see ya later

3/16/2019

Dikkon Eberhart

I am delighted with you readers!

I am especially grateful to those of you who write me back by email or comment on my posts or on my Salem Web Network articles, but…I am closing my writing down for a period of months.

For closer communion in truth via the Holy Spirit with God, for authenticity in my relationships with others whom I love, and for my future honesty with you readers, I need to concentrate on plain truth and not hide behind the walls of my laptop.

A lot of you readers are writers. I hope you don’t suffer from my malaise. If you do, then pay attention to your suffering. Don’t merely endure it. Fix it.

My malaise is word-smithing. I’m good at word-smithing. I grew up learning it and hearing it and seeing it honored while I lived among the scores of poets and other writers who peppered my parents’ literary dinners. Later, during 28 years as a salesman on the road, I perfected it.

Any evening, at the hotel, I’d prepare my sales calls for the next day and then gladly enter within the walls of my laptop and, until 2 or 3 in the morning, polish and polish and polish my words written the previous night.

Maybe 100,000 pages—30,000,000 words—who knows?

Ten years it took, but then I had a book. Sold about 4,000 copies—well received; good reviews; hours I spent on national radio shows. (More word-smithing, verbally this time.) Sales are trickling off now, but the book is still in print after 3 years.

And there’s also a new book, now, three-quarters done. It’s waiting within the walls of my laptop to tell me, at last, what it is about…which I don’t know yet.

Its final mystery needs to be anointed with a drop of literary and sacramental chrism. But that can’t happen until I live the book out, in life, and discover what it is about.

And that’s why I’m closing down for a time. To concentrate on living my life out with authenticity, humility, and succinctness.

We are all of us made in the image of God. God did not make us in His image in order that we should merely endure. Sacramentally, we are created beings who must struggle against our sin natures for the purpose of reflecting the glory of God.

Each one of us possesses some of the attributes among all the attributes that are available as the total image of God.

For example, I’ve said that one of my skills is word-smithing, but one of my sins is my habit to hide behind the product of my word-smithing. Sometimes what people I love experience of me is not authentic of me—instead it’s the product of my word-smithing.

Please leave your subscriptions active. That means—don’t do anything about them. They’ll remain active automatically. They cost you nothing, and I am not requesting any time from you…since I’m not sending you anything to read during this time.

I’ll see ya later.

I look forward to it!

22 Comments

LeAnne link

3/16/2019 02:11:42 pm

As a writer, too, I understand where you're coming from. I'll miss you and look forward to hearing from you here again regularly.

Dikkon

3/16/2019 09:29:58 pm

Dear writer LeAnne--

Certainly you are, and I admire your grace in writing. Any reader of this comment, please seek out www.glimsen.net, where LeAnne finds beauty in nature, the arts, and the unexpected. Lovely!

And thank you for understanding what I am struggling with. It's nice to have fellowship. Perhaps you can intuit the down side for those whom we writers love.

Blessings for you!

Betsy

3/17/2019 11:19:07 am

Dikkon. Did I write your words
Or did you write mine? The readers of words can be voracious in appetite. Now and again you must feed your on soul. I understand.

See you later. I will be in the wings
Betsy

3/17/2019 11:55:23 am

Ohhh...that is CLOSE, Betsy.

How perceptive, not that I would have expected anything else!

I can already sense you in the wings. Yours is a welcome presence. Thank you for being there.

Triune blessings for you,

Dikkon

Susan Blount

3/16/2019 02:18:00 pm

May this be a profitable time for you. Will look forward to hearing about it when you get back. Susan

3/16/2019 09:36:29 pm

Dear friend-in-Maine Susan--

Thank you for your encouragement, which you have provided so warmly and with such hospitality even back during the finishing (finally!) of my Mom/Hitler memoir.

I certainly pray that I will be back and that I will have the ability to "tell you about it" as that telling helps to finish my new memoir - tentatively titled PURSUED BY THE TRINITY: DELIVERED BY THE DOVE.

Please pass my greetings along to all at MFCW!

