else, who had different character motivations, and who was a complex yet driven character. Reginald Hudlin generally continued in this vein, though to a much more hit and miss extent.

From the cover, we’re promised a female Black Panther. Unfortunately, this is the age of stories written for eventual collection into trade paperbacks, meaning that the initial storyline is 4-6 issues long and issue number one, with few exceptions, plays like an extended prologue. In other words, the promised female Black Panther doesn’t make an appearance in this issue.

However, the story picks up against the back drop of Marvel’s company-wide "Dark Reign" storyline (which boils down to Norman Osborn having been given the keys to the Marvel kingdom). The story unfolds in a fractured style, bouncing between past and present, taking a page from the Christopher Priest brand of storytelling. We have royalty (in the form of Prince Namor) seeking out an audience with T'Challa, with eventually another fallen monarch, Dr. Doom, making an appearance.

“They follow his every move. To say they worship him is not a figure of speech.”

The Black Panther is a book about a king protecting his kingdom. What I appreciate most about these characters is that it’s easy to forget that he and Namor aren’t typical of the spandex set. They are monarchs, with different agendas and kingdoms to protect and guide. The Black Panther, along with his new bride, Storm, is practically worshiped by his people.

The natural spiritual connection that stems from this is the idea of the "kingdom of God". After all, Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was at hand. But what does it mean? Allen Mitsuo Wakabayashi, in his book Kingdom Come, defines it this way: "the kingdom of God is about the dynamic of God's kingship being applied". That is, God reigns and when that reign becomes specific one can say the kingdom of God is here. Jesus announces the near-arrival of the kingdom, this continuity between our here and now and a future heaven. His call was simply that all those who wanted to enter this kingdom simply had to repent and believe his gospel message. And we’re all invited into this kingdom.

Too much about the book reeks of hype, from the re-launch as a new number one (making this essentially volume 5 of the Black Panther) to the extension of the "Dark Reign" metanarrative to the promised female Black Panther to paying for a double-sized issue and only getting the standard length comic plus some filler, er, bonus material. Not exactly the best way to deliver on the hype.

S. Darko – A Review

2009-05-29T10:37:00.000-04:00

It’s difficult to make sequels of certain movies, especially movies which don’t need a sequel. Movies that had their own magic, where everything came together to create a special moment, for example, E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. Then there are movies that seem like a sequel could be made, to continue the adventures of their characters, yet sometimes even those sequels prove tricky (Blues Brothers 2000 springs to mind).

Donnie Darko is more like the former. Richard Kelly's cool cult phenomena offered an original and disturbing vision of suburban life, the terror behind the white picket fence, capturing the isolation and desperation of teen angst. A tale of alienation, being invisible, yet desperately wanting to be known; of parents not knowing they exist as they search for a place to belong and tendrils of connection. All layered with a healthy serving of science fiction fable.

S. Darko takes place seven years after the events involving Samantha Darko (Daveigh Chase, reprising her role from the original film) and her brother Donnie. Seven years to end up in essentially the same place. Lost, alone, struggling her way through life and its meaning. She joins her best friend Corey (Briana Evigan) on a road trip to California or to otherwise find themselves, as Sam dreams of becoming a dancer. Their car breaks down in a small Utah town, filled with eccentric characters and religious fanatics. Of course a meteor hits and sets in motion a chain of events that lead to prophecies of the end of the world happening.

Make no mistake, the only members from the original team behind Donnie Darko present for this debacle are Chase and a producer. All other caretakers of the vision are perfectly absent, leaving us with a poorly written, cliché strewn, tedious mess of a movie that barely makes sense when it’s not delivering banality at a record clip.
“We have the same holes in our hearts, you and me.” –Randy (Ed Westwick)

In the “Darko” universe there are the “manipulated dead” (Frank the Bunny in Donnie Darko and Samantha in S. Darko), someone whose future deceased self communicates with the receiver, prompting them to follow the destiny set forth for them; and “living receivers ” (Donnie in the first film and Iraq Jack (James Lafferty) in this one). Between the time travel, wormholes, and connections to other realities or dimensions, especially set against the backdrop of religious fanaticism, one can’t help but wonder about how God fits into this space-time continuum.
“God has all the time in the world for you.” –John Mellit (Matthew Davis)

The idea of heaven –God space, His dwelling place, His dimension—sits opposed to our space in some people’s mind, not God’s location within our space-time universe. So when we talk about heaven, this pie in the sky when we die place, we think of a destination spot for the redeemed. We occupy earth space, our dimension of reality. Heaven is not just a future reality, but a present one, where we go to be with God where He’s always been. So does God space and our space intersect, if so, how, when, and where?

“But when I was your age, I experienced things that made me feel like God didn't exist. Maybe you've experienced something like that too.” –John Mellit

Embracing the complexity of our reality, we have quasi-independent, mysterious overlapping dimensions. The two dimensions overlap and interlock in specific weighs as God intrudes or otherwise makes His presence felt. Abraham met Him, Adam walked with Him, He led the nation of Israel by pillars of fire/cloud, introduced Moses to Himself via a burning bush (holy ground), and was worshiped through the Temple. God operate under certain parameters, acting from within creation through His Presence, the Torah (the Bible), and Spirit. Ultimately, Jesus is the intersection: in him, heaven and earth intersect.

No one quite found their footing in S. Darko, from the writer (Nathan Atkins ) to the director (Chris Fisher) to the actors/actresses. It’s not like the core audience of Donnie Darko longs for a movie that makes sense, but there at least has the be the semblance of logic rather than events playing out for their own sake and characters that are weird for weird’s sake. Unfortunately, rather than re-create any of the magic of the original, this is a sequel best left forgotten. It’s more like they decided to re-tell the original movie in a less interesting way.

The Uninvited - A Review

2009-05-27T05:59:00.002-04:00

“The Uninspired”

The Uninvited is one of those kind of horror movies that leaves me frustrated. It’s a time worn premise that could still be mined for something interesting, which languishes on the screen. It has the trappings of a horror movie, some requisite boo moments and random creepy visions, which don’t really add up to a sustainable atmosphere. When it’s not pretending to be a horror movie, it’s half a thriller, in the vein of the 90s cautionary movies such as Fatal Attraction, Pacific Heights, Single White Female, etc. It’s strictly (horror/thriller) movie by numbers.

