Colour bar or colour farce? How a persons's race can change.

Ths U.S. election has raised the issue of race, with the possibility of the nation's first 'black' president. It is an interesting thing to see how people are classified regarding their race. Barack Obama has one parent for each, African and European. He is what some have called 'biracial'. I heard that the same is truue of Colin Powell. In the U.S. and Britain and here in Australia, if a person is visibly part black they are just classified as 'black'. A person is either pure white or they are black. I'm told that in Liberia, in Africa, the same syndorme operates in reverse. A person is classifed as white if they are visibly part white. You are either pure black or white. In South Africa, under the apartheid regime, those people of biracial heritage were classifed as 'coloured'. Can you see the impication of this? The one person can be a black American or Australian, a white Liberian and a coloured South African. Incredible! Travel across a border and you change races. Does that make the whole issue rather ridiculous? I know that race also has issures of culture, but it is a flawed way of relating to a person, or expecting things of them, because of their race.

Why the sad endings?

Why does so much modern fiction involve grim and unhappy endings? Some people seem to think it is intellectually mature and brave, or realistic and cool to applaud sad endings. They despise idealism and people who like cheerful endings. For as long as I can remember there have been individuals who run everything down and treat it with cynicism, and think they are really cool for doing that. I'm getting to think that they are just posers. Any one who wants to go on living wants certain things to come out right. So what is their problem? Do they resent any one else being happy and optimistic because they are not? Or do they think always expecting the worst means that you will never be disappointed? I think they can be real 'phoneys' , as Holden Caulfield would have said. It can be a way of sounding tougher than they really are. Anyone who really doesn't care about anything has lost the will to live. If you can still be bothered talking, then you must have some feelings, and that means that you would like some things to have 'happy endings'. Why pretend otherwise? Who are the real cowards.? The ones who don't like to think about unhappy endings, or the ones who prented they don't care, when they do but can't admit it?
Some years ago, in Australia, a critic raised the concern that too many pessimmistic novels and films can leave kids without hope and increase their problem with depression. Obviously it is not good to make things seem better than they are and deny some of life's harsher realities, but you can overdo the idea of their being no hope in life. If ther were not some happy endings, how could anyone go on?

How do you do it?

I may never be asked by budding writers how to do it, but if I am then I know what to say. It's not original, and if anyone has some other thoughts on the subject, run them past me! But I'd say, think of something that you would really hate to see happening, and write a story about how it was prevented - the lead characters being the ones who do so. Or else write about something you would love to see happening, and design your plot around how the central characters make it happen. Of course, the characters have issues to resolve also. But when you do that, it can be a great relief to think of a good outcome, even if it is fiction. I wrote the first novel I ever did about a group of high school age kids, and the way in which the youngest one is often left out of things; and the action resolved when the others in the gang see the need to include the younger one. It was thin, hardly a profound plot at all, but that is what makes me want to speak my mind and lay out a better way. Christianity provides the spiritual input because, the longer I live, the more I can see how it is a 'try-hard' thing to try and make good outcomes in only human strength, and with only secular philosophy. The world is full of people who would like to see things get better. But huge effort has been made, and little has come of it, because the instigators left God out of the equation. Sometimes the results become quite monstrous. Communism was supposedly a doctrine to make a caring, greed-free and strife-free world society; but it relied on human strength and direction, and degenerated into brutish and vile dictatorship. It tried to set up some Christian principles but denied the Christ His place in the scheme of things, and led to a shocking fiasco.
One of my favourite books in Frank Peretti's "The Oath". It shows, graphically, how human sin grows and gets more control. And even people who start off with good intentions, without God, will eventually be duped by their own folly into fouling up the thing they try to created. If only more people could see that! But some would accuse me of ramming my ideas at them simply for saying this! Still, in God, all good things can come to pass.

What's coming next?

Christmas this year was fab. because we had a family gathering and everyone just got on well. We lost my father last year, but the rest of us got together at my mother's home. Liz and myself, all five of our children. my brother and sister in law. And we all got on well. That was an answer to prayer. I can see why some people dread Christmas. We're all supposed to show the Season of Goodwill spirit and sometimes it can be hard. Our family have been praying that Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. will see a great revival. Trying to show the Christian spirit without the help of the Holy Spirit is more than many people can manage in their own strength. So heres hoping the Lord is active in the world this year. I keep thinking about what I want to write, too. There are ways you can lift people out of their day to day reality by showing them something better, something that could be. All my life I've enjoyed getting lost in a good story, and if it's a really good one it can leave you with something to bring back with you when you have to put it down and come back to this present dimension. I've been on medication for depression since having to give up work, and one thing that can lift me out of it is imagining the action in a story I'm going to tell someday. I love a good movie - check my profile and you'll see some of the ones I really like - and it's possible to make up my own, and view them in my mind. And when the tiem is rifght I'll put them down in book form.

