The Grace Pages

Confessions of a backslidden blogger

I feel like there should be an altar call now.

You know your relationship with your readers isn't what it should be right now! You know you've lost your love for the blog, and you know that needs to be put right tonight! Come on down to the front, right now! Oh, glooory!

Where did the blog go wrong? Well, life got busy, that's all. I frequently have ideas for blog entries, but never seem to get round to it. A month or two back I had a great idea for a regular blog, and it was great for about two weeks - and then just kinda flopped.

The main thing keeping me busy has been the local website, of which I am editor and sole news reporter. It became a lot more work recently because, to cut a long story short, my colleague and I got stabbed in the back by other colleagues, and now we're on our own. It was a horrid thing to have happen, especially since the guy who did most of the stabbing was an old school chum who I thought was a genuine friend, and it turned out he was prepared to pull everything out from under me without a second thought.

I sure did learn a lesson, though. It's taught me what's really important in business, and that's people, community and integrity. Quite honestly, by breaking off from those colleagues - unpleasant as it was - I think I was saved from being suckered into a model of business that, frankly, I want no part of.

But it's going good: The community is interested in the project, and we're gathering pace.

I'm not going to make any firm promises, but I do intend to try to get back to blogging.

Meet Richard...

...There's more to him than meets the eye.

The Horror of It All

Anyone with an interest in film, or Hammer horror in particular, can go visit Albion magazine to read my feature-length article The Horror of It All: The Dynamics of Class and Power in the Hammer Gothics.

And don't forget to keep visiting my new blog, RIP: A Blog for Dead Stars. I'm updating it about once a week now with obits of the rich, famous, struggling and not-so-famous, mainly from film and the arts. There'll be an update later today, with several interesting characters to add to the roll of the dear departed.

I believe in judgment

Woody Allen can be a brutally narcissistic and cynical filmmaker at times. Just look at an indulgent, cruel film like Deconstructing Harry (1997), and you'll see what I mean.

At his best, however, his films are tempered by a genuine warmth and a sense of grace. Take Broadway Danny Rose (1983), for instance, probably my personal favourite of all Woody's movies. Danny Rose is a loser, a no-hoper agent with a tendency to latch onto the least talented of acts, and whose heart is usually too big for his own good.

Broadway Danny Rose is a beautiful parable of grace and reconciliation. Talking with Tina (Mia Farrow) over a coffee, Danny (Woody Allen) philosophizes that guilt is good because it stops people doing devastating things to each other. At this stage, Tina's philosophy is 'take what you can get', and pretty much to hell with other people if they get in your way.

But a transformation occurs. Tina does Danny a wrong, and she loses sleep over it. They've spent only an afternoon together, and yet his words have stirred something in her. Having double-crossed him, her conscience is pricked, and she loses all life and vibrancy. Something has melted her cold exterior, and she cannot rest until she seeks out Danny and for forgiveness and friendship. Reconciliation. (Augustine suddenly comes to mind here: "You have made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.")

Even Danny, as big-hearted as he is, finds it too painful to welcome her back at first, but his conscience is awakened, too, and it is time to put his words about forgiveness into action. The movie ends with a warm reconciliation as Tina - having lost her street-smart, worldly-wise veneer - is invited back to Danny's shabby apartment to share a plate of frozen Thanksgiving turkey.

I wonder: Is judgment part of the beauty of reconciliation? Is the pain of being searched and found guilty all part of the wonder of grace, forgiveness and the restoration of friendship with God and with each other? Guilt is, as Danny recognized, a blessing that deters us from hurting each other or, in Tina's case, that provokes us into seeking reconciliation.

Paul says an interesting thing: You have been reconciled to God in Christ - therefore be reconciled (2 Corinthians 5:19). It's a paradox: God has already reconciled us, and yet reconciliation is a future event that requires our response. That response is not the futile effort of arbitrary religious acts, but the simple acceptance of God's offer of friendship. And it is judgment - the painful awareness of having been examined and found guilty - that moves us towards reconciliation.

God has removed every obstacle, loudly proclaiming in Christ that he does not hold any of our wrongs against us, declaring us totally forgiven. Will we wallow in shame or turn around and take his hand?

