So this morning I’m lying in bed with my laptop (which looks disarmingly good in a wig—but never mind), and I think, “Gosh, I don’t feel like thinking. I know! I’ll go see what other people are thinking.” But that threatened to blossom into something no longer about me, which I of course find unacceptable. So I reached the natural compromise, and decided to think about what other people think about me. This is really one of my favorite things to think about.

What I sometimes do when in the mood to think about what others think about me is to visit blogs that I can see (via my blog’s stat page) have linked back to my blog. That means someone’s blogging about me! What an enrichingly good time for them! And what fun for me, to e-eavesdrop on someone discussing me! It’s the ultimate win-win.

It usually is, anyway. And today it started out that way. First, I discovered that Famous Person John Tesh had a blog in which he had linked to mine. The November 13 post on The John Tesh Blog was titled “The Top Qualities of a Good Woman.” The first such quality John listed was: “A good woman freaks you out with her intelligence. Women have the uncanny ability to cut through the fogginess of an issue and come up with a brilliant perspective. The upside for guys is that the more you hang around smart women, like my wife, the more brainy you become.”

As you see, Mr. Tesh saw fit to turn the words “brilliant perspective” into a link to the post on my blog entitled, “Top 10 Qualities to Look for In a Wife.” (The first on my list being, coincidentally enough, “So smart she constantly freaks you out with her humongous Absorb-O-Brain”—which, by way of explication, I followed with: “Upside: Hanging around with a smart person makes you smarter. Up to a point, of course. But still,” followed by, “”Downside: Smart people remember everything. Pretty mixed blessing.” So you see how amazingly alike John Tesh and I think!)

The next link I followed from my stats page was to a blog called Pharyngula, the slogan of which is, “Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.” Sweet! Would of course myself change that slogan by a disgusting word or two, but none of my business.

I was disappointed if not actually crestfallen to discover that Mr. PZ Meyers, the articulate and good-natured University of Minnesota biologist who writes “Pharyngula” (which, I was happy to learn, “is a term coined by William Ballard to describe a particular stage in the development of the vertebrate embryo”) didn’t himself write about me. Instead, I saw somewhere amidst one of his 10-mile long comment streams the following, written by one “rickrOll”: 

“I know I said good about him before, but this John Shore is becoming a real problem, exhibiting all the classic signs of religous nuttiness. He … is incredibly rude and vindictive off his blog, and what’s more, I’m tired of waiting for him to be a mature adult. I vote we whack him: http://johnshoreland.com/. Normally I wouldn’t consider him a problem, but he needs to be taught a lesson in manners and some intellectual honesty.” A few comments down, Mr. Roll added: “This thread has no particular discussion in mind, though I was trying to rally support for my effort to slap a little sense into John Shore at Suddenly Christian (link above). If any would be so kind, please do.”

Thus far the brainy scientific types who seem to favor Mr. Meyers’ blog have failed to rally to Mr. Roll’s call to “whack” me. But I kind of hope they get on it! It’s been my experience that accomplished scientists are almost always fantastic writers, because they’re rarely bogged down trying to make their writing artsy. Instead, they worry about clarity—and thereby often achieve, I think, the best kind of writing art. So even though it might be at my expense, I’d welcome almost all of Mr. Meyers’ associates to comment on my blog.

Hey, man. Art’s all about sacrifice.

Anyway, there you have it. Looking to read about myself I visited two sites, finding in the first John Tesh sort of offhandedly if not reflexively mentioning me, and in the other someone trying to rally articulate scientists to “whack” me.

And now I’m going back to sleep.

(If you like my work, you can be of true help to me by simply joining my Facebook fan page. Thanks a lot.) 

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Have you ever wondered whether there’s any sin so bad God can’t forgive it? You have? Why? What are you planning on doing, anyway?

Sorry. If St. Thomas Aquinas taught us anything, it’s that humor and theology go together like confession and hand puppets. So I apologize.

As it turns out, the Bible tells us there is one sin beyond forgiving. We find it at Matthew 12:31-32, where Jesus says, “And so I tell you every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Like just about everything Jesus said (and there’s no shame in admitting this) this is at first a deeply confusing statement. For centuries theologians, philosophers, pundits and others basically unsuited for normal employment have bent their minds trying to decipher what exactly Jesus meant by that quote. If Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one being, they’ve pondered, how is it okay to blaspheme against one, but not the other?

