My Opus

by Robin Layne

Your opus is a written statement that helps you clarify the following:

Who you are:

I am a child of God and bride of Jesus Christ. As the robin bird is a herald of spring, so am I a herald of Christ’s eternal spring—new life now and forever and a new heaven and earth to come, springing from the blood he shed on the cross and the living water, the Holy Spirit he sent, springing up from within me. I am still learning what this means, and will probably continue to learn this more forever.

What you should do in life to best fulfill God’s purposes for you:

Foremost, I shall draw close to God and share in his love, letting it change me with the infilling presence of Christ; and secondly I shall share his love with all I meet—friends, enemies, family, strangers. I shall learn to be obedient to the voice of God within me to do the specific things he tells me, and, as I obey him, I will hear his direction more and more.

Your big dream for your work:

My big dream is to draw people into the deep passionate loving relationship that Christ has for them; and to be the mother of God’s children in whatever ways he calls me.

The purpose of your work:

The purpose of my work is to draw closer to God myself, because I know that I am a unique facet of the image of God, and that it gives him pleasure to share his love with me; and to show others who God really is, as opposed to the false impressions people have of him. If they really knew him, it is hard to imagine that anyone would not fall madly in love with him and want to serve him all the days of their lives and on into eternity in Heaven.

The strategies necessary for you to achieve your goals:

I am not aware of all the strategies God has for my future. I do know that he has called me to write, and planted in me a desire to write novels above any other type of writing; however, if he wants to change my direction, my sails are up and his wind may blow me as he wills. I expect to continue to write plays with Beautiful Minds, the NAMI group I’m part of, for as long as I can, unless God tells me not to. My future may include the help and companionship of a husband who would free me in many ways to minister more effectively—to go where we want and need to go, and to learn to love more together. If I do not meet a man to marry, I will be content, however, because my spirit and emotions are fulfilled by having Christ as my husband, and I also have already experienced the joys and sorrows of having and raising a child and do not want to give birth to another. I will continue to help teach Sunday school as long as I can. I will continue to show God’s love and wisdom to the friends I have now and will meet in the future.

The ways you intend to measure your progress to determine whether or not you’re hitting your target:

This is the part I always hate: figuring out how to measure my goals (probably because it resembles math, and I hate math and am no good at it). But for me, what I need to do is ask God to “search me” and show me how I am doing in his eyes. I will not be hard on myself, because part of the second commandment is loving myself, and how can I be full of God’s love if I shut it off from my feelings and actions toward myself? Of course, this is always harder to act on than to talk about, because I overextend myself and it always seems like more is expected of me than I can do, so I pick and choose. What I choose isn’t always what is the best self-care. I have to say, though, that my life, and its target, are God’s, not my own, so I don’t intend to get too stressed out on it. I will find a balance. I will recognize when I am in favor with man—I am always in favor with God, because Christ earned that for me, but there must be more to that idea, as Christ is my example and he grew in such favor. But sometimes the times when we are pleasing God, we are least in the favor of man and don’t seem to be bringing glory to God. The ultimate picture of this phenomena is, of course, the cross.

Your worldview (what you believe):

My worldview is that God made everyone, loves everyone passionately, and is working hard not to let any perish, but that he has put much of this work into our hands, and if we neglect it, we and others suffer. The best way to help God do his work is to be the glove his hand fills and work in partnership with him. That is part of what it means to be his bride. This is not usually a lone venture; we are much stronger and have more influence when we work together. That is where my church and other groups, such as Beautiful Minds, come in. I believe in being a part of something bigger than myself, although I sometimes feel like I don’t fit in well. But when I can’t seem to make conversation in a group or we don’t see eye-to-eye, I will remind myself that I am valid as God has made me and am there for balance. And we are all continually learning—hopefully, learning truth and not being deceived.

Your principles (what you value):

I value the divine romance and the divine nature God has placed within us. I value honesty. I don’t believe in saying everything to everyone, but in choosing my words carefully and wisely and that everything I say should be the truth as far as I know it. Honesty also involves keeping my word! And I intend with my words to embrace the will of God, on earth as it is in Heaven. I believe that life and death are in the power of the tongue—and of the pen. This requires that I control my thoughts, because they are the well of what I express. I value forgiveness. I will let God’s forgiveness for me act out self-forgiveness and forgive others.

