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471: The Song “Walkin'”

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #471, on the subject of The Song “Walkin'”.

Last month I mentioned that that song, Present Your Bodies (linked below), was structurally modeled on this one, specifically mentioning the repetition of the bridge and the way it changes the feel of the music.  I suppose the similarities end there–key, tempo, mood, even the nature of the lyrics are all different.  Yet because of those structural similarities the two songs are connected in my own mind.

As I mentioned then, The Last Psalm had just played its final concert.  I am not at all certain what inspired this song, but I liked it immediately.  Then Jeffrey Robert Zurheide called and invited me to play bass in a band that he was forming mostly to be backup for a Luther alumni classmate named Bruce Henne, and I immediately thought we should include this song.

Jeff and I had met at summer camp, a one-week “sleep-away” music camp sponsored by the United Presbyterian Church and at that time held on the Camp Lebanon campground belonging to the American Baptist Convention, in Lebanon, New Jersey.  Late in 1972 he was driving, and joined my band BLT Down as our lead guitarist and vocalist.  He stayed with the band in 1973 when it transitioned to being The Last Psalm, and for the next eighteen months his “velvet voice” was one of the band’s main attractions.  However, he did not particularly like the spotlight, and in the summer of 1974 he left the band.  Our drummer, John Mastick, persuaded him to play with us at our final reunion concert at Maranatha Church of the Nazarene in New Milford, New Jersey, at the beginning of summer 1975.

Our relationship had a strange quality.  I considered him my best friend, and he was best man at my wedding late in 1976.  On the other hand, as early as February, 1974, he had decided that my musical ambitions had to be reined in, that I shouldn’t sing as much as I did and shouldn’t be seeming to be in the spotlight.  There were several moments after that where Jeff took actions which seemed to be about stifling those ambitions, and in retrospect I often wondered whether this was one of them.  He was seeking someone to play bass guitar and help with the backup vocals in the new band, Jacob’s Well.  I played this song for him, and he immediately said no, he did not want the band to do this one, choosing instead one song from my repertory, When I Think (also linked below, web log post #412).  As I mentioned in discussing that song, I was never enthused about it, and it was all wrong for that band–the piano part was not easily reproduced on a guitar, and it wanted a soaring soprano that was not going to be found in an all-male band.  However, that was the one song from my repertoire that the band included.  This song was shelved.

I have vague recollections of a time a few years later when I met with a few musicians in Delaware through a friend (known as Big Brother Archie Bradley) who were exploring the possibility of including me in their band.  I played this song for them; I don’t remember what others I might have played.  Nothing came of that.

I’ve shied away from performing it solo, because in my mind the vocals are integral to the music–it was written for three vocalists.  However, when I was recording those vocals-over-midi-instruments recordings I included it because I still thought it was well written.  On the other hand, I did not include it on the list of songs to be considered for the Extreme Tour submission.

The piano in this recording is probably irreproducible.  When I was recording it, I felt the background was a bit hollow, but thought that another guitar wouldn’t solve the problem, so I began sketching a racing piano part.  I was working with a software interface that let me in essence put the part on paper and have the computer play it back to me, so I was making it up as I went along.  I’ve never even attempted to play it.  I think I have performed the piece live once or twice, because I like it, but feel like it needs a band.

Walkin’.

So here are the lyrics.

Walkin’ through this world of ours I see so much is wrong.
We’ve got to find a better way, ’cause this just can’t go on!
Brother hates his brother–there must be something else.
The world must surely grieve the Lord, but I’m no good myself.

Some will never understand the things I’m tryin’ to say;
They think that Christ was just a man who lived a special way.
They will never realize ’til the coming of the judgment day,
‘Cause the devil’s had them close their eyes, and they’ve turned their heads away.

We can’t seem to make it–something seems to hold us back.
In trying to be perfect, there is something that we lack.
God has got the answer–He knows that we can’t win:
The blood of Christ poured out for us forgives us for our sin.

Some will never understand the things I’m tryin’ to say;
They think that Christ was just a man who lived a special way.
They will never realize ’til the coming of the judgment day,
‘Cause the devil’s had them close their eyes, and they’ve turned their heads away.

Now I live for Jesus–Jesus lives in me,
And I’m here to heal the eyes of those who cannot see.
Jesus died to save you; He died to save all men,
And although they buried Him, God raised Him up,
God raised Him up again.

Some will never understand the things I’m tryin’ to say;
They think that Christ was just a man who lived a special way.
They will never realize ’til the coming of the judgment day,
‘Cause the devil’s had them close their eyes, and they’ve turned their heads away.

When we choose to follow Him, He leads us day by day.
Because He has forgiven us He hears us when we pray.
Christ was raised to victory when He was crucified.
The key to life abundant is that we have also died.

Now I live for Jesus–Jesus lives in me,
And I’m here to heal the eyes of those who cannot see.
Jesus died to save you; He died to save all men,
And although they buried Him, God raised Him up,
God raised Him up–

Some will never understand the things I’m tryin’ to say;
They think that Christ was just another man, though He lived a special way.
They will never realize ’til the coming of the judgment day,
‘Cause the devil’s had them close their eyes, and they’ve turned their heads away.

Now I live for Jesus–Jesus lives in me,
And I’m here to heal the eyes of those who cannot see.
Jesus died to save you; He died to save all men,
And although they buried Him, God raised Him up,
God raised Him up, God raised Him up again!

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret” | #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly” | #468:  The Song “Present Your Bodies”

Next Song: In the Light of His Love

Books by the Author, Games

470: Verser Turnings

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #470, on the subject of Verser Turnings.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first eight Multiverser novels,

  1. Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel,
  2. Old Verses New,
  3. For Better or Verse,
  4. Spy Verses,
  5. Garden of Versers,
  6. Versers Versus Versers,
  7. Re Verse All, and
  8. In Verse Proportion,

in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the ninth, Con Verse Lea,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

This is the fourth post for this novel, covering chapters 52 through 68.  Previous behind-the-writings posts for Con Verse Lea include web log posts:

  1. #460:  Versers Reorganize, covering chapters 1 through 17;
  2. #463:  Characters Unsettled, covering chapters 18 through 34;
  3. #468:  Characters Wander, covering chapters 35 through 51.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

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Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 52, Takano 73
Chapter 53, Beam 143
Chapter 54, Hastings 246
Chapter 55, Takano 74
Chapter 56, Beam 144
Chapter 57, Takano 75
Chapter 58, Beam 145
Chapter 59, Hastings 247
Chapter 60, Beam 146
Chapter 61, Takano 76
Chapter 62, Beam 147
Chapter 63, Hastings 248
Chapter 64, Beam 148
Chapter 65, Takano 77
Chapter 66, Beam 149
Chapter 67, Hastings 249
Chapter 68, Beam 150

Chapter 52, Takano 73

This was marked for a Hastings chapter, and I was at least several days trying to decide how to proceed.  The problem was that meticulous coverage of everything Lauren needed to teach them would be dull, but at the same time skimming over it in Lauren’s viewpoint would have to be detailed.  I then realized that Lauren would also be setting aside prayer time, which I would prefer were covered third-person.  So I changed the heading to Tommy.