I believe that what Jesus meant in the above quote is that he understands why people might reject him; he has, after all, presented himself in mortal form, which is bound to leave some people unconvinced.

I believe that what he is saying there is, “Fair enough. I can forgive you if you insist that I, Jesus Christ, the Son of Man—the human-seeming person you see here today—am lying, am not who I say I am. Apparently raising the dead  just isn’t enough for some people, but whatever. That’s why I gave you free will; everyone has the power to doubt. But once the Holy Spirit has eradicated your reason to doubt the reality of who I am by awakening within in you the certain knowledge of it, you and I have bonded. Then the truth is within you. And if you later reject that truth—if, having accepted me into your house, you then kick me back out again—then you have visited upon yourself a woeful state that even I cannot relieve.”

This means (yay!) that a Christian cannot commit the one unpardonable sin, because doing so would mean they’re not Christian, since it’s impossible to simultaneously believe in Christ and reject him. So we believers can rest assured that there’s nothing we can do—and nothing we have ever done—for which Christ, in his boundless mercy, cannot lovingly forgive us.

Whoo-hoo! Bust out the hand puppets!

Now, if you don’t believe in the vibrant, transforming power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—well, then, all I can say is the obvious: God help you.

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Warm, Still

I am too much aware of death

and of its fanged bastard cousin

suffering

whose knowledge of me is, after all, intimate

and who has ever taken pains

to counsel me

But today is Thanksgiving

And so away you

ghosts and goblins

endlessly chewing at my walls

Away, please.

For my wife

sleeps on the couch before me

having eaten her fill

of what on this day God

saw fit

to bequeth us

Outside our door

the weakened light retreats and

the nerveless cold marches forth

sure to catch us

sure to chill us

and she will awaken

and seek my warmth

and

delight

will be ours

still

1. The Pilgrims were:

a.  an exceptionally boring rock band from Kidneypool, England.

b. a sure way to kill any party.

c. the least fashionable sailors ever.

d. Christians who fled England in rebellion against Henry VIII’s forbidding of pew cushions.

2. The first thing Indians thought upon meeting the Pilgrims was:

a. “Why are these people the color of our gums?”

b. “Sun. Black clothes. Cool! Human popovers!”

c. “Okay, these guys are turkeys.”

d. “Bummer. There goes the neighborhood.”

3. The Mayflower was:

a.. the name of the company that moved the Pilgrims from England to America.

b. the primary ingredient used by Pilgrims to make the May chocolate chip cookies.

c. a ship that got lost somewhere between the Thames river and Hawaii.

d. a pretty gay name for a boat.

4. The purpose of Thanksgiving is to commemorate:

a. the founding of the New World.

b. the losing of the New World.

c. the temporary misplacement of the New World.

d. the Pilgrims smoking their first peace-pipe with the Indians.

e. the Pilgrims discovering the Indians didn’t know tobacco from a lava lamp.

5. Plymouth Rock is significant because:

a. it’s the first organic musical form to give expression to the Pilgrim experience.

b. how many rocks get their own name?.

c. it’s the first place on the North American continent where the Pilgrims ruined their shins.

d. it’s what the Chrysler company tethered to its last idea for a decent car before hurling it into the ocean.

6. “Maize” is the Algonquin Indian word for:

a. “No way out.”

b. “Not April or June’s.”

c. “he who awesomely dominates centerfield.”

d. tired, boring, cliche, trite: corny.

7. At first the Pilgrims had a hard time surviving in America because:

a. Their humongous belt buckles prevented effective arrow ducking.

b. They refused to pay taxes.

c. It’s so demoralizing when the native population won’t stop making fun of your hat.

d. All their gunpowder was wet.

To anyone who happens to read this: Happy Thanksgiving to you, and a most joyous holiday season.

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I’m always really pleased (and, frankly, surprised) by how many people read the posts I do on the how-to’s of writing. I’m freakishly enthusiastic about All Things Writing, so it’s gratifying to share that enthusiasm with others.

My last post,  A Would-Be Writer Asks: “MUST I Go to College?” made me think of a job I took earlier this year doctoring a novel. If you don’t know, “doctoring” a novel means taking someone’s novel and either outright fixing it yourself, or directing its author on what he or she needs to do in order to fix it themselves. It’s the most intrusive and inclusive kind of editing; it covers every aspect of the book at hand: pace, setting, characters, dialogue, wardrobe malfunctions, etc. I sometimes take on this sort of work if I believe in the author, or think the book has potential.

