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The Universal Memoir that wrote itself

When my friend read the draft of this, she wept.

The nutshell is this:
I wanted to write a story that captured my story.

Recently, I was intrigued by the phenomenon of “The 6 Word Memoir” idea. I like that idea that you can share a lot about your self quickly.

It’s poetry, really. (But that word scares -some-people.)

I’ve also felt nudged to write a memoir myself. But on which part of my life? There’s a lot of drama!

And really, I don’t have the fortitude to cover the seriously painful parts of my life. It wrecks me. I see why people just hire editors for that sort of thing. But, those are the parts that offer the best memoir material.

Also, any successful memoir is written by a famous or infamous person that has a following of some sort. The other kind of written for family member to read. The only reason I want to create one, or a few (it’s not an autobiography I’m interested in, mind you) is because have so many stories that beg me to tell them. To birth them into the world. But, it’s a lot like yelling into the void or dancing alone in a hall of mirrors.

And then the idea hit me to write a short story that was a kind of universal memoir.

In the same spirit as The Little Prince and Where the Wild Things Are I started writing something and in about a day and a half it was done. It was gestating for a long while. Years. (And of course, I just mean the first draft was done.) But, in truth, the story came out in nearly one whole piece. That never really happens.

So, now, I’m in the final stages with the layout. Gorgeous photos are in place. Illustrations are forthcoming. It’s a passion project and those sort of things have to be done independently–not for the publishing industry Machine.

Since an ebook can be done so easily, that bit should be available semi-soon and I’ll list it for free or a low cost. But, the nature of this book is not good for that format. It’s just NOT the sort of book. It won’t “work” 100% if it’s only digitally available. It should be material.

It should be held and kept by the bed table. Read to children who turn its pages and hear the sounds of the paper, and feel the texture on their little fingers. It should hold the occasional tear puddle like some of my Narnia books, and my Little Prince book have. It should be beautiful and lasting and not just a click away.

And for adults it promises to have the same magic of the classic stories read to them once in the twilight nights of warm summers when the lighting bugs danced, and everything was possible.

So, I’m going to raise money and self-publish with art book quality as a short run. You can join me in this leg of the journey.

Here is the cover.
(Stop by within a week and see another spread.)

I’ll gave you more details soon.

on Waiting…

This Sunday marks the start of the season of Advent 2015.

The predominant theme of Advent is WAITING in expectation.
It’s a timeless theme.

stranded-new-york-workers-wait-patiently-in-a-long-line-to-use-a-phone-booth-to-call-home — (Before mobile phones, if a bus broke down you had to find a pay phone and wait your turn to call for rescue. These folks don’t seem too upset by it.)

Waiting makes up a big portion of our lives, doesn’t it?

Whether it’s waiting in line or in traffic or waiting for an occasion or certain situation–we do a lot of waiting.

For me, a focus on waiting pulls me out of the present moment to a moment that exists in theory. It involves hope or anxiety. Or both.

The prisoners I minister to have a life centered on waiting for their freedom. They routinely tell me that keeping busy is the best way to conquer the burden and stress of waiting.

But a closer interaction with the experience of waiting can unearth and reveal deeper spiritual longings that can both call us into a richer walk of faith and engender the growth needed to more fully surrender to God.

If we just stay busy we can miss the gifts that come only through waiting.

Because waiting is such a huge part of the human experience, it’s no wonder that Christianity has long interacted with this theme as a entry point into bigger spiritual conversations and concepts. It is through this struggle we gain growth and maturity in our walk of faith.

Patience is rarely, if ever, attained by any other means than practice.

Waiting is that practice.

Waiting on the Lord is a vibrant theme in Scriptures too, right?

Most of the stories in the Bible include the aspect of waiting. Abraham and Sarah (and many others) wait for offspring, David waits on the Lord for deliverance, the prophets wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled, Paul and the other apostles do a lot of waiting in prison, and in the season of Advent we acutely encounter Mary’s waiting for the Savior, Jesus. She is the vehicle God has chosen to birth the Prince of Peace. It’s a nine month process–on the heels of thousands of years of waiting for the Messiah.