Most of it was thought of as I finally got around to typing something, again several days after I changed it to Tommy’s viewpoint.  I’m contemplating how to get a Bible to her, and have been considering a sort of magic technological solution.

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Chapter 53, Beam 143

I had known for a while that I needed this to be a trap, but couldn’t decide how it would work.  My first thought was some kind of portcullis dropping to block the exit, but it seemed too primitive and ineffective.  My second thought was that the enemy would have rigged the first room to explode and collapse, but that would be complicated and possibly beyond what they were able to do.  I discussed it with Kyler, who reminded me that when he was in this world, the thing that ultimately took him out of it was an ambush, so I went with that.

I am not certain whether Beam will survive the ambush.  It was obvious that Beam has more assets than Kyler had, most notably the early warning system of Bob.  The upside of surviving the ambush is that this world still offers numerous opportunities for action, and I’m not at all certain where I might send him next.  The downside is if this doesn’t kill him I’m not sure what will.  But I don’t have to make that decision yet.

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Chapter 54, Hastings 246

I was pondering what to do with Lauren at this point.  However, I had just had Tommy thinking about getting a Bible somehow, and realized that at some point Lauren has to deliver the gospel to these people.  It was still a few days on top of the previous few days in which I pondered what to do, but once I started writing the chapter came fairly smoothly.

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Chapter 55, Takano 74

I was going to make this a Beam chapter, but my brain was engaged in the next step for the Hastings/Takano story, and I still had not quite worked through what Beam was going to do, so I went with Tommy.  Besides, Tommy’s chapter count was significantly lower than the others, and I sort of felt she needed to catch up a bit.

This chapter sort of moved from one thing to another, but it covered a lot of important parts.  I know what happens next for Tommy, but I needed a break before that could happen.

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Chapter 56, Beam 144

It struck me that Beam’s best strategy would be to take out the leadership, but that he had no way of knowing who or where that was.  Then I realized that Turbirb’durpa could hear the thoughts of the leaders, and so know what the leader was thinking—but would that enable him to locate the leader?  I decided that yes, he did know whence the thoughts came, and as I started writing I recalled his actions back in his first appearance, where he was aware of the location of those whose thoughts he heard.  That enabled Beam to target the leader, because Bob could point him in the right direction.

I always thought that a rocket was the best choice here.  I had often considered using rockets, but always saved them, and after I had fired the rocket I looked up Dawn’s equipment list to find that there were half a dozen, which meant five left.  I wasn’t going to use them all here, but it also said several crates of grenades, and I remembered her grenade launcher, so I used that to blow holes in the enemy line.

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Chapter 57, Takano 75

I had already written several chapters at one sitting, but I had this, and Lauren’s speech, in mind since I started with Lauren being told it was time.  I knew that somehow Tommy was going to manage to get Bibles delivered despite the fact that they couldn’t get anything delivered, and this was that.  The rest was for continuity.

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Chapter 58, Beam 145

I wasn’t sure how this would work, but pieced it together on the fly.  Every paragraph was devised as I reached it, from the marching order to the fight to the decision to follow Warren’s lead.

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Chapter 59, Hastings 247

When I wrote that God had already given her the words, I had this opening in mind.  I’m not an evangelist, either, but I tried to piece together enough of a message for her to deliver.  I also decided early that the truck would arrive with the Bibles during her speech, and it made sense for that to end her speech, but to do so once she had said everything she needed to say.

The embossed Bible was a last-minute decision.  I knew she would get a new Bible at this point, but since they were being distributed to the mass of people I wanted a reason why this one wasn’t also given away, and making it different and putting her name on it would do that for me.

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Chapter 60, Beam 146

At this point I was trying to figure out how to wrap up Beam’s story here, and Lauren’s also, and where to send either of them next.  I wasn’t coming up with any decent ideas.

The chapter was short, because I actually had not solved the problems it posed.

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Chapter 61, Takano 76

I had been contemplating what direction to take with this chapter, and it struck me that Tommy had just had a prayer answered rather dramatically.  It struck me that she had technically worked a miracle, and she might wonder about that.

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Chapter 62, Beam 147

I had decided after I wrote the previous Beam chapter that the best place for Warren was going to be the caves, and that would be an acceptable temporary camp for the others.  I also realized that Warren and Ashleigh ought to be dressed in their outlaw garb, and that they did not store these in the same location, and it would be rude for Beam to ask where Warren kept his.  So I would have to split the party.

Once I knew that I would be separating Warren from the others, it struck me that Beam should give him one of those unimportant pieces of equipment so he could track him by scriff sense.  I wondered what he had, and all I could think of was that he had packed gems in The Dancing Princess; still, I checked his character sheet, and although there were other things such as pencils, I decided the gem was the best choice.  That caused me to think that he should also give one to Ashleigh, because even though I wasn’t expecting them to be separated, he wouldn’t know that with certainty and would decide it a good idea to have a backup plan.  I might have been influenced by the fact that I had within the last week posted Brown 208 (In Verse Proportion Chapter 41), in which Derek says, “one thing I’ve learned is that it’s better to have a backup plan than to wish you had one, even if it’s not a very good backup plan,” which I thought was an excellent quotable statement, even though I don’t think I ever mentioned that anywhere.

I had expected this chapter to take me to the caves, and possibly beyond, but the part about the gems filled it sufficiently that I didn’t want to overstretch it.

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Chapter 63, Hastings 248

I really only had the starting point, that Lauren would be asked questions about the Bible that people were now reading, and that Tommy would kill and cook something.  I decided on rabbit because I wanted it not to be fish and I thought deer was a bit too big.

The meal gave me the start into expanding the diet.  I’ve had some survival training, so I know a fair amount about what you can forage in the woods, but Lauren does not have that benefit, so I had to think a lot about what she would know was edible.

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Chapter 64, Beam 148

I had been ignoring Beam’s most disabling weakness, and as I began with thoughts of returning to the honeymoon suite I realized that he was going to have to eat, and that meant drink, and that with the need to wash down the rice and his weakness for alcohol, he was going to consume a lot of sake and effectively derail his romantic intentions.  But that wasn’t going to appear quite so obvious unless I had him awaken in the bed.  Once I did that, it struck me that I needed a reason for him to get out of the bed, and there was a somewhat obvious one, but there were also obstacles.  And so this chapter took shape.  I’m not certain what happens when he returns.

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Chapter 65, Takano 77

I sort of stumbled through this chapter, knowing only that at some point I wanted Lauren to bring back another, smaller, deer, and that she was going to initiate Bible teaching meetings.  I didn’t even expect the latter to be in this chapter, but as I was writing it arose naturally, so I included it.

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Chapter 66, Beam 149

I decided after I sent Beam to the latrine that when he returned Ashleigh would be awake and awaiting, and much of this was sketched in my mind before I wrote the previous Takano chapter–but I had to pad it a bit, because what I had was too short.

