Formal Creative Writing Practice

Each sentence is stand alone. Tried three variations of each form.

• She was savagely swept up in a current and drowned in foam and fury.
•  
• He was later raised by a fisherman who buried him by sweat and shovel.
•  
• She soon rested by my side breathing in dreams and exhaling hushed secrets.

---

• He wore a tattered pinstripe jacket, and the church bells rang for the work shifts to begin.
•  
• A hot breeze rolled over the hill, and the spring odors swelled with blood and rot.
•  
• His words were discomforting white lies, but his casket had beautiful lining.

---

• I became aware of reality again in the middle of saying the creed, on account of not having a consciousness, since the death of Freud at least.
•  
• The alms were given, since scarcity is scarce, to the blessed poor.
•  
• The cassock was dark, black is its only color after all, whether in day or night.

---

• Our judgment came before the fire, and like the fire, it was kindled more by the burning pages.
•  
•  The end started with the beginning, and as the beginning, it introduced the reader to the hero.
•  
• His hating eyes began before my response, and like the response, it began building to a violent conclusion.

---

• Divinity School can be a faith community; they can have their own gods.
•  
• Time is money, we're convinced we can own it.
•  
• Appeal to authority is a fallacy, or so I'm told.

---

• Many things drive us to attempt to consume God's being, the most distasteful, that I've witnessed, are experiences.
•  
• There are a few good ways to cook a fish, the best of which, in my opinion, is in a plate.
•  
•  Of all the forms that charity takes, the only one that matters, contrary to the spirit of the times, is in the form of our souls.

Prayer Vigils

Prayer vigils have become functional protests.
Protests are rain dances.
Rain dances also include walks, rides, and marches for money and/or awareness.
We might use a tool to an end,              -but it habituates us to its functions.

• those with a hammer think every problem is a nail
• those who play on the phone think friendships are kept through text messages
• those who hold "prayer vigils" think prayer is a special occasion
• instead of a way of life
• think God is a legislator to write to
• a monarch to protest, or protest to

Just as I'm habituated to think in lines on papers and writing software
because my paper since childhood consisted in lines
because I was trained to write in lines

We are not so easily removed from tools.
We use them to shape the world, and they shape us in the process.
Creation shapes the creature, the creature shapes creation.
Dominion does not entail separation, nor asymmetrical influence.
Lest we end up with silly prayers:

Almighty God, Father of all mercies. We your unworthy servants pray to you on this most special of occasions, not in thanksgiving or in praise, but in intercession alone. Thou alone art our tool to secure perpetual blessedness on this earth, that you might fully heal the world. Thou hast sent thy beloved Son, who stretched out his arms on the hard wood of the cross that we might pray when we are outraged at the unredeemed world. Send thy Senatorial Spirit amongst us that we might change the laws of the world. Trusting in thy manifold lobbying, we pray you to come to our aid to change the powers that be -- just as thy Son did by his death on a cross. Amen.

Give us the faith of thy patriarch Job who brought you, O Lord, to trial. Give us the faith of those who brought you to trial a second time before the Sanhedrin and the Romans. Give us the faith to bring others to court, that we might ensure others take up their crosses. We entreat thee to hear these, the prayers of The People, that you might see it fit to baptize our earthly city, for we have already baptized you in the waters of the world Lord. Hear, and read, our petitions O Lord, for the signatures are great in number. We beseech thy vetoing power that is inner governance of The Three Holy Branches of thy being: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, world without end. Amen.

...joining our voices with political forefathers and pundits and all the companies of the world who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of thy name:

Of course such prayers are not common, but sinners thinking they are pure enough to create their own liturgy is quite common. The form is much more subtle and devious than such satirical and improvisational prayers. God in my image, a god of my disposition, is no god at all, but an idol. God is the one who sides with me on how things ought to function inside the world. I'm not sure where one stands to make such a claim. If one is inside the Church, live within that city, that political, moral community. It is in the world but not of it. If one insists on making utopian like comments on how the city of the world ought to function, they become caught up in a grander conversation. A conversation that presumes the truth of certain political and social organizations that contradict the Church's own structure and functioning.

The world has already been redeemed.
God already tried to change the world and we killed him for it.
What good will we do holding silly prayer vigils for political action?
Are we so foolish?

There is of course a proper use to prayer vigils, e.g. for the deceased. What we have functionally around academies and larger cities though is, well, something else. We forget God's activities by which he has revealed himself. We forget the cross and take up the flag, even when we fool ourselves into thinking we're working so hard against the particular content of the flag. It's form wraps around us, and we smile as it slides around us, and we make it our own. We come to love it, for what it can do, how it can be used to do the will of God, so we cut a cross out of its fabric thinking it pure. So we hold prayer vigils for political action, raise up the "community," storming God or the world or both by prayer, making both our captive audiences.

Vigils like this are idolatry.