RIP: A Blog for Dead Stars

I'm pretty busy these days, and I'm totally lacking in inspiration. I've always said that thinking time is a luxury, and I just haven't had the time (perhaps the inclination) to sit down and think deeply on the religious issues I used to blog about.

Part of the problem is that this blog has lost its focus. When I started it almost two years ago, the focus was spiritual abuse and fundamentalism. I said a lot about those issues, and I got out of my system a lot of the things I hadn't yet expressed about my journey out of fundamentalism. Now the blog doesn't have that focus and, more to the point, doesn't seem to have any focus. That makes it difficult to attract and hold readers, and ultimately difficult to motivate myself into writing regularly

And yet I really miss blogging. So I've decided to create a blog with a very clear focus, something that will require a little bit of research each day, and that will entertain myself and my readers. I have created RIP: A Blog for Dead Stars. It will be a round-up of obits and news stories about people - mainly in film and the arts - who've died.

Lest you think I just have a morbid obsession with death, it is not death itself that fascinates me, but the personalities themselves who are moving out of this world every day. RIP is about their lives, not the grisly details of their deaths.

I think it will be a fun project for me to undertake (oops, bad choice of words), and has the potential to get a regular audience, which I've missed as Grace Pages has faded slowly away. The Grace Pages remains, although I still struggle to find a focus for it. For now it will contain assorted ramblings for anyone who happens to be listening in. And if anyone has any thoughts on direction - let's hear them!

Things I'll do in 2006

I've never made New Year's resolutions before, at least not since I was a kid and made to do so in school. For all my Pentecostal years there was a huge stigma attached to making resolutions because it was pagan and depended on self-will rather than the power of the Holy Spirit.

Well, this year I thought I'd make some. The New Year the most appropriate time to sit down and reflect on the past and make some changes for the future, so here goes.

1. Manage my time better.
I'm what you might call a right-brained person - lacking in discipline and structure what I have in creativity and imagination. But there's no excuse. We all have to try extra hard with those things that don't come naturally to us. I want to be able to apply myself rigorously to a task and then have it over and done with, not have my day a disorganized melange of one thing flowing haphazardly into another.

2. Manage my money better.
Heh. Like I even have any money to manage.

3. Put aside a short amount of time a few times a week to do basic chores.
Mom will love this one. I'm not talking investing hours of my time in vacuuming and dusting. There are more important things in life than that. But how about taking just ten minutes out of my week to run the vacuum cleaner around the living room? Or five minutes just to wipe down the toilet and sink?

4. Be more active.
I've probably talked before about my obesity. The kind of work I do doesn't require me to be very active. I work mainly from home, and am almost always in front of the computer. Even just walking down to the postbox a few times a week would be an advance in terms of physical activity.

5. Stop eating crap.
I'm perfectly well-educated on what to eat - I just don't do it. And yet I feel so much better about myself when I choose a carrot over a packet of chips or chicken breast instead of sausages. And the weight will drop off, as it has done before.

6. Spend less time in front of the computer.
The work I do and the focus of my life is bound to have me in front of the computer screen for at least eight hours a day. But still, if I were more organized, I'd find time to sit down and read a newspaper or a book instead. Think about that - words on paper!

That's six already, and I can think of more, but these seem to be the most important. Time wil l tell how well I do. Place bets now.

Another Christmas came and went...

It wasn't a bad Christmas this year. Christmas afternoon was quiet. My sister was having dinner with her new partner's family, and her three kids were off with their dad, so it was just me and my parents here. Mom had her most relaxing Christmas in years - we forewent the turkey and she made crab-stuffed plaice with some sort of cheese/wine sauce. One thing I wasn't prepared to miss out on was the candied sweet potatoes, my favourite Christmas dish, so we had those and some honey-glazed roasted parsnips and a few other bits. It was lovely.

Along with the turkey, I also forewent church on Christmas Eve. The last two years I had very bad experiences at Midnight Mass, due to my anxiety disorder, so I decided I would be easy on myself and stay at home this year. The association in my mind tends only to make it a stressful occasion. Missing Christmas Day was no big deal, as I haven't been to church on Christmas Day since I was about six.

I hope you, dear readers, have enjoyed a merry Christmas, and I wish you all the best for the New Year.