This delivery involves a lot of anticipation and waiting.

And so too does most anything else of worth. These many stories echo our own pain and struggle.

I appreciate Mary’s expression of gratitude during her wait (a.k.a. The Magnificat-see the video below to hear “Mary’s Song” sung my John Michael Talbot). We can use her example to help us along.

Gratitude produces joy that makes waiting easier.

Waiting aptly exposes our traits of impatience, also. It works to refine us.

Henri Nouwen once wrote, “Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. ”

Rev Adele Ahlberg Calhoun recently wrote,

Waiting is how God gets at the idols of our heart. Waiting addresses the things we think we need besides God to be content: money, comfort, expedience, success or control.

TODAY’S NUGGET:

It’s a powerful lesson we find in Advent. Meditate on the longings of your heart and cultivate the seeds of advent there. Expectantly wait for God to fulfill his promises with a heart of trust and gratitude.

the sabbatical interruption ?

Life is ‘a little while’, a short moment of waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill the promise to renew everything, and will offer us a new heaven and a new earth, makes the waiting exciting. We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people speak of it whenever they smile; the sun, the moon, and the stars speak of it when they offer us light and beauty; and all of history speaks of it when amidst all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them. What is my main task during my ‘little while’? I want to point to the sings of the Kingdom to come, to speak about the first rays of the day of God. I do not want to complain about this passing world but to focus on the eternal that lights up in the midst of the temporal. I yearn to create space where it can be seen and celebrated. ~ Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey
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by way of an update…

I look around and I realize that I have all the fixings to get 4-5 more posts done on my series about humor. But, something is amiss. I am humorless indeed. It’s an irony not wasted on me and its own sort of humor.

I suppose when I was trying to understand humor in the first place it was to save myself from this point. But I got here anyway.

So now, strangely, I feel like I’m on a sabbatical.

I’m placed in it but didn’t choose it. The will to write feels gone, even though seeds are in my hand.

Today, I spent the day at the Jesuit Center and found a book on Henri Nouwen in the library and it piqued my interest in him once again.

I don’t want to have this tortured part of me that gets befuddled most Autumns and Winters but there you have it, anyhow.

Until I get my gumption back, I’ll post the occasional pieces and bits from the scratching in the dust that I’m doing now in this arid place of the soul.

Sarcasm is Useless…yeah, right!

I’m back.

Have you missed me?

I’m getting to the last half of the humor series I started a few weeks back! (see the bottom of the page for the other entires)!

Today I am exploring sarcasm.

(part 1)

This took a lot of research because I had so little understanding of sarcasm and I’ve heard it so infrequently.

That was like stretching before a jog.

You limber and ready? Let’s do this!

We take humorous sarcasm for granted because it’s so plentiful in the modern culture milieu. This is, in fact, a recent cultural development, and one the entertainment industry has much to be thankful for.

Sarcasm is actually a rather complex use of a language:

In using sarcasm we must convey the opposite of what we are saying.

This happens best by using enough vocal intonations, body language, and other hints to communicate true intent. (The less exaggeration done, the more of a butt hole you seem.)

Sidenote:
For those with language or cognitive impairments, like autism, sarcasm may be routinely misunderstood. My son’s–who has autism and learning disabilities–now has a budding understanding of sarcasm at age 14. My daughter caught on at age 3. By using more exaggeration to convey the real meaning in my use of sarcasm, I introduced him to a common use of communication. I know you’re thinking… “PARENT OF THE YEAR!”…but, yes, this was not without its problems.

His accomplishment was a milestone of development that will start to serve him well if he expects to be treated as a mainstreamed person. Nevertheless, the use of sarcastic comments in our home tends to be unnoticed by him and taken in lateral, face-value terms. We try to keep a reign on it in our home to avoid needless problems of miscommunication.