Dikkon

Donna Rhodes link

3/16/2019 02:19:33 pm

Hi Dikkon, I just finished ready your post and I have an observation:
You stated that, 'we are all of us made in the image of God.’ Genesis 1:27 states that God did make mankind in His own image but after that the fall happened Adam and Eve found themselves cast out of the garden. Genesis 5:3 contains a subtle but tragic hint about our need for recovery: "When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image.”Now instead of being born in the image of God, each of us in born in the image of our fallen, sinful human ancestors, beginning with Adam.
2 Corinthians 3:18, "We all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."
If we are already in his image, why would we need to be transformed into his image?
Sincerely, Donna Rhodes

Sharon Caron

3/16/2019 03:16:06 pm

Donna, I had never heard these verses explained in the way that you did here and it makes sense but if Adam was in the image of God then his son would also be perhaps. We are also decedents of Noah so there is another likeness. Anyway that you for your enlightenment.
Sharon

3/16/2019 09:46:49 pm

Dear Sharon...and also back to Donna--

We were formed in God's image but you are right to point out that Cain, of necessity, was formed in Adam's image...which is God's image blasted and wounded by sin. Hence the necessity of Christ, who brings us back to our originally God-like formation once we believe in Him.

And, Sharon, welcome as a new comer...and I regret not having had the time to write more to you before going off on what I think of as my sabbatical. I will respond to emails if you care to write -- dikkon.eberhart@gmail.com

Blessings!

3/16/2019 03:01:14 pm

Dikkon, I am a new comer to your site and I awaited to see your name come up on my screen. I will miss you but I also understand your journey. I am not a writer as I suffer a disconnect from my brain to my finger tips. I admire all those who can write so I have much to read.
Will look forward to your return.
Sharon

Ruth

3/16/2019 06:18:25 pm

I pray that you accomplish all that you are striving to do, Dikkon. I struggle with recognizing just who I am at times and understanding who God wants me to be! I certainly haven't reached His image yet. I look forward to your return.

3/16/2019 09:47:44 pm

Dear Ruth--

It's warming to know I am not alone!

Blessings for you.

Becky McClellan

3/16/2019 07:56:16 pm

I am sorry to see you go for a bit, but understand. I love your words and look forward to your return. You stretch us and bless us....
God Bless you.....😊

3/16/2019 09:49:24 pm

Oh, dear Becky--

How kind of you!

God bless you, too...and Alan and everyone you love.

Let's smile at one another as we pass in the corridor!

Dikkon

donna devillez

3/17/2019 06:29:00 am

Dear Dikkon,
I will miss your writings very much, but I am a want to be writer and am so thrilled that you are a writer and are going out to write a book, God gave you a gift to write and with that gift you have inspired and helped many people. I am sure that with this book you are starting on you will once again inspire people.
I look forward to your return. Remember to take some time to read O. Henry!! Something to think about: Imagine if O Henry had been a apostle, hmmm, a epistle with a twist!
Good luck and may God bless you.
donna devillez

3/17/2019 11:47:17 am

Dear Donna--

Thank you for your compliment!

It will be a pleasure to return to a regular post...AFTER I have learned the discipline of separating my writing attention and my tendency to hide away from my desire to listen to people whom I love and to answer what they ask, not just what I assume they are asking.

Better communication all around!

This is your second O. Henry reminder, Donna...I will pay attention. Interesting speculation -- a gospel message with an O. Henry twist, eh?

Of course, the gospel is the Gospel, and it doesn't need a perspective shift at its end. Yet there is a means-more-than-it-means sacramental awareness that is not often preached about the gospels and that might enrich our awareness of them if it were. That's where the perspective of an O. Henry mind could fit in. I'll go back and read some of his stories and think about it - send you a note about it sometime!

Blessings,

Dikkon

floyd samons link

3/17/2019 10:32:56 am

Thanks for your honesty. It's a good example for all of us, especially those of us that use words as a camouflage.

I'll try to take your wide counsel and look forward to when you come back, brother.

3/17/2019 02:38:52 pm

Thank you, brother, for looking forward, which suggests you're not sighing with relief that I've stopped at last! Ha ha.

Words CAN provide camouflage, can't they? My prayer for this sabbatical is that I learn to stop using camouflage of any kind and for any reason.

May I be helped by the Spirit!

