dad's writing

silhouette, originally uploaded by pr9000.

Several of you -- you have no idea how nice it is to say "several" -- asked for links to my dad's creative writing. I don't know if his first essay (on the joys of being a truck driver) is online; I'll ask him and see what he says.

But the other two are available -- this one, a fictional piece about a son and his mother, and this one, debunking common myths about a topic most of us know too little about. I think the latter is the best he's written to date, partly because he speaks from the heart, and partly because it's solid storytelling with a minimum of fancy-pants, gee-look-I'm-a-writer tricks. ("Gee-look-I'm-a-writer tricks" -- I've already done it myself. See, it's not that easy to avoid.)

As I said before, I'm extremely proud of my father for what he's done, and continues to do.

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Switching gears: Slev Dupre (not his real name ... I think) is a friend of mine who once wrote for a now-defunct website I used to "edit" long ago. He has his own very humorous blog where he waxes philosophic on sharks, East Wheeling, John Wayne playing an Irishman, Mike Huckabee vs. the squirrels ... and, lately, science vs. religion.

I won't bore you with the details; you can head to his site yourself. But you'll notice my reaction in this post to those "Darwin fish" things that people put on their bumpers. He engaged me offline and we started debating the issue ... he says I'm making too much of the Darwin fish thing: "to me," he writes, "the Darwin fish says 'I believe differently, and I have an equal right to express it.'"

If the Darwin fish creator hadn't taken an already-existing Christian symbol and used it to get his point across, I wouldn't take offense. I'm not at all offended by the Flying Spaghetti Monster; the whole thing makes me laugh, actually. But the Darwin fish seems to be rubbing it in my face expressly by co-opting a traditional Christian symbol and, in many Christians' eyes, making into a declaration of hostility.

But then I think: am I an odd Christian by believing both the Rapture and evolution? Because that's me. I don't necessarily accept that the Old Testament is exactly how it happened, down to the timeline that makes the Earth 6,000 years old. And yet I believe in the redemptive message of Jesus Christ, that He is the last, best hope of a dying world, and that He will return some day.

I don't think that Darwin was wrong. And I don't think that insulting Christians who happen to think differently is a very ... well, Christian thing to do.

I think the real message here: Avoid bumper stickers completely.