This was, at first, a bitter disappointment to me, having come from a caustic childhood environment where sarcastic mockery was more plentiful than supper leftovers. Alas, it was a call to greater maturity as well as development of alternative modes of mirth-making. For me, baby steps.

6 Things to note about the use of sarcasm:

1. Unlike many other expressions of humor, sarcasm always has a point and means to activate or thwart something. It also proves useless (or frustrating) if the hearer fails to understand the actual pointed meaning. Tip: That’s how to foil it. Just act oblivious. Easy-peasy.

2. Invariably, It is used to point out the supposed superiority of one person (or group) over another.
That’s, right…..Busted!

3. It is considered genuinely humorous only when one can duly side with the practitioner of it, and not be the object of the sarcasm/ridicule. The rare exception being when the practitioner has the master skills to appear convincingly benign to everyone involved–which few do convincingly. Groans, eye rolling, harbored resentment, passive aggression, or revenge plots indicate failure on this part.

4. The word sarcasm comes to us from the mid 16th century in the French word sarcasme. Isn’t it hard to believe that of all people and language groups on the planet that it would be the French at the source of the word?

I wonder what the source of the the word “snooty” is….

(Find out and let me know!)

Right now, I feel I should point out that “DeLay” is my married name.

The French word sarcasme was originally from late Latin, from late Greek sarkasmos. In Greek, it is sarkazein and means to ‘tear flesh,’ (lovely!). In late Greek it meant ‘gnash the teeth, speak bitterly’ (think: sneer). And like the languages from whence it came, sarcasm is often noted to be too little, too late and, of course, carnivorous.

5. The frequent use of sarcasm creates a negative, cynical, and often toxic atmosphere and state of mind. And it’s just plain old douchey (pardon my French).

6. In the classical (Greek) world, “humor” was primarily conducted as sarcasm and practiced by the upper class (who were few) to degrade and condescend the lower, poorer classes (who were many). I’m assuming that in contrast, the poorer classes, as is typical, found burping, farts, and shit jokes funny (pardon my French).

This class issue is why the use of humor was denounced by Plato and other early philosophers (who were–mind you–literate, educated, and upper class. They saw it as counter-productive and without virtue. The noble, high class aim is to be good. And of course, farting was not at all funny to Plato, ever. Not once.)

In the Republic (388e), Plato says that the guardians of the state should avoid laughter, “for ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter, his condition provokes a violent reaction.”

I’m not sure if he meant riots or just getting punched in the eye.

And now, I will leave you with this story…

A linguists professor instructs his class saying,

“Sarcasm is a poor use of language, crass and unsophisticated, and serves absolutely no sensible point.”

To which a student in the back replies, “Yeah, right!”

Sarcasm is, most often, poison humor meant to somehow injure or to thwart.

It works like a kind of tool and inflicts a kind of violence. As with all weapons, prudence and moderation will be the best course…in case all of this is getting past you. ;)

It goes without saying that, sometimes, violence is the point, so then it boils down to determining what kind of person you want to be most of the time.

Your assignment is to write something sarcastic in the comments section to prove you understood this post, or instead… if your conscious is lashing you, count and report the number of times sarcasm was used in the post.

Sarcasm tends to be misunderstood in written form. This includes, letters, emails, texts, and sky writing. The internet is replete with sarcasm misunderstood….so in

PART 2 I’ll go over how the Secret Service is considering using software to detect sarcasm online. Crazy but true.

PREVIOUS ARTICLES IN THE SERIES:

1. The primacy of humor

2. Step 1: Tickle Rats (the science and study of humor)

3. It’s not just timing, it’s specific knowledge

4. On how subversive humor works

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Laughter: The Mini BRAIN SCAN

It’s another installment in the HUMOR SERIES.