Dikkon

Betty Draper link

3/20/2019 02:07:22 pm

I am sad for I was looking forward to you helping me along my way with my book. Sad but also understand. Life has a way of calling us aside from something we love to something that loves us more so we can grow in that love. When I first got saved I was so hungry for God. My husband started going to a small bible institute and I wanted to go to. He wanted me to stay home with the kids instead of put them in the nursery. Well, I pushed and pushed till he said ok. That first night in class my hand was the first to go up with a question. During that hour long class the wall between my husband and I grew thicker and thicker. Thank God I had enough sense to know I was over shadowing him in that class. So I quit after one night and stayed home with the kids and he continued. My heart cry to God was, feed me please. A week later I was ask to host a bible study in my home with all ladies who were older in the Lord then me. I got fed and my husband grew by leaps and bounds. God used that to show me how to be a Godly wife to my introverted husband. I had to decrease so he could increase in knowledge and spiritual truth. Had I not listened and obeyed I don't think we would have served in two countries or be where we are now in the ministry. I have worked with women like me, natural leaders who lead their husband to the mission field, usually does not work. I admire you stepping away from something you love brother for the sake of I am sure something that is needed. I will be around, Lord willing when you step back into writing. Also will pray for you as you walk in obedience.

3/20/2019 05:00:38 pm

Dear Betty--

I am grateful both for your story--which seems to me to be appropriate in its dynamic although its details are different than mine is--and for your prayerful support.

Though I am not writing, I am not incommunicado. If there's some way I can help you with your book, please ask. My email address is -- dikkon.eberhart@gmail.com

I may be distracted by on-going prison ministry during the next few months, but I don't want to abandon my friends, of whom you are certainly one.

Again, I'm honored by your kind thoughts, Betty.

Dikkon

3/26/2019 07:20:20 pm

Thanks for the offer to help. I had put aside my book writing because of...as I always say, life. Picked it back up this week due to inspiration I gleamed from watching the movie, Pearl Harbor, which I wrote about on my blog. When it flows, it flows and its those time I wish I was in a cabin over looking snow covered mountains with a huge fire in the fire place, ALONE. My friend who also is writing a book, goes to the ocean in their rv, parks for a few days, husband goes to work and she writes. Distractions time gives way to discouragement for me. Everyday I ask the Lord to give me inspiration to write and the memory to retain it until I can sit down and type it out. I get great inspiration in church and am always penning things down while the pastor is teaching. I hope it makes him feel good because he thinks I am taking notes on his sermon, which sometimes I am. Again, thanks brother for being willing to help me. For what ever reason you are taking time off, I am sure you will come back and share some of what the Lord has taught you. He never ever waste anything.

3/27/2019 08:39:52 pm

Dear Betty--

Here's a sentence from what you wrote above which may provide insight--

Distractions time gives way to discouragement for me.

I'll get back to that sentence in a minute.

Can you say what your book is about in one simple short sentence? The sentence I am imagining is NOT a book report. It's a billboard. It's purpose is to excite the potential reader, to make him or her urgent to read your book. It's to make scores of questions about your book immediately come into the reader's mind...which seem to the reader immediately to need answers.

And that sentence has another purpose. It's the sentence that brings you back--time after time--to the act of writing your book, which you are otherwise tempted by distractions to stop doing. Not only does your sentence excite your potential reader, it excites YOU.

Every time you think of your sentence, it should give you a kick in the imagination, forcing you to go back to your manuscript, if only to improve that one paragraph you wrote yesterday and which you suddenly realize you could have phrased so much better than you did then.

And doing THAT--rephrasing that paragraph--automatically gets your writerly juices flowing, and suddenly it's pretty easy to ignore that distraction that otherwise would claim your attention and instead to make you excited to jump to the end of the manuscript and to write that NEXT excellent paragraph!

Two hours later, and three brand new exciting pages in, you'll take a deep breath and remember the distraction, take care of it, realize it actually can be handled now just as effectively it could have been handled two hours ago--but NOW you have three new pages, and a much improved paragraph from yesterday's writing as well.

Betty, if you don't have one single short sentence that is a billboard for your book, I suggest you create it. It's going to be the single hardest sentence for you to write (or it is for me...always)--but you need it because you need to have it before you because (like many people) "distractions time gives way to discouragement"...for you.

Give yourself a beacon of light in your mind--that sentence--which captures your attention and forces you to avoid discouragement by placing distractions on a lower priority level than it seems you allow them to be now.

Do what NEEDS to be DONE, not only those things that certainly should be done but can be done later.

May you be blessed!

Dikkon

see ya later

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