Tag Archives: Thy Dross to Consume

Stuck

My latest fiction attempt isn’t flying off the pages lately. Maybe it’s because Mark Pacer, my main character, is stuck, too.

With the help of a friend, he overcame the early stages of grief (Thy Dross to Consume). He has family; he’s not alone.

Still, he’s just going through the motions lately. Coping.

My idea is: shortly, someone is coming into his life to shake him up. He’ll have to decide some things.

I’ve left Mark in the late 1980’s time wise. Maybe I’m coping myself with this fictional return to that in-between era. It’s a return to that time immediately before my life changing decision that took me around the world. Both the world and I changed after that.

In this return to that in-between time, the Soviet Union already is changing. The U.S. President is an older guy, conservative. Is he too set in his ways to handle potential changes? Is the country he leads too set in its ways?

Mark is serving his latest U.S. diplomatic stint in Canada. It’s nice to live in a country with western values again. But maybe it’s a little boring after the Middle East?

Something is going to happen to shake him up. I’ve got the idea, but it’s still fluid, seeking its course.

Though he’s not yet middle-aged, Mark has traveled to the outskirts of a Dante-an dark wood.

Someone from the past enters his life again. His children are growing and asking hard questions. Finally, his work involves him in the first tip of an iceberg coming into view—the refugee crisis that later will turn into a flood.

What does he do now?

If God is Evil . . . ?

We often hear: “If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world?”

But someone also asked,” If God is evil, why is there so much good in the world?”

Regardless, when one suffers great loss—the death of a loved one perhaps or witnesses the suffering of innocent children—normally the griever is not interested in philosophical answers.

Perhaps it’s a matter of simply getting through the loss as best one can.

When I wrote my book Thy Dross to Consume, I didn’t presume to answer the question of why evil exists. I simply wanted to tell the story of how one man stumbled through his grieving after a loss.

Often we sons and daughters of the western world assume the answer lies with our particular slant on religion or philosophy.

So, Tadros, an Egyptian Coptic Christian, entered my story to explore loss from a different perspective.

Tadros, suffering through his own earlier loss, came to tie his loss with God’s loss. If you do not subscribe to Christian beliefs, you no doubt will find other ways to deal with loss, perhaps even atheism.

For Tadros, though, as a Christian of a minority faith in Egypt, his journey finally ended with understanding a God who suffered his own loss.

It allowed Tadros to scream his hurt, as Jesus, dying on a Roman cross, screamed at God. It did not deny him lamentation by mouthing trite sayings.

My imperfect novel was not intended as deep theology or philosophy. It was only a story to illustrate how one person found the comfort he needed.