In accordance with new FTC guidelines regarding endorsements and testimonials for bloggers, I would like my readers to know that many of the books I review on my site are provided to me for free by the publisher or author of the book in exchange for an honest review. I am in no way compensated for any reviews on my site.
Yep. Once again I am going to participate in NANoWRIMO. That is National Novel Writing Month. I have, too, folks. I've been doing the pr stuff, short stuff, but need to get an agent and need more logs on my fire. I need more books, yall.
So ontop of dealing with Trick or Treaters and another spiel on "Why we don't celebrate Halloween" to Selah. I have to cram for NanoWrimo so I can start writing tomorrow.
How will I cram? Well, here is my 24 Hour ToDoo List to Prep for NANOWRIMO
Set dailing writing schedule
Complete character sketch(I already have that. I use a sketch I learned from attending Anna DeStefano's writing workshops)
Build skeleton plot (I use an 8 point one based on JMARK Bertrand's model)
have a clean composition book for writing in car, at kitchen table and in tub
Find a nanowrimo partner. A few twitter friends have given me their userid. Mine is deestewart.
Giving myself permission to write horribly bad.
Set up scheduled blog posts (done that)
Goto grocery store
Get my progress tracker badge for site
Buy a new crazy pen.
Okay I'm ready. well ready to tackle this list. What should I add?
Samuel L. Jackson has signed on to star in a remake of Berry Gordy's '85 cult flick, The Last Dragon as yep, you don't have to guess...The Shogun of Harlem. LOL. I wonder if Taimak will do a cameo. And who will be Bruce Leroy Green? Now that's the question. Who do you think ist is?
Addicted to Love A Gospel Play Cast: Shirley Murdock Christopher Williams (New Jack City) Lil'G (Silk) Derrick Brinkley Carl Payne (The Martin Show) Special Cameo Appearance Guests November 20-23 (Sat & Sun Matinees) @The Detroit Music Hall for the Performing Arts 350 Madison St., Detroit, MI 48226
Tickets available at The Music Hall box office and
Thomas Nelson has launched a formal program to enroll interested bloggers and provide them with free review copies of "select titles" in exchange for the promise of a posting of a review of at least 200 words on a blog and at Amazon.com.
"My goal is to have a rich database of bloggers who are actively selecting Thomas Nelson products that they are interested in to read and review. The positive reviews will be a priceless word-of-mouth marketing vehicle and the negative reviews will be a useful tool in understanding why a product might not have sold at retail."
For more information, and/or to register for the program, go here.
I like this concept.
Book review bloggers can also be rated.
Thomas Nelson encourages good and bad reviews.
It adds to the solution of having more respected Amazon reviews.
Reviewers can choose what books they want to review.
It's a great promotion tool for book bloggers.
Michael Hyatt is asking for suggestions and comments about the new service. Become a part of the conversation.
Faking Grace Blog Tour
This week CFB will be participating in Tamara Leigh's Faking Grace Blog Party hosted by WildCard.
Christmas Book Give Away Contest
Now you know Christmas books are my favorites. So I am excited to be giving away a Christmas book and I think I have another one coming down the pipeline. The book I'm giving away is Jerry Hoggatt's The Christmas Wish(Random House.)Here's the scoop on the book:
Something strange is brewingat the Comeback Café
A grandfather’s song has turned a diner into hallowed ground. A contrary girl with a gypsy heart feels the tug of home. And a truck driver named Jedidiah keeps his foot on the gas, ready to sweep you into an unforgettable story of belonging and grace.
The Contest: What is your Christmas Wish for your family? Answer on your blog and send me the link. Or answer on Twitter. Or email me your response. The deadline to enter is November 5, 2008. I will announce the winner on November 23, 2008.
Sinful Too Review
McGlothin’s steamy sequel to Sinful reveals what happens when the wicked Dior Wicker determines to marry Dallas pastor Richard Allamay, star of Church TV’s High Praise and “shepherd of Methodist Episcopal Greater Apostolic Church” (M.E.G.A. Church, for short). Richard, bored with his wife, is ripe for a fall. McGlothin unravels at a relentless pace a sexy and twisted story of marital and spiritual unfaithfulness, culminating in a shocker of a conclusion. Eric Jerome Dickey, watch out. —Publishers Weekly
This week's Trailer Park Tuesday goes hands down to the Ron Clarke Academy for remaking TI's "You Can Have Whatever You Like" into a song that helps children understand civics and the 2008 Presidential Election, "You Can Vote However You Like."
If you haven't seen it, enjoy. The kids talk about how and why they created the song and video,and their thoughts about the election. Moreover, if you have a book trailer or commercial you think would be great to get featured here, then hit me up on Twitter.
I am inviting you to participate in my first Blog Talk Radio show. It will last only 30 minutes and will not be your typical author interview type show. Eric Wilson, New York Times Bestselling author of Fireproof and Facing the Giants the novelized Versions is a huge big fan of Claudia Mair Burney, who has five books out this years. On this show they will talk to each other about their faith, their friendship, their new books, the road to writing no holds barred.(Eric has written a Christian vampire novel and Claudia has a book about a teen exorcist and a black women with stigmata, so the show should be edgy. I will take questions from the chat and the call in line. I hope you can stop and say hi on your lunchbreak. And if you miss it, you can listen to it later. I would also like to know if you like that kind of programming, so please leave a feedback comment.
CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson is offering a $100,000 reward for the safe return of her 7-year-old nephew, who has been missing since her mother and brother were found dead in their home Friday.
"Thank you all for your prayers and your calls. Please keep praying for our family and that we get Julian King back home safely. If anyone has any information about his whereabouts please contact the authorities immediately. Here is a picture of Julian and what he was last seen wearing. Once again thank you all for being there for us through this tough time.
"I'm not a natural memoir writer," said Anne Rice. "I'm a natural fiction writer. In fiction you can resolve a lot of things, but writing a memoir is not like that. You churn up material and don't really resolve anything, so I'm very glad it's done." (Source)
Rice's memoir 'Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession' (Alfred A. Knopf, $24) shares her journey to her return to Catholicism.
TL Hines. Have you seen his pages? My book fun buddy TL Hines is at it again. This time he and his fanbase are disassembling a single copy of his latest novel, 'The Unseen,' and hiding all 383 pages across the United States and Canada, hoping to connect with potential readers in unexpected settings. Bookmarks attached to the pages invite people to visit the author's website, tlhines.com, and leave a comment before placing the pages elsewhere for other people to find.
'Why? Well, a multitude of reasons, but foremost among them is: to have fun. Maybe sell a few books, maybe meet a few new people, maybe get a few unexpected surprises...but for me, that all comes under the category of having fun.
Hines is offering a prize to encourage people to leave a comment, then hide the page for others to find: the page receiving the most comments on the web site wins free signed copies of the author's first two books, 'Waking Lazarus' and 'The Dead Whisper On,' for every person who found it.
Zondervan distributes Sony Reader
Zondervan has announced that it will serve as the exclusive distributor of the Reader Digital Book by Sony to the Christian retail channel.
Introduced in 2006, the Sony Reader was the first product of its kind in the publishing industry. The second edition of the device was released in 2007, featuring expanded capabilities and features.
Zondervan will sell individual Reader Digital Books to retailers and offer Zondervan's content for the portable device, company officials said. An interactive point-of-purchase demonstration fixture for the Sony Reader is also available for Christian retailers through Zondervan.
"We are excited to offer our CBA partners the unique ability to sell not only the digital content, but also the device to access the content, which we view very much as a competitive advantage for them," said Moe Girkins, Zondervan president and CEO.
NY Times bestselling author Eric Wilson & Claudia Mair Burney share movies, faith, books on DeeGospel's Blog Talk Radio Show October 28, 2008 12:30 -1:00 PM EST
Summary: New York Times bestselling author Eric Wilson, who has penned three of his eight novels based on movies (Facing the Giants, Flywheel, and Fireproof 'in theaters now') chats with critically acclaimed new author Claudia Mair Burney in a candid conversation about life, the writing life, faith, passion, and who knows what else. You have to listen in to see what these two will discuss.
