Glynn Young

Writing: The Right Reason

April 13, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I was at a writer’s conference, carrying with me my selection of a work in progress like hundreds of others, scheduled for a meeting with both an editor and an agent. Like most of the people there, when not in a general session or a seminar, I spent a lot of time milling about, looking at the writers’ books for sale, talking to a few people, trying to understand what I was even doing there.

At one of the luncheons, a woman sat next to me, her arms full of books, papers, notebooks, purse, briefcase, and water bottle. She smiled expansively at the rest of us at the table and announced, “I am a writer.” Loudly. Loud enough so that the people at the next table turned their heads.

She went on to tell us, knowing we were all phenomenally interested, that she was in her positive affirmation mode. Declaring herself to be a writer meant, as night followed day, that she was one. And she went on to explain what that meant.

“One day,” she said, “I will be on that dais, getting ready to make the luncheon address. I will be signing books during the meet-the-authors sessions. My books will be on the best-seller lists. I will be mobbed by people asking for advice and the name of my agent, and manuscripts thrust in my face to read.” She smiled. “I will not just be a writer; I will be an author” (emphasis in the original). She looked around, a smug smile on her face. “And each of you knows that’s what you want, too.”

The rest of us at the table suddenly discovered reasons why we had to be somewhere else. And if we had to choose between two good seminars scheduled at the same time, the decision would be easy once we saw which one she had chosen.

What struck me about her words wasn’t her brazenness. It was that she didn’t want to become a writer, not really. What she instead wanted was the experience of becoming a writer. The difference was, and is, huge. One implies work; the other implies adulation. One implies a love for others; the other implies a love for self.

In Forgotten God: The Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit, Francis Chan asks a rather pointed question about Christians’ desire to be “filled with the Spirit.” And that question is, “Do I want to lead or be led by the Spirit?”

It’s not unlike “do I want to write or have the experience of being a writer?”

Chan asks the question rather bluntly because there’s no dancing around it; this isn’t the time to be polite. Your faith is either all about you, or it’s not. How you live your faith is either all about you, or it’s not. How you pray is either all about you, or it’s not.

Do I want to lead or be led by the Spirit?

That question requires a deep pondering, a prayerful searching of the soul. The answer isn’t as automatic as we like to think it is, or hope it is.

Because if there’s one thing that’s true about the Christian faith, it’s that it’s not about the person holding that faith. It never was and it never will be. To be a Christian is to be other-directed, in the same way Jesus was other-directed. For him, and for many of us over the centuries, it meant being other-directed to the death.

Jesus didn’t die to save himself.

That’s why Francis Chan asks that question about the Spirit.

Do I want to lead or be led by the Spirit?

Photograph by Aaron Burden via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Fleet Street and St. Bride’s Church

April 9, 2018 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Fleet Street in London has been long associated with newspapers and journalists. But it’s been a long time since any newspapers were actually located there, since all moved to other part of the metropolitan area. In the fall of 2017, I walked Fleet Street and some of the side streets on a cloudy, rainy Sunday, and say only one vestige of the area’s newspaper past – fading letters on the side of a building. A few former newspaper buildings have been listed on the historic register and preserved, but no newspapers operate here today.

St Brides interior — The interior of St. Bride’s

The area includes the Temple, still a part of the legal industry, notable buildings like St. Dunstan-in-the-West Church, the Samuel Johnson House, the Royal Courts of Justice at the western end of the street and the Old Bailey near the eastern end, and many more. On my visit that Sunday, I stopped long enough to take a photo of a lawyer’s gown and wig for sale at a shop.

St Brides Courtyard — The side courtyard of St. Bride’s, where Michael has a press conference

The church long associated with Fleet Street, so much so that it’s still called the “journalists’ church,” is St. Bride’s. The site may be one of the oldest church sites in London, dating back to the 7^th century. Seven church buildings have stood here; one was burned during the Great Fire of 1666 (and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren) and another was bombed during the German Blitz of World War II. After the war, it was rebuilt according to the Wren design.

The church contains considerable history. One of the first printing presses (and thus the origins of the newspaper business) was set up next door in 1500. The parents of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America, were married here. Author Samuel Richardson is buried here.

