Category Archives: Christianity

“Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once.  What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream.” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) composed over 600 classical works – symphonies, operas, choral and chamber music, piano etudes and so forth. Yet, unlike most creative geniuses, Mozart’s amazing abilities were recognized during his lifetime. A contemporary of Mozart, Joseph Haydn, who was called the “Father of the symphony,” wrote: “Posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years.”

Haydn was wrong. So far, 220 years later, no one has stepped forward as an equal to Mozart.

Now, when we consider composers, we usually think of a person sitting at a piano. A pencil in one hand, his other hand playing a few notes, his hair all frazzled and his eyes glazed over from lack of sleep. After a while, the composer turns and quickly jots down notes in his notebook. He then returns to play a few more notes on the piano, shakes his head in disgust, turns to erase what he wrote earlier in his notebook and writes new notes on the paper. His notebook paper resembles a smudged and scribbled kindergarten fire-drill.

The composer continues this tedious process over and over until he has finished the musical work on the piano. If it’s a symphony or chamber music, he then has to arrange the music for other instruments.

Composing is a time consuming, laborious task. That is, unless you’re Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Mozart would sit down, with an ink pen in hand, and write the whole musical piece as if he were copying it from a book. He could carry a conversation or get up and walk away and then return to finish it later. It mattered not if it were a piano solo, a complete symphony or an opera, he wrote it all without a struggle. His first copy was his last copy, no matter how many instruments or arias were involved.

Okay, when it comes to writing, I’d prefer to be a Mozart, but sadly, I’m not. I’m that bedraggled, frazzled composer with glazed over eyes who struggles through every sentence, dangling participle and verb tense.

And when I’m finally done writing my article or novel or whatever, I’d like to finish it off by writing: THE END.  And never, ever look at it again.

Yet, that’s not how God works with me.

After I’ve finished writing, and it’s been rewritten ad nauseum times, along comes a new revelation which forces me to rewrite the whole piece again. Does this happen often?

My novel, Jonah, has been rewritten almost 60 times. New Wind Blowing is nearing 40 times. Then, if you toss in the four other works I’ve been writing and rewriting for years,  you get a good glimpse of who I really am: God’s hack.

Guess what?

I have just received a new revelation which has to be dealt with in a few of my so-called finished works, the ones which I thought were ready to be published. So, it’s back to the keyboard.

I will continue on with Part 7 of You Can’t Go Home Again in late January. See you then, okay?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

It was noontime and the crowds were scurrying here and there. Some were heading to restaurants. Others had errands to run. The summertime sidewalks of Irvine were filled with people.

But what was strange about this particular lunch hour was the old man with a Chicago Cubs baseball hat on his head, standing directly across the street from where I was sitting. He held a microphone in his right hand. Then, from time to time, he stopped passersby and held the microphone up to their faces. It looked like he was interviewing them.

From my vantage point, sitting outside a Starbucks Coffee Shop, my curiosity was stoked. Could he be a newspaper reporter writing a human interest story for the LA Times? Or better yet, a panhandler with a new angle on shaking down people for money?

Having nothing better to do, I crossed the boulevard to check him out.

As I approached from behind, he turned and looked at me. He motioned with his hand for me to stop

“Would you be so kind as to answer a quick question for me?” he asked

I nodded.

“What do you think is wrong with the American Church system?” he asked.

Then, he held the microphone in front of my face for a response.

My mind went blank. Normally, I am quick witted and respond without much forethought, but his query caught me off guard. What is wrong with churches? I thought.

To be honest, I was not a religious person. My parents were not church goers. So, from early on, I had not given much thought about churches, one way or another. Of course, I had attended a few from time to time for funerals, marriages and visiting with friends. Yet I had never been what you would call a regular member of a church.

As I stood there, I thought over some possibilities. Isn’t church a place where you go and give money to be completely bored? Doesn’t everyone think that it is the longest hour of the week? When you exit a church service, you are no better off than when you came, right? And guess what, the following Sunday, more of the same old, same old will be offered to you with the same results.

Finally, I shrugged my shoulders.

“There’s nothing wrong with the American Church system. It’s the one institution which never seems to change much,” I said.

The man thanked me for my time and I headed back to Starbucks.

This is a short story from the upcoming novel, Deceived Dead And Delivered by Larry Nevenhoven.