More about Eric Wilson: Eric has traveled in over thirty countries, fueling his love for the world. He's written eight novels, with his most recent, Field of Blood, exploring Earth's tension between heaven and hell by turning the traditional vampire tale on its head. His goal is to reach those on the fringes of faith.
More about Claudia Mair Burney:
Claudia Mair Burney is the author of five novels released in 2008, including The Exorsistah and Wounded: A Love Story. Publishers Weekly has said about her work, "Burney pushes her prose to the edge of the edgiest in the 'Christian fiction' genre, and then barrels right over." She lives in Inkster, Michigan with her tattoo artist husband and five of their seven children.
Dee Stewart, publicist, bookseller and Secretary of the American Christian Fiction Writer’s VIP Chapter will Dee-Code the book marketing plan with you on September 13, 2008 and much more…
During this session you’ll learn about:
Defining a book marketing analysis
Components to a book marketing plan
Using your marketing plan to edit your final book draft
How to write a tag line
Ensuring your book marketing plan and budget are align
So now that I have committed myself to writing this story. This first thing I do is brainstorm a few horses(themes) for this story. The goal is to find its core and then to choose a symbol that this story core could revolve around, and hopefully pull out a few minor themes that can help me build the story cast.
Examples of symbol story cores are:
The Beehive in The Secret Life of Bees
Purple Hibiscus in Purple Hibiscus
the water well in Abraham's Well
basket weaving in The Spirit of Sweet Grass
a pair of magic jeans in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants
OK.
I am writing a woman's self-discovery/romance story. It is about a hopelessly sad woman who on the brink of killing herself receives a request letter from an old college friend, who's now a soldier deployed to Iraq.
The story core of my story is hope. Both characters are searching for hope. So I need to shape every aspect of this story(the character's action, description, cast, everything) around this core of hope. What does hope look like? Is the question that I am answering through this story.
It is also the answer I seek as I search for a symbol that I can build this story around.
I have been taught a few techniques to help me search and find this symbol. For the next 30 minutes at home. I will apply those techniques and get my symbols.
While I'm away I would like to know from you, how much effort do you put in thinking about your story's theme?
I am writing a short story this weekend for a magazine contest. I am also reworking a novel for a mystery novel contest for a publishing house. And I am writing a new novel. And and ebook on book marketing plans. Although I am a quick writer, it takes a certain kick, an excitement in my gut--if you will-- to fuel my drive to complete any of these assignments, especially fiction.
I never have writer's block, but I do have writer's waiting challenge. My term. For me it means that this story sits in my head. When I look at it its hazy and not coherent. It's like the first stages of having a cold. I'm not sure if I'm sick or is it allergies, so I wait it out and see until the cold begins to nag. I become congested and there's no point of return. Story creation is the same process for me. I have many germs of stories in my head that never make it to fruition. They fizzle out by the next morning.
The reason I decided to enter the Ebony short story contest was story germ is teetering over the the point of no return. My symptoms are very clear:
I have a character that haunts me.
Everytime I hear a certain song my story comes back to view.
I can't move forward until this story is purged out of me.
Whether I win the contest or not is my concern. Getting this story written is. Today my body and mind and spirit will not allow me to do anything else but talk about this story, work its issues out, then write.
I will share my process with you. But I have a favor to ask?
How do you decide when its time to take your story idea and turn it into a story?
What else? Subscribe via email or follow CFB on twitter. And if you want to keep up with my busy life and the world of christian pr follow me on Twitter and Utterz
Every week I receive and search for great book trailers to promote on Christian Fiction Blog. In the beginning I was excited about what I found. It was a new concept, so I was game. However, after a few months of posting book trailers and reading others I've come to a conclusion. Book Trailers Don't Work and here's why:
1. Most Book Trailers aren't viral. Let's be honest. When was the last time you embedded a book trailer video onto your blog or passed the video to your email friends or Twitter buddies? Probably never. Unless you have a dear author friend with a trailer who you want to help out the answer is probably not one time. Until these trailers can spark many watchers to want to share it with their warm market, then it is a waste.
How do you make a book trailer viral? In my opinion
2. Book Trailers are too long. First thing is shorten the trailers. They are too long. Anything over a minute online is too long. This post is too long until I cut out the fluff. Keep the trailer short and simple.
What must you include in a short book trailer?
3. Book Trailers aren't commercials.
If you notice a movie trailer, the better ones are shorter , to the point and mysterious. But most importantly, they tell you when the movie drops, title and buzzworthy actors, directors and producers.
In short, I am a fan of a book commercial. A short and sweet video shot of your book. The hook should be its focus. Just like most commercials. If it's short and crisp and marketed effectively these videos would get the word of mouth/email bounce around and chatter it deserves.
Above is the best book commercial I have seen. The music matches the theme. The video is under 30 seconds. Long enough to etch an idea about the book, and catchy enough to share. How has your book trailer submitting experience been?
ONE LUCKY FAN TO WIN CHANCE TO PRESENT A STELLAR AWARD
On Saturday, January 17, 2009 the 24th Annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards will return to the historic Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, TN. The star-studded evening will be filled with uplifting music from the industry's hottest celebrities and entertainers.
RushmoreDrive.com is celebrating this year's Stellar Awards by sending one lucky winner and a guest to Nashville to do something we've all dreamed of -- gracing the Stellar Award stage and presenting the Fan Based Award to the top gospel artist for 2009 as selected by fans. So click here to get your tickets to the 2009 Stellar Gospel Music Awards now!
Book:Bon Appetit
Author: Sandra Byrd
Summary:In this second book in the French Twist series, readers join Lexi Stuart in a crème de la crème adventure!
Deciding to leave her familiar home in Seattle and her could-be boyfriend Dan, Lexi moves to a quaint village in France to pursue her dream of becoming a pastry chef. Life among the French initially proves to be less than easy as Lexi is challenged by her coworkers, missing her friends, and failing to master the perfect baguette.
Determined to find her place, Lexi settles into the culture and life becomes la perfection. She finds a church, meets a new friend, and makes the acquaintance of a child named Celine—as well as Celine’s attractive, widowed father, Philippe. Even Patricia, the gruff pastry cook, shows a softer side as she mentors Lexi in the art of baking.
Fast, fun, and packed with French culture, foodie appeal, and unique recipes readers will love accompanying Lexi on her journey in Bon Appetit as she tries to choose between two countries, two men and the faith to lean on God while savoring the surprises life brings!
It is time to play a Wild Card!Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book's FIRST chapter!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Ron Hall is an international art dealer whose long list of regular clients includes many celebrity personalities. An MBA graduate of Texas Christian University, he divides his time between Dallas, New York, and his Brazos River ranch near Fort Worth.
Denver Moore currently serves as a volunteer at the Fort Worth Union Gospel Mission. He lives in Dallas, Texas. Today, he is an artist, public speaker, and volunteer for homeless causes. In 2006, as evidence of the complete turn around of his life, the citizens of Fort Worth honored him as "Philanthropist of the Year" for his work with homeless people at the Union Gospel Mission.
List Price: $14.99 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Thomas Nelson (March 11, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 084991910X ISBN-13: 978-0849919107
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Well—a poor Lazarus poor as I
When he died he had a home on high . . .
The rich man died and lived so well
When he died he had a home in hell . . .
You better get a home in that Rock, don’t you see?
—NEGRO SPIRITUAL
Denver
Until Miss Debbie, I’d never spoke to no white woman before. Just answered a few questions, maybe—it wadn’t really speakin. And to me, even that was mighty risky since the last time I was fool enough to open my mouth to a white woman, I wound up half-dead and nearly blind.
I was maybe fifteen, sixteen years old, walkin down the red dirt road that passed by the front of the cotton plantation where I lived in Red River Parish, Louisiana. The plantation was big and flat, like a whole lotta farms put together with a bayou snakin all through it. Cypress trees squatted like spiders in the water, which was the color of pale green apples. There was a lotta different fields on that spread, maybe a hundred, two hundred acres each, lined off with hardwood trees, mostly pecans.