Based on Kim Jee-Woon's 2003 Korean horror film, Changhwa Hongryon, The Uninvited centers on the story of Anna (Emily Browning), a troubled teen who returns home after spending time in the hospital following the tragic death of her mother. Her family situation continues to be complicated as she finds out that her father is involved with her mother’s former caretaker, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). Anna’s mother’s ghost shows up to warn her because her soon-to-be evil stepmother isn’t who she claims to be. Anna teams up with her equally troubled, though in a different way, sister, Alex, as they investigate their father’s girlfriend in a battle of wills.

“We all have things in our past that we’re ashamed of. I think sometimes it’s best to let them go.” –Rachel

We all have regrets. Fixing matters isn’t always an option: what’s done is done. Sometimes you just have to carry the weight of your bad decisions and selfishness and hopefully let them shape you into a better person. Even our mistakes have value, if it leads to a transformation of who you are and what you do. If we can’t go through life doing our best to love one another, then the least we can do is try and go through life trying to cause as little damage as possible. And have fewer causes of regrets.

Danny DeVito’s character in the movie The Big Kahuna put it this way: “I'm saying you've already done plenty of things to regret, you just don't know what they are. It's when you discover them, when you see the folly in something you've done, and you wish that you had it do over, but you know you can't, because it's too late. So you pick that thing up, and carry it with you to remind you that life goes on, the world will spin without you, you really don't matter in the end. Then you will gain character, because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself across your face.”

Sibling directors, Charles and Thomas Guard, haven’t quite mastered the rhythms of a horror movie, inserting predictable creepy elements rather than doing anything with them. The movie arrives a few years too late to ride the coat tails of the Asian horror re-make trend (The Ring, The Grudge, Shutter). Dull, flat, and obvious, the movie lacks style, grace, creepiness, and any originality and there are better ways to kill an hour and a half of your time.

Mo*Con IV: In Absentia

2009-05-21T06:24:00.001-04:00

What connections do you see between Spirituality and ... Horror?

We've talked about scary stuff before. Way back in 2007, we published an interview with Bible scholar Marcus Borg, who is an insatiable fan of character-driven mystery novels, but we've rarely returned to the topic. We are aware that mysteries and scary stories in general are very popular with religious men and women. A number of famous religious writers, including C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, dabbled in both faith and fright.

Plus, nearly every major religious tradition has horrific stories within its sacred literature.

So, we invited author James Leach to write a short overview of a Horror-and-Spirituality conference he just attended in Indiana.

(Continue reading Horror and Spirituality here)

For the record, my favorite line in the article was "As I sipped absinthe from a Sponge Bob dixie cup at the after party..."

There were a couple of awards given out at Mo*Con IV, but the recipients weren't able to make it. So I thought I'd share them here:

Mo*Con IV: The Story of (My) Christianity Part II

2009-05-20T05:40:00.003-04:00

(Continued from Part I)

There are two kinds of writers: those who can sit down in front of their keyboards or with their pad and pen and simply start writing, letting the story and characters go where they go. I hate them. I’m the other kind, the ones who outline because we have to know where the story is going or else we’d get lost. Me viewing my life through the lens of a writer had implications on how I viewed the Bible. I started to read it as a storybook, a collection of stories. The story of God’s interaction with His people and a collection of stories I choose to live my life by.

A story has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. With the Bible, the beginning starts with ... the beginning, the creation. The act of creation provides not only the setting, but also the characters. But who is the central character, the protagonist? Who is the hero of the story? God? Humanity?

So we start with God. I believe that there are things we can’t/haven’t measured, a spiritual transcendent dimension to our reality. There is something wholly other, a complex other. If you’ve ever tried to get to know someone, you know that it requires work, trust, intimacy, and time, and that’s for people. God is ineffable (beyond words) and incomprehensible. God would not be God if this were not the case. And we’re handicapped by having only limited perception.
There is mystery and paradox, involved in getting to know him.

If there is a God, he has to have revealed himself or else he might as well not exist. We would end up endlessly wondering what “the Universe” wants. On faith, I believe Christ is not only the bridge to that other, but also the full revelation of that Other. But I’m skipping ahead in the story.

The protagonist (for that matter, all the characters) has a long-term goal for the duration of the story, so in this case, it is God interacting with humanity for a purpose. God creates, for the same reason we echo in our lives, because he has to. It’s a well spring of who he is. The Creator loved world he made, wanted to look after it best possible way so he created care-taker creatures modeled on Himself, embody his characteristics (though not fully).

The action that propels a story is some sense of conflict, in the form of the Fall: the sin of Adam and Eve. Moving beyond a literal interpretation of the story, let’s look at what the sin represents. Adam’s sin represents man seeking his own way. Sin becomes its own undoing. We’re left with a fear of death and end up spreading further sin and destruction in light of that fear. Our pursuit of what we hope to create out of rebellion (the lie of independence), attempting to write our own stories; all the while ignoring the grand story of which we’re a part. The Fall also gives us the main themes of Story. Relationships are broken and look at what we arises from this conflict: man vs. man; man vs. God; man vs. self; man vs. Creation. One of the things that makes suffering so bad is the sense, the part of us that knows, that things aren’t as they’re supposed to be.

In a way, the story is part romance, about God wooing humanity back to him. Meeting us where we are, messy and broken. And I mean romance in the best sense of the word (and wouldn’t it be great if Bibles came with covers of Jesus with a half ripped open pirate shirt or something?)

Yet with any good story, something stands in the way of the protagonist achieving his goal.
The story of God putting things right, isn’t that he just woke up one day, decided to pay attention, and suddenly decide to do something to fix the mess by condemning Jesus to a cruel fate to satisfy some blood thirst. Nor would his passion to put the world right, fulfilling this idea of justice involve swooping in, waving a magic wand, and cleaning things up. That would be him forcing himself on us. Instead, His plan has always been to work through people. From Abraham and Israel to Christ and the Church, he stirs our spirits and acts from within creation.

So the story builds to a climax. The climax is the point at which the story goes from being an interrelated, deliberately arranged, set of scenes to a cohesive story. It provides a fundamental meaning to events. That’s what the incarnation (birth in human form), life, death, and resurrection of Christ did for human history.

