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Neil Gaiman: Reposted as something that can be reblogged. ON WRITER'S BLOCK.
I’ve seem to be hitting writer’s block far too often now. My grade in my creative writing class is suffering because i don’t turn in anything because i’m never really satisfied with anything i do. all my good ideas seem to turn into bad ones once i write it down. How do you get pass writers… -
The first official collaboration between Yuko Ota and myself. I made the mistake of sitting her in front of my computer last night to doodle and she started drawing this amazingly trashy romance cover. Instead of moving on with our lives, however, together we put together this picture. I apologize to all of humanity for it.
Most of the line art is Yuko and most of the colors are mine. Also, the contorted spine is very much intentional.
So, this is a thing that happened last night? I’ve been threatening to draw Kim and Balthazar in a romance novel cover for a while now, and then Aaron told me to draw something on his cintiq, and then I did, and then I Aaron and I were hanging out until 2AM finishing it… so, uh.
oh my god radnar what are you doing, stop that
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I think the most disturbing thing here is seeing what I’d look like in a rust-coloured shirt. Beautiful art.
A magpie with a Neil, drawn in PS, about 5 hours
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(Source: time-fucked, via nattfink)
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(via heavenisalibrary)
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Happy 9/10/11!
(via ibelittlebutfierce)
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John the Elder - Love
Greetings, dearly beloved. I can see that you all are wondering who I am and why I’ve been asked to speak to you today. My name is John and I knew Jesus during the years when he came as Messiah and gave us the greatest commandment. With my own eyes, I witnessed his life and with my own ears I listened with rapt attention as he spoke. I can still remember his greatest commandment,
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It was a radical statement – the Master told us that our identity would not be based on descent from Abraham, or the rite of circumcision, or even by obedience to the law of Moses as interpreted by the Pharisees and lawyers.
Instead of heritage or nationality or religiosity, our allegiance to Messiah would be based upon our willingness to love each other. We would be identified by the way we welcomed each other, by the sacrifices we made for each other, and for our willingness to die as he died for us.
My name is John, but I have been called many other things.
Son of Zebedee, which made me known as a Jew and a Galilean. Fisherman, which proclaimed my business as one of boats and nets. Disciple, which told the world I followed the Master.
Jesus called me and my brother James the Sons of Thunder, calling us out for our fiery tempers, our failure to be slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness. We wanted to call down fire from heaven on unreceptive villages, but the Master’s mission was about a purifying and refining fire within, the fire of the Spirit, the Comforter, who would teach us the truth.
Apostle I was called, and Elder, titles that signified my place of authority as one of Jesus’ Twelve. And indeed, as we carried the truth of the Master’s life, death and resurrection forward throughout the empire, I bore witness with authority and with courage, as one who had seen and heard and walked and talked with Jesus himself.
Today I am called John the Evangelist, because of the account, the gospel I recorded as a written witness that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Guided by the Spirit, I told the story of Jesus as I remembered him, the very Word of God made flesh, dwelling among us, tabernacling the image of the invisible God. Not a shimmering ghost or an illusion, but God himself walking as one of us.
My name is John, but when I wrote that gospel, there was only one title I used for myself.
The disciple whom Jesus loved.
All the other names I told you about have one thing in common: they identify me based on things I have done or said or been born into.
But more than all of these, I wish to be known as one loved by the Love of God, a man who walked and talked and saw and heard God himself, the Truth. As I continue to teach the truth of Jesus the Master, I continue to grow in love and into love. And this love is what makes me who I am.
And I pray the same for you, beloved. That as you come to know God, that your love for him and for his people would the defining mark of who you are.
“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
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“Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it…Cursed is the ground because of you/In toil you will eat of it/All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you…”
The idea of garden is very important to the very idea of humanity. Those of you who follow my academic journey know that I recently wrote a paper about Sam Gamgee and the heroics of the earthy.
Now I get to BE Sam Gamgee.
The campfire area, long overgrown, is being reclaimed as a beautiful place. Over the past week, I have taken weedeater, garden gloves, rake and garden hoe in hand in order to take back Oklahoma clay from the angry organisms known as sand burrs, poison oak, crabgrass and stray oak saplings that - ironically for a camp named “Oakridge” - simply do not belong.
But here’s the thing:
I love overgrowth. I revel in underbrush.
I walk in the forest and delight in the places where the path is covered over with roots and wildflowers and mosses and are untouched by human hands. I rejoice at the signs in national parks insisting that human visitors leave things be.
I am the Lorax; I speak for the wilds.
But one man’s wilds are another man’s weeds.
(This is the part where I pull out my Tolkien scholars. Buckle up.)
Writer Matthew Dickerson writes of what he calls “Entish feraculture.” For Fangorn and his blood (sap?), the deepest beauty and value was in living, wild things, untouched by the axes of men and orc. They were dedicated to preserving that which was wild, to leaving things be.
And there is much to be learned from them.
But Dickerson also points out that in Tolkien, we see a model of horticulture practiced by the elves. Of pruning back and taking in and creating, perfecting the beauty of the world around them.
Pruning. Perfecting.
“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes,that it may bear more fruit.”
Our Gardener, for all that he is a wild lion, is a horticulturist, removing that within us that is not fruitful and cutting that which is fruitful to bring forth a more perfect, more beautiful abundance.
Where I want to be an Ent, where I want to be wild, the shears of the Father (and my fathers, in all their forms, but chiefly: Pat, my father; Prof, my mentor; Dan, my bishop and director; Brian, my Oakridge father) are clipping back, his rake is making smooth, his garden hoe is uprooting.
What I want to do is gawk at the wildflowers within the garden of my soul. Wisdom sees weeds and does what he must to cultivate and keep my ground as Temple and Eden and Hallowed.
Here’s to pruning.
May the bite of sand burrs be an encouragement to root out thorny ground.
May the burn of poison oak remind you not to touch the evil places.
May you, as I am continually doing of late, discover beautiful fruit.
Grace to you and peace be multiplied as you garden and are Gardened.
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I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady— not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.
I’m reading these words. And seeking their heart.
And then.
I get to write a monologue in the character of John the Elder. One of seven, and the one which I may get the chance to deliver.
I’m blessed.
Even in exhaustion. And leadership fatigue. And fatigue of the normal kind.
Blessed by a Master who loves me, and who dances me into his dance, even when others are hard to love and even when my feet are too tired to dance along.
Blessed by brothers and sisters who love and encourage me, even when I am not so lovely seeming.
Blessed when my Master asks that I love those who are hardest to love and is my satisfaction when I feel empty.
Blessed that my lodges are clean to excellence.
Blessed to be poor in spirit.
Blessed to be emotionally overdrawn.
Blessed to receive and toss the blue/white basketball of sharing.
Blessed to be a man ready to love.
Blessed to be my father’s delight.
Blessed to be a mother hen.
Blessed most of all to find Breath when I need second wind.