Wadn’t too many trees right by the road, though, so when I was walkin that day on my way back from my auntie’s house—she was my grandma’s sister on my daddy’s side—I was right out in the open. Purty soon, I seen this white lady standin by her car, a blue Ford, ’bout a 1950, ’51 model, somethin like that. She was standin there in her hat and her skirt, like maybe she’d been to town. Looked to me like she was tryin to figure out how to fix a flat tire. So I stopped.
“You need some help, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, lookin purty grateful to tell you the truth. “I really do.”
I asked her did she have a jack, she said she did, and that was all we said.
Well, ’bout the time I got the tire fixed, here come three white boys ridin outta the woods on bay horses. They’d been huntin, I think, and they come trottin up and didn’t see me ’cause they was in the road and I was ducked down fixin the tire on the other side of the car. Red dust from the horses’ tracks floated up over me. First, I got still, thinkin I’d wait for em to go on by. Then I decided I didn’t want em to think I was hidin, so I started to stand up. Right then, one of em asked the white lady did she need any help.
“I reckon not!” a redheaded fella with big teeth said when he spotted me. “She’s got a nigger helpin her!”
Another one, dark-haired and kinda weasel-lookin, put one hand on his saddle horn and pushed back his hat with the other. “Boy, what you doin’ botherin this nice lady?”
He wadn’t nothin but a boy hisself, maybe eighteen, nineteen years old. I didn’t say nothin, just looked at him.
“What you lookin’ at, boy?” he said and spat in the dirt.
The other two just laughed. The white lady didn’t say nothin, just looked down at her shoes. ’Cept for the horses chufflin, things got quiet. Like the yella spell before a cyclone. Then the boy closest to me slung a grass rope around my neck, like he was ropin a calf. He jerked it tight, cutting my breath. The noose poked into my neck like burrs, and fear crawled up through my legs into my belly.
I caught a look at all three of them boys, and I remember thinkin none of em was much older’n me. But their eyes was flat and mean.
“We gon’ teach you a lesson about botherin white ladies,” said the one holdin the rope. That was the last thing them boys said to me.
I don’t like to talk much ’bout what happened next, ‘cause I ain’t lookin for no pity party. That’s just how things was in Louisiana in those days. Mississippi, too, I reckon, since a coupla years later, folks started tellin the story about a young colored fella named Emmett Till who got beat till you couldn’t tell who he was no more. He’d whistled at a white woman, and some other good ole boys—seemed like them woods was full of em—didn’t like that one iota. They beat that boy till one a’ his eyeballs fell out, then tied a cotton-gin fan around his neck and throwed him off a bridge into the Tallahatchie River. Folks says if you was to walk across that bridge today, you could still hear that drowned young man cryin out from the water.
There was lots of Emmett Tills, only most of em didn’t make the news. Folks says the bayou in Red River Parish is full to its pea-green brim with the splintery bones of colored folks that white men done fed to the gators for covetin their women, or maybe just lookin cross-eyed. Wadn’t like it happened ever day. But the chance of it, the threat of it, hung over the cotton fields like a ghost.
I worked them fields for nearly thirty years, like a slave, even though slavery had supposably ended when my grandma was just a girl. I had a shack I didn’t own, two pairs a’ overalls I got on credit, a hog, and a outhouse. I worked them fields, plantin and plowin and pickin and givin all the cotton to the Man that owned the land, all without no paycheck. I didn’t even know what a paycheck was.
It might be hard for you to imagine, but I worked like that while the seasons rolled by from the time I was a little bitty boy, all the way past the time that president named Kennedy got shot dead in Dallas.
All them years, there was a freight train that used to roll through Red River Parish on some tracks right out there by Highway 1. Ever day, I’d hear it whistle and moan, and I used to imagine it callin out about the places it could take me . . . like New York City or Detroit, where I heard a colored man could get paid, or California, where I heard nearly everbody that breathed was stackin up paper money like flapjacks. One day, I just got tired a’ bein poor. So I walked out to Highway 1, waited for that train to slow down some, and jumped on it. I didn’t get off till the doors opened up again, which happened to be in Fort Worth, Texas. Now when a black man who can’t read, can’t write, can’t figger, and don’t know how to work nothin but cotton comes to the big city, he don’t have too many of what white folks call “career opportunities.” That’s how come I wound up sleepin on the streets.
I ain’t gon’ sugarcoat it: The streets’ll turn a man nasty. And I had been nasty, homeless, in scrapes with the law, in Angola prison, and homeless again for a lotta years by the time I met Miss Debbie. I want to tell you this about her: She was the skinniest, nosiest, pushiest woman I had ever met, black or white.
She was so pushy, I couldn’t keep her from finding out my name was Denver. She investigated till she found it out on her own. For a long time, I tried to stay completely outta her way. But after a while, Miss Debbie got me to talkin ’bout things I don’t like to talk about and tellin things I ain’t never told nobody—even about them three boys with the rope. Some of them’s the things I’m fixin to tell you.
Dior's devilicious ways holds no bounds in this sequel. However, McGlothin relies too much on cliched themes like: pulpit fight scenes, adultery and the boring pastor's wife, church funds abuse and poor red herrings placement. Constant head hopping slows down pace. Moreover, the church's name, a supposed acronymn for megachurch is implausible, since a Methodist Apostolic church could never exist. If this novel were a Pat G'orge parody, then the word play would be understandable. But instead it imposes a question. who’s this novel’s audience?
On the other hand the novel is a good read for fans church drama lovers of Kimberly Lawson Roby’s Sin No More and Carl Weber’s The Preacher’s Son.
Synopsis:
Dallas men clothing’s store saleswoman Dior Wicker can sale the pants off any man including Pastor Richard Allamay, Methodist Episcopal Greater Apostolic Church. But there’s only one thing stopping her from becoming his lady, his wife, First Lady Nadeen. (October, 320 pp, $14.99)
It's the 21st, time for the Teen FIRST blog tour!(Join our alliance! Click the button!) Every 21st, we will feature an author and his/her latest Teen fiction book's FIRST chapter!
Paul McCusker is the author of The Mill House, Epiphany, The Faded Flower and several Adventures in Odyssey programs. Winner of the Peabody Award for his radio drama on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer for Focus on the Family, he lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and two children.
Product Details
List Price: $9.99 Reading level: Young Adult Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Zondervan (October 1, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 0310714362 ISBN-13: 978-0310714361
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
“I’m running away,” Elizabeth announced defiantly. She chomped a french fry in half.
Jeff looked up at her. He’d been absentmindedly swirling his straw in his malted milkshake while she complained about her parents, which she had been doing for the past half hour. “You’re what?”
“You weren’t listening, were you?”
“I was too.”
“Then what did I say?” Elizabeth tucked a loose strand of her long brown hair behind her ear so it wouldn’t fall into the puddle of ketchup next to her fries.
“You were complaining about how your mom and dad drive you crazy because your dad embarrassed you last night while you and Melissa Morgan were doing your history homework. And your dad lectured you for twenty minutes about . . . about . . .” He was stumped.
“Chris-tian symbolism in the King Arthur legends,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah, except that you and Melissa were supposed to be studying the . . . um — ”
“French Revolution.”
“Right, and Melissa finally made up an excuse to go home, and you were embarrassed and mad at your dad — ”
“As usual,” she said and savaged another french fry.
Jeff gave a sigh of relief. Elizabeth’s pop quizzes were a lot tougher than anything they gave him at school. But it was hard for him to listen when she griped about her parents. Not having any parents of his own, Jeff didn’t connect when Elizabeth went on and on about hers.
“Then what did I say?” she asked.
He was mid-suck on his straw and nearly blew the contents back into the glass. “Huh?”
“What did I say after that?”
