Elijah David

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry I all but disappeared last month. NaNoWriMo took up a lot of my spare time. To sum up: I won NaNo with about 52,000 words, but didn't finish There's No Place Like Home? by about 10,000-15,000 words. So December's goal is to finish that up and maybe get a couple other small writing projects off the ground. While working on NaNo, I've also been preparing for Christmas dramas at church. Really, I've been preparing for them since some time in August or September (I've slept since then, so the exact details are a bit fuzzy), but we are now in crunch time, with the next two Sundays taken up with adult drama (written by yours truly) and a children's musical (which I will only be participating in as a character). Not THAT character, but the show does have a Whoville-type setting. And in the last few months of preparation for these productions, along with an Advent-starting service this past Sunday, God has been teaching ...

I've talked before about stories being more than "just" fiction. The topic came up again recently in a couple of conversations with some friends of mine, and I thought of another angle for the Christian who enjoys stories in all their forms. There's a spectrum of responses to the idea that stories have the power to affect us. On one extreme lie the folks who say that stories are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs unless they are safe and uplifting, free of all the bits that might make us uncomfortable or indicate anything beyond surface-level sin. On the other end sit the folks who say stories don't affect us in any way, so let's all just enjoy the show, you bunch of kill-joys. (Incidentally, there's a third group which occupies a place at either end of this; this group acknowledges the power of stories, but believes stories can only affect us positively and therefore should be enjoyed without thought or worry.)* The best stance, from my expe...