Being a parent

I've just finished reading the blog of a Christian mother and wife, and it's a case of 'me too.' She fears for her children, learning to live in the world as Christians and avoiding some of the cruel traps and mistakes. Like her, I find my self praying for my children, three of whom are actually adults, that they will be guided and protected and find the things they need in life. Liz and I prayed before any of our children were even conceived that if we had any children they would be saved. It is a great joy and relief to see them walking in Christ, but there are still anxieties. Our daughter quit school, spent time living in the state capital city looking for work, ringing home when some crisis arose that she wanted help with, and all we could do was be there and assist as much as possible. That and pray, of course. And the end of it, we were glad when one time she phoned us and wanted us to remind her of the words to the 23rd Psalm. It was what she turned to for comfort. That was uplifting to know. Still, it will be a relief when she settles on a direction and gets on with it. It was a very happy Christmas for us all when we got together. We did remember to pray for those not having such a pleasant time. Here's a thought for any one from the northern hemisphere who reads this: when I was younger the family lived in England for a few years. Chistmas was cold weather, sometimes snow. When we moved to Australia, I recall thinking that when Christmas is in summer then at least the homeless and the poor are not cold! I'm very grateful that it was such a happy time. If any one reading this had a sad Yuletide, please be assured that if my prayers make any difference, then you have them. And if anyone had children who cause the to lose sleep, I know the feeling.

Who says fiction is a waste of time?

I heard someone say that fiction was a complete waste of time. He wanted his son to practice reading, so he gave him an article on milk production. How rivetting! Sure, it might be worth knowing about, but unless you're into that sort of thing, reading about it becomes an effort. A good story that gets you in makes you want to read. That's not just me. I'm not judging everyone else by myself. The fiction industry is huge. Why? People like reading. Someone else ran an interesting thought by me once, too. In good narrative fiction, or real life type fiction, the reader can experience things in a way that might not be possible in real life. That might be just as well. How many people would want to go to war? But if you read some of the classics, like "All Quiet on the Western Front," the writer can give you a sense of being there - and if you need any convincing that war is not some sort of grand adventure, that should do the trick.
Some of the books I've read, like some of the better movies I've seen, let you see what the consequences of a thing can be, too. That's hardly a new idea. The Greeks of the ancient world used theatre as a didactic way of teaching moral lessons. So did dramatists in the Age of Shakespeare. So writing is a way of sharing things with others. And it can make some critical points. If you read "Jurassic Park" (Michael Crichton) one of his characters makes the point that knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, is like inherited wealth. You did not have to earn it, so you do not always have proper respect for it. Hence the problem of knowledge without conscience - a dangerous mix!

Why do we do it?

I want to write because in my own stories you can make what I want happen! If anyone ever asked my suggestion about how write, that would be mine: think of something you would really hate to happen, and write a story in which it was prevented, with your central characters being the ones involved. That way you feel committed to the story and the characters. That might seem obvious, but when I tried taking creative writing courses, they seemed to centre on what you could sell rather than what you felt strongly about. In a way, that is realism, but it seemed to me to involve a certain cynicism, as well. So I wrote what I wanted to.
If you read about the myths and cultures of the world, you come across some odd stimuli, or starting points from which to start writing. I was reading about the ancient Norse people, the Vikings. They believed in a certain type of ghost, that of an unwanted child that had been left out in the snow to die. This ghost would sometimes come back to seek vengeance on the parents who abandoned it. After reading that, I wanted to write a story in which someone found these abandoned children and took them in. I got down to it, and the result was a novel that I titled "Outcasts of Skagaray."
Other things could prompt the same feeling. I heard somewhere that the two young gunmen who carried out the Columbine High School massacre considered some people 'not fit to live.' The same attitude was true of the boy who carried out the shooting at the school in Finland. There have been some horrors of history carried out because of that sort of attitude. The Nazis who ruled Germany for part of the Twentieth Century acted on the same notion. So did the scientists or officials behind the Lynchburg Experiment in the U.S. at about the same time in history. Then back in ealier times the Romans used to discard children they considered weak. Human history is full of cruelty. But sometimes there are good outcomes. There have to be, or life could not be worth living! And sometimes creative fiction can show what might be possible, what can happen if only.....
So we keep writing. We might inspire others to keep hope and faith. Any ideas?