I’m not a God apologist. I can’t argue philosophical points. I can only speak to what forms my faith. I tend to subscribe to a “something happened” brand of apologetics. Christianity is the story of something that happened, centered around to and through this Jesus of Nazareth person. Something happened more than a guy coming along laying down some moral guidelines and teaching or else we’d see people worshiping Oprah.

Something happened which changed the course of history. I know that Jesus was not the hero they were looking for. Those waiting on a messiah were looking for someone to overthrow their Roman oppressors.

Something happened which caused massive transformation as people saw that they could be saved from an empty way of living, if they choose to accept that. That we may be lost, dying, and in need of new life, resurrection could be had. That the rule of death had been broken, freeing us to live for others. Something happened which gave them the sense of mission to the world to be a blessing.

It’s a story of big ideas with big characters who often make big mistakes. It’s a love story of a Creator rescuing his creation from rebellion, brokenness, corruption, and death. It’s a story we’re a part of and a story we’re invited into. It’s the story thus far, as we live out and work toward the ending. We propel the story, invited to become fresh, new characters.

And that’s the point of the story. We’re invited to join in God’s mission, to be a part of reconciling the universe. We’re called to heal it, to bring restoration, redemption, and reconciliation. We needed a new way of life and living to fix it and Jesus modeled a new way of living and people chose to conform their lives to his example. We need to be continually renewing this example, because it’s easy to fall back into old patterns and old ways of living. We need to be a part of the solution, not the problem. What good is faith if we don’t put what we say we believe into action, living it out as best we are able.

Where there’s a story there’s a plot, there’s a plotter. Not the best proof of the existence of God, but it works for me. We connect with story because we’re a part of a grand story. The story comes full circle as Christ undoes the way of Adam, showing a new way (as high priest and intercessor), and recreating community and relationship with God. In short, He redeems Creation. In turn, we’re all called to live in light of this story, aligning ourselves with this truth.

The one true overarching story of Christianity is that all stories are finally brought not only to fullness and completion, but redemption in Christ. In Christ, all stories are finished. If I had to guess Wrath’s reaction, it would be to say that what I’m saying is that I cling to a fairy tale I hope is true, because what I’ve said isn’t logical. And he’s right. It’s as logical as falling in love. You can’t help who you fall in love with, you do have a choice about what to do about it.

Me? I’m just a man searching for truth and trying to work out his faith. Stories can take you to a deeper reality. My stories are one way I work out my faith. The world is good, but broken, a paradox stories can help us understand. I see the reality of evil and darkness. Sometimes I see how love and relationships can become twisted and selfish. I look into the heart of humanity, into my own heart, and find it wanting. I question, I doubt, I often miss the point, and I fail.

Faith is confidence in the goodness of God remembered on how he has shown goodness to you in the past. Remembering and re-experiencing the way God has touched your life. It leaves you with a sense of hope, that you have a future. Doubt is useful for a while ... but we must move on. We can deconstruct our beliefs all we want, but after awhile, we have to construct something.

I have hope and I cling to it. Darkness may win battles, but light win the war. Justice is real, if sometimes slow in coming. Love, true love, forgives, heals, and triumphs. And humanity, even me, can find redemption.

Stories can show us possibilities. Stories can let us have glimpses of a future hope. Stories can encourage and sustain us. For me, it comes back to the recognition that "we are imperfect people living in a very imperfect world and worshiping a perfect God in an imperfect church." What I want is to truly experience, the true prayer of my heart, is to truly feel God, to truly know God. Until then, I can only cling to my faith and continue to pray my favorite prayer found in the Bible:

“Lord I believe. Help me with my unbelief.”

Mo*Con IV: The Story of (My) Christianity Part I

2009-05-20T05:20:00.004-04:00

Faith hasn’t always come easily to me. I’ve always been intellectually curious, things had to make sense for me. I’m trained as a scientist because I’ve always been about searching for answers. For truth. But it’s also why I don’t hold to a “everything can be explained in nature” sort of worldview. Facts only take you so far. You can assent to a set of facts, but you can’t disprove my faith with facts. You can’t argue someone into faith with facts. Plus, facts equal certainty and certainty is the opposite of faith. It’s the frustrating thing about faith: it’s an intuitive leap that isn’t always logical. I do, however, believe one can think critically and logically about one’s faith.

For the record, I didn't grow up in a faith-filled home. My father and his father before him were about as God neutral, even anti-God as you can get. My father, in one particularly chilling conversation, once told me that he understood fully the choice he made living his life the way he wanted. He recognized the consequences and if that meant an eternity of hell, then so be it, but he at least got to live his life his way.

My mother talked about God on occasion, but I had no sense of her having a spiritual life until the last ten years or so. I grew up in the church, however, and our family has a history of spiritualism, such as the obeah people, the practitioners of the Jamaican form of voodoo. My first major sale, “Family Business” to Weird Tales, was about wrestling with that branch of the family. [But I've detailed this part of my journey before.]

Faith is what you choose to believe in. You have to have some system of belief, something to hold onto, or else you end up just flailing about through life. Just like it’s easy to have faith when everything is going well, when life chugging along pretty much as expected, going along the way you want. But what happens when things go off the tracks?

Any followers of my blog know that I have failed: as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a leader. And in light of the mess I’ve made of my life, it’s left me asking a lot of questions about what I believe. I’ve wondered if there’s any truth to the Christian story? Why does it feel like I’m not close to the person I should be by now? I’m left wondering what’s real about it and with doubting eyes, I have to re-examine what I hold to be true.

So here’s what I know, or rather, what I believe to be true. I firmly believe that this life has meaning and is heading towards something. If this is all there is, I feel sorry for us, because then we truly aren’t any different than any other animal.

We’re hard-wired with certain longings, certain base ideas. Like the idea of justice. We have a passion for justice. We have a sense pretty early on of what’s fair and what’s not, like a dream written onto our hearts. We know there’s something like justice, but we can’t seem to get there.

I also firmly believe that the human heart longs for fellowship, love, and communion. We’re wired for relationships. We want the comfort of an embrace, we want to be known and loved. It’s as if we were designed to find our purpose and meaning in community: family, friends, co-workers, or nation. Yet there is a pain and brokenness to our relationships. What should be so natural is often difficult to navigate.