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Chapter 67, Hastings 249

I had no idea what I was going to do with this chapter, and slept on it.  I came to the idea that Lauren was going to realize she had committed herself to lead church, which she had never done nor felt called to do.  It was after I had started writing that I remembered she had taught Bible in the mutant earth world where she met Derek.  Then I gave her margins in the Bible to make notes, but realized that although she had paper she didn’t actually have a pen–she didn’t bring a quill or ink from the fantasy Arabia world.  I also checked Tommy equipment, confirming that she didn’t have anything of that sort, either.  That meant I had to explain Lauren’s notes in the margins of the Bible she gave to Tommy, but that was easy enough.

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Chapter 68, Beam 150

I started this chapter with nothing more than the first line and a few vague notions of what had to be done in the short term.  I developed as much as I could of the plan from there.

I had to look up Amanda’s name, and also what it was that she called Beam, because she had been off stage for so long.

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This has been the fourth behind-the-writings look at Con Verse Lea.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.

Bible and Theology

469: Church History

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #469, on the subject of Church History.

This title is overblown.  About fifteen years ago I did a twenty-three part series at the Christian Gamers Guild Chaplain’s Bible Study about Church History, which at the time I thoroughly researched and still had to be corrected on a few points, and I’m not doing that research again now and not even re-reading that series.  But I was asked a question, and I’m going to attempt to muddle through an answer which I hope is adequate.

The questioner asks me such questions periodically, and sometimes I address them on Facebook, but when they get complicated I resort to writing posts for this weblog.  This time the question reads:

I’m confused so I turn to you for enlightenment.  Even when I was Protestant I had no idea between charismatics and Pentecostals and Calvinists.  They seem to fight a lot according to these so called faith based preachers that are on my video feed.  I enjoy listening to them for purely entertainment purposes because frankly, they tell me nothing other than their dislike for the other.  Maybe you could shed some light.

For background, the questioner was raised Lutheran, attended a Lutheran Bible college briefly and became serious about Christian faith when he played in a Christian band.  He converted to Roman Catholicism to accommodate his second wife, and has studied the beliefs of that church more intently than he had studied Protestantism generally or Lutheranism specifically.  Most of that is outside the parameters of the question anyway, but it might help the reader to understand my starting point.

It probably isn’t much use to understand the origins of the Reformation, but I find it at least interesting.  We actually start in England with Wycliff, who put forward the idea that ordinary people should have access to the text of the Bible in their own language.  The Catholic Church opposed this concept, because it was felt that uneducated people reading the Bible in versions that were not the original text or Latin translations rendered by persons who had been identified as “Saints” would get wrong ideas and teach them to others–and there was by this time a long history of heresies started by reasonably educated and scholarly people who read the Bible and got wrong ideas from it, so there was some reason for concern.  Wycliff was far enough from Rome to survive scrutiny, and his message managed to reach a man in Czechoslovakia named Hus.  He wrote a few things that the church didn’t particularly like, but he didn’t actually cross any lines, and his teachings were preserved within the monastic orders for consideration.  They thus reached a young monk named Martin Luther, who found them enlightening and realized that there were some problems with what the church was teaching and doing at that time, so he wrote a list of problems he thought the church should discuss, his ninety-five theses.  He posted a copy on the front door of his church in Germany, as announcements of local interest were generally promulgated, and mailed copies to a few friends around Europe.  One of those friends had access to a Gutenberg moveable type printing press, untested technology at the time, and made many copies of this, which then flooded Europe, and what was supposed to be a starting point for discussion became a battle line for division.

I believe that everyone is wrong about something, including me; a major point of study is to identify my own errors and correct them, which I have done repeatedly over the decades as I refine my understanding of what scripture actually teaches.  A corollary to that is every denomination holds a fundamental error in its doctrine, and this appears at the Reformation.

Whether or not it was official, the perceived message of the Catholic Church was that to get into heaven you had to be sinlessly perfect.  To achieve sinless perfection, you had to be forgiven, and divine forgiveness was mediated through the church.  Thus you confessed your sins to priests who gave you absolution, and usually prescribed penance–good deeds you should do to earn that forgiveness.  Probably that would have been stated as demonstrating that you deserve it, but it’s not very different in concept.  Because of this Last Rites are extremely important, because before you die you must confess all the sins you undoubtedly committed since your last confession, or you will have to pay for them in Purgatory or even go to Hell.  This led to abuses–if the church mediates forgiveness, you can be given forgiveness for wrongs you have not yet committed, and thus the sale of indulgences had become popular, the church prospectively forgiving sins you planned to commit in exchange for substantial gifts you gave to the church.

Luther rejected these ideas.  Forgiveness, he argued, was not earned but given freely, paid for by the sacrifice of Jesus.  It was given to everyone who had faith, and the church had no control over that.  Calvin agreed with this–but then they had a problem.  They were determined that in their understanding Christianity was never about doing something to earn your salvation–works–but entirely about faith, but it struck them that if you had to choose to have faith, then faith was something you did, and therefore a work, and they were back where they started with using faith to earn salvation, something that was a gift and could not be earned.  They each resolved this in a different way.

As an aside, I think this is where the Reformers made their error.  Later denominations have argued in essence that faith, a choice, is not a work, an act, and thus you can choose to trust God and so be saved without that counting as a good work that you did.  Strict Reformation Christians criticize this as “Decision Theology”, that you get to choose whether to believe, because the solution to the faith-is-works problem that the Reformers gave is that you don’t choose to believe, God chooses to give you faith, to cause you to believe.  In support of this, Ephesians 2:8f is frequently cited, reading (in the American Standard Version) for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory.  The error here is thinking that the “that” refers to the faith, but “that” is neuter and needs a neuter referent, and both “faith” and “grace” are feminine, so the “gift”, which is neuter, has to be the focus of the statement, the salvation which is given by grace and received through faith.

However, working from the assumption that faith had to be a gift, Calvin deduced, logically, that God decided who would and would not be saved, entirely arbitrarily, and individuals had no choice in the matter–either God saved you, or he didn’t.  This gives us the “Five Points of Calvinism”, which in English are recalled by the mnemonic “TULIP”:

  1. Total Depravity, that people are too corrupt ever to be able to do anything genuinely good on their own;
  2. Unconditional Election, that God makes his choice without reference to anything about us;
  3. Limited Atonement, that Jesus didn’t die for everyone but only for those God chose to save;
  4. Irresistible Grace, that if you have been chosen you cannot fail to believe;
  5. Perseverance of the Saints, that those who are actually divinely chosen will persevere to the end and so be saved.

Thus Calvin’s answer was that God arbitrarily decides who will be saved, forces those people to have faith, saves them, and condemns everyone else.  This is strict Calvinism.  Luther, by contrast, resolved the matter with an irrational solution:  God offers to give everyone faith to believe, and if you accept that faith it’s no credit to you, but you can reject it, in which case you are responsible for your own damnation.