“You said . . . uh . . .” He coughed, then glanced around the Fawlt Line Diner, hoping for inspiration or a way to change the subject. His eye was dazzled by the endless chrome, beveled mirrors, worn red upholstery, and checkered floor tiles. And it boasted Alice Dempsey, the world’s oldest living waitress, dressed in her paper cap and red-striped uniform with white apron.
She had seen Jeff look up and now hustled over to their booth. She arrived smelling like burnt hamburgers and chewed her gum loudly. “You kids want anything else?”
Rescued, Jeff thought. “No, thank you,” he said.
She cracked an internal bubble on her gum and dropped the check on the edge of the table. “See you tomorrow,” Alice said.
“No, you won’t,” Elizabeth said under her breath. “I won’t be here.”
As she walked off, Alice shot a curious look back at Elizabeth. She was old, but she wasn’t deaf.
“Take it easy,” Jeff said to Elizabeth.
“I’m going to run away,” she said, heavy rebuke in her tone. “If you’d been listening — ”
“Aw, c’mon, Bits — ” Jeff began. He’d called her “Bits” for as long as either of them could remember, all the way back to first grade. “It’s not that bad.”
“You try living with my mom and dad, and tell me it’s not that bad.”
“I know your folks,” Jeff said. “They’re a little quirky, that’s all.”
“Quirky! They’re just plain weird. They’re clueless about life in the real world. Did you know that my dad went to church last Sunday with his shirt on inside out?”
“It happens.”
“And wearing his bedroom slippers?”
Jeff smiled. Yeah, that’s Alan Forde, all right, he thought.
“Don’t you dare smile,” Elizabeth threatened, pointing a french fry at him. “It’s not funny. His slippers are grass stained. Do you know why?”
“Because he does his gardening in his bedroom slippers.”
Elizabeth threw up her hands. “That’s right! He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care how he looks, what -people think of him, or anything! And my mom doesn’t even have the decency to be embarrassed for him. She thinks he’s adorable! They’re weird.”
“They’re just . . . themselves. They’re — ”
Elizabeth threw herself against the back of the red vinyl bench and groaned. “You don’t understand.”
“Sure I do!” Jeff said. “Your parents are no worse than Malcolm.” Malcolm Dubbs was Jeff’s father’s cousin, on the English side of the family, and had been Jeff’s guardian since his parents had died five years ago in a plane crash. As the last adult of the Dubbs family line, he came from England to take over the family fortune and estate. “He’s quirky.”
“But that’s different. Malcolm is nice and sensitive and has that wonderful English accent,” Elizabeth said, nearly swooning. Jeff’s cousin was a heartthrob among some of the girls.
“Don’t get yourself all worked up,” Jeff said.
“My parents just go on and on about things I don’t care about,” she continued. “And if I hear the life-can’t-be-taken-too-seriously-because-it’s-just-a-small-part-of-a-bigger-picture lecture one more time, I’ll go out of my mind.”
Again Jeff restrained his smile. He knew that lecture well. Except his cousin Malcolm summarized the same idea in the phrase “the eternal perspective.” All it meant was that there was a lot more to life than what we can see or experience with our senses. This world is a temporary stop on a journey to a truer, more real reality, he’d say — an eternal reality. “Look, your parents see things differently from most -people. That’s all,” Jeff said, determined not to turn this gripe session into an Olympic event.
“They’re from another planet,” Elizabeth said. “Sometimes I think this whole town is. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
“I like Fawlt Line,” Jeff said softly, afraid Elizabeth’s complaints might offend some of the other regulars at the diner.
“Everybody’s so . . . so oblivious! Nobody even seems to notice how strange this place is.”
Jeff shrugged. “It’s just a town, Bits. Every town has its quirks.”
“Is that your word of the day?” Elizabeth snapped. “These aren’t just quirks, Jeffrey.”
Jeff rolled his eyes. When she resorted to calling him Jeffrey, there was no reasoning with her. He rubbed the side of his face and absentmindedly pushed his fingers through his wavy black hair.
“What about Helen?” Elizabeth challenged him.
“Which Helen? You mean the volunteer at the information booth in the mall? That Helen?”
“I mean Helen the volunteer at the information booth in the mall who thinks she’s psychic. That’s who I mean.” Elizabeth leaned over the Formica tabletop. Jeff moved her plate of fries and ketchup to one side. “She won’t let you speak until she guesses what you’re going to ask. And she’s never right!”
Jeff shrugged.
“Our only life insurance agent has been dead for six years.”
“Yeah, but — ”
“And there’s Walter Keenan. He’s a professional proofreader for park bench ads! He wanders around, making -people move out of the way so he can do his job.” Her voice was a shrill whisper.
“Ben Hearn only pays him to do that because he feels sorry for him. You know old Walter hasn’t been the same since that shaving accident.”
“But I heard he just got a job doing the same thing at a tattoo parlor!”
“I’m sure tattooists want to make sure their spelling is correct.”
Elizabeth groaned and shook her head. “It’s like Mayberry trapped in the Twilight Zone. I thought you’d understand. I thought you knew how nuts this town is.” Elizabeth locked her gaze onto Jeff’s.
He gazed back at her and, suddenly, the image of her large brown eyes, the faint freckles on her upturned nose, her full lips, made him want to kiss her. He wasn’t sure why — they’d been friends for so long that she’d probably laugh at him if he ever actually did it — but the urge was still there.
“It’s not such a bad place,” he managed to say.
“I’ve had enough of this town,” she said. “Of my parents. Of all the weirdness. I’m fifteen years old and I wanna be a normal kid with normal problems. Are you coming with me or not?”
Jeff cocked an eyebrow. “To where?”
“To wherever I run away to,” she replied. “I’m serious about this, Jeff. I’m getting all my money together and going somewhere normal. We can take your Volkswagen and — ”
“Listen, Bits,” Jeff interrupted, “I know how you feel. But we can’t just run away. Where would we go? What would we do?”
“And who are you all of a sudden: Mr. Responsibility? You never know where you’re going or what you’re doing. You’re our very own Huck Finn.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Not according to Mr. Vidler.”
“Mr. Vidler said that?” Jeff asked defensively, wondering why their English teacher would be talking about him to Elizabeth.
“He says it’s because you don’t have parents, and Malcolm doesn’t care what you do.”
Jeff grunted. He didn’t like the idea of Mr. Vidler discussing him like that. And Malcolm certainly cared a great deal about what he did.
Elizabeth continued. “So why should you care where we go or what we do? Let’s just get out of here.”
“But, Bits, it’s stupid and — ”
“No! I’m not listening to you,” Elizabeth shouted and hit the tabletop with the palms of her hands. Silence washed over the diner like a wave as everyone turned to look.
“Keep it down, will you?” Jeff whispered fiercely.
“Either you go with me, or stay here and rot in this town. It’s up to you.”
Jeff looked away. It was unusual for them to argue. And when they did, it was usually Jeff who gave in. Like now. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
Elizabeth also softened her tone. “If you’re going, then meet me at the Old Saw Mill by the edge of the river tonight at ten.” She paused, then added, “I’m going whether you come with me or not.”
I have ten days left to enter a writing contest. Had I not told my writer's group or my friends on Twitter, my blog and my family about my master plan to enter this contest I could pretend like I never planned to enter. But I didn't. I opened my big mouth, and now folks are depending on me to deliver...not just any story but a good Dee Story. To be honest, I'm depending on myself, too. Dee hadn't been writing a good Dee story in a while. I want to see if I still have the juice.
Atlanta,GA]— Destiny Praise kicks into overdrive with its sophomore release, Driven. “His Will,” the first single released from then project is currently the #1 most downloaded CCM single on R & R. Broken the third song on the project is the theme song for Praise 97.5‘s Cocoa Brother Radio show, the #1 FM radio show in Atlanta. This group’s explosion on the charts and in contemporary Christian life is not an enigma, but the beginning of new shift in CCM Music.