Below are excerpts from the last summary report I wrote for a would-be novelist (a fellow whom I’m proud to say took my advice, returned to college, and is now well on his way to making it as a writer of literary fiction).

Back to basics

Just like a physicist must first master basic math skills, so a writer must first master punctuation, grammar, syntax and usage. You simply have to know this stuff, cold. I don’t know how you’re going to learn it as thoroughly as you need to—if you’re going to take an adult ed class in English composition, or buy some style or usage guides and study them, or what. I can tell you what I did—though I wouldn’t recommend it. I taught that stuff to myself. I spent about three years with my nose buried in “The Chicago Manual of Style,” and Kate Turabian’s classic style manual, and the “Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage,” and the AP Style Guide, and about a zillion other such titles. (One of the best, most comprehensive books of this sort available today is “Quick Access” by Lynn Quitman Troyka. It’s awesome. If you’re only gonna have one such book—and don’t, of course—make it this one.)

I wouldn’t recommend teaching yourself this material because the best way to learn anything so vast and complex is systematically, which is pretty much the whole purpose of (shudder!) school. I think you want to take some classes in English composition. You need to know what constitutes a complete sentence; the basic rules of punctuation; the pitfalls and earmarks of sloppy syntax. However you go about it, do not try to short cut around learning this stuff, because without it I guarantee you will never get off the ground as a writer….

Reading is really the best way to learn the basics of writing. If you read enough, for long enough, after awhile you just know what does and doesn’t make for a sound, clean sentence; you understand the functions of punctuation; you come to have a solid feel for syntax and usage. Read any modern master: Updike, Vonnegut, Hemingway, John Irving, Steinbeck. Read it hard. Study it. Take a class or two (or ten) on English literature. Give it a some time. It’ll be worth it, because once you know grammar and syntax you’ll be in possession of all the bricks necessary to build yourself virtually any building you want….

Show and (not) tell

If I say to you, “Bob was angry at Tom,” that’s one thing. But if I create a scene in which the living, breathing person that is Bob is railing violently against a cowering Tom, then I’ve given you something you can really get into; I’ve made the fact of Bob’s anger come alive for you. If I just tell you that Bob was angry at Tom, you kind of … don’t care that much. It’s the difference between reading about being on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and being on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Whole other thing. They have so little in common that they’re almost unrelated….

Besides committing the cardinal sin of inserting yourself between the reader and whatever you’re meaning to convey to the reader, one very definite thing about telling rather than showing something is that it’s soooooo much easier. You can see the difference between just saying, “My father was a difficult person,” and actually taking the trouble to construct a scene in which you not only show an example of your father being difficult but also convey how typical that behavior is or isn’t for him. “My father was a difficult person” is six words. A scene showing your father being a difficult person will cost you many, many times that. Directly telling and artfully showing represent radically different orders of work. (And because properly/effectively showing something takes up so much more room than does essentially reporting it, in a novel you have to be very careful about what scenes you choose to focus on, to present in their fullness to the reader. Everything that happens in a novel must have an extremely good reason to be there; you’ve no time—you lack the raw available word count—to present anything that’s not critical to moving the story forward or helping us understand or empathize with a character.) ….

Read ‘em and weep

Without knowing you (and I certainly don’t mean to insult you), I would hazard too suggest that you need to read a lot more great novels. Read “The World According to Garp” by John Irving. “The Fixer” by Bernard Malumud. Definitely “Huckleberry Finn.” Definitely Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” The classic first person American novel is J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” Any modern classic of this sort—anything by John Updike, for instance, is golden. You need to read a lot of great books, so that the style of such writing sort of sinks into you, becomes part of your subconscious bedrock of knowledge, power, and aesthetic understanding into which you can then dig as a source and even inspiration for your own work. You need to ask yourself the degree to which you’re familiar with the basic cannon of Western literature—at the very least, of modern Western literature. If you can’t say that you’re truly familiar with our best literature—that you really have read at least as much as any student with a Master’s degree in English Lit.—then I’m afraid there’s no getting around your need to change that. Get a library card. Start hitting used book stores. (And thrift shops! The best book deals are at thrift shops!) I would even recommend you take a year or two off from writing, and just read. In the end, there’s nothing better you can do to improve your writing skills. And there’s no question but that you will never improve as a writer without that kind of reading under your belt. Every writer knows he owes everything he writes to the authors he’s read and loved, to the writers before him who inspired him. Find out who those authors are for you. (For what it’s worth, mine include Twain, Chekhov, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, John Irving, Jane Austen, and John Kennedy Toole, the guy who wrote one of my very favorite novels, the unbearably hilarious “A Confederacy of Dunces.”)….