The churches which call themselves “Reformed”, “Calvinist”, or “Presbyterian” generally follow Calvin’s schema, although as I read in a booklet by Catholics explaining Presbyterianism, most members of such churches are more interested in whether they are following Jesus than whether they are following Calvin.  It is also followed by some Baptist denominations, but others follow the line of Arminius, who attempted to correct Calvinism’s strict double-predestination system (you are predestined to be saved or predestined to be lost), which led to decision theology, adopted by many Baptists and most of the Evangelical movement.  It should be noted that there are Calvinist Evangelists, whose motivations are first that evangelism is commanded and second that we don’t know whom God is going to save so we have to present the message to everyone.

So we’re almost halfway there–these are the Calvinists.  They are distinguished from earlier Catholics by the belief that salvation is entirely by grace through faith with no relation to works, and from later Evangelical denominations by the belief that people really don’t have a choice but are chosen and given faith without reference to their own feelings about the matter.

We now have to move through a few centuries and a couple of “Great Awakenings” in which new denominations such as the Baptists and the Methodists arose, to get to the end of what some call the Third Great Awakening (others object that there are only two), involving Moody and Finney.  In the wake of this there were strange events, among them healings, visions, and ecstatic speech.  The concept developed that some people went beyond being saved to being “baptized in the Holy Spirit”.  This was the foundation of the Pentecostal movement, which led to the creation of several Pentecostal denominations united by a recognition of this “second” experience and manifestations of Spirit involvement, most notably speaking in tongues.

Established denominations in which this was not a reality could not accept the notion that there was “more of God than you know”.  Whatever this new experience was, it couldn’t be of God, because the established churches all believed that there was nothing else God was doing in the world that they didn’t have.  In fact, all of them had theological explanations for why these didn’t exist–they were limited to the capital-S Saints, or they ceased at the end of the first century as the New Testament replaced them, or the references actually are to natural gifts like preaching and translation and medical skills.  The Pentecostals couldn’t be called heretics because they maintained all the essentials of orthodox docrine, but many denominations believed that the supposed supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit were demonic.  Pentecostalism was thus marginalized for the first half of the twentieth century.

Sometime around 1960, plus or minus a few years, small numbers of members of traditional denominations became involved with Pentecostals (probably due to the ecumenical movement) and brought concepts of Pentecostalism back to their churches.  Beginning with the Catholics, these groups were called “charismatic” from the Greek “charisma”, a gift of divine grace.  Many of these groups “received the left foot of fellowship” from their churches, but by 1970 there were established “charismatic movements” in all the major denominations (Baptists were generally the holdout), but there were also independent fellowships built on charismatic theology that were evolving into churches.  They tend to blend Pentecostal experience with more traditional church practices, peculiarly mostly the Baptist practices and beliefs, probably because the Baptists were most resistant to accepting the Charismatics as a genuine move of God.  However, there are Charismatic churches in most denominations, and Charismatic groups in many churches that are affiliated with traditional denominations.

Calvinists generally believe that Evangelicals are wrong about the ability to choose to have faith, and thus they are against Pentecostal and Charismatic beliefs because of that, but also because of a belief that all the miraculous manifestations of the Spirit are relegated to the first century.  Pentecostals and Charismatics criticize Calvinists for failure to recognize that people can choose to have faith, and for excluding the power of God from their religion.  Pentecostals criticize Charismatics for trying to “pour new wine into old wineskins”, saying that the new move of God won’t work in the old churches, and Charismatics criticize Pentecostals for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that is, overlooking that there is much in the denominational traditions that has value and should be preserved.

All of that is a bit simplistic, and indeed there are Calvinist Pentecostals and Charismatic Calvinists.  Most Pentecostals and Charismatics are Evangelicals, but not all.  Many Pentecostals and Charismatics fellowship together.  However, as has been observed by others, the closer any two groups are to each other, the more emphasis they put on their differences.

I hope that helps.

Bible and Theology, Music, Uncategorized

468: The Song “Present Your Bodies”

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #468, on the subject of The Song “Present Your Bodies”.

Identifying when I wrote this song is a bit tricky, but I have a few clues.

In May or June of 1975, shortly after The Last Psalm played its last concert and just before I was invited to join Jacob’s Well, I wrote a song called Walkin’; that song is slated for next month, simply by a sort of random roll, but it is relevant here, because this song is like that one in structural ways of which I was always aware–indeed, I think they were intentional–but which might not be obvious to the casual listener.  Unfortunately, you won’t be able to hear the other song until next month, unless of course you’ve arrived late, in which case the link to it should be at the bottom of this page.

The similarities are related to the fact that the “bridge” is marked by a significant key change which changes the feel of the music, and it is repeated such that it launches out of both the chorus and the verse.  Both songs have three verses, multiple repetitions of a chorus, and as mentioned a repeated bridge.  It was a formula that worked perhaps better for the other song than it did for this one, and I rarely sang it for that reason; it was lengthy and repetitious, and I was never certain it held the attention of the audience.  I rarely sang the other, either, but that was for different reasons to be addressed next month.

I suppose the similarities end there.  This song is considerably slower and more somber than the other, and its power comes from a slow drive and potent words.  The lyrics are entirely quoted or paraphrased from scripture in this song, while that one is more a narration of a poetic salvation message.

My other major clue is that in the summer of 1977 I was using a small studio at Gordon College to record a few songs (those tapes, alas, long lost), and this was one of them.  That gives me a window during which this was created.

This is another vocals-over-midi-instruments recording.  Again its simplicity helps support a decent recording, although there is a technical hiccough in the midi at one point.

Present Your Bodies.

So here are the lyrics.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord
With all humility, with gentleness,
With patience.
Always be diligent in striving to preseve your unity
In peace.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

Count it joy when you suffer for the Lord,
And thank Him that He finds you worthy
To serve Him.
He will reward those who continue praising through their suffering
For Him.

When He comes back again
He will repay
Each one according to his deeds.
When you are serving Him
Day after day,
He will provide for all your needs.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

Place your whole life solely in His hands.
He’s working all things for His glory
And our good.
He’ll finish ev’ryone in whom He has begun salvation.
Amen.

Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God,
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Set aside the sin that oh, so easily besets you.
Forget the past, and press on toward the prize.

When He comes back again
He will repay
Each one according to his deeds.
When you are serving Him
Day after day,
He will provide for all your needs.

He’ll finish ev’ryone in whom He has begun salvation.
Amen.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret” | #466:  The Song “In a Mirror Dimly”

Next song: Walkin’

Uncategorized

465: Characters Wander

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #465, on the subject of Characters Wander.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first eight Multiverser novels,

  1. Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel,
  2. Old Verses New,
  3. For Better or Verse,
  4. Spy Verses,
  5. Garden of Versers,
  6. Versers Versus Versers,
  7. Re Verse All, and
  8. In Verse Proportion,

in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the ninth, Con Verse Lea,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

This is the third post for this novel, covering chapters 35 through 51.  The first, covering chapters 1 through 17, appeared as web log post #460:  Versers Reorganize, and the second, covering chapters 18 through 34, #463:  Characters Unsettled.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

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Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 35, Takano 68
Chapter 36, Beam 135
Chapter 37, Hastings 242
Chapter 38, Takano 69
Chapter 39, Beam 136
Chapter 40, Hastings 243
Chapter 41, Beam 137
Chapter 42, Takano 70
Chapter 43, Beam 138
Chapter 44, Hastings 244
Chapter 45, Beam 139
Chapter 46, Takano 71
Chapter 47, Beam 140
Chapter 48, Hastings 245
Chapter 49, Beam 141
Chapter 50, Takano 72
Chapter 51, Beam 142

Chapter 35, Takano 68

I needed to begin organizing the camp, and there was a lot to cover, but I didn’t want to overburden the chapter.