Your passion (what you love):

My passion is, first Jesus, and then, writing. Third, trying to help others write better, which often takes the form of noting mistakes that the world often considers petty or even non-existent. This has been leading me into being an editor, and as an editor, I have made more money by far than as a writer. I need to make a living (unless, someday, a husband supports me, which is rare these days), but I have to admit writing, not editing, is my first love when it comes to any kind of work. I love fiction most, and also poetry, songs, and non-fiction. I have a passion to share God’s love through my writing, especially the fantastical, but I have been writing more autobiographical material lately and have become more bold about sharing it with the world.

Your purpose (why you live and work):

Evangelism and representation of the church through the bride relationship with Christ, often through intercession—which I feel I do FAR less than I should, but believe that in the past I have experienced and prayed for things that have come about in the church and the world at the same time or later—seeds germinated by God. I guess that makes me more a mother of God’s children than I thought! I definitely need to make intercession more of a priority. I also do evangelism through friendships and writing as well.

Your process (how you will do so):

Intercession:

I will keep a list of people and other things to pray for, picture the faces in my mind, and start a prayer journal. Yes! I will use the book that Jean gave me for Christmas. I will keep it with my miracle book and my church notes spiral notebook. I will write more miracles in the miracle book as they occur or as I learn of them, and try to share them with others to increase their faith and encourage my own.

Writing:

Specific works so far: Blood of the Willing, and the rest of the AVS series, Lord willing—for teens and others interested in vampires, spiritual guidance, and spiritual warfare.

Related works, if the Lord wants, such as “Against Heaven and Earth” as novella or novel: find a publisher or self-publish when I have the money someday. But I don’t know if that one should be a priority.

The Beautiful Minds plays

Articles for AuthorsbyDesign.com

Perhaps write, and possibly act in, church dramas in Portland (to find out more next Sunday, but consider my time—and my priorities. Put God’s kingdom first, but which aspects of it?

Blog on Goodreads

Write more book reviews—Goodreads and Portland Book Review

More Hubs?

More writing work, as inspired to do it

Hopefully, make connections with people who can help market my writings (a husband, friends, agent)

Editing:

Finish classes and earn editing certificate; continue freelance editing; look for editing job; make more money to support myself and pay for my writing. Get my website to work somehow. Help others to express themselves in worthwhile writing projects of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and script writing. More as God expands my horizons.

Ultimate goal for career:
Live off my writing and reach many people with the gospel who couldn’t be reached by conventional means. Continue working outside the box.

Typing Without Glasses (experimenting intro)

    This is an interesting experience, having to maintain two monitors in order to actually see the text that I am writing. This is a peculiar experience to not need eyewear of some kind in order to see what I'm doing. Normally, I fall about, running into inanimate objects, or animate ones if some unlucky individual happens to fall into my path -- much like those unlucky characters in action television or cinema where the characters are trapped inside their vehicle and a train is roaring towards them, while a black SUV pushes them onto the tracks. While they could move, merely pressing on the gas pedal and placing the car in gear -- like some light stricken dear or out of the cliche driven madness of a script writer whose got only 20 more minute to finish that scene before the latest episode of Young Justice comes on Cartoon Network -- they stand in awe of the coming doom and do nothing, or worse, try to put their car in reverse of all things and back up! Yes, people who fall into my path are like these -- unable to move for the awe-striking mass of my girth, and await the crushing inspiration that said mass will spell for their lives once they are supplanted by a tumbling ball of flesh and sinew.

My Writings for February 16, 2013

Prompt One Response:

“Crap!”, thought Eros “In over 35,000-years of doing this job, never once have I missed. Is this what mortals call, 'getting old'? If it is, I want my money back.”

The gracefully winged immortal tossed his long, hazelnut brown locks and began pondering his next move. Since he'd never actually missed a target (or as he affectionately called them, “Aphrodite's play things”), he was rather outside his field of experience. What was he going to do? Should he contact dispatch and ask to speak with the infuriating empress of pink futons and oversized boxes of truffles? Or, would it be better to try to figure this one out on his own?

“Maybe, Eris would have an idea how to get me out of this mess? She's always causing grief, yet somehow manages to not tick-off upper management. Now, where did I put that phone?”

Prompt Two Response:

Iceberg: A big-ass chunk of ice in the Arctics that floats around and runs into boats whose crews are too focused upon making money than general safety of their passengers. Most of the mass of an iceberg exists beneath the surface of the water.

