Skip to main content

Idle Tales: a reflection on the Easter service and my writing.

I was really moved by the Easter sermon that my pastor, Christina (yes, my church has a female pastor, its awesome) gave on Easter.

She began by telling the story of when Mary, the other Mary, and Johanna went to tend to Jesus in his tomb.  They were just planning on paying their respects (as you do with the dead).

"But something happens at the tomb that goes against everything they know to be true."

  1. The tomb is empty.
  2. There are 2 sparkly messengers there, telling them that there is dead among the living.

The women go rushing back to the disciples telling them what they have just heard.  And the disciples considered these "idle tales", and they did not believe the women.

An Idle Tale. The Greek word is Leros, usually reserved for the ramblings of someone who is suffering from delirium.

And this is when I started thinking about my writing.

We as Christians believe in this "Idle Tale". We believe in a lot of them.

"The dead come back to life? Maybe in a Stephanie Meyer novel.  Not in real life."

 How can you be so sure?

I think what makes Fiction so great, is that it has some sort of Truth.  That somewhere within its "Idleness", its delirium, there is something that we can hold on to. Something we can learn from.

Just like the Easter story.

It's interesting to me that the words they used to translate what the women said is Idle.  As if they were useless, as if they don't work. As if the audience knew that nothing would come from what they said.

I worry that my writing will be considered the same.  Crazy talk.  Meaningless babble.

But I'm a Christian.   I believe in a lot of "Idle Tales".

And I need to believe in my writing too.

I need to say to the Idle Tales in my head, the ones that say "Your writing is a waste of time." or "Your writing is bad." or "Nobody will read this."...

How can you be so sure?




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

Okay there are so many places I want to take this post, and I'm not sure where I want to start, so I'll just start with cover art and a quick summary of the book: This story focuses on the adventures of 5 Americans on an uncharted island.  It starts during the American Civil War, where 5 northern prisoners of war decide to escape by hijacking an air balloon. After flying through a storm for several days, they finally land on some unknown island. They name it "Lincoln Island" as tribute to their president, Abraham Lincoln. The five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerin (!), iron, an electric telegraph (!) a cliff side home, and even a seaworthy ship. Throughout their time on the island, there seems to be a deus ex machina at work, delivering chests of goods and rescuing them when in danger. Eventually, they find out the secret of the island and the gifts. Captain Nemo.  Yes, that Captain Nemo from 20,000...

Writing Update

Hello everyone! Just a quick writing update before I head for vacation later this week.  There probably won't be an update next Monday, and the usual Weekly Writing Progress posts will resume in March (I'll do another quick update before then). As I've mentioned, I am in rewrites for my main project.  I finished the rewrite of chapter one (and it is somewhere just over 2,000 words). While my rewrite is going better than I anticipated (now that I know the direction that I want to go), I still find that writing long is difficult. I'm so used to writing short stories, that when I try to write something long, I know I tend to ramble. I am sure that is something that will get better the more the write and the more I practice but for right now its a fine line for me between writing not enough, and just sort of...rambling. I've never been one for what I like to call "fluffy" language. I don't like a lot of extra detail, but at the same time, this ha...

Coffee Shop Chat!

What I Did This Week... This week has been super busy!   Sunday:  Had a meeting at Job #2 suuuuper early in the morning (I am NOT a morning person), and then it was off to church for the Palm Sunday service, which was awesome.  The church was freshly decorated for the season, and the children had a Palm Parade, where they walked around the block, waving their new palms around.  Super cute.  Then, I went to the coffee shop to TRY to get some writing in (that didn't go too well, but I had a delicious pot of green tea). And then I came home and worked on school work (I get my Masters in 2 months!). Workout and Meditation. Monday:  Worked at Job #1 (the library), ran errands, workout and meditation. Tuesday:  Worked at Job #2 (corporate job, ew). Had a TERRIBLE day, but that was made better by these beautiful flowers from my SO: Wednesday:  Worked on my Grad Portfolio ALL DAY (Did I mention I get my Masters in TWO MONTHS??) ...