And the world is full of beauty. Now, I’ll admit, where some people see mountain vistas, lakeside view, a sunset, all I see is why God created tv and air conditioning. There is truth and goodness in beauty, one that we recognize without having to be told. Beauty calls us out of ourselves, is outside us, and appeals to something within us. Beauty touches a primal chord within us, captivates us, and spurs us to adoration, even worship. Beauty is in our art. We know it in music, we interpret it in dance. The idea of beauty points to something greater. It’s a longing we want to express as we try to capture an ineffable quality, an indefinable … truth.

And we have a quest for spirituality. One of the reasons I started Mo*Con was because I believe most of us are on a spiritual quest, a search for truth, and we don’t have enough folks to ask our questions to. We may embrace the western mindset that right-thinking people give up their silly superstitions, and see religion as little more than a runaway imagination, misguided feelings, mixed with wishful thinking, foolish and unsophisticated. A cultural neuroses. Yet we can agree that we all want more for ourselves and our lives. We want meaning, for all this, our struggles, our pain, to have been for something. To me, that very human experience and longing points to an exploration of a spiritual dimension to this life.

So we have this nebulous idea of the need for faith which becomes shaped by personal experience and intuition. I’m a scientist and a theologian (in the way that all spiritual seekers are theologians). So how do I make sense of it all? I’m also a writer.

I love story. I was the kid in class who instead of having a comic book in my text books, I had Bullfinch’s mythology hidden in them. Okay, comic books too. I love all stories. I believe we’re caught up in a story, Wrath and I at different points in it. We connect to a story. We choose the stories that ring true to us, each choice is a leap of faith. The story of evolution doesn’t move me, doesn’t give me purpose and sense of being. It doesn’t take me outside of myself and connect me to others. So the story of evolution couldn’t be the complete story for me.

The Christian story claims to be the true story about God. It’s the story with the recurring themes of going away and coming back home again, of slavery and exodus, of exile and restoration, of death and resurrection. Yet, as Wrath has pointed out, The Church and its people have never gotten it all right, sometimes doing as much harm as good. It’s easy to take any story and do bad things with it.

(To be continued... )

Mo*Con IV: My Atheism Part II

2009-05-19T05:40:00.001-04:00

(Continued from Part I)

I didn’t become an atheist because I was mad at God. You can’t be mad at someone that doesn’t exist. I didn’t become an atheist because some tragedy befell me that made me turn my back on religion and deny the existence of God like some sort of grudge. If I was mad at God I wouldn’t deny his existence because if God doesn’t exist than he’s not responsible for anything. God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist. That would be like denying the existence of Hitler because I was pissed off at him over the Holocaust. It wouldn’t make sense. I’m not an atheist because I find Christian morality too hard to live up to and I want to just sin freely without repercussions. There are always repercussions for your actions in this life.

There’s no need for a heaven or a hell because we get them both right here, right now and it isn’t as simple as good befalling the good and bad befalling the bad. You can be the most loving and giving person and still make bad decisions that you ultimately suffer for. The morality I subscribed to, in my opinion, holds me to a much higher standard because it requires me to be more than simply good, it requires me to be smart. It doesn’t allow me to hate someone for no other reason than because some book says I should.

I became an atheist when I realized that the only reason I had ever believed was because that’s how I had been raised. I had been a Christian only because my family and everyone else I knew were Christians. That was it. That was my only reason. It had nothing to do with proof. If I had been raised by Hindus I would have been Hindu. If I had been raised by Muslims I would have been Muslim.
When I realized this I was embarrassed. To me, it was the most random, the most arbitrary, the most ridiculous reason I could think of to believe in anything. And that’s the way most people adopt their religious beliefs, it is simply handed down to them like a used sweater and we put it on before we are old enough to question it. Most people go their entire lives without ever questioning why they’re wearing it, if they need it, or whether they would be better off without it.

I didn’t have any proof that anything in the bible was true and once I read the bible, I realized that I didn’t believe half of the things in it and that neither did most of the people I knew. Yet somehow they still called themselves Christians. Most of the people I knew didn’t believe in Adam and Eve. They didn’t believe that Jonah lived inside a whale’s belly for days. They didn’t believe that Noah put two of every animal onto a boat for thirty days and thirty nights and that somehow every animal on earth lived within walking distance of Noah’s house, several million species of insects, thousands of birds and rodents that would have taken several lifetimes to collect. They didn’t believe that women should be silent and subservient. They didn’t believe in slavery. They didn’t believe that if someone worked on Sunday or cheated on their husband or didn’t obey their parents they should be stoned to death. They didn’t believe that it was a sin to eat crab or lobster or rabbit. Most of the Christians I knew had never even read the entire bible. They accepted this ideology and didn’t even know what the book really said. I became an atheist when I realized that I had no logical reason for being a Christian.

When I first began to question religion I assumed that I would find answers to my questions and that nothing would change. I assumed that the failing was in me and not in the bible. I thought that if anything, my belief would be stronger in the end. Instead, the more I read, the more I questioned, the more doubts I acquired and the harder it became to hold on to my beliefs. I found falsehoods. I found contradictions. I found immorality. I found that all the things I had believed made no sense and those things that I believed that did make sense were not even really in the bible or else were actively contradicted by other passages in the bible. That so much of what was written in its pages flew in the face of reason and morality. At that point, I would have had to deny all logic in order to believe and I just could not do that.

Isaac Asimov said, that when “Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived.” That’s why those who know the bible the best and follow it the most literally look crazy to most people. Even moderate and liberal Christians think fundamentalists are crazy. Because the passages that most sane and reasonable people completely ignore or choose to interpret symbolically or metaphorically, they believe. So we call them extremists and zealots when what they really are, are true believers. When the church was burning infidels at the stake and sending armed missionary soldiers abroad to slaughter or convert entire cultures, they were following the bible. Today’s fundamentalists don’t even follow the bible 100%. They can’t. If anyone was to follow every command in the bible 100% they would be a criminal and a murderer. They would be a thoroughly reprehensible human being—a racist, sexist, homophobic, wife beating, gay bashing, child abusing, slave trader. But the bible was written to be followed 100%. There’s nothing in there that says or even suggests that certain parts were to be ignored or taken lightly. When Jesus said, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling." He didn’t wink afterwards. He didn’t laugh. In Titus 2:9 when it says "Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect." Afterwards it doesn’t have a little note in parentheses that says “just kiddin’”. He meant that literally.