Humans are such complex creatures of design or accident. Because we lack some magical telepathic ability that lets us know what others think, feel, experience, know, the lives they have lived or the people they have met – basically, we know very little about people beyond what our physical appearances.

Each person is rather like an iceberg into of themselves. We travel about on our own, independent of one another's thoughts outside of sense experience and shared language, custom, etc., running aground every so often, passing by, but unless there is a great upheaval or just an especially shallow individual, so many of us pass by unexamined.

I'm one of those people. Unexamined by others – residing deep within the waters of the world, hidden away, and so unknown as to my true self.

Besides the Creator of this world (if such a being truly does exist), I know not of a single person whom I truly can claim “knows me”. It's a morbid experience, wandering aimlessly and listlessly through the world from my formative years onward – ceaselessly searching for companionship, yet never seeming to find it.

Lately, I've been blessed enough to find people with whom I can relate on some level, but I fear my future may not speak so kindly. Furthermore, it is only those who have experienced grievous pain that in some way can appreciate one another. It's like trying to explain to someone who has never before seen a mountain to visualize a mountain. Can this be done by one so ill-equipped? I know not, but it begs the question, “If life sets us immortally and immaterially alone, separate and apart from our fellow beings of waking sentience, then how can we be expected to live?

Perhaps, in this small way, I see this as the great burden of humanity. Whether it was by design or merely personal choice that humanity was split asunder from our capacity to truly know one another, can it be said at what cost this rendering of flesh, spirit, and soul has caused? Not just onto those for whom this fate befell, but for all those who were to follow – how is it that we as beings can survive the great immortal toil of this frail existence without ever being known save by a spirit in the sky and within our own hearts? How can we relate; how can we love; how can we feel the caring breath of this world when we are all alone within it?

I know not answers to these questions.

I am told that humanity's greatest adaptation is cooperation. What constitutes this “cooperation”, I know not, but if we lack capacity to truly know one another, how can we cooperate? Every action I might take, every feeling, ever fiber of my being could be stifled the the actions of another, but unless that person knows me, they wouldn't be able to truly, viscerally comprehend my fate. This seems a vitally critical component to cooperation irrespective of its nature. All parties must be on the same page of the manuscript of the same edition and form in order to see what the other is speaking of.

This poses a great deal of challenges for us as people to befriend and form lasting relations with one another. The pain we feel can be a truly comprehensive part of our being – something that may never escape us. Life is hard, and simply wishing for it not to be or even worse, pretending that it was not so, drastically undermines the abilities of humans to form relations.

I've greatly struggled establishing deep friendships on account of this paradox: Those who are most capable of understanding you often manifest the same flaws and struggles as you and often make having friendships more difficult, yet those people are often the only ones who can truly appreciate your situation for they have been through similar ones themselves.

One of my friends of late, Jacob French, suffers from HIV. He's also had an extremely rough life outside of that – being adopted by his parents from Romania where he was left suffering and sick as a baby by his too young Roma parents. Jake experienced a great deal of trauma from all he's been through, and it is this experience, his suffering that bonds us together. We can relate, but not just in our pain, but in many other things that show that we are “ancient souls” or however one wishes to call those of us who've lived and lived an examined life.

One of the greatest struggles, parental relations with my mother, suffers grievously, on account of a lack of understanding. Mom, a wonderful person in my mind, cannot relate on some levels with me because she's stuck in her own world. I guess I can appreciate that – being lost in my own world a great deal of the time – focused only upon what is in my immediate vicinity – ignoring all else in my path.

Life truly is a struggle, especially, when you are a human iceberg. If only I could find other icebergs who were willing to look beneath the ocean's surface.

 Prompt Three Response:

 

[Explosion]

“Captain! The aliens! They're... they're... Green!”

“Yes, Johnson... They are green. What color did you expect little green men from Mars to be? Chartreuse, maybe? Now, can you please hand me that bottle of astro-dent-remove?”

“Um... but, sir... Chartreuse is green.”

Shaking his head, “Johnson... Chartreuse is not green. It is a 50/50 mixture of primary green and primary yellow, thereby making it not green, but chartreuse. Now that you are done lecturing me on the merits of elementary color theory, can you hand me the bloody tube?!”