One of its distinctive features is the steeple, which looks exceedingly like a wedding cake (another connection to the church’s name). The interior is beautiful; the day and time I was there the church service had just ended and the parishioners were having a fellowship time and it was rather crowded and joyfully noisy.

The area of St. Bride’s and Fleet Street have a small role in Dancing King. St. Bride’s is one of the churches where Michael Kent-Hughes preaches a sermon. And Trevor Barry, who becomes a consulting attorney for Michael for the coronation, parliamentary law, and the history of the monarchy, has offices near the Royal Courts of Justice, between Fleet Street and the Thames, on a small street called Essex Street. Law offices actually exist on this street, which is close to the Temple tube station. Barry finds himself frequently taking the District or Circle line to the St. James’s Park station, about three blocks from Buckingham Palace.

Fleet Street Temple — Gown and wig for sales in Fleet Street

After his sermon at St. Bride’s, Michael does have a short press conference in the side courtyard with reporters, but it’s mentioned in the book only in passing. There are a number of more extensive scenes involving the news media, but those are mostly set at or near the palace. They include the BBC interview, the media present at Michael’s meeting with protestors, and others.

Essex Street Temple — Essex Street, where the attorney Trevor Barry has his law offices

The news media play an important role in Dancing King because they play an important role in British society and in the lives of the royal family. Michael’s experiences with the media reflect my own career background in communications and media relations, where I learned that your have good reporters, so-so reporters, and bad reporters, like every other profession.

Top photograph is the famous wedding-cake steeple of St. Bride’s. Photograph of the interior of St. Bride’s by Dilff via Wikimedia. Used with permission. Top photo and all other photos are by me and my trusty iPhone.

Writing and Publishing

April 6, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I started reading a novel recently where what mattered to the writer most was being published. I stopped after four chapters. The writing was bad. What got the book published was lust dripping from every page. I suppose some authors would be thrilled to write like that if it meant being published.

I wasn’t. You might call me the reluctant novelist.

I worked on my first novel, Dancing Priest, for years before I showed the manuscript, or even a piece of the manuscript, to anyone. I wasn’t uninterested in publishing it. I did join online groups, followed what everyone was saying about publishing, followed the blogs of agents and publishers, sent our query letters to agents, and talked to editors and others writers. And I was reading a lot of fiction, both in the general and Christian genres.

I attended a writer’s conference, and even had a session with an editor who had read a portion of my manuscript and then a group reading session with an agent and other writers. Both sessions were personally encouraging. I kept at the writing. I even kept writing after an awful experience with a review and an editor that taught me that some Christian publishers were no different than general publishers. It’s a business, like any other business, and it is business considerations that rule over everything else, including what kind of quality is published.

So, when a small publisher approached me and said they had heard I had a manuscript, I said no. It took almost a year of prodding before I finally agreed to let the publisher see it. When they came back with the offer to publish, it took six months for me to agree. I was still reacting to that negative experience with the Christian publisher, and I also understood what kind of effort would be required to market and promote the book. I already had a full-time job that was about 50 percent more than a full-time job.

We went ahead and published. And I was right to have been worried – the amount of time required was huge, in reverse proportion to the result achieved. The same thing happened with the sequel, A Light Shining.

But I learned a lot. And that made the entire experience worth it.

In On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts, Charity Craig (co-author with Ann Kroeker) quotes author Anne Lamott, who frequently sees people at writing workshops who are less interested in writing and more in being published. “The problem that comes up over and over again,” she says, “is that these people want to be published. They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You’ll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them.”

Charity and Ann both describe their own experiences with trying to be published. Both eventually got there, but not because they wanted to be published. They wanted to be writers first; they wanted to tell the story they had in them to tell. They both eventually realized that sometimes, and perhaps most of the time, it’s better to concentrate on the writing and making your story the best it can be before rushing out to try to get published. And sometimes life intervenes, and your writing dreams get put to the side.

The writing is what matters.

Photograph by Helloquence via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Southwark, the Human-Scale Cathedral

April 2, 2018 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

When you visit London, especially for the first time or two, two great churches are on the must-see list – St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. And with good reason. Both churches are known for their soaring architecture, structural beauty, and the fact they are filled with English and British history. Right down Victoria Street form Westminster Abbey is another monumental church – the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. London is a big city with big cathedral churches.

