Now and then I get out of the house to write this blog. Partly so I won’t be tempted to keep raiding the snack drawer. Partly because staying indoors too much begins to affect my writing. It can start to sound like…well, somebody who has developed a bit of SAD (seasonal affective disorder).
I often hit the road for a favorite Barnes and Noble, where cookies are kept safely within a glass case (having to pay for them seems to deter my grazing tendencies). The gigantic store windows also allow a premium of light.
If I need a five-minute break, I can wander through the shelves, where new authors have made it into the writing world. One thing I’ve noticed during my browsing: I’m amazed at the level of politicization and ideological groupthink on those pages. If you’re sick of the endless hollering in the real world, you can also find it punctuating fictitious ones in new novels. Seems there’s no reprieve from it, even in a parallel universe. While flipping through random selections, I found, entirely by chance, the protagonist giving dutiful salutes to the “appropriate” political side, and single-fingered salutes to the other.
Fiction isn’t the only place this happens. Apparently, our in-fighting has made it into non-fiction, disinterested books as well. I bought a volume on the craft of writing and discovered within a few chapters the author’s seething hatred for Donald Trump. Now, mind you, I would have found such malice for any democrat, liberal, or progressive, just as disconcerting, because the author had hi-jacked his own subject matter. I paid money for a book to get tips on great writing. That’s what the cover promised. However, the author kept utilizing tired, hostile political tropes. He couldn’t seem to help it, either.
Figuratively, I characterize all of this as a smell. In fact, everyone has some sort of figurative odor about them. Sometimes they announce it from a distance. Even if they don’t, give them a few minutes to talk, and you’ll find out what it is–whether lavender, cypress wood, or rotting fish. It’s all about what you love, what you fear, what you obey, what you feed upon, think about, listen to, and put your hope in.
Christians have a smell, too. Or, at least we should, according to the Apostle Paul:
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? (2 Cor. 2:14-16).
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This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
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