Dr. Bryan E. Crute, Senior Pastor of DestinyMetropolitanWorshipChurch in Atlanta, Georgia hand-picked the nine-piece ensemble in 2001. Since then they have opened for John P. Kee andKim Burrell. Grammy Award winning music Producers Travon and Tandria Potts(Trin-I-Tee 5:7, Monica,) created their debut and latest project, Driven. With those combined forces, they have won the 2006 Atlanta Gospel Choice Awards for Best Vocal Group/Duo. Another highlight for DP was singing in conjunction with the Purpose Driven Worship Conference at SaddlebackChurch, under Pastor and author Rick Warren (Purpose Driven Life).
Tonight Destiny Praise will be chatting with Gerard Henry and you. I'll be giving away a CD to those who listen on the show.
Why do you read and review Christian fiction? Do you exclusively read Christian fiction or do you also read general market books?
The first Christian fiction title I read was France Ellen Harper's Iola Leroy written in 1892. The story was about a black woman whose father was a plantation owner and her mother was one of his slaves. It was about Abolitionism and Social Justice and Black Spiritualism and the rise of fall of Christianity in Black Revolutionist Thought, The women's Club movement. I loved this book. I still own it. I've written essays about it. I fell in love with this idea of stories that not just glorified God, but showed real people dealing with a faith that challenge them during important times in their lives. How do former slaves believe in a God that not only enslaved them, but ripped their souls apart? Even today the best titles are the ones where the characters are sharing an honest conflict where their faith was involved. So of course, I read Christian fiction, because I love reading stories about characters who not only share my faith, but can solve their challenges because of their faith.
I review Christian Fiction for three reasons:
I was asked. Eight years ago my pastor launched a gospel radio station and newspaper. I was asked to be the features editor. I admit I was skeptical. My background is in literary fiction and I didn't care for commercial fiction. But I had been introduced to Jacquelin Thomas work with BET's New Spirit imprint and I found a new home in my reader's soul.
There aren't enough reviewers. There are friend who friends books, but not enough Christian fiction reviewers who can pull the book apart and identify not only the missing parts, but what makes it inspirational.
African American Commercial Christian Fiction authors came on the scene a decade ago, but still receives very little opportunities for exposure. It has been goal to share those writers with Christian Fiction readers who otherwise wouldn't have. And I am honored that my non African American reader friends, trust me enough to subscribe to CFB and also come to me about book picks and their concerns. I am thankful for the dialogue.
I review all types of fiction, not just Christian fiction. I am a reviewer for Romantic Times Magazine. Most titles I review are contemporary romance. I also from time to time write literary criticisms for Mosaic Literary Journal. However, all of those titles have strong Christian themes.
The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angle Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed. I know it is presumptuous to compare my small life to hers, but I have reason to believe she wouldn't mind; I will get to that. Right now it's enough to say that despite everything that happened that summer, I remain tender toward the bees. An excerpt from the book, The Secret Life of Bees
I read The Secret Life of Bees six years ago. I remember it well, because Selah was two years old and I was in a wheelchair, on an oxygen tank and couldn't feed myself. I couldn't mother Selah like I had imagined I would. I was heartbroken. My family knew it and did everything to make me feel better, including picking up books from the public library for me. Reading was my first love and at the time all I could do--wanted to-- back then was read and escape from my sad reality.
I read that book, and not only did it make me fall in love with writing again, it made me stronger somehow. As you know my health and my maternity has spun onto a whole new orbit.
So when I received an opportunity to prescreen "The Secret Life of Bees" The Movie i missed the first two opportunities. Not because I chose to, of course, but because (1) I had promised to Selah to the Rockdale County Fair and then the second time because I was so under the weather. My health is better, but limiting sometimes.
But I have some good friends, closer than sisters, Rhonda McKnight and Pam Perry as well as Felicia Tanner of Liquid Soul Media(a new sister) who knew where my heart was. They reserved the last two tickets for me and a guest.
My eight-year-old daughter, Selah was my guest. If I told you she was one of Dakota Fanning's biggest fans I would not come close to what she says she feels about the actress.
After watching the movie I am in competition to be her biggest fan.
This movie was beyond sweet, heartwarming, charming, heartheavy, bittersweet, romantic. It was heart opening. Queen Latifah stuck her foot in August Boatwright. Alicia Keys...she personified June's sizzle, spirit and spite so well. Oh my goodness. Sophie Okonedo wore the world's emotion on that screen. Wow. Brilliant. Angelic. And Jennifer Hudson. When I read the novel I imagined someone else, but boy do I thank Director/Screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood for casting her. She was a humbled sister/mother so symbolic of The Black Madonna.
I am so grateful to have lived to have read the novel and thankful to God to have seen it as a movie.
I hope my writer-or-die chicks/Sisters in Christ continue to write compelling, centered stories and believe in the power of the bees.
Advisory: This movie has strong themes that if you bring your child(ren) to see, then prepare to talk with them about those themes and how you as a family have decided to honor your family. Selah and I had a long talk about those issues and we will continue to come back to this conversation as she starts puberty.
My rating: 5 Hallelujah Handclaps
Here an Queen Latifah and Tristan Wilds Talk Secret Life of Bees Here
ATLANTA, GA (October 15, 2008) – Gospel Music Channel (GMC) television network will take viewers on a unique, behind-the-scenes journey in its first-ever unscripted reality drama series called Revolve: Rockin’ The Road.The five-episode series -- set to premiere Friday night, October 17 -- is GMC’s first foray into dramatic reality programming as well as its first original series targeting teens.
Revolve: Rockin’ The Road follows four advance team members of The Revolve Tour, the popular new travelling tour for teen girls produced by North America’s largest women’s conference, Women of Faith.
The show will be seen through the eyes of four young professionals working with The Revolve Tour this summer: Chad Eastham, Jenna Lucado, Sean Kelly and Courtney Clark Cleveland. Crammed inside a tour bus and armed only with their faith, the four friends trek across America with an agenda to connect with teen girls and spark interest in The Revolve Tour: All Access that kicked off September 12, 2008.
Revolve: Rockin’ The Road will give viewers an all-access pass as the foursome travel to nine different Christian music festivals across the country.The series will capture their collective quest to maintain spiritual peace and discipline amidst logistical challenges, self goals, and inevitable relationship struggles. While some of the cast finds resolution to those struggles at the season’s end, others remain searching.
Christian music artists Natalie Grant, Hawk Nelson, Group 1 Crew, Krystal Meyers and Ayiesha Woods are featured in the series, performing at the festivals and connecting with the Revolve team.A preview of the new show can be seen at http://www.gospelmusicchannel.com/revolve.
It's the 15th, time for the Non~FIRST blog tour!(Non~FIRST will be merging with FIRST Wild Card Tours on January 1, 2009...if interested in joining, click HERE!)
Craig Detweiler (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is codirector of the Reel Spirituality Institute and associate professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has written scripts for numerous Hollywood films, and his comedic documentary, Purple State of Mind (www.purplestateofmind.com), debuted in 2008. He has been featured in the New York Times, on CNN, and on NPR and is the coauthor of A Matrix of Meanings. Barry Taylor (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary), adjunct professor of popular culture and theology at Fuller, is a professional musician, painter, and the leader of New Ground, an alternative worship gathering in Los Angeles.
Product Details
List Price: 13.99 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (July 1, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 0736924604 ISBN-13: 978-0736924603
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Freedom
and
Responsibility
How did the culture war begin? Was there a clear winner? Or did it devolve into a long, costly stalemate? What can we learn from the battle? Perhaps we are not as polarized as we presume. Political parties and pundits strive to distinguish themselves from the competition in the starkest possible terms. We use rhetoric to rail against one another while our core positions may involve only a slight divergence. We may be hardly separated rather than deeply divided. Can we move from an adolescent mind-set, shouting across the religious and political divide, into something more thoughtful, productive, and mature?
As a witness to the sixties and seventies, I’ve seen how destructive we can be—even toward ourselves. I’ve also lived through the comparative comfort of the Reagan era in the eighties. He turned back the clock to a prosperous vision of America before the social upheavals of the sixties. Can we uphold the vigorous freedom of the sixties alongside the rigorous responsibility of the fifties?