The overzealous private turning, “Oh, I'm sorry Captain. Yes! Right away.... Here you are, sir. Is there anything else we need to secure the air lock?”

“No Johnson... not at this time. However, I would appreciate it if when our guests of the International Space Accounting Office for Sol System and outer planets arrive you would try to be tactful for a change and not give the Taractilian Ambassador On Interplanetary Economics an exploding toilet seat. While I realize that you and Horace have been making habit of pranking one another since primary, considering he has now been promoted to the ISAOFSSAOP Admiralty, and considering you have been eagerly seeking promotion, I would suggest avoiding making a scene like last years Colloidal Neutron Milk Rectal Ramming Incident occur while in the presence of the Martians. They take a rather dim look on these matters.”

“But, Captain Eltman, just because the green Vulcans don't have a sense of humor doesn't mean the rest of us have to suffer. If I don't prepare myself, Horace is going to pull every prank he can think of until I retaliate. You know the Taractilians are?!”

“Johnson, I realize, that is why I've already spoken with ambassador Horace. He's agreed to not pranking you during the Martians stay. I fear he may be planning something, given the ease by which he agreed. He hasn't been in contact with you recently regarding this?” the Eltman replied.

“Sir, not that I am aware of, although, he may have messaged me. I'd have to check the dataservers.”

“That's fine. Please go and check and return. The Martians will be through the hanger deck at any moment.”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

Turning and returning to his previously abandoned duties repairing the hole in the airlock sensors, Captain James T. Eltman (his father an overtly obsessed Trekie naming him after James Tiberius Kirk sans the surname modification) was pondering how he got stuck piloting a floating relic from the mid 21^st century. At least, he wasn't forced to eternally spend his days shipping rotten vegetables and plutonium arsenide to his uncle's generating plant or give Universal Studios Intergalactic Tours of the Stars for one more day – he somehow made it through University working at these putrid excuses for employment and it would take more than an outdated star transport or a misguided private to make him forget the numbers of hours he spent in the academy's detoxification chamber to meet the genetic purification code for admission into the program.

It helped that his allergies in primary had enabled him to meet the academy's chief medical officer. Strangely enough, the small village outpost where James spent his formative years was also the research headquarters for a very peculiar medical researcher who would become his friend – Doctor Shiro-Matsumata Andreas Chesterton the third, or Cheesey Shinjiro or “Cheesy” as he was affectionately called by his friends. Considering the guy could take your head off with a single move (he was a quarter Nexmoxian, a quarter Martian, and half-human. In other words, a mutt like the rest of us, but old enough—his alien gene pool securing him extreme longevity—to not be required to register for the genetics purification exams for employment and neo-patrician citizenry.

Too Familiar for Comfort

by Robin Layne

            While I was on the way to the dentist’s with a toothache, I saw this red-haired teenage girl on the bus. I thought she looked like Carletta, but I see a lot of girls who do. This one sat in the seat in front of me. She took a little book out of her backpack. To my surprise, it looked just like the journal I used to have, pink with cats all over it. Were they still making that journal? My sister sent me mine in the early ’80s. What was particularly amazing about this journal was that my character Carletta has one like it.

            I looked over her shoulder and saw her writing in the journal. The cursive was a bit messy because we were on the bus, but the best I could make out was:

            That Jack is dead meat! He’s harassed my boyfriend one too many times! I sure hope you don’t keep me from (illegible------) (illegible------).

As she wrote the rest of this sentence, her hand tightened around the pen. She stopped, lifting and dropping her shoulders with great sigh.

Another coincidence, I thought. In my story Carletta kills a football player named Jack Sloan for repeatedly harassing her boyfriend Hugh. If this were Carletta, I knew what the illegible words would be: “burying the body where it would never be found.” My imagination was surely running away with me, but I found myself staring at the girl in front of me. The way her hair flipped at the back and gracefully covered her neck was very familiar. When she turned her head to smile at a teen boy across from her, I noted how her freckles dotted the tops of her cheeks and, just like Carletta’s, were nowhere else to be found. She even wore sunglasses; Carletta did, too, because her eyes were so sensitive to sunlight. I almost expected to see fangs when she smiled, but it seemed that her hypnotism affected even me. Hypnotism? What was I thinking? This couldn’t really be Carletta. I invented Carletta.