In order to keep Christian beliefs in line with modern morality you have to reinterpret passages that are relatively black and white or else disregard them entirely because so much of it runs contrary to commonsense morality. To be a good person and continue to believe you have to cherry-pick the good stuff and disregard all that slavery, homophobia, and misogynism stuff.

So, after reading the bible, I decided to reevaluate all of my beliefs. I abandoned everything I had believed for which there was no evidence and I started over, putting my beliefs back together piece by piece and only including the things I could logically support and defend.

I realized that the first step in achieving true knowledge was admitting my own ignorance. Not going in already committed to a conclusion and just looking for facts to justify the conclusions I had already reached. If I had begun asking questions when I was already one hundred percent emotionally committed to a conclusion those questions would have been worthless. So I let all these emotional convictions go and it was like a great weight had been lifted. The scales had fallen from my eyes and I could finally see the world as it was rather than how I had been conditioned to believe it was. My mind was now opened by wonder rather than closed by faith.

History has shown us again and again that the closed mind created by faith is fertile ground for hatred and prejudice, not to mention that it has often been an impediment to both moral and scientific progress. To quote Blaise Pascal, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” That alone would be enough for me to reject faith. This irrational illogical thought process, to me, contradicts the very definition of a human being, the rational animal. We were given these great big brains in order to allow us to answer questions and find true knowledge. Filling in the gaps between what we know and what we don't know with beliefs that we lend the same weight as knowledge ensures that true knowledge will have a hard time ever finding fertile ground upon which to grow.

The virtue of ignorance is that it allows for knowledge. The sin of faith is that it does not. If you believe before you know and are committed to that belief you will NEVER know. Your belief has taken the place of knowledge. Why would you search for truth if you believe in your heart that you have already found it? Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you from asking the questions and that alone is enough reason for me to reject it. You cannot fill a vessel that is already full and that is the problem with faith. That alone is reason enough to be an atheist. Not because I have anything against any one religion but because of the foundation of faith upon which all religions rest. That is why I am and will always be a skeptic.

The reality is that when it comes to creation and the existence or non-existence of a creator we just don't know. Anyone who says he does know is either deluded or disingenuous. We don't know. There is no shame in admitting that we don't know. There is no dishonor in admitting our obvious ignorance. The dishonor is in resigning ourselves to remaining ignorant. Not just belief without evidence but belief against all contradictory evidence. That type of willful ignorance is a sin against all the potential within human nature. An open mind that leads to the pursuit of knowledge is the very definition of what it means to be human and as such is the highest virtue.

Thank you.

Mo*Con IV: My Atheism Part I

2009-05-19T05:35:00.001-04:00

By Wrath James White

Good afternoon, my friends. I’d like to first thank Maurice for inviting me here and thank you all for welcoming me. My name is Wrath James White and I am a humanist, an atheist. As Maurice’ll tell you, I am about as passionate in my disbelief as he is in his belief.

Let me begin by explaining what atheism is. Atheism, simply put, means not believing in any god or gods. There’s a quote made popular by Richard Dawkins: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” We are all atheists when it comes to believing in Zeus or Odin or RA. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.

But, so what? I don’t believe. You do. Who cares? And if there was a way to keep these two viewpoints from coming into conflict with one another I wouldn’t care. But I believe in many things that are threatened by the church.

I believe in euthanasia. I believe that people should have the right to choose when and how they die. I believe they have the right to a dignified end. But because of the dominant religious beliefs in this country, if I became paralyzed with some crippling, agonizing illness that deteriorated my quality of life to the point that I no longer wanted to live, I do not have the legal right to end my life. That pisses me off a little. I believe in same-sex marriage. I believe that society benefits from people being in committed relationships. It serves a stabilizing function by encouraging people to settle down, get a job, raise children in a stable loving environment, buy a house, and pay taxes. But once again, because of the dominant religious beliefs in this country many loving couples are not able to enjoy the same rights as every other American. And that pisses me off. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I don’t believe it benefits this society and, in fact, it does great harm to bring unwanted children into a world already straining beneath the weight of overpopulation, crime, and poverty. But the dominant religion in this country is constantly trying to curtail that right.

I believe that people should be judged by their abilities, their morality, and their actions rather than by their religious beliefs or lack thereof. But yet, in this country atheists are the minorities least likely to be elected to public office. And yeah, that pisses me off. When asked who you would like your son or daughter to marry, once again, an atheist is at the bottom of the list. Despite the fact that atheists are most likely to be college educated, least likely to go to prison, and least likely to get divorced. And finally, I believe in reason. I believe that the practice of believing without evidence is demonstrably dangerous and has historically led to abominable acts of intolerance and cruelty. As Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

I don’t think it‘s a coincidence that nearly all the racist organizations in this country are religious organizations. When you don’t need evidence for your beliefs you can believe anything and that tendency can be easily exploited by the corrupt and the unscrupulous.

Atheism is not a belief system. There are no dogmas attached to it. No mores. No rituals. There are no Ten Commandments of atheism. It is simply the absence of belief.

I’m sure you have been told and many of you perhaps believe that atheists hold science up like a religion. That we have faith in it the same way believers have faith in their religions, but there’s no such thing as scientific faith. Science is the study of evidence whereas faith is belief without evidence and often in spite of all evidence. They are the antithesis of each other. There are no scientific beliefs that are sacrosanct. If a scientist could disprove evolution or gravity or relativity he would be famous. He’d be almost guaranteed a Nobel Prize.

“… my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming.”

That was Richard Dawkins who said that. He is about as close to a fundamentalist atheist as they come. And that is why there is no such thing as a fundamentalist atheist, because if there were scientific evidence that God existed there would be no atheists. I know exactly what it would take to convince me of God’s existence, verifiable evidence, facts.