And in conclusion…

What I hope you’ll be left with coming out of this is what I know you had coming into it: your desire to be a great writer. If that core desire remains intact, then believe me it’s possible for you to achieve that goal. You’ve got the brains; I assume you’ll keep the drive. All you lack is foundation; all you need to do is take the time to establish that foundation. If you have a community college near you, enroll in it, and get an A.A. in English Literature. My personal opinion is that that, right there, would give you everything you need to start a serious career as a real writer. You’d learn mechanics: grammar, punctuation, syntax. And two years of study would give you a good sense of Western Literature—the same body of work of which you’d like your own work to one day be part. Take some creative writing classes; get involved with some writers groups. Start writing short stories, which of course constitute their own art form, but also prepare you for novel writing. Share your stories with readers you respect, inside or outside your writers group. Get them critiqued. Have people talk to you about your work, and talk to others about theirs.

This is how you learn to write. It’s the only  way to learn to write. And we’re talking about a total of three years here. You do that stuff—go to school for two years; join a good writer’s group; start writing short stories–and at 50 years old (if I’m remembering correctly that you’re 47) you’ll be ready to write your first real novel. I personally think that’s the perfect age to begin saying stuff nobody knows until about that time in life anyway. 

Related posts o’ mine: When Punctuation Goes Really, Really Wrong, How To Make a Living Writing

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This morning I received an e-mail from an aspiring author. “I am currently paying the bills with a job in telecommunications,” he wrote, “but ultimately would love to make the transition to being a full-time writer. From your experience, how much would a formal education/bachelor’s degree help me to make this transition? Having been to college for two years already (even though that was over 10 years ago), I can certainly understand the benefit of formal instruction. But I’m wondering if the benefits of that formal education would justify its cost. Any professional writer thoughts or wisdom you’d care to share?”

My answer:

Bend your life as far as you can in order to enable yourself to go to the best college you can afford. You’re unlikely to make it as a writer without a college education. You can, of course—anything’s possible!—but (and especially these days) trying to make it as a writer without a college education is like trying to play the violin without lessons. It’s possible that you’ll create great music, but it’s way more probable that you’ll spend some time making noises no one cares to hear, and then quit.

The main reason college is so critical for a writer is because it’s hard to have anything interesting to say about the world if you don’t know anything about the world—about history, culture, literature, science, etc. Generally speaking, the broader the context, the richer the thought. College is also good for writing insofar as you have to do so much writing in college, all of which gets read and evaluated by professors who have spent their lives engaging with great writing. College also has humongous value in a purely utilitarian sense, because those same professors know people out in the publishing world who can help jump-start your career. The publishing business is just like any other: Whom you know seriously helps. College professors know people.

All that said, though, it’s also true that creative writing is just that: creative. It’s an art form. And while you can certainly nurture and train an artist, you cannot make an artist out of someone who’s not. Journalism, you can teach (though I doubt whether you can teach the qualities of personality good journalism demands). But you can no sooner teach or instill the kind of artistic vision it takes to be a successful creative writer than you can teach a cow how to play canasta.

Related posts o’ mine: How To Make a Living Writing, John Notes for Lit 101, John Notes for Philosophy 101.

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Hello, friends!

Me: Speed blogging.

When: Now.

Why: Wife off work entire forthcoming week. Whoo-hoo! Visiting local wineries today to buy Thanksgiving wine. She now in shower. Me now on/in bed, BLOGGING AT WARP SPEED!

Do I enjoy going to winery tastings? No. Nein. Nyet.

Why not: Weird business model: Stand; sip; get stared at; feel pressure to buy. Plus, prodigious pretentious potential powerful put-off.

Wife, though, LOVES whole atmosphere of wineries. May be burgeoning wino. Must monitor.

Thanksgiving! Always a fave holiday of ours! So much to be thankful for. First: Perfect religion. Second: Love of good woman. Third: I’m not yet dead. List goes on. Except actually that’s about it. Sweet!

