Writing About Personal Obsessions

I've been obsessed with Ethiopia for half my life. After all, they might have the Lost Ark of the Covanent of Indiana Jones fame, and they might have had a 3,000 year old dynasty founded by a son of King Solomon. Their Judaism was more true to the One God than Israel's, their medival Christianity sure looks more pure than the medival Church of Europe. Plus there's the sheer exotic factor: their crosses are ornately beautiful, they carved churches into the sides of mountains, they have those amazing quarried rock stele things, that look like the Washington Monument and weigh 500 tons each. Like other engineering feats of the ancient world, given their massive size and weight no one can even figure out how the steles were put in place.

Besides that, they're all so good looking. I've never seen an ugly Ethiopian.

So, since I'm obsessed, I'm writing about Ethiopia. In particular, the Ethiopian sacred book called the Kebra Nagast, which translates to The Glory of Kings. I'm writing about how it was written, what it says, my own reflections, how it fits in with the Bible, ect.

I'm finding myself thinking about these articles I'm writing when I've just woken up but am not out of bed yet, and other odd times. True mark of an obsession, this. Also, I'm traveling light years from the hubpages model of write it fast, slap it up there, write on popular topics. What percentage of the population is thinking about the Kebra Nagast in the early morning hours? I'm gonna guess not too many. How many are searching the internet for it? Not too many. Ah well, it's an esoteric obsession for sure. Maybe I'm not in the realm of Hubpages with this one, I'm just not sure what realm I am in. It's not a book. I don't even know where I would send it as an article. Hubpages has made things too easy for me, and I've learned nothing about how magazine publishing even works. I passed up taking a magazine publishing workshop with a friend because I was getting together with friends that night, and the truth is, I don't feel much of a push to get published. I'm looking to teaching for money, and Hubpages gets me admiring accolades from readers, so there's my emotional fulfillment. Maybe I should ask my friend, who did go to the workshop, for advice on print publishing, then think about whether I even want to give it a try.

Managing Family Life as a Christian Mom

I read "Crazy For God"
 by Frank Schaeffer recently, and wrote a reveiw of the book on Hubpages. The review is one thing I guess, but I've been thinking about being a Christian and family life. "Crazy for God" was, well, damning about the way Christians, especially professional Christians, deal with their families.

If you are interested in the review, it is here :
http://hubpages.com/hub/Review-of-Crazy-For-God-By-Frank-Schaeffer

The evangelical community is less than thrilled with Frank Schaeffer these days. That's not too surprising, considering how harshly he critisizes them not only in "Crazy For God" but in his trilogy of semiautobiographical novels about a boy with nutty evangelical parents. ("Portofino" is the first novel in the trilogy. I haven't read it.) But I want to consider what he says seriously. He was raised by parents who were all but worshiped in the evangelical community. They traveled a great deal speaking on Christian topics and wrote many books. Frank's report of their family life was less than stellar, and that's an understatement. He makes it sound miserable.

So what are his complaints? Here we go in no particular order: 1) They claimed they were homeschooling him, but were so busy doing ministry he was left to pretty much run wild and learned almost no academic skills until someone donated money to send him to an English boarding school 2) His mom was "nutty" 3) his parents gave up the things that really mattered most to them in life b/c they were "living for God" 4) they prayed over meals so long the food was cold 5) his mom was a martyr, and never let anyone forget it 6) they didn't have family time b/c all time was spent on ministry 7) his parents competed over whose ministry affected more people 8) there were long lists of things God didn't like.

What can I learn from all of this? I guess the biggest thing is "Be real." Or maybe, there's no point not being real with your kids, since you can't fool them. I kind of think that summed up most of what happened to Frank Schaeffer. His father comes out alot better than his mom in the memoir, and I think it boils down to his father was open about his weaknesses.

In "Crazy For God" Edith Schaeffer comes off as tragic. At least I think so. Here is a woman who traveled the world to talk about marriage and family, to advise other women how to be Christian wives and mothers, and her own kids don't like her. They love her, but they're pretty critical. One of Frank's sisters said that she had never had an actual conversation with her mother in her life: her mother always had an agenda. Even sadder, the daughter said this in her fifties, so it can hardly be dismissed as adolescent angst. Another one of the daughters suffered three nervous breakdowns, not exactly the hallmark of a happy life.

Well, again, how to avoid this sort of thing? How can a Christian woman so admired by other Christian women for her family life end up with a pack of resentful offspring? (I once knew a pastor who wrote books about parenting, and he told me when his kids were teenagers they read his books and had a ball quoting his own words back to him.)

Is the problem professional Christians? Professional parents? Paul once advised Christians to live a quiet life and work with their hands. I suppose the type of ministry the Schaeffers were doing involved living a loud life and working by talking. Is the problem that Christians have trouble finding balance in their lives? Someone once told me that John Wimber's wife Carol was asked why she didn't do more "ministry," and she replied that she wanted to spend most of her time on the people she had the most influence on, and that was her own children. The world in general rewards us most for the things where we are having the least lasting impact. All Christians would agree that time spent in personal prayer is valuable, but one gets no reward at all from the world for this. Being an excellent parent when no one can see you (the most important time to be a good parent) doesn't get much of a reward. Having internal integrity gets little reward: only people who know you well can even recognize this.

The big tangible rewards all come from things with little long term value and no eternal value: having a job that pays well, being good looking, being a polished public speaker, being a celebrity of some sort. Jesus said the last will be first in His Kingdom. Maybe this is what he was talking about.

Where's Your Thesis Statement?

So I showed my hub "My Son Becomes a Man" to my writing group, they hemmed and hawed a bit, and then someone asked, "What's your point exactly?"

I tried to explain my point. Something along the lines of masculinity is this powerful force that can get dark and violent, but that very same force drives men to take charge, stand up for right, and care for loved ones.

Halfway decent thesis, but it was in my brain, and not on the page. I'm going back to the article, and working some rewrites.

I made some changes, and it wasn't as painful as i thought it would be.

It's Friday, I have the house to myself, and I'm going to do some laundry, then curl up with a book.

Here is the new improved hub:
http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Son-Becomes-A-Man-What-Manhood-Means-To-A-Woman