It's the most ironic time of the year

I don't know whether it's just me, but the Lord seems to have a habit of flagging up the irony of the whole thing at this time of year. You can pretty much guarantee that however well things are going  for me the rest of the year, by the time Christmas comes around, something has happened to turn life sour. This year it's to do with the bank and the phone call they made me earlier this week. The timing made it a phone call worthy of Ebenezer Scrooge.

This isn't a sympathy drive, by the way. This is just a reflection on how irony -- the main theme of my life, as I've probably said several times -- is central to the Christmas story. The beginnings of Jesus' life (setting aside arguments over how historically reliable the gospel account is) are every bit as ironic as the end of his life. What could compare to the irony of a crucified Messiah? Try the King of the Universe born into a trough and receiving a bunch of sheepherding peasants as his first guests.

I think it's the irony of the gospel that has kept me clinging to it despite change of mind I've been through the last few years. It's an irony that resonates with me and is true to my experience -- that riches come out of great poverty, and life comes out of death. Hell, if I didn't believe all that, what hope would I have when the shit hits the fan? To me, death is just a precursor of resurrection.

One of my enduring Christmas memories is of standing in the middle of a hospital ward, in only my dressing gown and slippers, reading John Betjeman's poem Christmas to a dozen old ladies. It was another of those ironic festive moments -- me spending the week before Christmas 2001 in hospital (gallstones, *ouch*) with a bunch of old dears for company. I love the way Betjeman (right) encapsulates the irony and the meaning of Christmas in the last few verses. I'll leave you with them as I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

And is it true? and is it true?
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant.

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

My passionate online affair

One of my alltime favourite blogs is Creating Passionate Users. It's full of tons of useful advice for just about anyone with a product. Its founding principle is that people will use your product if you can make them passionate about it. One thing that the folks at CPU have often pointed out is that if you can make your users passionate about your product, they will forgive you anything. They will overlook the occasional glitch or failure, because they're committed. They'll defend your product to the hilt.

One company that has been great at this has been Google, although I don't want to speak too soon, because the whole enterprise could easily go the way of Microsoft and become as reviled as it is powerful. AppleMacs have the same devout following. Another is Mozilla Firefox, which has its users eating out of the palm of its hand.

I speak from experience, because I have been engaged in an intensely passionate love affair with the Firefox browser for about six months now, and it shows no signs of letting up. Even when it does crazy things like it has been doing all week, Firefox is still my friend, and I won't hear people badmouthing it. It's been freezing up on me periodically for about the last ten days, but still it reigns supreme over every other browser, in my heart at least. The Mozilla team have successfully created a passionate user out of me.

The CTU crew have also made me a passionate user of their blog. Hell, they've even got me giving them free advertising like this. You're doing something right when your users want to go out for free and evangelize on behalf of your product. Check it out.

Hey diddle dee dee, a writer's life for me

Ah, deadlines --  the bane of the writer's life! After six months carving out a career in freelancing, I am now getting down to the real nitty-gritty of the writing life, with three deadlines all coming more or less at the same time. Sometime in the next three days I have to write 6,000 words about leaving fundamentalism, anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 words on Hammer horror films and about 1,000 words on upcoming video game releases. It's varied, I'll give it that. Hopefully I'll find time to gather some local news, too, and at least make it sound interesting (Exclusive: Town Hall gets new lick of paint, etcetera etcetera, You heard it hear first etcetera etcetera).

Writing has great benefits, not least the fact I'm self-employed and can manage my own time and space. On the other hand, the greatest benefit can also become the greatest drawback, since it is far too easy to slip into bad habits and a total lack of routine and discipline. I think I may need M Scott Peck at this time in my life. Delayed gratification and all that.

If you'd asked me this time last year what I'd be doing now, this would definitely not be the answer. I was depressed, as I had been for years, but didn't realize it. I was stuck in a teaching career that kept me whirling in a constant spiral of anxiety. I was spending the first few hours of every morning on the verge of tears and worrying about people dying and crazy, irrational things liike that, and stopping on the way to work to gag and vomit. And I really didn't realize I was all that stressed. Fancy that.

I must sign off. I am doing exactly what Scott Peck would advise me against -- blogging away and avoiding real work instead of getting the hard graft over with. Tsk.