I don’t have, and never had, the ability to suspend my disbelief and natural skepticism. Not even when I was a believer. I always questioned and doubted. That’s just who I am. I can’t believe just to satisfy anxieties about death or my place in the universe. I can’t believe simply because a particular belief system is popular. Truth isn’t decided by majority vote. I can’t be persuaded just because some priest or minister talks real pretty. I know they are just men like me. I talk pretty too. That doesn’t mean I’m not full of crap sometimes. I can’t just choose to believe because I don’t trust my own moral compass and fear that I wouldn’t be a good person without the threat of damnation and the promise of paradise. I cannot believe just to fit in, for that safe, comfortable, sense of community. I cannot believe just because everyone in my family, culture, or country believes and it has become a custom or a tradition. My mind just does not work that way. I am not terribly skilled at the art of self-deception.

I can only believe in any religion or ideology when I know it to be true, when it can be verified by empirical facts, by experiments that produce predictable results that can be duplicated. That’s the basic standard of proof we use for everything except our religious beliefs. If someone were selling me a TV set and they said “You can’t turn it on. You just have to have faith that it works. You can only turn it on after you’re dead.” I’d think they were crazy. And hopefully, so would you. But religion doesn’t allow you to turn it on and try it out before you buy it. You don’t know if religion works until you’re dead. Now, I’m just a kid from the ghetto so to me, that sounds like a con.

When I was growing up on the streets of Philadelphia, I learned the hard way not to blindly trust in pretty words and beautiful fantasies spun by charismatic individuals no matter how desirable the fantasies were, no matter how well they fit my personal aesthetic, my personal vision of how things ought to be, no matter how much they flattered my ego or calmed my fears. I learned to question everything. I wasn’t fooled by the pimps, hustlers, conmen, and drug dealers because I questioned every lie that came out of their mouths and I demanded proof. I demanded evidence. I saw what a crack addict looked like and so I never fell for the lies of the crack dealer. I saw the drunks and winos. That’s why I never drank when I was young no matter how much peer pressure there was to get drunk and party. I never smoked cigarettes. I never smoked weed. No matter how many of “the cool kids” were doing it. I never got into crime. I saw the end results of the drug dealer’s life, the pimp’s life, the gangster’s life, and so I was never impressed with their temporary wealth and ghetto fame.

Likewise, I heard the preacher telling us that “Jesus Saves” and then I saw my friends and neighbors gunned down in the street by drug dealers. I saw them in welfare lines and unemployment lines. I saw them get sick with cancers and diseases and die in agony. I saw crack babies born into abusive homes. I saw the socio-economic oppression of my people, crushed beneath the weight of racism and poverty and it was hard to rectify that with anything the preacher was saying. I read in the bible, Mathew 7:8 , where Jesus said “For everyone who asketh receiveth; he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?” It floored me, because I had been asking for bread for as long as I could recall and had usually received stones and serpents. My own life proved the lie in this statement and it called everything else into question. As I looked around at my neighbors I saw that most of them had likewise learned to subsist on stones from heaven. The bible was obviously wrong. And so, like the lies of the pimps, drug dealers, gang bangers, and conmen, I learned not to trust it. Just as it had on the streets, being a skeptic kept me from being a fool and a victim.

Atheism, for me, is not a statement of any knowledge concerning the origins of the universe or of life. It is not saying, “I know for a fact that there is no God.” What it says is simply, “I don’t know if there is a God and neither do you. And because I don’t know I can’t believe.”

(to be continued)

Mo*Con IV: Twittered

2009-05-18T09:01:00.002-04:00

· T-minus 6 hours before I pick up my first mo*con arrival (yeah, a few come in early). this thing will become all mo*con all the time then.9:59 AM May 14th

· At airport, waiting, with great anticipation & trepidation, on @kellidunlap. She has a "special" greeting for me.4:07 PM May 14th

· *OW*4:45 PM May 14th

· And now I've whisked @kellidunlap off to a magic: the gathering tournament.6:03 PM May 14th

· And now to be greeted by @aletheakontis ...10:15 PM May 14th

· *OW* 4:45 PM May 14th

· Suddenly not looking forward to being greeted by @WrathJW...10:17 PM May 14th

· It's 1 o'clock in the morning. Fixing Jack Daniels Steak for @WrathJW, @kellidunlap, and @AletheaKontis. @j_c_hay is missing out ...12:35 AM May 15th

· Any @WrathJW story that begins "so i had this moment of black rage" is a must listen.1:10 AM May 15th

@kellidunlap QOTD: the big negro ate all my sweet tarts!

· I'm REALLY going to regret getting so little sleep BEFORE Mo*Con even officially starts ...7:19 AM May 15th

· RT: @kellidunlap mo'con = listening to @mauricebroaddus talk about religion...and then telling him why he's wrong =)8:46 AM May 15th

· On our way to pick up @j_c_hay and @WrathJW to head to brunch.8:55 AM May 15th

@kellidunlap Following @MauriceBroaddus on the hwy is like getting directions from a drunk!

· At The Journey, a sushi buffet. Waiting to see how long it takes for them to tell @WrathJW "you go now!"10:35 AM May 15th

@aletheakontis Entering dessert coma on my mark MARK.

· Twenty pounds of chicken being cooked for chicken marsala. If we run out of food, it'll be fishes and loaves night at the church.1:34 PM May 15th

@kellidunlap Nap good... But woke to @MauriceBroaddus in full on con-panic mode

· uh oh ... Linda Addison is grading our poetry ...8:38 PM May 15th

@j_c_hay Okay, okay. I'll read a poem. You first @MauriceBroaddus.

· And now the after party at the Broaddus'. Tomorrow's going to come too soon.11:15 PM May 15th

· On a Wayne hunt. I hate misplacing guests.

@KyleSJohnson Its raining, we're walking, @mauricebroaddus has a paper hat on. Life is good.

@kellidunlap mo'con day 2: the party-goers sleep soundly while the con-rooster makes the coffee and plays with the muse... rudely pouncing comes later!

@kellidunlap Kelli's mo'con schedule: "love sucks" & "there is no god"... and hey, i'm a GOH next year, just imagine the damage!!