Southwark Cathedral is another church, smaller than its more famous London relatives. But of all the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen in London and England, it may be my favorite. Size has something to do with it – it’s smaller, more human-scale, still impressive, but the human eye can take it in without being completely overwhelmed.

It’s not as well known for tourists. It’s partially location – on the South Bank near London Bridge tube and train station, it’s about a half-mile walk to the Globe Theatre and Tate Modern art museum. It’s only about two blocks from the London Bridge Experience, whose replicated blood and gore I’ve so far managed to miss. The cathedral is also adjacent (about as adjacent as you can get) to the Borough Market, full of produce, stands, food shops, and restaurants and also the site of a terrorist attack in June of 2017 (not to be confused with the Westminster Bridge attack in March of 2017).

Southwark’s official name is “the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St. Saviour and St. Mary Overie,” the “overie” meaning “over the river.” A church has existed on the site since the 7^th century; archaeologists have identified the foundations of an Anglo-Saxon church there. It’s believed to have first been connected to a community of nuns, and later a community of priests. The first written reference to it is in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror’s detailed assessment of land and resources.

In 1106, the church was reestablished as a priory and followed the Rule of St. Augustine. It was then that the church was dedicated to St. Mary Over the River. A hospital was established as well, and it would eventually grow and be transferred to what is now St. Thomas Hospital near Westminster Bridge and across the Thames from Parliament. (Incorporated into St. Thomas Hospital was the old Guys Hospital near Southwark Cathedral, where the poet John Keats studied to be a doctor.)

Southwark was the staging area for pilgrimages to Canterbury, and it was in this area that Geoffrey Chaucer launched the pilgrimage made famous in The Canterbury Tales.

The order at Southwark was dissolved along with orders across England by Henry VIII in 1539, part of the English Reformation and likely inspired by Henry’s desire to get his hands on the churches’ and orders’ prodigious wealth. The building was rented to the congregation and called St. Saviour’s; in 1611, the congregation purchased the church from James I. One of the notables buried in the church is William Shakespeare’s younger brother Edmond (1607).

The church officially became “Southwark Cathedral” in 1905. Today, the Diocese of Southwark encompasses a rather large area (and includes Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury). It covers 2.5 million people and more than 300 church parishes.

Southwark Cathedral nave — This would be Michael Kent-Hughes’ view as he speaks from the pulpit

In Dancing King, Southwark Cathedral is the place where Michael Kent-Hughes begins his series of sermons at London churches, two days before Christmas Eve. The photograph here of the nave is the view Michael would have as he’s speaking to a packed church. And it is here, the next night, where almost 1,200 people will show up for a Bible study, filling the church past overflowing, beginning what will become a religious revival in the Church of England. But it will be a revival matched by intense opposition from the senior church hierarchy.

If you visit the cathedral (and it’s well worth a visit), the entry fee is a pound (a bargain compared to the big churches). You pay your fee in the gift shop, where in return you’re given a cathedral guide. You also usually warned to make sure your guide is visible when you enter the church; one of the church wardens will politely ask to see it or send you to the shop to buy one if you don’t have it. The fee doesn’t apply during church services.

Top photograph: a view of Southwark Cathedral, with one of London’s tallest office buildings, known as “The Shard,” in the background.

The Writer at Rest

March 30, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I’ve invented a word: “misculturalized.” It describes being born, raised and living in one culture when you’re probably better adapted to another culture. And the culture I should have been raised in? The one that celebrates naps. Spain. Mexico. Argentina.

How could I have been born in United States, the country that hates – hates – naps? Think of everything we miss when we succumb to temptation and take a nap: getting work done; staying busy, looking like we’re staying busy; and rest.

Rest.

While I love naps, I have a hard time with the word rest. And rest from writing? Can’t happen. It’s too much of who I am. At least that’s the excuse I make. To myself.

And yet.