A purple state of mind pushes past the either/or squabbles of an earlier era. It adopts a both/and approach to following God and interacting with the world. It builds bridges rather than burning them. It seeks common ground rather than points of division. A purple state of mind attains maturity by knowing when and where to apply biblical truths to our blind spots.
John: I think this should be a candid discussion.
Craig: I want it to be first and foremost an honest conversation. Straightforward. Tell the truth. Nothing held back.
Were you alive when President John F. Kennedy was shot? While the world wailed, I was warm in my mother’s womb. She was in the doctor’s office, awaiting a checkup on my status. I was born two months after Kennedy was assassinated. I arrived after the initial shockwave, the outpouring of grief, and the confusion as to why such tragedy happens. But we all continue to wrestle with the conflicts that erupted in the wake of Kennedy’s death.
I entered a world on fire. Throughout my childhood, there were riots in the streets, protests on campuses, scenes from Vietnam in the news. My parents attempted to shield me from much of the conflict, turning me on to Mr. Rogers rather than Walter Cronkite. Yet the palpable conflicts over civil rights, free speech, and the war draft spilled into newspapers, televisions, and casual conversations. The struggle for civil rights was more than a century in the making. Leaders like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were as patient as possible, given their long walk to freedom. Yet the positive steps created by the Civil Rights Act still moved too slowly for those trapped in the inner city. Riots in Watts and Detroit set cities ablaze. The mistakes of the Vietnam War constitute their own painful book. As images of the war filtered into our living rooms, resentment toward our leaders grew. Chaos reigned among protestors inside and outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
I knew my dad hated the protestors, but I didn’t know why. Something about their appearance bugged him. It may have been their long hair, their scanty clothes, and their flagrant disregard of authority. The hippies seemed equally frustrated by people like my father. They were complaining about the man, the system, anyone over 30. Why were the protestors so angry? What was all the shouting about? A generation gap emerged over the war in Vietnam. The students were ostensibly resisting the draft. They did not want to serve in an endless, misguided war in Southeast Asia.
Behind the political policies were distinct lifestyle choices. The hippies were celebrating free love, plentiful drugs, and raucous rock music. My father was wondering what happened to hard work, paying taxes, and civic responsibility. Teenagers embraced freedom while adults trumpeted responsibility. These dueling notions of the American identity exploded into a full-blown culture war that has been raging ever since. Reporter Ronald Brownstein calls this second civil war “the great sorting out.”
A purple state of mind appreciates the competing ideals that launched the culture war. It recognizes the patriotism that resides behind both visions. It remembers how much capital was created by responsible citizenship in the fifties. It also celebrates the ingenuity unleashed in the freedom-loving sixties. We learned valuable lessons from both eras. A purple state of mind borrows from both, combining freedom and responsibility.
The Fifties Versus the Sixties
I have lived my entire life in the shadow of the 1960s. I’ve heard the stirring speeches of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I’ve mourned the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in Dion’s song, “Abraham, Martin, and John.” I’ve been taken to the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now. How many television specials have I seen that retrace the upheavals of 1968? Rolling Stone magazine commemorates Woodstock or the Summer of Love every single year! Was it the best of times or the worst of times? Forty years on, we’re still locked in an adolescent debate. We see it in the childish name-calling of Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter on the right or MoveOn.org and Daily Kos on the left.
Every American presidential election since the sixties has essentially been a referendum on that painful era. There were no clear winners in Vietnam. Like Rambo, we’re still fighting. It is a dark era in American history most of us would rather not review (even though we must learn those lessons so we stop repeating them). The fissure generated in Vietnam lies behind our conflicted feelings over the war in Iraq. We can’t talk rationally as a nation about important issues because of deep-seated, unresolved family dynamics. If you prefer the comparative calm of the fifties, then you know how to vote. If you uphold the progressive hopes of the sixties, then it is clear which candidate represents you. The only problem with this pattern is that many of us missed the fifties and the sixties. We’re ready to move on, to live in this moment, to meet today’s challenges rather than to relive yesterday’s news.
Living with this conflict is comparable to listening to our parents argue. We’ve heard all the lines, all the rhetoric, and all the old grudges. We can recite them from memory, and we’ve been exhausted by the gridlock. We haven’t bothered to speak up because we know our parents were too busy arguing to listen. The shouting match showed no signs of abating, so we let the circus pass us by. Instead of joining the conversation, we elected to start our own companies, clubs, and churches. The creative brain drain from civic activities has been well documented. Those who were turned off by the partisan rancor eventually turned off the pundits on TV. We are on the Internet instead, arguing about the minutia that remains distinctly ours—music, movies, television, shopping. We don’t want to be superficial. But with no creative political options, we opt out. If we hope to engage the next generation in public life, then this culture war, rooted in bitter recriminations, must stop. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must call a cease-fire.
Those of us who’ve inherited this war have seen enough casualties. John Marks and I were born at the end of the baby boom and the beginning of Generation X. We understand the majority position and empathize with the minorities who’ve been sidelined by the sheer size of the opposition. Consider this book an effort to bridge the generation gap. I’m here to help those over fifty understand what is coming. I stand between the baby boomers and their children, brokering a truce. As a professor, I’ve invested heavily in Generation Y, hoping that they will enact enough changes to make room for my children—Generation Z!
Seeking Wisdom
Seek wisdom, not knowledge.
Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future.
Native American PROVERB
I recount our recent history in an effort to fill in gaps in our understanding. We must comprehend where we’ve been if we hope to figure out where we’re going. I’ve seen the abuses of power represented by Watergate. The special prosecutor’s hearings interrupted hours of my favorite TV cartoons. (Did you realize that Hillary Clinton was part of the legal team investigating Nixon’s White House? Republicans have struggled with her for a looooong time!) I watched Nixon’s sad wave goodbye on the White House lawn. I also understand the faith embodied by the first “born again” president, Jimmy Carter. His Southern Baptist beliefs led him to broker peace in the Middle East. Yet I also endured the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis that accompanied his peaceful negotiations. After such international embarrassment, Americans desperately wanted to return to the fifties era of strength and power. Ronald Reagan played the part of forceful leader resisting the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism was a victory for freedom around the world.
Unresolved tensions about Vietnam, drugs, and the sixties fueled the vitriol hurled at the Clintons and the Bushes. Bill Clinton strapped on the mantle of President Kennedy, declaring himself “A Man from Hope.” His appearance playing saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show sent a clear signal that he embraced civil rights. As “entertainer in chief,” Clinton demonstrated a mastery of the electronic medium. His obfuscations about inhaling marijuana and dalliances with White House intern Monica Lewinsky also sparked latent fears of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. (Did you realize that Monica’s famous blue dress was found in her mother’s apartment—in the Watergate complex?) To his detractors, Clinton represented too much freedom and not enough presidential responsibility. The impeachment proceedings against him were a recapitulation and payback for the embarrassment borne by the Nixon administration.
George W. Bush represented a return to the fifties. He may have engaged in alcohol abuse or cocaine use, but Bush confessed his sins and seemed genuinely contrite. He experienced the dangers of too much personal freedom and welcomed the responsibility he found in his newfound faith. While Clinton parsed verbs, Bush offered plain-spoken surety. He distanced himself from his patrician upbringing, adopting a Texas rancher lifestyle as a populist alternative. To those tired of Clinton’s libertinism and excess, Bush offered a down-home throwback: cowboy boots and pickup trucks.
Yet all the tough talk in the world seemed insufficient in dealing with a nearly unseen enemy. How could a band of terrorists bring down the World Trade Center? They used our strengths against us, hijacking our own planes. They crashed into our most impressive symbols of financial prowess and military might. September 11, 2001, humbled and angered us. We marched into the Middle East with unprecedented firepower. Afghanistan fell almost without resistance. We submitted Iraq to “shock and awe.” Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda proved they could not only run but also hide. We attacked nations, but our enemies were individuals. American technology ended up undermined by insurgents with homemade bombs. We terrorized others with torture at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We operated like a powerful empire but proved incapable of ferreting out an ideology. We desperately need leaders who can protect freedoms while serving as responsible world citizens. Such nuance has been lost in our prolonged and pointless culture war.
