Merry Christmas!

Movie Quote of the Year

I wasn't sure if I'd like Love Actually, but once Hugh Grant finished his opening monologue, I knew this movie was a winner:

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around."

Pure poetry.

Feeling Accomplished

Yesterday, I found out that a manuscript that I read and highly recommended is going to be published! How affirming! Seriously, that made my day. Now I know that I have a knack for finding good literature. But it is making it a little difficult to be searching for technical writing jobs when I've discovered that I'm good at this editing stuff. I do have an interview sometime soon with the people from the MN Literacy Council, though. They produce a literary magazine each year, and they're interested in me helping them out! It's a part-time unpaid internship again, of course, but what can you do? The publishing world is kinda brutal, and I'm still tasting the beginnings of it.

So, be looking for a collection of short stories called Still Life with Plums. It should come out in about two years :)

Corresponding Shapes

My heart is breaking. People living together before they are married, people being politically correct about homosexuality, people being homosexuals. What ever happened to the sanctity of marriage, to the beauty that God created for us? Maybe I'm more effected by these social norms now, because I am married and know just how wonderful and lovely it is, and I see how Satan is destroying it. And maybe I'm more attuned to the deterioration of love, because I'm interning at a publishing company where artists are more open about their sexuality, more articulate about their sin. They make it look glamorous, poetic, beautiful. And that bothers me deeply.

But I'm a writer too. And a Christian. I feel more like a minority than I ever have before. But I won't stand for tolerance, acceptance. Tolerance becomes complacency, ignorance, indifference, and I don't want to live in an indifferent world. I will celebrate sexuality, but within marriage and between a man and a woman. Sorry if I offend anyone, but I will make God's view known.

And on a side note, though the Twilight series is very poorly written, Meyers is at least portraying dedicated love. And hey, they don't have sex until they're married. Kudos for that. In a world filled with frivolous sex, it's good that young people are idolizing a storyline that has some moral goodness in it. Not that idolizing is all that great of a thing, but that's an entirely different topic. I won't get on my soapbox about it, yet ;)

Love,

Heidi