Ah, autumn. It was 87 degrees here yesterday. Our local leaves turn orange and red in the fall cuz they’re frying in the sun. No: It’s autumn/winter here, for sure. Can tell by eerie darkish light So Cal gets this time of year. Dig it.

Wife out of shower! Must rouse self!

But before I do: A sincere thanks to those who’ve joined by Facebook Fan Page. I have no platform—no TV/radio show, no mega-church I head, no national ministry to help me sell books. The web is my platform. Tough to impress publishers with that. But every person who joins my fan page is one more indication to a book publisher that I might be someone on whom they should take a chance. So THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I look forward to walking out onto the stage you’re so graciously helping me build.

All right! Rouse time! Out of my bed and off I go, to act like I know a merlot from my toe.

Yesterday a young woman sent me an e-mail in which she wrote:

I have a question that I’ve been researching for quite a few days now, with not much success. Recently, my husband tearfully confided to me that he trusts fully in Jesus (since age 6) for his salvation, but he finds it hard to feel the love for God that Christians often speak about. He is a man of integrity—he is kind, compassionate, and generous. He is knowledgeable in the Bible and believes that it is the true word of God.

Is it possible for someone to be a Christian and be reverent to God, but not feel love for him? Is it just more difficult for men to connect emotionally with God?  I have never heard this topic touched on or talked about in any capacity. 

My husband is a highly intellectual individual—a thinker. I want to be able to understand his feelings, but I can’t relate and haven’t heard this issue addressed.  I would be truly thankful if you have any ideas or know of any resources that may expound on these things. 

Here’s the short version of my answer to this earnest, good-hearted wife:

Tell your husband not to worry. His is a problem of language, not soul. Christians use the same language as everyone around them, but oftentimes what they mean by the words they use is so different from what the rest of the culture would mean if they used those same words that a kind of disconnect in the Christian’s mind can result. And nowhere is there a bigger difference between the way Christians and everybody else uses the language than in the way Christians talk about their “love” of Jesus.

Not long after becoming Christian I read about how a believer is meant to be the bride of Christ. My first thought was, “Oh no. I look awful in taffeta.” Then I tried to picture Jesus and me feeding each other cake at our wedding reception, and me getting it all over my veil, and everyone laughing and laughing until we all remembered that it’s wrong to be gay.

See? It’s a problem of language. I’m not a bride; I’m never going to be a bride. Jesus never got down on one knee and proposed to me. I would have loved to see his line of groomsmen, but … no. (I’m voting that his best man would be Isaiah.)

I think Christians feel stress over the way their emotions don’t fully accord with the language they use when they talk about God. I can say I love Jesus, but the relationship I’ve then connected with that word is so radically unlike any other relationship with which I ever connect that word that I’ve automatically set myself in uncharted territory. As much and as readily as we talk about Jesus as if he were an actual, living, corporeal being, he’s not. We can’t actually, literally walk with Jesus. We can’t hold his hand. We can’t get into anything like a normal conversation with him. We can’t send him a letter, phone him, hug him, tousle his hair, or buy him a tie he has to pretend to like for Christmas. The relationship we have with Jesus isn’t anything like any other relationship we ever have with anyone—and yet we talk about it using the exact same words we use to talk about all of our other earthly, loving relationships.

I think this perpetual linguistic dichotomy causes Christians stress and even doubt. I think Christians hear other Christians rhapsodizing about Jesus as if he really were their husband or lover or friend, and then they, following suit, say the same things about their relationship with Jesus—and then secretly feel weird because of the disconnect between the language they’ve used and the reality of the relationship they’ve used that language to describe. I think they fear that disconnect they’ve sensed is an indication that they’re in some way disconnected from God. I that’s what happened with this woman’s husband. I think it speaks volumes about the quality of his relationship with Christ (not to mention of his marriage) that he would be honest enough that perceived disconnection to bring it to his wife.

Young man: Fear not! You’re not suffering from anything more serious than a language issue. You love Jesus, and Jesus loves you. Your problem is that you’re stuck, as are we all, using the only language you have to describe the one relationship in your life for which there is, in fact, no language at all.

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I spend five or six hours every day exploring Christianity with non-Christians. Doing that—being someone whom non-Christians trust enough to do that with—necessarily means being consistently honest about those aspects or practice of my faith that I have every reason to understand will be difficult for non-Christians to accept.