The next generation admires the civic responsibility of the fifties and the progressive art and music of the sixties. They have embraced a both/and view but have been alienated by either/or debates. A purple state of mind embraces freedom and responsibility. It takes the best of history but leaves the worst excesses (on both sides) behind. It blows away the purple haze hanging over our past. This chapter highlights key moments that got us into this mess. It will offer tangible proposals for moving on with maturity.
Nixon Versus Kennedy
For almost 50 years, we have been sorting out the choices represented by the first televised presidential debate, Republican Richard M. Nixon versus Democrat John F. Kennedy. On September 26, 1960, Vice President Nixon and Senator Kennedy squared off under the moderation of ABC’s Howard K. Smith. Over 80 million viewers tuned into the debate, which pitted Nixon’s experience (eight years as Eisenhower’s vice-president) against Kennedy’s comparative youth (one term as a U.S. senator). Both candidates offered hawkish opposition to the Communist threat represented by the Soviet Union. They debated issues of national debt, farm subsidies, welfare, and health care that continue to be unresolved. They drew distinctions about the role of government to stimulate economic growth. But Nixon and Kennedy diverged most significantly in style rather than substance.
Kennedy arrived at the debates looking tan, rested, and energetic. Nixon looked haggard, having recently fought off the flu. He refused to don makeup, figuring his forceful words would rule the day. Those who listened to the debate on the radio found Nixon the victor. Yet those watching the debate on tiny black-and-white televisions saw something else. They saw Nixon sweat while Kennedy smiled. Although Nixon was only five years older than Kennedy, his demeanor seemed comparatively ancient in outlook and energy. Nixon’s noticeable five-o’clock shadow didn’t help either.
Nixon learned the connections between style and substance too late in the campaign. Makeup covered his beard in three subsequent television debates. But Kennedy gained just enough confidence and votes to capture the closest general election of the twentieth century. Just one-tenth of 1 percent of votes separated Kennedy from Nixon. Americans have remained almost equally divided ever since.
The legacy of John F. Kennedy remains remarkably hopeful and progressive. Consider the optimism behind his war on poverty. Having watched the Russians beat Americans into orbit, Kennedy redefined the terms of the space race. How much chutzpah did it take to engage in a race to the moon? His version of American government looks almost absurdly hopeful in hindsight.
When Richard Nixon campaigned for president in 1968 (and for reelection in 1972), he promised an alternative to the vexing Vietnam War. Nixon expanded the Cold War efforts to include Cambodia and Laos. He presented a stronger America that refused to be intimidated. At the same time, Nixon engaged in a remarkable array of diplomatic missions to China and the Soviet Union. He met his adversaries face-to-face, winning surprising concessions and forging unexpected alliances.
Behind their policies, presidents Kennedy and Nixon represented divergent attitudes toward profound social change within America. The Kennedy years brought glamour to the White House. Entertainers like Marilyn Monroe sang sultry birthday greetings to President Kennedy. An air of celebration could also be read as a reign of permissiveness. A Democratic administration presided over the explosion of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Progressive politics coincided with experimentation and unrest. The Nixon presidency offered a return to law and order. Freedom took a backseat to responsibility. In 1971, President Nixon identified drug abuse as public enemy number one in the United States. He created the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (it became the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973). We’ve been fighting America’s longest war, the war on drugs, ever since.
Purple Haze
Jimi Hendrix’ song “Purple Haze” epitomizes the fuzzy grasp of reality that accompanied drug experimentation in the sixties. The title allegedly arose from a powerful batch of LSD served to Hendrix by Owsley Stanley. Some have also attributed it to a strain of purple marijuana. Hendrix said the inspiration arrived in a dream. Whatever the derivation, “Purple Haze” is rooted in altered states of consciousness. Released in 1967, “Purple Haze” served as the psychedelic anthem for San Francisco’s summer of love. The key to the song’s eerie sound is harmonic dissonance. Jimi’s guitar is tuned in B-flat, while Noel Redding’s bass plays E octaves. Such discordant sounds matched the era perfectly. A clash of cultures resulted in something jarring and new. Jimi didn’t just play rock music, he offered the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Consider the transcendent promises contained in his phrase, “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.” Some heard it as a sexual provocation, a pledge to kiss a guy. But the sound made it clear that his sights were set in the great beyond. At his seminal appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, Jimi transported the crowd to a higher state of consciousness. He demonstrated the otherworldly power of raw feedback, playing his guitar behind, above, and beyond himself. Hendrix stepped into the role of sexual shaman, licking, caressing, and stroking guttural sounds from his Stratocaster. In setting his guitar on fire during “Wild Thing,” Hendrix offered his gifts to the rock gods. It is an incantation, sacrificing his most precious possessions to the altar of altered states.
Unfortunately, Jimi’s life ended up in a similar state of self-immolation, falling to pieces just as suddenly and tragically. The Experience Music Project in Seattle serves as a permanent archive for all things Hendrix. EMP founder Paul Allen spent part of his Microsoft millions acquiring Hendrix memorabilia, bringing it back to Jimi’s hometown of Seattle. It is a memorial to a musical messiah. The hall dedicated to Jimi is fittingly called “Sky Church.”
To others, “Purple Haze” demonstrated a world utterly adrift. The idyllic visions of Woodstock were undercut by the horrific murder at Altamont. With Hell’s Angels serving as security, 1969’s other free concert (at Altamont Speedway in Northern California) ended in death rather than musical bliss. Every time Rolling Stone magazine presents another rosy retrospective of the sixties, I wonder why it refuses to acknowledge the dark side of psychedelia. How can it hold up Hendrix, Joplin, and Jim Morrison as departed saints, when they are also exhibits A, B, and C in the perils of drug abuse? They were amazing and stupid at the same time. Great talents squandered by excess. So when parents who lived through the worst of the sixties attempt to spare their children the same amount of destructive experimentation, I applaud. “Just say no” arose from painful, lived experience. It may have been simplistic, but it was preferable to self-destruction.
Recent films like Drugstore Cowboy, Trainspotting, and Requiem for a Dream capture both the allure and the demolition of drugs. They provide an audio-visual approximation of a drug trip. Their images are intoxicating and attractive—the ultimate music videos. Yet their message is clear: Despite the attraction, do not be deceived—drugs will kill you. They serve as cautionary tales for a stylish era. Today’s students have largely learned from the painful past. Rates of teenage pregnancies, drug use, and violence have hit 40-year lows. The parents from a turbulent era raised remarkably respectful, well-behaved kids. Demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss noted the surprising generational shift:
Boomers started out as the objects of loosening child standards in an era of conformist adults. Millennials are starting out as the objects of tightening child standards in an era of non-conformists adults. By the time the last Millennials come of age, they could become…the cleanest-cut young adults in living memory.
To a large degree, Generation Y has embraced the family values of the 1950s. But its rebellion remains wrapped in the profane packages of the 1960s.
Consider the violent, R-rated film Fight Club (1999). It is a scathing critique of consumer culture and middle-class values. We follow Jack, the bored protagonist, on a brutal slide into an underworld of macho self-abuse. Jack longs for genuine feeling, even if he must shed blood to achieve it. So while Jack may be a mild-mannered bureaucrat by day, he rallies his friends for bare-knuckled bar fights at night. Fight Club unleashes the fragile postmodern male id with frightening results. What begins as an invigorating alternative devolves into Project Mayhem, a prescient precursor to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Schizophrenia leads to destructive nihilism.
This is contrasted by the diagnosis offered by the toughest puncher in the club, Tyler Durden. He summarizes the isolation of a generation raised in affluence rather than upheaval:
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s— we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war…our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very p— off.
