Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

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Do Your Characters Talk to You?

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The news report made quite a splash. Researchers at Durham University in the U.K. teamed up with The Guardiannewspaper and the Edinburgh Book Festival to do a study of authors. And the study reported that two-thirds of authors hear their characters speak while they’re writing. 

My first thought was, this is news?

The study was more of a survey. Some 181 authors who participated in the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2014 and 2018 were asked an array of questions. The biggest surprise, at least to the researchers, was that 63 percent of the authors hear their characters speak, and 61 percent say their characters can act independently. 

I’ve been listening to my characters speak since I’ve been writing. I’ve experienced characters getting a mind of their own and doing both the expected and the unexpected. Other writers I’ve talked with say they’ve experienced the same thing. Of course, characters speak. Of course, authors hear them speak. Of course, characters get themselves totally out of character and screw things up, at least temporarily. This is part of what makes them real to the author and the reader.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Poets and Poems: River Dixon and “Left Waiting”

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Time is our greatest asset, poet River Dixon writes in the introduction to his poetry collection Left Waiting: And Other Poems. It can be painful, unforgiving, and indifferent, he says. Squandering it can be devastating. “But time also gives us those moments when we can step back, put down the load we carry and recognize that there is something more at work here than what we can define. It’s these moments that we find another precious commodity: words.” 

Time and words are themes running through Left Waiting. There is a sense of time fading, like the dying rays of the sun and like what happens when as we age, and decades seem to pass increasingly faster. Where did the time go? How did the children grow up so quickly? I blinked and the four-year-old was graduating from college.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

The Sacredness of the Ordinary

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I’m reading Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith by Karen Wright Marsh, and I’m struck by how ordinary all these famous Christians actually were. I ponder the thought that perhaps it’s our celebrity culture than permeates my thinking about people known as heroes and heroines of the faith. 

Consider Christians like Mother Teresa, one of the most famous saints in our own lifetimes. She was a woman who dedicated her life to God, and then wondered why God had stopped speaking to her. For decades. She lived with constant doubt, because, as she often said, God doesn’t call us to success; He only calls us to faithfulness.

Brother Lawrence started adult life as a soldier, was eventually crippled, and had to find something else to do with his life. He washed up on the shores of faith. And it took him almost his entire life to realize that washing dishes was a way to practice the presence of God.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poems for Holy Week

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The lull before

After Mark 14:12-31

It is the usual meal,
the annual observance
of deliverance from
the angel of death
in the land of pharaoh,
the last and ultimate
plague foretold,
the death of the firstborn.
It is a celebration, yet
quiet and somber,
an annual thanksgiving
for salvation, redemption.

And yet. And yet.
This is different.
No plans are made.
It’s all last minute,
almost haphazard,
but directed, the man
with the water jug
will lead them 
to the house,
to the upper room.
Imagine the surprise
of the two disciples
told to do this.

They prepare the meal.

He talks of many things.
Betrayal by one present.
Betrayal by one who dips
bread.
He talks of the bread,
with a threefold command:
take it, eat it, understand it
as my body.
He talks of the wine,
with a threefold command:
take it, drink it, understand it
as my blood poured out.

They sing. They go 
to the olive groves
to rest, to pray.
The night begins.
It is the lull before.

Photograph by James Coleman via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The darkness

After Mark 15

The day that begins 
in darkness
and ends in darkness,
the day of arrest,
the day of trials,
the day of beatings,
the day of ridicule,
the day of mocking,
the day of scourging,
the day of jeering,
the day of carrying
a cross through crowds,
the day of spikes 
driven through hands,
the day of thirst,
that terrible thirst,
the day the father
who loves him
turns away,
the death of death.

The sky cracks open,
the earth shakes,
the darkness engulfs,
the curtain tears.

It is done.