If you’re new here or late to the series, get started on these previous articles:

1 Intro: Laughing from birth

2. Step 1: Tickle Rats

3. What makes something funny may surprise you

4. Jokers ARE wild: Subversive Humor

How humor works like a mini BRAIN SCAN

(Secular) Biologist Robert Lynch, who also performs as a comedian, sees humor as an adaptive, learned trait; and one that helps us connect with others who share our values.

His theory about humor?
“You laugh because you believe it is true,” says Lynch, and his experiments seem back up his theory, at least partially.

A joke, in other words, is like a little brain scan: When we laugh, we reveal what’s inside us. -Robert Lynch

In an experiment Lynch conducted, a variety of people were video-recorded while watching an edgy comic who joked about gender inequality. The volunteers were then given a psychological test that measured their unconscious gender attitudes. Those with mid-20th century gender views of women being responsible for home and children and men bread-winning laughed harder at that joke than those with more progressive views.

In another experiment, people Lynch terms “self-deceivers” found much less humor in an entire joke reel, in general.

I’m guessing that because Lynch used this “self-deceivers” language to identify reluctant laughers, he probably laughs at just about everything. Naturally, if scientists are self-deceiving they are doing something wrong. Something unreasonable?

I’m betting that to Lynch “self-deceivers” are “other people”. Otherwise, he would term them “discerning” or “wise” or “judicious” or “pensive” or “still thinking about it” or maybe just “unsure”.

So, I wonder if he’s just a bit off the mark.

Could the phenomenon of less laughs be a combination of a few things he hasn’t accounted for?

• Could less laughter be a result of natural personality or temperament traits?

• Fewer habits of deep introspection?

• Previous experiences that predispose infrequent laughers to think quietly instead of giggle aloud?

• Or a mismatch in values? (What sorts of jokes were told? We don’t know because he doesn’t say.)

The subjectivity of laughter producing humor seems to be at play a bit more than his experiments can account for. And that’s no joke.

I do agree with Lynch on this point:
We can conceal our true opinions, but in the moment of unguarded laughter, we reveal our true preferences.

Lynch says that the trait of a sense of humor is desirable and its presence or lack thereof helps us select a mate: A sense of humor is always listed in the top five traits people look for when mate-hunting.

Plus, humor helps us bond with those in our group, or determine who’s outside our group. This does seem clear.

And lest we forget, (the non self-deceived?) Lynch likes to work the crowd at open mic comedy nights. Does this scientist have a formula?

Yes. Sort of. Basically.

Here’s how he does it:

He finds common ground and builds on it. First he works at locating something held in common. Then, he points out a shared opinion or value, and underscores something that rings true to listeners.

It might start with some simple commonality like the geographical location of the place, a sports team preference, or the clientele in attendance.

He’s also snarky. If you like that style you might be amused.

“It’s great to be in New York City again. The coral reef created by sinking subway cars off Manhattan has a 58% higher rate of stabbings than a natural reef.” (or something like that. blah blah blah…you can watch the video on his theory here.)

If I’m writing a joke, often what I do is I look at things that I think are true, that people tend not to admit to, or maybe reluctant to admit to, including myself. -Lynch

Of course, I don’t hold the similar belief that the reason for laughter happened ad hoc and by chance, as Robert Lynch contends. That idea seems more like a punchline to me.

“Why did the cave man laugh? I’ll tell you in ten million years…”

(yes that was mine)

Sure, we adapt using humor, and we always well, but I doubt the source of humor was landed on by sheer mistake or mutation + time. HA-but that’s a good one. You almost had me, Lynch!

What may be the case is something that isn’t so stupefyingly accidental or self-deceiving. Something reasonable.

Namely, that One beyond our comprehension designed and equipped us purposefully with a sense of humor and in a way that we can better socially bond in positive ways…because we inherently need each other.

In a future post, I will go a bit further and pose a kind of theory for the purpose of humor and the reason for laughter based on some work from different researchers and my own educational background.

The takeaway:
If you want to know what someone is really like and what they really think, pay attention to what and whom they laugh at. Laughter is a kind of brain scan.