The Calling in your Heart
and two places to find it
The good news is that I have been writing new scenes to the zombie's mother story. The apology is that I am sending this letter out later in the week than intended. Anyway, I'll explain why this matters down below. Before we get there, let's start with Dominion.
Paul VanderKlay has been praising the book Dominion by Tom Holland for quite some time. Based on his strong recommendation, I added the book to my Amazon wishlist (a friendly way people can support my research and artistic contributions). A generous supporter (my dad) purchased the book for me as a gift - to which I am most grateful. But there it sat on my shelf, waiting for over a year.
I like to think that books have a way of choosing you, or presenting themselves at an appointed time. And such was the case with Dominion. Somewhere around chapter 5 I realized its brilliance and hit the pedal to the medal, finishing its 600 pages within a week. I accomplished this feet "thanks" to falling ill. cycles of reading then sleeping. It was glorious, like entering into a sleepy dream state. I'll save my review of the book for another time. I'm sure the book will begin surfacing in my writings and YouTube videos.
I went back and listened to the conversation with Paul VanderKlay and the author Tom Holland. The conversation takes on a life of its own. Most of it explores themes outside the book itself. Which for someone who has read the book is like getting an additional "special features" disc with your DVD collection. One of the first things Holland says is about writing, and it cut me to the quick.
"The wellspring of what I wanted to write about lay in childhood and youthful obsessions. It can take time if you have a writing career to work out exactly what furrow you should be plowing."
"I just realized that, you know, the Romans are my great interest. I'm gonna write about that."
What furrow should you be plowing?
Here's a few windows to look through to help reveal what to write about (or more generally, what you are called to do). The first window, as Tom Holland says, is your childhood. What were you like as a child? What were you obsessed with in your youth? Sometimes these snapshots can reveal the calling that is in your heart.
When I was a young boy, I had an expansive imagination and fascination with writing and composition. I wrote poems, songs, short stories. For instance, in 10th grade, I turned in a dystopian science fiction Christian interplanetary apocalypse short story. My literature teacher wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Sometimes looking back at a point of origin can help us clearly identify the path forward. Like we discussed in The Eternal Appetite of Infancy, it may be that “we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we” (Chesterton).
The second window is feedback. It's getting the "amen" from the audience, as Neil DeGraide described in our second conversation. Another conversation partner, David Brodeur, gave me some helpful feedback.1
"Btw your last newsletter was excellent. I really like your newsletter. They have been interesting to me since the beginning but lately, a couple of months ago let's say, they've been better and better."
I told him that one of the deep thoughts that filters my decisions is, "What do I want my daughter to read when she gets older?" This question is shaping more and more of what I commit to these days.
David replied, "I really like your way of thinking. I might start doing the same: "what intellectual legacy do I want my daughter to see/inherit?"
The imaginary conversation that I have with my daughter decades down the road, when I am nearing my last winter, goes something like this:
“Dad, what did God call you to do? Did you become who he made you to be? Did you make the best use of your unique talents? Do you have any things you wished you had done? Why didn't you do them? What held you back?"
Deep down, I know what I would like my answers to be. But that means that I need to do them NOW. Because we will be having that conversation sooner than we think.
What's next?
For the past 2.5 years, I have been in an explorative season with YouTubing, podcasting, and writing. For example, I published a video this week unboxing God's'Dog graphic novel by Jonathan and Matthieu Pageau. It was the first one of it's kind that I have done (and probably the nerdiest).
If my daughter were to ask me: why did you make that video, dad? I would tell her that 1) it was thrilling to make; seriously, knowing you have one shot to record a true first impression is exhilarating. and 2) I have a deep satisfaction promoting the work of my friends and people I admire - I'm weird like that. It’s good to give back, even in small ways.
But is it the type of videos I should be doing? Artistic hours are limited after all. It is fine to make unboxing videos so long as they were not distracting from the main thing.
🎯 The main thing has to be publishing the original stories. Plenty of other people are better theologians, video essayists, podcasters, book reviewers, symbolic interpreters, but no one is going to write the stories in my mind or compose the songs in my heart. No one is going to write that zombie’s mother book. No one else can bring that story to life. This can be quite scary at times. It means changing my approach. The immediate challenge will be dedicating myself to prioritizing the main things and not getting seduced by the sweet, low-hanging fruit.
Sure I can do - and probably will need to do - the other things. I enjoy the process of making podcasts, essays - and yes, even unboxing videos - but those things should only make sense in the context of the main things.
I'm not certain what this looks like. But I am getting a clearer sense of what I need to to. And hopefully you are too.
I feel that the furrow is getting clearer thanks to the windows of childhood and feedback. I am still very much the kid writing sci-fi fantasy stories trying to make sense of things.
David Brodeur's and I conversation about the symbolism of mountains and the film Arrival (2016) - watch it here. You can read David's Symbolic World articles at https://thesymbolicworld.com/author/dbrodeur/