Photograph by Jason Blackeye via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday silence

After Mark 15:42-47

It is not the nothing day,
although it’s common 
to think of it as that,
a bridge between
the Friday of death
and the Sunday of life.
But it is preparation day,
actually, the time to be
used to prepare for Sabbath.
The body is sought.
The body is granted,
The body is taken down.
The body is wrapped in linen.
The body is taken to the tomb.
The body is placed there.
The stone is rolled to seal the tomb.
The body is left in darkness.
It is the day of preparation.
It is the day before Sabbath.

It is the day they hide themselves away,
the day they tremble in fear,
the day they expect the pounding
on the door, the day their fate
becomes what his has been.
But it is not that day, yet.

It is the day of preparation,
and the Sabbath comes.

Photograph by Maithilee Shetty via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Just a few words

After Mark 16:1-13

A decision made to go
and anoint meets the reality
of a stone blocking the way.
“But who will move it
for us?” they ask.
A legitimate question, 
answered by the new reality:
the stone was already
rolled away. No one
needed to do it for them;
it was already done.

And inside the cave
they find a young man,
sitting calmly, waiting
for them, dressed
in white, and pointing
to the empty shroud.
His few words explain
and give direction
to the new reality.

The heavens had split,
the earth had shook,
the curtain had torn,
and now time itself
had cracked wide open.

Photograph by Robert Koorenny via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Top photograph by Stephanie LeBlanc via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Etiquette of the Walk (in the Days of the Coronavirus)

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In the days of the coronavirus,
we may be self-isolated or
we may be quarantined, but
one thing we’re encouraged
to do is walk.

Walk in the neighborhood.
Walk in the park (even if
facilities are closed).
Walk in the vacated downtown
streets so empty, streets framed
by silent concrete canyons.

Walk in the forest, if one
is close by; even a woodland
trail will suffice.

But in these days of the coronavirus,
a process has quickly put itself
in place, a process we might call
the Etiquette of the Walk.

If you walk faster than
the walker ahead, you pass
on the left or the right
by a good six feet.

If you encounter 
a walker coming 
toward you, follow
the etiquette of the walk.

If the walker is 
older than you, 
you yield and 
swerve left
or right by your
6 or 8 feet.

If the walker is
a mother or father
with children or
a baby carriage,
you yield. Always.
No exceptions.

Dog walkers yield 
to all others;
no exceptions.
Dog walkers 
encountering
dog walkers
yield to each
other; both 
swerve, no matter
how badly the dogs
seek acquaintance.

Singles encountering
couples always yield,
unless the single
is older.

If you cannot swerve
by your 6 or 8 feet, 
you swerve by as much
space as possible.

In all cases,
you smile and
say hello.

You will know
the apocalypse
has arrived
when cyclists
yield to walkers
in crosswalks.
It happened
to me yesterday,
and I expected
the sky to split
open and 
the four horsemen
to appear.

They didn’t, but
you know what
I mean, in these days
of the coronavirus.

Photograph by Iwoji Iwata via Unsplash. Used with permission.

When the Story is Not What You Think It Is

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I suppose you could call me a Les Mis fan. I’ve seen the stage version of Les Misérables twice. I’ve seen the movie twice. I’ve watched the anniversary specials on PBS (the ones they show during fundraising months). I know the words to the big songs. I am deeply enthralled with the character of Jean Valjean. My heart breaks for Fantine. I laugh at and secretly adore watching the comic and grasping Thenardiers.

What I haven’t done is read the book by Victor Hugo. Perhaps it was the size – 1,222 pages of the “complete and unabridged” edition we have. Perhaps it was my wife telling me, as she read it, “There must be 300 pages describing the sewers of Paris. It goes on for page after page about the sewers.” Eewww. She surprised me when she said she loved the book.

Last year, I spotted a book at the local bookstore, and only saw the title on the spine first: The Novel of the Century by David Bellos. Ah, I thought, a book about David Copperfield, or Great Expectations, or Vanity Fair. Uh, no. It was subtitled “The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables.” That book about sewers. Perhaps watching the movie version yet again would suffice; the sewer scene in the movie is the vastly abbreviated version of what the book contains.

The Grace of Les Misérables by Matt Rawle has changed my mind. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.