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Chapter 36, Beam 135

I had thought about how Beam would be able to settle into a place for a while, and so the strategy he followed developed.  Again I am uncertain what to do with him, but I have to connect him back to the outlaws, I think.

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Chapter 37, Hastings 242

I got to the middle of this and thought Lauren again needed to borrow a knife, and I knew that one of the team leaders had one, and knew which one, but couldn’t at that moment remember the names of the leaders.  But I had pressing errands, so I dropped the effort and saved everything.  It was over a week before I managed to return, during which time I wrote or prepped quite a few other projects but did not resolve all my issues here.  After I had written it, I realized that Lauren had a knife–it just wasn’t listed as such on her character sheet, instead being one of her “cooking utensils”, so I went back and changed the text to reflect that.

I knew that I would be bringing in the lake and the bathrooms, but wasn’t sure quite how, so this was that.

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Chapter 38, Takano 69

I originally marked this as a Beam chapter, but wasn’t sure where he was going next.  Meanwhile, I had a lot to cover for Lauren and Tommy, so although I had to this point avoided two in a row in the same world, I decided this was a good place for that.

The bathrooms were loosely modelled on those at Camp Lebanon, but that I removed the showers and didn’t give them hot water.  The shower is very like one I saw at Philmont Scout Ranch, although I didn’t actually use it so I’m working mostly from descriptions.

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Chapter 39, Beam 136

The rifles were a late decision, but I decided Beam would think it wise to use weapons for which he could replace the ammo.

The realization that Beam’s revolvers were .45 caliber came as I was writing.  I realized that it was possible that the .45 caliber bullets used in that world might be too long for his gun, but since they were used by the outlaw semiautomatic pistols, I concluded they would be short enough.

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Chapter 40, Hastings 243

The lake was always in view here, and was in fact the first thing I had decided she would find.  She had lived by a lake when she learned all her camping abilities, and she was applying them in the new world.

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Chapter 41, Beam 137

I had labeled this chapter for Tommy, but then in the time between writing chapters I had been considering what I was going to do next with Beam, and so this changed to cover him.

I had to have Beam pick up some equipment here, but it seemed reasonable for it to be here and for him to recognize the needs.

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Chapter 42, Takano 70

I pondered the problem of what Tommy should paint on the bathroom and shower entrances to mark them, thinking of several of the ideas I include in the text, and then asked Kyler.  He suggested the Mars and Venus emblems, which of course would be completely unfamiliar to the people but recognizably different and something they could learn.

The question about the shelter was essentially filler, because I needed to extend the chapter meaningfully.

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Chapter 43, Beam 138

I debated whether Ashleigh would take a vest, but decided against it.  She’s probably unhappy with the rifle, but pleased with the bullets, which fit her pistols.

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Chapter 44, Hastings 244

I was getting bogged down in the details, and didn’t get as far as the spear fishing lesson, but I was not unhappy with it.

I realized early that the Mars and Venus symbols would have an astrological connection, and that this might be discomforting for Lauren, but not terribly particularly given that no none else would recognize it.

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Chapter 45, Beam 139

I wasn’t sure how to get Beam onto a track I wanted.  I needed to get him on a ninja mission, but he was on the move such that it would be difficult for them to connect.  For the moment, I just needed to figure out what was logical for him to do.

I had learned from a Viet Nam veteran that soldiers in the field in Southeast Asia quit smoking because the locals don’t smoke and can smell soldiers who do.  That seemed a reasonable point to include here.

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Chapter 46, Takano 71

I wasn’t sure that this wouldn’t bore my readers.  After all, Lauren was spearfishing in the beginning of Old Verses New, and I was repeating detail covered there.  But she has to teach people, and that includes Tommy.

It occurred to me when I finished that I didn’t include teaching people to clean the fish, but I figured that could come later.

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Chapter 47, Beam 140

I had come up with a reason for the outlaws to contact Beam, and a reasonably credible way for them to find him, but it required that I keep him moving for a bit to establish some time passing.

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Chapter 48, Hastings 245

It was probably not a good time for me to write–there were multiple distractions, and I was just a bit tired and unfocused–but I wanted to push forward a bit, and knew a bit of what had to be done.

The notion that six people were going to have to carry enough fish to feed a hundred had been bothering me, but I figured I didn’t have to show how they did it.

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Chapter 49, Beam 141

I had written between a third and a quarter of this chapter when the power flashed and the computer crashed.  The autosave managed to restore about half of what I’d written, and I tried to recreate it, but it was after midnight and I wasn’t really focusing well–complicated by the fact that I wanted the chapter to be longer than I had thought through, and to end with something that I was going to reach too soon.

I was concerned that I not make my setting too North American, but had no idea whether there were any large game animals in Japan.  A search for “japan game animals” gave me a lot of links to video games, but I managed to refine the search (adding “hunting”) and get a short list that included brown and black bears, several game birds, something called a shika deer, and wild boar.  This isn’t actually Japan–for one thing, the territory is too big, as the entire known civilized world is part of the empire–but I had avoided deer precisely because I needed to distinguish Lauren and Tommy’s woods from Beam’s.

I was going to end this with the ninja arriving, and have the problem open the next chapter, but I decided there weren’t a lot of ways to bring him into the picture and I needed to do more to make this chapter long enough.

This was my solution to the problem of getting Beam back into action, given that he was a bit over the top for the ninjas.

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Chapter 50, Takano 72

At this point I was trying to figure out how to cover the skills quickly without either the feeling that I was glossing over them or the sense that the story was bogging down in the details.  Thus I’m trying to cover things briefly but with enough detail to make them real.

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Chapter 51, Beam 142

As I was reaching for a name for Ashleigh’s father it struck me that making him a gunsmith would make sense.  I had to go back to Beam 125 and change a bit of text so that Ashleigh wouldn’t seem to be denying that, but decided I didn’t need to include that there because she probably didn’t need to tell the blacksmith that her father was the gunsmith, and secrecy is part of their lifestyle.

Looking for that name, the first I came upon was Warren Buffet, and I decided I needed to drop the Buffet and come up with a more appropriate surname.  Then I decided peasants did not have surnames but were identified by other details, such as parentage or trade.  I didn’t want another Smith, and didn’t see him as a blacksmith, but it occurred to me that if he were a gunsmith he would secretly make the pistols for the outlaws, and would have a high status in the group; it made sense for the outlaw leader to be a gunsmith.

I ended this chapter somewhat abruptly because I had half decided there should be some kind of impediment at the exit.  A portcullis was what came to mind, as primitive as it is, but I wasn’t certain, so I decided that would be the point of the next chapter.