One thing I never do when talking to non-Christians about Christianity is employ as final proof that something is true the fact that it’s in the Bible. Christian theology desrves better than that; Christianity is, if nothing else, absolutely rationally supportable. Believing in the reality of Christ does not mean checking one’s brain at the sanctuary door. Newton, Erasmus, Descartes, Bacon, Kierkegaard, Pascal, Faraday … it’s just not reasonable to claim that the endless number of such people were Christian in spite of their intellectual prowess.

As Galileo said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

Bottom line being: We’re not idiots.

And not being idiots means we can’t shy away from manifest, obvious incongruities about our faith or the way it’s practiced. Doing that would be dishonorable to God; it would mean acquiescing to the idea that Jesus has bequeathed us something of which we need to hide or be ashamed. And of course that’s unacceptable to us Christians; surely each of us holds as our own Paul’s proclamation (at Romans 1:16), “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”

It is in this spirit of honest, forthright engagement with God and his word that I’d like to ask a question that couldn’t help but come to me as I was reading the Bible this morning. I was in 1 Timothy 2, when I read this: “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes …. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.“

Now how in this world could I read that and not think of Sarah Palin? I didn’t want to think of Sarah Palin. I didn’t want to think of anything besides the glory of God’s word. I hardly waded into my Bible this morning looking for trouble. But (alas) there it was.

So I’m honestly and truly asking, simply because I don’t understand and want to: How do Christians who embraced and supported Sarah Palin in particular for her adherence to “traditional” Biblical values reconcile how utterly she violated Paul’s injunctions to women to not wear expensive clothes, to stay quiet, to remain submissive, and to have no authority over men? If vigorously campaigning for Vice President of the United States (while, as we all know, wearing expensive clothes) isn’t in direct, overt, purposeful, and sustained opposition to all four of those things, then … then King Kong was a leprechaun. I would think evangelicals and Biblical fundamentalists would reject Ms. Palin for … well, for one, so ambitiously seeking authority over men.

What do I say to non-Christians when they assert that Christians are being blatantly hypocritical and even opportunistically bigoted when they use Paul’s words as justification for the condemnation of homosexuality, and at the same time ignore Paul’s very explicit words when doing so suits their own personal desires and ambitions? How do we use Paul to argue for California’s Proposition 8, but not use Paul to argue against Sarah Palin?

As a believer in the gospel who is constantly engaging with non-Christians about Christ, I’m sincerely asking my fellow believers: What should my answer to that fair question be? I’m pretty good at logic, and at a single thought can be filled with the liberating, redemptive power of the Holy Spirit. But for the answer to this one question I’m afraid I have to rely upon the wisdom of others. Please help out a brother if you can.

(Oh, and please don’t say that 1 Timothy 2 was meant by Paul only as instructions on worship. I know that many of our Bibles say “Instructions on Worship” right before 1 Timothy 2. But that’s an utterly people-inserted title. There is virtually nothing in the text itself to indicate that Paul isn’t prescribing proper behavior for all Christen women at all times.)

Extremely pertinent post o’ mine: Ecclesia Reformatat Semper Reformanda.

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As of this precise moment, 99 people have joined my Facebook Fan Page—99 people who’ve been willing to step forward, and boldly proclaim to all who for some reason happen to see that page that yes—yes!—they have no particular reason not to claim that they’re not especially repelled by my writing.

Whoo-hoo!

♥ 99 fans of my blog on my page; 99 fans of my blog; you take one down, pass him around; he wakes up and pounds you right into a fog. ♥

So, the point is: If you act now, and become my 100th Facebook Fan, I will send you a free book, inscribed with “Thanks for being my 100th Facebook Fan!” and autographed by none other than my next door neighbor, Brian, who is an actual Hollywood stunt car driver! If come the time, however, Brian is off wearing sunglasses while expressionlessly parking cars at warp speed, I will sign the book myself.

You, Mr. or Ms. 100th Fan, will have your choice of books: Being Christian or (the paperback version of, since that’s all I have left) Comma Sense.

Now, you can’t join my Facebook page if never read my stuff, since that would be almost as sad as me actually bribing people to get fans. But if you’ve been meaning to sign up as a Facebook fan o’ moi (just as, honestly, I’ve been trying to think of something bloggily fun to do with one or two of my books), here’s your chance to do right by me and snag a free book autographed by the less famous of the two authors named on its cover!

Act now! Click here! Postage is on me! I excel at stampage!