Asking Myself: Who was God for you when you were a child?

This is the 30th post in my series "Asking Myself," in which I weekly ponder one question posed in Teresa Blythe's rich book, 50 Ways to Pray. You can find the start of the series here and last week's post here. The first nine posts focused on theological musings, while posts 10 to 25 prayerfully consider the specific questions Jesus posed in the New Testament. Posts 26 to present focus on Questions on Spirituality.

Q: Who was God for you when you were a child?

Try as I might, I don't have a cogent essay to answer this one. Instead, I present here a hodge podge of memories and impressions.

God as Protector

You know, as a child, I think I always felt pretty safe. I was secure in God's protection. This is surely in part a product of my loving and secure upbringing and the fact that my country was not war-torn or in a state of unrest. But even on a spiritual level, I didn't worry about losing or being lost.

There is a dream I had that seems to speak to this question. I might have been about eight years old. It was realistic in that it seemed ordinary- my house was my house, I was me, the lighting and quiet were all very much they way they were. (I point this out because usually my dreams merge people and places into new composites that are as much fiction as they are nonfiction.) The one strikingly abnormal thing about the dream was that there was a an evil presence against me in some way, perhaps Satan himself. He'd slipped into the normalcy of my house and his intentions were for ill. And in my dream I went to the top of my staircase and belted out a song from Sunday school; it echoed against the vaulted ceiling of the stairwell.

Lisa Cron's "Story Genius" urges aspiring authors to get to know their protagonists

These days a lot of books like to tout brain science in order to seem wiser and more cutting-edge. I found the subheading of Lisa Cron's Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel, to have that same draw. The literary agent and now story workshop teacher proposes that humans are sucked into story because we feel that learning how other people like us face their challenges might help us navigate our own. She also throws in a few random statistics about the percentage of would-be authors who receive rejection letters and book sales averages in an attempt to show that the failures are due to stories that lack the blueprints she outlines in the book. I found this introductory part of the book that debunks the supposed myths of prevailing writing camps (the plotters and the pantsers) to be what many introductions are: a sales pitch for her methods and perhaps for her workshops. 

While the book doesn't quite live up to its "sciency" promise, I have been finding it very helpful in its clear course of action and encouragement as I attempt to flesh out a story idea that's been running around my brain for a while.

The fun part about this book is that Cron's friend and fellow writer, Jennie, plays the role of the guinea pig, offering up her own flicker of a story idea and developing it according to Cron's steps so that it gradually unfolds over the course of Story Genius. Following Cron's steps, Jennie fashions a storyline that follows a topic I find utterly insipid (a woman adopts a dog so her dog-loving friends will think she's normal as she deals with the fall-out of a romantic relationship gone awry) into something that tugged my heart strings and even caused me to shed tears. 

In short, Cron asks the right questions, such as who is the protagonist at her core, what event made her that way, what myth is at the core of her worldview, and what event will totally upend her current way of thinking? By skillfully answering these questions, Jennie made me actually care about her budding dog-lover. 

I can see how some writers might find Cron's methods limiting... there are indeed great stories out there that don't quite fit her protagonist-centric mold or perhaps leave the ultimate meaning of the book ambiguous so that diverse readers can find their own message. 

But as a complete novice to novel writing, I'm pretty excited to follow Cron's detailed advice, if nothing else, as a way to keep myself motivated in the face of so many distractions and procrastinations!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Asking Myself: In what activities do you feel blocked from God's presence in your life?

This is the 29th post in my series "Asking Myself," in which I weekly ponder one question posed in Teresa Blythe's rich book, 50 Ways to Pray. You can find the start of the series here and last week's post here. The first nine posts focused on theological musings, while posts 10 to 25 prayerfully consider the specific questions Jesus posed in the New Testament. Posts 26 to present focus on Questions on Spirituality.

Q: In what activities do you feel blocked from God's presence?

Well. I hate to say it, but I often feel blocked from God's presence. Perhaps this isn't as bad a thing as it seems at first religious glance. After all, it's better to feel blocked, than to be completely unaware of it. Hopefully that dry, dismal feeling is the impetus I need to seek him out or to assess how actions and frame of mind might be contributing to the distance.

Yet it's hard for me to single out specific activities that unilaterally hide his face. I supposed the safe answer would be: I'm blocked when I'm sinning. Yet, sometimes sin triggers the conscience alarm that makes me most aware of of the Almighty. So what actually blocks me from God?

My off-the-cuff answer produced these three activities that I find to be fairly sure-fire ways (for me) to be blocked from the joy, peace, love and creative energy that come from God's presence.

1. Spending any more than 5 consecutive minutes on social media.
Especially in our polarized political and cultural climate, any amount of time spent skimming through or clicking within my various feeds makes me prone to the habit of outrage so many articles and posts seem crafted to inflame. These days, I find that doing anything more than "liking" a few of my friends' kid pics leads to being sucked into the world of injustice and idiocy. More than feeling my blood boil, I feel the urge to retaliate, to set the record straight. The impulse is checked only by the observation that most of the opinions expressed on social media are fixed. Facebook is not (for me) a place of humble reflection nor an open marketplace of ideas where people feel safe enough to consider another perspective. Jesus did act on his righteous anger over the money changers in the Temple, but I don't think he purposely fed his indignation by returning over and over again to turn tables.