· Off to go shoe shopping ... don't ask.8:36 AM May 16th

· The horror community has bought so many flowers for @supersbroaddus you'd think there was a funeral about to happen ... uh oh ...12:31 PM May 16th

· Off to go get interviewed.12:32 PM May 16th

· If The Boondocks have taught me anything, it's that white people really love their cheese ...1:21 PM May 16th

· Nervous. @WrathJW and I are about to do our talks. Or settle the God issue with Greco-Roman wrestling...4:34 PM May 16th

· Mo*Con is the convention that happens in the (well-stocked) con suite.

· And now ... the absinthe fountain. This will end well.

· ok, they're drinking absinthe from my kids' spongebob dixie cups.

@aletheakontis Late nights, bad fiction, & absinthe FTW!

· RT: @kellidunlap QOTD: @aletheakontis: my stomach will not miss eating at strange hours...

· RT: @AletheaKontis Having to leave is the worst part of any good Con. This was a great Con.

@KyleSJohnson The sadness is palpable...Mo*Con almost done, but NEVER fucking done, professionally. Until then, sunshine and cheese steak.

· Well, Mo*Con V has now been COMPLETLY planned out. I mean Kelli*Con ... (yay @kellidunlap)

· "Would you stop filming this?!?"

@kellidunlap Per the norm... Last man standing. Con done :)

· oy. RT: @AletheaKontis: Sometimes what happens at a convention...goes on YouTube. http://bit.ly/8080d

I'm Not Talking About Mo*Con IV ... (5/22/09 update)

2009-05-18T06:06:00.004-04:00

Once again, there's no easy way to describe Mo*Con so go read Kelli Dunlap's blog summary.

or

Bob Freeman's summary

Tom Piccirilli’s The Brotherhood of Inspiration

Brian Hatcher's summary

Kevin Lucia's reflections

or from a fan perspective:

Sheryl Hugill's summary

Tony Tremblay's summary (through which you can almost entirely relive the con. wow.)

I have posted:
-A sample of what Mo*Con looked like on Twitter
-Wrath's sermon on atheism
-The Story of My Christianity
-The awards given in absentia (including a feature story on Mo*Con)

And if you want to see some pictures, we have:

My FaceBook Album

or my wife's facebook albums
05-14-2009 Arrival of Mo Con Guests
05-15-2009 Pre-Mo Con Brunch at "The Journey"
05-15-2009 Pre-Mo Con - Getting the church ready
05-15-2009 Mo Con - Day one
05-15-2009 Mo Con - Day One - Poetry reading
05-16-2009 Mo Con - Day 2
05-16-2009 Mo Con - Day 2 - Art Gallery
05-16-2009 Mo Con After Party
05-17-2009 Mo Con Day 3 - Just Brunch today

Alethea’s Pics

[Two things on a personal note: 1) I can't state strongly enough how great it was to host our guests. They were truly epic; 2) It's great to have friends who speak truth into your life--even when it's painful to hear--and who support you during times of trouble; 3) there are a few folks I especially can't thank enough for the help and support in making Mo*Con possible: Sally Broaddus (whose patience and support continue to amaze me); Sara Larson (without whom, this con would not have happened); Ro Griffin, Jenn Baumgartner, and Larissa Johnson (Team Broaddus); brunch chef, Rob Rolfingsmeyer; and Michelle Pendergrass, Jerry Gordon, Bob Freeman (yay! all the IHW).]

UPDATE:

Oy, I've been re-mixed...

Star Trek

2009-05-14T07:11:00.003-04:00

“All that you know is wrong”

Long time comic book readers are used to the idea of a history reboot. After all, characters like Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four, and X-Men have been around for decades and as such, have accumulated a long, entangled history that makes it difficult for a newcomer to just jump into the books. There are two common ways around this dilemma: start a new book, possibly in a new universe, with familiar though not exact continuity, ala the Ultimate line (Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimates, Ultimate Powers, Ultimate Iron Man, Ultimate Hulk); or do a continuity shattering story line that give you an excuse to reboot your franchise (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Final Crisis, House of M).

Star Trek was a mix of both.

Star Trek had become quite the continuity nightmare since its initial run. After The Original Series (and its animated follow up) came the movies, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine*, more movies, Star Trek: Voyager, and Enterprise. That’s a lot of Star Trek and too much of a good—well, largely mediocre—thing can exhaust even that faithful audience. The J.J. Abrahms (Lost, Alias, Mission Impossible III) re-launch of the Star Trek franchise was clever and fun, and most importantly, free of the problems that beset most origin movies. Let’s face it, when we’re watching Spider-Man, Batman, or Iron Man, yes, the movie has to introduce us to the characters, let us get to know them (for those unfamiliar with them), but it’s just the countdown to when they put on the spandex.

“A friendship that could define you both.” –Spock

Going all the way back to their childhoods, we have James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) as the hot-head rebel without a cause balanced against the boy of two worlds/outcast of both ever-stoic Spock (Zachary Quinto, who we quickly forget is Sylar from Heroes). Abrams remains faithful to Gene Roddenberry’s creation. Pine’s Kirk has the swagger and cockiness we’ve come to expect and spends a lot of time nearly sliding off things (cliffs, platforms, etc.). Spock, aka “that pointy-eared bastard”, is given a romantic life with communications officer Uhura (Zoë Saldana), something hinted at in The Original Series episode Charlie X. (And there’s even a nod to the mishaps of being a red shirt assigned to missions with Kirk). The movie over-arching story is how these two become friends.

The rest of the movie follows the time-tripping tale of Nero (Eric Bana) returning to the Federation of Planets in order to get revenge on Spock. Which, gives us an excuse to not only get the original Spock into the story (a still spry Leonard Nimoy), but “logically” gives the movie its impetus to establish an entire new chain of events, a new/alternate reality. Well, as logical as “red matter” and making black holes can be.

There are some recurring numbers in the Bible which seem to be important, like three and seven (and twelve and forty). Star Trek: The Original Series revolved around a trinity: Kirk, Spock, and Leonard “Bones” McCoy (the professional pessimist of a ship’s doctor, now played by Karl Urban). There were other characters, but they were never especially fleshed out, little more than ciphers who we had a passing knowledge of. In the movie, we begin to have a sense of them as real characters: Uhuru (given more to do in this movie than probably the entire original series combined), Scotty (Simon Pegg stole every scene he was in), Sulu (John Cho, who brought the swashbuckling), and Chekhov (Anton Yelchin, now a 17 year old brain who brought the comedy relief and manages to not become a ghost of Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation). Seven.