We’ve had several beach vacations – Gulf Shores and nearby Orange Beach, once at Virginia Beach. And Honolulu. Some with kids, some without, and once empty nest. On the empty nest beach vacation, I’d wake early each morning, walk down to the beach, rent my umbrella and chair, and sit, reading. To be honest, it was a project – the second time I had read the unabridged version of Don Quixote. And I was doing it because my high school English teacher who taught our class the novel said you should read it three times in your life – when you’re young, when you’re middle-aged, and when you’re old.

Sitting there on the beach each morning, listening to the sounds of the waves and birds, feeling the heart, smelling the salt of the gulf, I read the Cervantes classic. And it seemed like a very different book than the one I read when I was 17.

Even though I was technically doing something, it was still rest. Sitting for long stretches of time and reading, finding myself transported to Spain in the late 1500s, and tilting at windmills, was restful.

It was the kind of experience Ann Kroeker describes in On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts (co-authored with Charity Craig). She finally convinces herself to go with her kids to a family camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and she finds herself reading and resting.

“At camp,” she writes, “I sat a lot, often with a book but just as often with nothing. I sat at a picnic table. I sat in an Adirondack chair. I sat on a beach towel on the sand, on a couch in the lodge, and in a folding chair by the calm, cold water of Lake Huron.” She did go jogging one morning.

What she was doing was engaging in mental rest. We have to take time to let our minds rest and regenerate.

Our minds, like our bodies, need a Sabbath.

Photograph by Aaron Burden via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and the Crypt

March 26, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Trafalgar Square in London is highlighted by three landmarks – the statue of Nelson in the square itself, the National Gallery on north side, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church at the northeast corner.

At ground level, you have to look up (way up) to see Nelson atop his column. The National Gallery is huge, running the entire length of the square, including both the original building and the relatively new (and contemporary) Sainsbury Wing. St. Martin’s, however, has always seemed the most striking building, perhaps because of its steeple and its architecture, which has inspired thousands of church buildings in the United States.

St Martin-in-the-Fields — The church nave

The church is named for St. Martin, born about 316 A.D. in what is now Hungary and right when Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire by Constantine. He was originally in the Roman army but left because of his faith and settled at Poitiers in France, where he founded the first monastery in France. The monastery lasted until the French Revolution in 1789. Martin was almost kidnapped by the people of Tours to become the bishop. He refused the bishop’s lifestyle and actually lived in a cave outside Tours. He was associated with many acts of healing, including raising the dead to life. He died in 397; the day of his burial, Nov. 11, is still his feast day.

A church has existed on this spot since at least 1222, when it’s first noted in the records. As the area grew in population, an official parish was organized. By about 1544, the old church building was torn down and a new, although small, church was built in its place. In 1603, when James I became king, a considerable number of Scottish nobles settled in the Charing Cross area. The church building was too small, so James had it enlarged.

Finally, in 1720, Parliament passed an act approving the construction of a new church. The architect was James Gibbs, a friend of Sir Christopher Wren. Gibbs built the church known today. The large clear glass window, rather modern in style, behind the altar was added after World War II bombing destroyed the originally stained glass.

The church today is known for its outstanding classical music ministry, with both paid concerts inside the church and free lunchtime concerts outside in the courtyard. Below ground, in what was the church crypt, there is a restaurant, Café in the Crypt, serving lunch and dinner at generally more reasonable prices than can be found nearby (this area is close to being ground zero in London for tourists from around the world).

The café and the church are among our favorite places in London. We’ve eaten here numerous times, had our first real Victoria sponge cake here, used the crypt as a refuge from the rain, and attended concerts and lectures. St. Martin-in-the-Fields is like our home away from home. (The church also has a great shop next to the crypt, and I’ve found numerous books there.)

The church has a small reference in my second novel, A Light Shining, and then only being noted as one of the places damaged during The Violence, a jihadist uprising that happens in London and other cities in Britain. In Dancing King, Michael Kent-Hughes and his chief of staff meet with the church vicar for lunch in the crypt, and Michael commits to underwrite the rebuilding and to help with the fundraising effort. This has its origin in the historical fact that the church and the area have long been associated with Britain’s royal family (the land on which the National Gallery sits was known as the Kings Mews or stables).

If you visit London, St. Martin-in-the-Fields is a must-see, and the Victoria sponge cake in the Café in the Crypt is a must-eat.

Top photograph by Robert Cutts via Wikimedia.

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