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This has been the third behind-the-writings look at Con Verse Lea.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.

Bible and Theology, Music

466: The Song “In a Mirror Dimly”

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #466, on the subject of The Song “In a Mirror Dimly”.

I remember exactly where I was when I wrote this song, and what inspired it.

I was dating Sue Adams my freshman college year, and in June, 1974, right after school was dismissed for the summer, we spent a few days at her home on Staten Island.  She lived in a duplex, and her grandparents, who had shared the other half of the building, had died that spring.  Thus I was given one of the vacant bedrooms in the otherwise empty half.  There was an old mirror, the sort that was losing its silver and so had an imperfect reflection, leaning against the wall near the bed, and I had my guitar handy when I awoke.  The mirror reminded me of the passage in I Corinthians 13, so the words of this song came to be.

I remember stretching a bit for the second verse, looking for something else that gave a weak reflection, and the storefront window was the only thing that came to me.  The third verse stepped out of the mold, but was still about something we would see that would, in a sense, reflect the image of God.

I was never overly fond of the song; it felt a bit strained to me.  However, others like it, particularly my wife.  I performed it with The Last Psalm in the 74-75 year, and so I included it in the recordings I made for Dave and Jes Oldham.

This is another vocals-over-midi-instruments recording.  It is rather good, probably because it is simple.

In a Mirror Dimly.

So here are the lyrics.

In a mirror dimly we can see His face.
He is God most holy; His image we can trace,
But oh, what an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him!

In a storefront window we buy our peace.
We don’t count it sin, though we find release
From oh, such an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him!

God is great, and God is good,
We thank Him ev’ry day.
He gives us life, He gives us food,
But if He came to stay
Would we let Him live with us?
Would we let Him reign?
He once died as Jesus;
Would He die again?

In a quiet sunset His glory shows,
But we haven’t learned yet, and may never know
Oh, such an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him!

In a mirror dimly we can see His face.
He is God most holy; His image we can trace,
But oh, what an image–
It scares me to think that someday
I may see Him!  I may see Him
Face to face,
Face to face.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three” | #464:  The Song “The Secret”

Next Song: Present Your Bodies

Bible and Theology

465: Believing in Ghosts

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #465, on the subject of Believing in Ghosts.

In Matthew 14:26 we are told that the disciples, caught in a storm on the water, saw Jesus walking on the waves coming toward them and thought He was a ghost.  (We find the same statement in Mark 6:49.)  This raised a question:  Did they believe in ghosts?  Do we?  Should we?

I recently heard a comedienne comment that
she had figured out that ghosts were
people who died trying to fold a fitted bedsheet.

The question was raised by a long-time friend and reader who sometimes brings questions about the Bible and faith to me (notably, the question about The Abomination of Desolation).  I had recently commented in an article elsewhere that many people do believe in ghosts, and not just those who, like the cowardly lion, are faced with frightening events they don’t understand.  Our world even has professional ghost hunters who are fully persuaded that there is something real about these phenomena, and that they know what it is.

Of course, we have many who disbelieve, as well.  C. S. Lewis commented (in Miracles:  A Preliminary Study) that he knew someone who had actually seen a ghost, but that the witness did not believe in ghosts either before or after that sighting.

The Greek word in this passage is the one from which we get the word “phantasm”, and etymologically derives from a word for light to suggest something that appears, something that can be seen but has no substance.  “Ghost” is a good translation for it.  It is not used in any other passage in the New Testament, but it fits here quite well:  if you were in a small fishing boat on an inland sea in a storm, and through the rain and the winds you thought you saw a person striding atop the waves, you would be fairly certain it could not be a physical body and so probably identify it as some kind of spirit entity.  That, though, begs the question:  did they believe this was what we normally identify as a “ghost”, that is, the spirit of a departed person?  That matters to my questioner, because he was concerned about the Old Testament proscriptions against communicating with the dead.  The fact that they recognized something as an apparation does not necessarily mean they believed it to be a ghost in that sense.

Also, what they believed might not be relevant.  After all, in this case we know they were wrong–what they saw was not a ghost, but the living, breathing body of Jesus walking on the water.  The fact that they may have believed ghosts to exist when faced with something they did not understand does not mean that ghosts actually do exist.

On the other hand, it is difficult to read I Samuel 28, where King Saul visits a woman in Endor said to have the ability to contact the dead, and so has her connect him with the spirit of the deceased prophet, and not conclude that the Bible appears to teach some kind of survival of the spirits of the dead in some form.  That’s not quite the same thing as a spirit roaming the world or haunting its locale, but it is something we might call a ghost.  A belief in ghosts is not opposed to our faith.

And those prohibitions don’t say we can’t believe ghosts are real; it says we shouldn’t have any contact with them.  The prohibition against communicating with the dead would be rather foolish if it were not possible, and although it might be reduced to a command not to allow anyone to dupe you into believing you were speaking to the departed, that’s not the feeling we get from it.  It is certainly within the realm of our faith that we could believe in ghosts and keep our distance from them.

Again, though, many of prohibitions in the Old Testament Law were targeting the religions of other nations, and this has the hallmarks of one of them.  Ancestor worship was a common practice, and witches were people who sought to contact spirits other than God, which included demons and angels but also those of the departed, as part of religious practice.  We don’t contact spirits other than God because there is no good reason to do so.  As I have said in my book Why I Believe, there might be many spirits out there, but we are not well equipped to determine which ones might be benign and which might have motivations for compromising us in ways that make sense in a spirit realm beyond our understanding.  It is better to stay clear of ghosts and apparitions and spirits, simply because we can’t know which ones can be trusted.  It might seem nice enough, but then even among humans the ones who seem nice enough are frequently the con artists and sometimes the serial killers.

I don’t believe Christians either must or must not believe in the existence of ghosts, and in our grace-based lives it is not particularly relevant whether we have any contact with them.  What the original disciples believed about ghosts is similarly not relevant to what we should believe about them.  What matters is that our trust is in God, and not in spirits no matter who or what they claim to be.  It is better to stay clear of any such spirit, not because it is dangerous but because we don’t know what it is or what its motivation might be, and if it tells us things we don’t already know, we can’t know when it lies.

I’m not sure whether this answers the question completely, but I hope it helps.

Bible and Theology, Music

464: The Song “The Secret”

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #464, on the subject of The Song “The Secret”.

I sing this song from time to time in my solo concerts, but not that often–people just don’t seem to get it.

I remember that the first person for whom I sang it was Jeff Zurheide, in Evans Hall at Gordon College, so it must have been 1975 or 6, not later than 78.  He stared at me, and said that he thought I was going to end by saying that if you couldn’t do all those things just ask Jesus and he’ll help you do them.  That, of course, is not how it ends.  I played it some time later for Phil Keaggy, who was not really expecting someone to walk up to him after a concert carrying a guitar and singing a song, and all he said was it was interesting.

It comes from a silly saying, that there are two ways to get to heaven.  One was to be sinlessly perfect your entire life, and the other was the right way.  That’s what I wanted to capture with this.