When I showed Fight Club to a class of undergraduate students, they nodded in recognition. They connected with Tyler’s frustration. During a class discussion afterward, a student announced, “We’re rebels.” When I asked what they were rebelling against, he said, “Our parents.” is all sounded more than vaguely familiar, so I pushed further. “What does that look like?” The students answered, “We don’t want to be like our parents. Drinking. Doing drugs. Getting lots of divorces…we’re rebels!” e most rebellious behavior imaginable? Abstinence!
While baby boomers harrumph about presidential candidates’ ancient drug use, their children are begging for them to grow up. Parents complain to MTV about Britney Spears’ kiss with Madonna. Switchboards light up from viewers shocked by Janet Jackson’s nipple slip during the Super Bowl halftime show. Yet the next generation lets out a collective yawn. They’ve already seen it, done it, or dismissed it. They identify with the band Weezer, which recorded a song titled “Tired of Sex.” They are ready to move on, past the provocation to more substantive issues. Rivers Cuomo of Weezer asks, “Oh, why can’t I be making love come true?”
A New Conversation
Craig: My introduction to what it meant to follow Jesus was to be a laughingstock. It meant bad hair, bad makeup, and bad TV. Is this what I signed up for? This whole tension of red state and blue state, this is the tension that I live with—how do I own my own people who so make me cringe on a regular basis? This nomenclature of left and right, red and blue is not helpful right now.
John: It’s not meant to be helpful. It’s meant to do exactly what it does. I’m not happy with what people on the traditional left, or Democrats, say is their worldview. I honestly don’t know if they have one. I’m as weary as anybody in this country of the politically correct dialogue, which basically says, “I’m a victim and you’re not. No, I’m a victim and you’re not.” It’s useless. It’s done. It’s dead. Postmodernism is dead. All those answers on the secular side are basically dead.
John Marks and I stand between generations. We are old enough to understand the boomers’ intra-generational issues, yet we’re still young enough to identify with the discontent of those who followed. We embarked on a purple state of mind because we’re desperate for a new paradigm, hungering for a different set of talking points. We each risked alienating our constituencies. Coming from evangelical Christianity, I am part of the fifties tribe, which is struggling to protect home and hearth. As a journalist, John Marks identifies with the political left and their tattered ideals. We both find ourselves embarrassed by those we represent. I ask how God’s people could have turned Jesus into a hater. John questions why allegedly free-thinking people are so close-minded when it comes to religion. A purple state of mind tries the patience of both sides. It runs the risk of disloyalty for the sake of a larger goal.
We must put the past behind us. We can no longer afford to be divided over issues of sexuality and drug use when global crises demand our attention. To lead the world, we must get past our adolescent fixation on who did what to whom. The rumor mills that trumped up charges against the Clintons in Whitewater or George W. Bush with evasion of the Vietnam War have done nothing but distract us. How much negative energy has been expended on investigations that went nowhere? We’ve been busy digging up dirt when we should have been building roads and schools. We tore down a government in Iraq rather than solidifying our own ability to lead by example. Shame on us for obsessing over the past instead of investing in the future. No wonder voters in 2008 longed for change.
The Gospel According to Austin Powers
Our desperate need for freedom and responsibility rests in the seemingly contradictory letters of the apostle Paul. He applied his godly advice in a unique way for the audience he was addressing. To Corinthian Christians navigating a libertine culture, he preached caution. Corinth was noted for temples dedicated to Apollo and Aphrodite. Worship at these temples often included sex with temple prostitutes. They were thought to serve as conduits for the divine. An intimate sexual encounter on temple grounds was comparable to an experience with the gods. So imagine how confused early Corinthian Christians may have been about what constituted proper worship of Christ. Their understanding of Christian freedom knew no bounds. Paul urged the Corinthian church to exercise spiritual discipline, to get their house in order. He insisted they “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18). To those who claimed, “Everything is permissible,” Paul responded with a chastening, “Everything is not beneficial” (1 Corinthians 10:23).
In Corinth, even eating meat could involve idolatrous activity. The local cults of Apollo and Aphrodite controlled so much of the public consciousness and economy that new believers were encouraged to examine the sources of their food supply. Food sacrificed to idols may not be contaminated physically, but Paul challenged the Corinthian to demonstrate sensitivity toward those who may have confused or conflated eating with idolatry. Paul urges the Corinthian believers to take responsibility for their Christian brothers and sisters. To a chaotic church, he preaches order, propriety, and maturity.
Yet to the uptight church in Galatia, Paul preaches freedom. The new believers clung too closely to their Jewish roots. Perhaps out of fear of persecution, the local church leaders insisted that new Christians adopt the rigorous (old) rules of Hebraic law. Gentile converts were expected to get circumcised according to Jewish ritual. Paul considers such attempts to bind people to ancient purity laws as a threat to the gospel of grace. He insists, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). He begged the Galatian Christians to loosen up, to relax their standards in the name of Christ.
Was Paul contradicting himself? By no means! In each letter, he concludes with an appeal to love. To the legally minded Galatians, Paul summarizes the law in a single command, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14). To the battling Corinthians who confused sex with love, Paul spells out the attitudes and actions that constitute love. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” (1 Corinthians 13:4). He preaches freedom to Galatia and responsibility to Corinth because they each need to apply the message in a unique way.
Unfortunately, we often fail to identify our particular blind spots. Legalistic churches will often reiterate the call to purity given to the Corinthians. Lax churches will return to Paul’s letter to the Galatians to justify more license. Those who need freedom cling to responsibility. Christians who need to learn responsibility insist upon the freedom Paul grants to Galatia. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery urges us toward maturity. In the comedic conclusion, Austin gets the drop on a surprised Dr. Evil. But Evil remains unflappable and punches Austin’s buttons: “We’re not so different, you and I. However, isn’t it ironic that the very things that you stand for—free love, swinging parties—are all now, in the nineties, considered to be evil?” Austin retorts, “No, man, what we swingers were rebelling against is uptight squares like you whose bag was money and world domination. We were innocent, man. If we’d known the consequences of our sexual liberation we would have done things differently, but the spirit would have remained the same. It’s freedom, baby, yeah!” Austin Powers connects wisdom, experience, and the spirit all in one interrelated package. Dr. Evil offers a challenge: “Face it—freedom failed.” With the sounds of the sixties anthem “What the World Needs Now Is Love” playing in the background, Austin concludes, “No man, freedom didn’t fail. Right now we’ve got freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time.” Even sassy movie stars can capture profound truths.
It is not freedom versus responsibility. It is not the law and order of the Republican Party or the liberal policies of the Democratic Party. We need a strong military to defend our freedoms. We need unregulated markets to encourage innovation. We need social agencies to check our greed and support “the least of these.” We must find freedom and responsibility between the parties. We must learn to listen to Paul’s competing calls. Christian maturity incorporates the whole of scripture and applies it to an integrated life. We must be aware of our history. We must recognize how we’ve become so divided. We must grow up as a nation, moving on to freedom and responsibility rather than dragging each other into ancient history. The radical claims of Paul continue to challenge us. Libertines may need to give up some freedoms for the health of others. Conservatives may need to unwind enough for the Spirit to enter in.
Adolescence is an experiment in self-governance. It is about identifying your own strengths and weaknesses, learning to moderate. Sometimes we fall on our faces from too much excess. At other times, we shrink back from opportunities we should have seized. Highly responsible people may sprint to early success and wake up 20 years later, wondering what all the compliance wrought. They will long for freedom. Those raised in a borderless environment will have to find a roadmap that shows where the blind curves and dangerous precipices are located. Maturity arises when those maps have been internalized, when familiarity with biblical wisdom coincides with personal experience. We appreciate the gift of freedom, but we also recognize when enough is enough. Only with our house in order can we begin to focus outwardly. We do not merely play thought police, checking and correcting others. Rather, we take on the deeper challenge of walking beside others, inviting them to join us on the journey. It’s a very groovy time.
CHICAGO, Illinois (