            The first time I saw that character was in a dream years ago. I dreamed I was a teenage girl spying on her boyfriend, who danced on a restaurant patio with another girl. The temptress had short red hair, and she bit the boy in the neck and drank some of his blood. There was more to the dream. It laid out some of the plot of the story, enough to get me started. I filled in details from there, and, over a period of years, had written a whole novel. I named the teen vampire Carletta, and the boy she stole from the main character I called Hugh. In my novel, Hugh gets too caught up in her charms to notice the reports of missing persons and dead bodies in his hometown since she moved in. She continues to kill until she is stopped.

            The boy across the bus aisle looked up from his video game and caught the girl smiling at him. “Hey, Carletta!” he said.

            I felt my face flush. Surely I had heard wrong. You don’t run into a Carletta every day in the first place.

            “Wasup, pretty girl?” he said, leering.

            She slipped the diary and pen into her backpack again. She removed her glasses and batted her eyes at him—just like my character does whenever she wants to influence someone—and it looked like her eyes were gray like my vampire character’s, too. “Could you do me a big, big favor, pretty please?” she said with a grin.

            How many girls really talk like that? Carletta does, though.

            “Anything,” the boy said. He had brown curly hair and was wearing a football jersey—like the kid in the English class whom I never gave a name to.

            “Would you tell me where Jack lives?” she asked.

            “Just on my way there now!” the curly-haired boy said. “If you’re in for some action with us, I won’t tell Hugh.”

            I fell out of my bus seat, which set my bad tooth to throbbing. I cried out from the pain and the shock.

            Carletta turned and squinted at me. “What’s the matter with you, lady?” The unnamed boy was laughing.

            They got off the bus. Giving up on my dentist appointment, in spite of the pain, I got out and followed at what I hoped was a safe distance.

            It wasn’t.

            The boy pointed to a house on the right. Carletta looked back at me, and her hands went to her hips. She said something I couldn’t hear to the unnamed boy. He turned around and, to my amazement, pulled a knife out of his boot. I didn’t imagine the football player in my story would wear boots, much less a knife.

            “You can’t kill me!” I blurted out.

            “Why not?” he said.

            “It—it’s not in character for you,” I said.

            “How do you know?”

            Meanwhile, Carletta kept walking up the driveway to the house I assumed was Jack Sloan’s. This was totally crazy, but I felt I had to stop her. I turned to follow her, but the boy blocked my way. He advanced, holding out the knife. “You don’t know what I’m like. You never even bothered to give me a name.”

            How did he know that? More to the point, how could he be the high school boy I had invented?

            Before I knew it, he held the knife against my throat. I saw Carletta nodding at us from the driveway.

            “If you kill me, you’ll disappear,” I said to the boy.

            “How do you know?” he said. “Maybe we invented you!”

Glimpses of Past Rekindled and Shown Anew

There comes a time when people off all ages, given glimpses into their past, are given unique experiences whereby they are shown something magic. A glimpse of something spectacular, in childhood, or in their lives, never knowing what it is or from whence it came (only a sliver of perception/knowledge by which to glean), and manifested through overwhelming passion and drive, inklings through their minds--nagging, pestering, scratching, clawing to get out, to get noticed, to be remembered!

It has only been due to my research skills which have been hefted up throughout the years (and in no small degree thanks to the miracle of the Internet and modern technologies like YouTube) that I have managed to acquire the means by which to find this sliver of lost consciousness. Thereby, providing the unique opportunity to discern whether that childhood vision was truly worth all the hype my childhood mind placed upon it, or whether it falls, manifestly, upon the shoulders of an older, more "critical" eye that shoves the child into a cupboard, never to be seen or heard from again.

I shall now see:

Yuel Ball at the Clackamas Public Library presented by Adam the Alien

Thought you guys might enjoy this video. It was created by a new friend of mine named Adam. He's a vlogger (video blogger).

My friend Amanda Runion, who is part of our group, but hasn't been able to make a formal meeting (the one we tried attending was on a day no one came, and I messed up timing with Robin not realizing she was not coming until the afternoon).

In any event, please let me know what you think. Apparently, one German viewer found me rather entertaining, which I find mildly bemusing.

Have a great night!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxwav-CyPBM&list=UURWYIloA3Mh4T9OobZMbH_g&index=1

See you Friday!

Watch "Jacksonian Revelry During Mayan Apocalypse" on YouTube