“You will always be a child of two worlds.” –Sarek

We all come into life with the baggage of our parents, the family which shapes and forms us. We live in the shadow of their expectations and incorporate the lessons they teach us, even the inadvertent lessons of their absence. Yet at some point, we have to break from them and become our own person and fulfill our own destiny. That’s the lesson Kirk and Spock come to terms with.

As with any continuity re-vamp, the bulk of history is still familiar (enough to please long-term fans), but the details are now up for grabs, free to change and reinterpret by writers/creators. By giving a tip of the hat to mythos, and making a point that none of the mythos are safe, Abrams makes Star Trek both exciting and relevant again. This is a big screen Star Trek, not simply an episode blown up. And it’s fun … fun, in the truest spirit of Kirk!

*And I did this entire review without once saying that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the best iteration of all of the Star Trek franchises.

Dark Avengers

2009-05-13T07:55:00.001-04:00

Written by Brian Bendis
Illustrated by Mike Deodato
Published by Marvel Comics

Mighty, New, Initiative, and now Dark, apparently the Avengers are franchising like they have the words Law & Order or C.S.I. in their name. However, Dark Avengers is not your father’s Avengers. This team consists of Captain Marvel, former Kree warrior; Sentry, a powerful “Superman” with severe mental issues; Ms. Marvel, the villainess known as Moonstone; Ares, god of war; Wolverine, Daken, the “real” Wolverine’s unstable son; Hawkeye, the Daredevil arch-nemesis, Bullseye; Spider-Man, everyone’s favorite villain, Venom; and is led by Iron Patriot, Norman Osborn, yeah, the former Green Goblin. This team is more Thunderbolts than Avengers.

“You will go out there and you will defend this world. You will keep it safe from those who would have it otherwise.”

The espionage group, S.H.I.E.L.D., once led by Nick Fury, has given way to H.A.M.M.E.R. and Norman Osborn’s vision. Finding targets and striking is the spirit of H.A.M.M.E.R., in order to make people feel safe (which makes as much sense as the idea of the Avengers involving avenging, even though they were more in line with the idea of the Defenders, except, well, that that team sucked).

As a division of H.A.M.M.E.R., the Dark Avengers are “a hardcore team” which is “what the world wants right now” (apparently in droves as the first four issues have sold out and gone back to press repeatedly). This is the kind of team that would swoop in and rip off an enemy’s head.

“Today, you—and me—we’re going to decide to live life to the fullest.” –Norman

Dark Avengers wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it didn’t revolve around fascinating characters in search of redemption. Even (or especially) villains can find redemption, if they truly want it. God works through people to put wrongs right, to fulfill his mission to reconcile creation back to him. And when I think about “villains” doing the right thing, I’m reminded of the following is a quote from C.S. Lewis’ "The Last Battle," from the chapter "Further up and Further in.":

"Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou shouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

“When you deny yourself your humanity. You create something else. You create a …” –Norman “… void.” –Sentry

Sentry, though not strictly a villain, is a perfect example. He fears his dark side, what he calls The Void. “The void is in me” he often says. We all have voids in us, deficits or a shadow self. We all struggle against an inner darkness which we fear may overtake us. We can’t live from a place of fear. We can’t be afraid to love out of fear. All we can do is love without taking one another for granted, pray for one another’s continued safety, and be there for one another when the bad times come. And they will come, no matter how much we may want to protect people from them.

Brian Michael Bendis knows how to weave old characters and new, continuing to build epic stories that will be long-remembered. And he’s made the (Dark) Avengers relevant and popular again, taking their place as the (off) center of the Marvel Universe. Dark Avengers has a countdown quality to it, like we’re simply waiting for this bad idea to collapse on itself and we’re making popcorn so that we can enjoy the implosion from the front row. It’s the coolest thing to come out of Dark Reign (though, I’m quite tired of storylines which wrap through the entire universe and having to buy a bunch of books in order to stay abreast of things).

Dark Faith: The Mo*Con Anthology Guidelines (Updated - 6/14/2009)

2009-05-07T06:47:00.005-04:00

Call for Submissions

Below are the submission guidelines for the forthcoming Mo*Con anthology to be published by Apex books in conjunction with Mo*Con V (summer 2010).

First, all the stuff you really care about: Pays 5 cents per word up to 5,000 words. Deadline is November 1st. Reading period opens June 1st. Payment on acceptance.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mo*Con, you’ll be operating from an extreme disadvantage. It’s the annual horror convention, named after myself, that revolves around discussions of spirituality, writing, and social issues. Horror, too often, has been thought of as the non-thinking genre, home of the “monsters in the dark” with little to offer in terms of depth. Mo*Con defies that image of the genre. Its themes so far have covered spirituality, race, gender issues, art, and love.

So what am I looking for? Smart, literate stories that fit in with any of the themes of Mo*Con. Horror/dark fantasy stories with depth, that stretch the genre. Stories that make you think, that comment on the human condition and the social order. Stories that are rich in their language use. However, a s much as I love social commentary, don’t forget to entertain me. You should also note that about half of the anthology has already been filled with solicited pieces.

Obviously, this being a Mo*Con anthology, having attended, supported, or participated at a Mo*Con gives you a leg up in the submission process. (I will have special affection for you and your story … and it will especially hurt if I have to reject it). Of course it may not seem fair. So when you set yourself up as “King For A Day” and edit your own anthology, you can make the rules as fair or arbitrary as possible. Be glad I don’t have you submit your stories with an accompanying picture of you wearing a stork thong or your cover letters written as pirates.

Please include a cover letter with your submission - even if I know you, even if you're a regular at Mo*Con. Please send no more than one submission at a time. No reprints.

*My policy on simultaneous submissions: I'd send the same story to 5 markets and first come first serve if I could get away with it, so I won't begrudge anyone else. I snooze, I lose.*

*Due to the overwhelming response, Jerry Gordon has been recruited as the assistant editor on this project. This way we can continue to give speedy responses to your stories.*

All submissions must be emailed as a RTF file to Maurice Broaddus at MoConAntho@gmail.com