This is another vocals-over-midi-instruments recording.  Although it sounds as if the eleventh and twelfth commandments are the two given as the most important by Jesus, they were references to two commandments I’d heard in my teens, Thou shalt not hassle and Thou shalt not sweat.  There actually were scripture references to support those, but I’m not sure what they were.  The point was to make the requirements seem as impossible to keep as they are.  Someone commented that they appreciated the shift near the end from the “never” rules to the “always” rules, that more was required than simply refraining from evil, that some positive good was part of it.

The Secret.

So here are the lyrics.

Everybody wants to know the secret;
Ev’ryone is looking for a way.
People tell us how to get to heaven,
But they disagree in what they say.

Some men say sincerity
Will pay the price of liberty,
But people make mistakes when they’re sincere.
Some men tell you to believe
Anything you do believe,
But that doesn’t seem to be quite clear.

I’ve waded through the answers;
I’ve found the one that’s true,
So if you’ll stop and listen,
I’ll pass it on to you.

God expects perfection from your birth until your death.
This is all you really have to do:
Keep your whole life perfect with your ev’ry passing breath.
This is what the Lord expects of you:

Keep the ten commandments, the eleventh, and the twelfth;
Love the Lord above all else,
And love your neighbor as yourself,
Show kindness to your enemy,
And give to all abundantly.
Never hate a man, never tell a lie,
Never doubt the truth, never question why,
Always bear the pain, always take the time,
Always keep the law, always stay in line.
Then perhaps you’ll make it to his throne;
Then perhaps you’ll make it on your own.

But if you’ve any trouble, there’s a better way:
Turn around and give your life to Christ,
And God will touch you with His power, and starting from that day
He’ll give to you a brand new kind of life.

Yes, if you’ve any trouble, there’s a better way:
Turn around and give your life to Christ,
And God will touch you with His power, and starting from that day
He’ll give to you a brand new kind of life.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need” | #462:  The Song “John Three”

Next song: In a Mirror Dimly

Books by the Author

463: Characters Unsettled

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #463, on the subject of Characters Unsettled.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first eight Multiverser novels,

  1. Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel,
  2. Old Verses New,
  3. For Better or Verse,
  4. Spy Verses,
  5. Garden of Versers,
  6. Versers Versus Versers,
  7. Re Verse All, and
  8. In Verse Proportion,

in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the ninth, Con Verse Lea,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

This is the second post for this novel, covering chapters 18 through 34.  The first, covering chapters 1 through 17, appeared as web log post #460:  Versers Reorganize.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

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Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 18, Beam 126
Chapter 19, Takano 64
Chapter 20, Beam 127
Chapter 21, Hastings 238
Chapter 22, Beam 128
Chapter 23, Takano 65
Chapter 24, Beam 129
Chapter 25, Hastings 239
Chapter 26, Beam 130
Chapter 27, Takano 66
Chapter 28, Beam 131
Chapter 29, Hastings 240
Chapter 30, Beam 132
Chapter 31, Takano 67
Chapter 32, Beam 133
Chapter 33, Hastings 241
Chapter 34, Beam 134

Chapter 18, Beam 126

I was figuring out a lot of detail for this world.  I had run it at least thrice before, but never with a group and only once with an adult character and usually in the “alpha” setting (medieval).  At this point I did not know where Beam was going to stay or what he would do.  Returning to Ashleigh’s home was the best option.

The original of this chapter contained this text:

“Did you make your own sword?”

“My sword was made by the blacksmith we visited earlier.”

“I didn’t see any swords in his shop.”

“Of course not.  The soldiers would arrest him if they knew he made swords for anyone other than them.  When someone needs a sword, they save up the rice for it and then visit the smith to ask him to make it.  In a day or two they pick it up.”

On a re-read it struck me that the ninja-to was a feature in the medieval version of this world, but absent from the modern one, and so since it hadn’t been mentioned I deleted the reference.

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Chapter 19, Takano 64

I had spent some time trying to figure out what the scouting teams would see and what they would report.  I realized that I needed them all to return quickly, and one excellent way to do that would be to terrify them with some machine.  Ploughs were the first and simplest choice.

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Chapter 20, Beam 127

I was very much delayed on this, partly because I was working on other projects including that web log series about the credibility of the Exodus account, but partly because I was inching forward.  I had had a mental breakthrough on Lauren and Tommy’s story, but was still trying to work out how Beam and Ashleigh manage to get moving forward.  The idea that she would go on a mission without telling him seemed the right first step.

I was also working through the right level of technology for peasant homes in this world, and decided on cold running water and plumbed outhouses.

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Chapter 21, Hastings 238

I wanted to bring back the third team, but I didn’t want it to seem either as if the three teams all came back at once, or on the other hand that one of them was out longer than was reasonable.  Thus I wound up with this chapter about Lauren and Tommy waiting.

I had expected to describe what Boronir’s team found in more detail, but thought that it was time to transition back to Beam and that I should delay it for the next chapter.  It also gave me a sort of cliffhanger, which I liked.

I had spent quite a long time thinking about what this third scouting team would have found and how Lauren would proceed from here.  There was going to be a place to camp, and I considered having Boronir describe it, but the more I considered it the less sense it made.  Ultimately I decided that the brave former tennan would have to be stopped by something he didn’t understand how to pass, and that Lauren could find the campground by magic.  I also worked out how the technologically-oriented deity of that world could answer her prayer, but that’s for the next chapter.

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Chapter 22, Beam 128

I was still unsure how Beam was going to become integrated into this world.  I didn’t see him apprenticing to an herbalist, which several players have done, but his style was not terribly consistent with the ninja program.  He was going to need a place to live, food, and something to do, none of which seemed obvious at this point.

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Chapter 23, Takano 65

I had expected to have Boronir describe the fence, but decided that this wouldn’t be terribly interesting and I needed to get the people on the road, so I rushed through that and went as directly to Lauren’s spell as I could.

The idea of the direction coming as a map on Tommy’s cell phone had occurred to me a few nights before as I was driving and mentally trying to unravel how to move all the stories forward.  I remembered that Lauren had that direction spell, and that it had worked before in this world, but I needed a technological way for the magic to work.  Tommy had both a laptop and a cell phone, but cell phone map programs made more sense, being designed to work as GPS systems.

I have also mentally worked out the destination, but I’m still working on how to present the journey.

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Chapter 24, Beam 129

I struck on the idea of attacking villas pretty much incidentally.  I had envisioned most of the nobles living in cities, with peasant servants, but realized that attacking homes in the cities would mean needing a place to hide.  I’m beginning to form a plan.

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Chapter 25, Hastings 239

I had intended this to take them to the gate, but I realized that I needed to stop for lunch, and when I did I realized I needed water, and the best way to do that was by tapping an irrigation pipe.  However, as I invented how those pipes worked, I realized that Lauren and Tommy weren’t going to be able to open it by physical means.  I decided that opening a valve magically would be a release lock or hold spell, within the bias, and that calling for water could use Moses as an example, so I built all of that.  However, it took long enough that my chapter ended there.

