hey...

love is different than you think
it's never in a song
or on a tv screen
and love is harder than a word
said at the right time
and everything's all right
love is different than you think
[caedmon's call]

I decided that I'm done being a romantic. I haven't really been a romantic since January. [can you cure yourself of that?] There's so many more aspects of literature and writing that appeal to me. I actually got pretty sick of British Romanticism.

If I actually wrote things, I would want to be a creative truthist, like Flannery O'Conner. My good ol' buddy Edgar A. Poe said, "write the truest thing you know." It's good advice. The truth isn't always pretty, but it's also not forever ugly.

Marvin Olasky calls it Biblical Realism. In describing World Magazine's purpose, he writes, "We believe it is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever--and forever begins right now. We like sex, within marriage. We're not amoral hedonists, but we're not stoic moralists either. We like the vines and the fig tress God gave us. We read novels, go to movies, and listen to classical music but also jazz. We prefer ice cream to cotton candy, we cover movies, yoga, artists, and travel; we aren't Christians with rules against anything that's fun--because God made fun, too."

Biblical Realism is why it's okay to have your quiet time at Starbucks, to make friends with cool non-Christians, to have fun with your clothes and hair on weekends, and have intellectual conversations about Poe, Aristotle, and Johnny Cash. God put us into this world not to be consumed by it, but to ride the waves and learn how to live. Jesus was a real person, too.

Forever begins right now.