Now I Sit Me Down to Write

Now I sit me down to write

I ask God for words not trite

I wish I can, I wish I might

Pen a masterpiece tonight.

Many times as we sit down to write, visions of grandeur fill our minds. After all, how hard can it be? I am sure Charles Dickens or Samuel Clements simply put on paper whatever came to mind didn’t they? It is simply a matter of letting the words flow from our exceptionally creative minds through our fingers to the page. Right?

If it were only that simple. Plot line? What’s a plot line? What do you mean I should rewrite that? I like it that way! For every potential Oscar winning screenwriter out there, for every potential poet laureate, for every possible Nobel laureate for literature, I say enjoy your craft. Do not write for the accolades of man. If you do, your work will find itself becoming a creature that you do not enjoy. Enjoy your craft.

To sit and write for the enjoyment of others, for the edification of others, for the lifting of man’s spirit is more fulfilling than any prize to be won. Enjoy your craft. Find the joy in the development of your story. Watch your characters grow as if they were your own children. Your ideas coalesce into a nearly physical being in your mind as you press on in your work. Enjoy your craft.

Let rewrites become a joy as you mold your piece like a potter would shape a vase. Let your critics become your friends, for the truly honest ones are invaluable to the writer. Enjoy your craft. As with the work on the potter’s wheel, know that many works do not end as originally intended. In well trained, experienced hands many will become great works admired by man. Many more, still will be simply useful, bringing a smile or a reflective moment into someone’s life. Still others will be broken and discarded. But even here the broken pot thrown to the ground becomes the foundation on the soil for new works to begin. Let nothing go to waste. Enjoy your craft.

For the joy in writing comes not in the far flung dreams of grandeur obtained by so few in our world, but rather in the moment of discovery. The birth of an idea, the epiphany of a story line that returns to it path long ago lost in the ramblings of your wandering mind, the joy of one person living a better life because what you put on that page spoke to them when they needed it most. Enjoy your craft and your craft will bring joy.

Is Darwin Dead?

I have recently been thinking about the ongoing debate concerning Darwin and his theory of evolution. Not that I haven't thought about it before, in fact I've studied it to some extent, I've just been recently thinking about it again. No particular reason.

The whole idea of evolution continues to amaze me. In the late 1980's there was a saying: Disco is dead, the Bee Gees just don't know it yet. I would put forth today that Darwin is dead, the Evolutionist just don't know it yet. Now before you cut straight to that reply button at the bottom of my post, please let me explain.

For decades now the argument has been creation vs evolution, or evolution vs creation. It's as if God and Darwin are the only two beings in history to ever have an opinion on the subject. Now Creation Theory, by it's very nature, must be taken on faith. Creationism can not be scientifically proven. It happens to be what I do believe, but I recognize that it is my choice by default and not by scientific reasoning that I believe this way. Therefore I have no means by which to convince you that creationism is the "correct" theory. That belief is entirely up to you.

Where the evolutionary pundits fail in my mind is that they present evolution as fact, which it is not. Remember it is called the Theory of Evolution by Darwin himself. This theory fails on the same test as does the creationist theory. It can not be scientifically proven i.e. it has not been observed in nature and it can not be duplicated in a laboratory.

"Not observed in nature" you say??! What about all of those birds on the Galapagos Islands? What about fruit flies in Hawaii? What about - fill in the blank? Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the birds in the Galapagos are still birds. The fruit flies in Hawaii are still fruit flies. The fill in the blank, my guess is still a fill in the blank. What Darwin observed was adaptation, not evolution. Evolution was the mindspring that Darwin created by taking these observed adaptations to an extreme conclusion. Creatures of our planet adapt all the time. The fruit fly was introduce to Hawaii through international shipping and thus has a known point in time that it was established in the Islands. It is not a native to the South Pacific, but it changed over many generations to live and thrive in the warm climate. It adapted, but it is still a fruit fly. You would adapt if you moved from Florida to South Dakota (although adapting to the reverse scenario would be much more palatable.) That in no way means that you have evolved or that your future offspring will be anything but a human like you, even if they are much colder.

Many facets that are taught in schools today as facts of evolutionary theory have in fact been scientifically disproven. The idea of life coming from some promordial ooze not only can not be scientifially proven, it has been show to be chemically impossible.

I was watching a documentary recently about animals in Africa. The show had a decidedly evolutionary bent to it. The commentator began to explain how the giraffe has a special valve in its throat. Without this valve the giraffe would not be able to drink because of the extreme distance below their body mass that they need to reach to be able to drink from the ground. This was very interesting. Something I had never heard of before. Then the commentator went on to explain how this valve had evolved over millions of years of giraffe evolution to bring us to this day of this modern biological marvel, the giraffe that we know and love today. Only one thought came to my mind: If the ancestors of the giraffe did not have this special valve in their throat, how did they drink?

On that note I leave you with my thoughts and the opportunity to ponder your own meaning of the universe.