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Chapter 26, Beam 130

Again I expected to move further forward in this chapter, which was going to be about making the map, but I first had to figure out the camping arrangements which took more ink than I anticipated.  Still, I wasn’t really sure how to write the mapmaking section, so I’m not complaining.

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Chapter 27, Takano 66

Getting this organized was the trick.  I needed Lauren to kill the turkeys, but I also needed her to examine the gate and talk about setting camp on this side of it.  I had been thinking about Tommy’s concern about dangerous animals for a while, and needed to get that in here as well.  Thus piecing it together in a sensible sequence was the challenge, and I cut off the story before becoming too involved in everything else.

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Chapter 28, Beam 131

The map had been on my mind for a while, a necessary step to Beam starting his actions.  I also decided that they should sleep in the woods, because he was not going to be comfortable celebrating his honeymoon in his bride’s mother’s common room.

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Chapter 29, Hastings 240

I had expected to come to this sooner, and had anticipated the difficulty of conveying everything Lauren had to teach these people and the challenges of working without the best tools.

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Chapter 30, Beam 132

Life stalled this chapter at least a week, and although I knew the essential story elements, I wasn’t sure how to compose them.  The plot has a few chapters to it, but the execution still promises to be challenging.

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Chapter 31, Takano 67

Starting this chapter, I only knew that it began with entering the woods, and that I couldn’t have them reach the campsite until the next chapter because I needed the hike to seem long.  The dialogue arose to give a sense of the passage of time, but it raised important issues.

I wondered about what they would be able to find for food, particularly as Lauren is the only one who has any experience hunting.  I pondered if there were any crops that might be grown in patches in the woods, and wondered about cranberry bogs, but a quick check determined these were not harvested until late fall.  I also considered other berries, which often grow in wild patches, but for a hundred people this would require rather large fields of them.  I thought of my solution, which should come in the next chapter.

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Chapter 32, Beam 133

I had spent quite a while trying to decide how Beam could take over a villa.  The moving in did not seem to be a problem; it was avoiding being evicted.  What I decided was that he had to make the commanders reluctant to attack.  I thus knew before Beam took over the villa that he would be leaving it early in the morning and demolishing it when the soldiers arrived to retake it.

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Chapter 33, Hastings 241

I long pondered how to make the shooting work.  I tried to imagine how the buck would fail to notice or react to the arrival of a crowd of people, or how Lauren could manage to be carrying her bow and pulling her cart.  That pressed me to finding a reason for Lauren to scout ahead, and Tommy’s fear of predators gave me something.

I had looked up the amount of meat on a buck, and whether a bow hunter could bring one down with one shot, just to be certain I wasn’t being unreasonable.  It turns out forty percent of the weight of a one hundred fifty pound buck (large) is edible meat.  It also occurred to me that deer is kosher (cleaves the hoof and chews the cud) so it would probably be fairly safe.

The water spout was one of the first features I’d envisioned for the campsite.  It occurs to me that I’ve got a couple more, and I’m going to have to consider why Lauren has not yet seen them, but she hasn’t explored far yet.

I wanted Lauren to say, or think, “Hi, honey, I’m home”, and even returned to the chapter looking for how to fit it into what I’d written, but it wouldn’t work with what I had.

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Chapter 34, Beam 134

Beam’s expectation is that after what he did to the soldiers who came to retake the first villa, the military will be a bit less rash in their response this time.  In game he would need a good general effects roll for that, but I’m giving it to him here, partly because I think it likely despite the attitudes of the soldier nobility.

What I don’t have is a next step for him.

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This has been the second behind-the-writings look at Con Verse Lea.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.

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#462: The Song “John Three”

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #462, on the subject of The Song “John Three”.

Sometime around 1969-70 I wrote a song entitled I Die At the Dawn–I wrote a lot of songs about death and dying back then.  It had rather vapid but sad lyrics and long instrumental stretches.  Then in 1973 when BLT Down morphed into The Last Psalm, I rewrote the words, created melodies over the instrumental sections, and created Saturday’s Song, about the despair the disciples must have felt between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  It was one of the rockier songs in the repertoire, and a crowd pleaser.

This is not that song.

However, that song was the impetus for something.  My lead guitarist Jeffrey Robert Zurheide subsequently wrote a duet, a conversation in which a soldier orders a cross from a carpenter, and we were off and running on a rock opera about Passion Week, every song told with Jesus off stage by people who had been there.  We eventually had about a dozen songs in the series, and this was one of them.

I have not recorded many of these, partly because there are several on which I would not be able to sing the soprano part, partly because I never finished writing the massive finale.  There will be another that I recorded mostly because when I wrote it I had no one to perform it and wanted to preserve the intricate music.  This one I wrote because it was co-written with David D. Oldham (and his friend Stephen Fredette), who insisted I make these recordings, so I included it on the first disk I made for him.

It follows the crucifixion, and sees Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus sitting outside the tomb in which they have just sealed the body of Jesus, talking about their own despair and lack of direction.  The “three angry men” section is a musical variant of the original theme from Saturday’s Song (it’s in 3/4 in the original, developing into a fugue, while here it is in a syncopated 4 with harmony).  The two characters sing it as a duet, and we performed it with The Last Psalm, another of the rockier songs in the repertoire.  The vocals-over-midi-instruments recording of it is one of the better ones.

John Three.

So here are the lyrics.

Oh, Nicodemus, I’m asking you,
Where do we go from here?  What do we do?
Joseph, I’m horrified–my hopes are crucified.
He died on a cross for three angry men,
None of whom will be blamed.
He died all alone, the cross was His throne–
The world must have gone insane.
Where do we go when we know that our hopes have been crucified?

Now that we’ve buried Him, where do we go?
I’d like to tell you, but I just don’t know.
If He had made it clear,
Then we would not be here.
He died on a cross for three angry men,
None of whom will be blamed.
He died like a man, with nails in his hand.
How could he stand the pain?
Where do we go when we know that our hopes have been crucified?

Oh, how could one day, so brief and grim,
Bring such distress to us, and death to Him?
So now we stand for Him against our fears,
But since we rose too late, we’re standing here.

We’ve gone too far my friend to turn back now.
We should go on ahead, but don’t know how.
We can’t forget Him friend.
Have we been born again?
He died on a cross for three angry men,
He died on a cross for three angry men,
He died on a cross for three angry men–
Where do we go when we know that our hopes have been crucified?

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  The Song “My Life to You” | #366:  The Song “Sometimes” | #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom” | #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy” | #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice” | #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good” | #393:  The Song “Why” | #399:  The Song “Look Around You” | #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command” | #408:  The Song “Given You My Name” | #412:  The Song “When I Think” | #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me” | #428:  The Song “To the Victor” | #433:  The Song “From Job” | #436:  The Song “Trust Him Again” | #438:  The Song “Even You” | #441:  The Song “Fork in the Road” | #442:  The Song “Call to Worship” | #445:  The Song “How Many Times” | #447:  The Song “When I Was Lonely” | #450:  The Song “Rainy Days” | #453:  The Song “Never Alone” | #455:  The Song “King of Glory” | #457:  The Song “Greater Love” | #458:  The Song “All I Need”

Next song: The Secret