Tough luck...

Allow me to geek out for a moment.  I LOVE J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings(LOTR).  It is one of my favorite books.  I feel that there is so much that a person might learn from reading this story. 

Today's LOTR lesson is: Life is Hard.
Life is incredibly hard.   I'm sure that we've all had those days when we just feel that we cannot go on.  It's painful.  There is an overwhelming sense of long, unending, difficult monotony.  We think to ourselves, "This is it.  It's never going to get better.  This feeling is not going to end.  Everything is such a struggle.  I want to quit.  It's all such an impossible mess."

Think of Frodo.  A lot of people don't like Frodo.  For some, that is exclusively do to the Elijah Wood interpretation of Frodo.  For others, they just feel that Frodo is a difficult, whiny, weak, and pathetic character.  In some ways, I think that's true.  Frodo complains.  Frodo is weak and fragile.  He is injured.  He carries a burden that is too great for him.  There is an evil, which is always pulling at his heart, begging him to give up.   He has to take this great evil, which lurks in his own heart, and destroy it.  All the while, this evil whispers, "Just give up.  If you give up, this will all be over.  All of this pain, all of this struggle will all be over if you just give up."

For me, the entirety of Frodo's struggle is excellently captured in the above picture.  You guys, I've been there.  I've been there so many times.  It stinks.  Sometimes, things are just bad, with no consolations.  It happens.

Sometimes, the pain doesn't go away for a long time.  Even after the cause of the pain is long gone, sometimes the pain remains.  Sometimes, we don't get closure.  Sometimes, it takes a long time to just begin to move on.

Before you freak out, I am not currently in such a place, but I know a few people who are or have recently been there.  So, it's on my mind and now I'm writing about it.  There are so many people who know what I'm talking about and it really isn't fun. 

So, here is the second LOTR Lesson of the Day: There is Hope

No matter how dark things get, no matter how alone you feel, no matter how how desperate things seem, there is always hope.  At the end of all things, there is something worth fighting for.  There is a reason for keep on keeping on.  Don't abandon that.  Don't give up.  =)  You matter to someone.  You matter to me!  Don't be afraid to face the hard stuff.

The Ten Lepers

Today at Mass, our associate pastor gave a very insightful homily regarding today's Gospel reading(Luke 17:11-19).   He began by focusing on something which I often don't really think about: leprosy.   Anyone who reads the Bible has at one time or another encountered a passage that deals with the subject of leprosy, but do we ever stop and think about what leprosy meant to someone in Jesus's time?  Or even to someone of our time who lacks the necessary resources to be cured?  Well, here's an idea for you:

For a better understanding of the technical aspects of the disease click here.

Leprosy is horrible, painful, slow, hideous, divisive, lonely, depressing, and so much more to the person afflicted with the disease without a hope for a cure.  

Take a moment to think about that.   Really.  Think about it.

That is what sin does to our souls.  It slowly eats away at the life within us.  It cripples us.  It isolates us from what is good.  It leaves us alone and without hope.  We are in pain.  There is no escape.

Sin brings doubt, fear, distrust, anger, selfishness, loneliness, restlessness, despair, sickness, and suffering.

Enter Jesus!

He lovingly and persistently offers a way to be healed.  It is not an easy way.  It is a way of sacrifice.  A way of martyrdom.  But it is a way of supreme joy and love.  It is such a beautiful thing to be healed and alive!   There is such a peace in knowing that you are no longer decaying from within.  Thank you, Jesus!

My Sweet Friend...

Today is my girl's feast day.  St. Therese and I have so much history.  She's pretty much been there with me, the whole way.   Her life is a special witness to God's grace because it was so ordinary.  St. Therese was sort of a spoiled little girl and she was a tender, sensitive person.   She wasn't tough.  She wanted to be.  She had a great admiration for Joan of Arc.   She was certainly no great fighter like Joan, or at least not physically.

But Therese had a great love for her Lord.   More importantly, she trusted blindly in His great love for her.  She had no fear as she threw herself at the feet of His benevolent mercy.  

St. Therese of Lisieux, pray for us!

The Art of Writing Battle Scenes

So, I've been working on this story about superheroes (it is completely unrelated to the one I previously made available on my blog).   To make it even nerdier, it's about me and some of my friends as superheroes.   Now, there is a long back story about how I came to be writing this, but we'll leave that for another post. 

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is I've sort of hit a wall.   You see, I can't write battle scenes.  Either they're over simple(e.g. D punched M, but M dodged, etc.) or they're too technical(e.g. D leaped into the air from a cat stance to deliver a flying front snap kick, only to be diverted by M's single knife-hand block, which threw him off balance and sent him tumbling).   The first one is boring, but the second one will loose readers in technical jargon, unless they read up on all the styles of martial arts that will be featured(i.e. krav maga, sambo, tae kwon do, judo, ido, kendo, jiu jitsu, zui chuan, kick-boxing, archery, and a few others).  

Maybe I'll just skip out on the writing of these particular scenes and just resort to illustrating them in a comic strip!  I jest, of course, as my illustrations in this area are also deficient.

*sigh*  What is a young, enthusiastic writer to do?

Well, as I have only ever finished two of my stories, I am quite determined to conquer this.  So I will continue researching martial arts styles, maybe read a few books with epic hand-to-hand combat and get back to you on that.

In other news, today is apparently National Coffee Day.  Personally, I think that coffee is disgusting, but for those of you who love it, you might be able to get free coffee on this day (according to this site: http://www.punchbowl.com/holidays/national-coffee-day)  Personally, I'm a bit skeptical about the entire holiday as Wikipedia doesn't seem to know anything about it, but I won't be a hater.  Enjoy your coffee, if you can, and have a happy National Coffee Day!

O be careful little mouth what you say...

I once heard a story about a woman who struggled with gossip.  It wasn't really a struggle, because she didn't really fight.  Every day she would share "the latest news" of what was going on in everyone else's life.  There was no filter.  She was a sweet old woman and easy to talk to, so everyone came to her with their troubles.  Many people knew that she couldn't keep her mouth shut, but they loved her and knew that she meant no harm, so they let it go.

That wasn't the lady's only problem though.  Her lack of a filter extended much further than that.  This woman also gave plenty of unsolicited advice.  If you had a problem, she would always tell you what she thought you needed to do to fix it.  In that sense, listening wasn't really her thing.  Again, however, people knew that she meant well, so they let it go.

But one day the woman inadvertently went too far.  She told secrets that were too personal, she gave advice that was too blunt.  Then, those around her reacted with horror and hurt.  The woman was devastated and hurried to Confession to seek advice from her pastor.

He advised her to take a bag of feathers and spread them all around town, then to go back the next day and gather them up.  The woman didn't really understand the point of the exercise, but she knew that her pastor was a wise man and so she followed his advice.  She scattered the feathers throughout her little town and the next day went to gather them up again.  But she was only able to find twelve feathers.  All the others had blown away, or were picked up by someone else.  Later that day, she went to her pastor and asked him about the little exercise.

He likened words to the feathers.  Once you spread them, it is very difficult to gather them back up again.

I am not this woman.  I am not the cute, sweet, lovable, reckless, old lady.

I do struggle with being careless with my speech.  I say struggle because it's something that I've been working on for as long as I can remember.  That said, I've made minimal progress.  Just so you know, I am working on it.

And if you're like me and don't know when to keep your mouth shut, remember that words are very powerful and that once they are said, they can never be unsaid.