Tuesday 24 April 2012

Rick's Writing Journal (dropping the numbers) Learning To Write.

It was around six months ago that I really decided to give writing a real go. One thing I really had no idea about was how much there is to learn.

First, I heard of something called, 'voice'. I was reading comments about a piece of writing having a strong or weak voice, I had no idea what this meant. I think I'm now beginning to get it; just the act of trying to write has helped me to understand.

Next came 'flow', people talking about how some writers have a great flow in their writing. Again I had no idea, but I have begun to understand after recantly reading a book by Margo Lanagan. The book, 'White Time' has ten stories in it. I did not like all the stories, but I found myself wanting to read them just because of the way they were written. Because of the way the words 'flowed' off the page.

Most recently, I want to a one day workshop on grammar for writers. I knew that I didn't know a lot about grammar, that good grammar helps, but how much I need to know really surprised me. It was a classic case of, 'The more you learn, the more you realize you need to learn.', but I learnt enough to want to learn more.

Learn about all of it, I want to learn and to write.

PS. I'm making good progress on my story goals for the end of the month.

Friday 6 April 2012

Hallelujah

Hi discovered this really incredible version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah the other day, the link to it is below.

http://www.godvine.com/Girl-Sings-an-Absolutely-Beautiful-Version-of-Hallelujah-1337.html

I was so amazed by this girls singing that it lead me to look closely at the words of the song and was quite struck by by the things I found. Here are just two:

1. The song seems to be about King David!

2. There are some amazing words.

The most amazing, to me, are:
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

What this line said to me is that real love is not about when it's easy, when you feel your a winner. Real love is when it hurts.True love is there in the deepest darkest hours, when all hope seems lost, when it cannot hurt any more that it does right now. Love finds it's greatest expression in our greatest pain, when you love that which hurts you the most.

I'm writing this on Good Friday, the day that God still loved us when it hurt the most, more than we can ever know.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Jesus on the cross, God's cold and broken Hallelujah.

Monday 2 April 2012

Baptism No. 1

I had the privilege of baptizing two men on Sunday the 1st of April, yes a perfect date for it.

Leading up to the baptisms, I was struck by the number of times I had to explain that I wasn't sprinkling water on the heads of babies, but actually baptizing two grown men by immersion. This lead me to thinking about the different views of baptism found in christian churches. Two different views to mine that I have encountered often and recently are:

1. You must be baptized by full immersion to be saved.

2. A child of christian parents who is baptized, by having some water sprinkled on their head, is part of the covenant relationship between God and the Church, and assured a place in heaven until old enough to be accountable to God for themselves.

These represent to totally opposed views of baptism and, as I have already said, are both wrong in my judgment. However, the only real judgment that counts in God's word, the Bible. So over the coming few weeks I'm going to attempt to show how these two views do not reflect what is taught in God's word, and how my view does, or at least comes closer.