Category Archives: GENERAL INTEREST

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What is Going On? Boston, Connecticut, Lockdown, Fear & Trauma

WHAT IS GOING ON?

The candle flame is burning low. Remembering those we lost.

Remembering those we lost.

Historical Relevance: Written the day of the Boston Marathon Bombings before we knew the culprits’ names.

BOSTON

Dear Readers,

I am adding on to an earlier post I wrote soon after the school killing in Connecticut. Reading the events of today (Boston Marathon bombings), the two bombs planted and detonated for the purpose of causing harm, fear, injury, and death, directed at random people enjoying a well-known event, makes me want to revisit a writing of mine about school shootings and the dangers that threaten our security as people in America. I wrote it during a passionate moment when I was considering the nature of the times in which we live. We aren’t in Kansas anymore. We must wake up. None of us will enjoy a sense of safety if evil is allowed free access to ferment and grow, especially if good things and wholesome concepts are not a part of who we are as a people. I want more for my children and grandchildren than to live in fear or where life has little value, where it is not considered intrinsically of worth. Of course, I do not know who placed the bombs at this time, so no conclusion can be wrought in this writing. It may not fit the circumstances….but, I believe it is worth repeating anyway.

My thoughts and prayers to each and every family impacted by today’s horrific bombings, and for our nation with its loss during its time of need.

May God Bless America,
Norma Brumbaugh Wieland
April 15, 2013

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CONNECTICUT
Three days ago a young man went on a killing rampage at an elementary school in Connecticut after killing his own mother. As I watched President Obama say the words we all were thinking, I had to agree, it’s happening all too often. Something is terribly wrong. Last night I penned the words that follow for a facebook post. We must force ourselves to look at the bigger picture, to see what is becoming a reality in our society. There are many reasons that people do these horrid crimes against humanity. One can’t lump them in a tight group. But it can’t be just mental illness or access to guns. Here is what I wrote last night.

LOCKDOWN
My two-cents: A year ago I went through a lockdown at the school where I taught. A shooter was on the loose. It happened at dismissal time. We were told that the school was going into lockdown mode. I called a couple students back who had just gone out the door, and I initiated measures to protect my students. The kids thought it was a practice drill, but I thought it was legitimate because of the timing. A few minutes into it, one student asked me, “Do you think this is real?” I said, “I think it may be.” Soon another child said, “Do you think we will go to heaven today?” We didn’t know what was up for 45 minutes until the Superintendent came into our classroom and escorted children one-by-one to their parents. It had been a nearby shooting, at a taco truck down the street from the school, the gunman at-large, his home across from the school. Scary stuff.

COMMENTARY
Yesterday I was making a connection. In other countries the shooters, destroyers of innocents, come in the form of suicide bombers. In our country, it’s the young adults who’ve been raised in a country that glorifies death, often called “the culture of death.” We are short-sighted when we as a nation and the news people think it’s just about gun control. I’ve seen evidence that our children’s minds are being influenced in a trend toward violence. Three years ago I started witnessing something new in my classrooms, while I’d be teaching a lesson in a small reading group, Ks and 1st graders would point with their fingers and sometimes make shooting noises at random times during a lesson, pointing at other kids or at me. It didn’t matter what group. In the past I was used to seeing children pick up sticks at recess play to use as weapons (although we would stop them) which one would come to expect, but now shooting was so automatic in their video-game-focused minds that it would spill out at all-too-frequent moments like an automatic extension of themselves. Some children could literally not stay awake in class because they played their game systems long after their parents were asleep. I think, the entertainment business has a lot to answer for…but no one talks about this, only gun control.

VIOLENCE
Meanness is in, in case you haven’t noticed, another common denominator in movies and in the whole area of bullying. In bully-prevention courses we learn that the bully does not see the targeted victim as a person, they are seen as an object, an animal or less. If we want to look even closer, it has become socially acceptable in some areas. As a nation we kill…we’ve made it legal to kill the unborn…the so-called unwanted…and in extreme cases…the living who have no voice or value. I’ll never forget the images of a woman starving to death when she was denied hydration and nourishment (Terri Schiavo), and we as a nation watched this for almost two weeks, every day I wondered how much longer she could last, and ultimately, the judge and doctors turned their back on her. Do you remember this? I changed the wording in my Will because of that travesty of justice. What is the message to our children, to our citizenry? I am angry in a sense, we need to wake up and stop being so blind.

SOLUTION
SOooo a solution….Let’s make our communities and nation into a “culture of life.” Let’s show that everyone has value, intrinsic value because they are a person and they matter, that we care enough to encourage healthy experiences. We need to help people in need. We need to want the right things for our children. We need to teach about a higher power, a loving God. Why? If we take this even further, we can step back and see that a lot of this violence also relates to our distancing from God and His teachings. Without moral teachings or constraints, or a better reason for doing right, people can do dehumanizing actions towards other humans. I think we need to reverse this trend. Encourage the thoughts embedded in the Ten Commandments, that anchor a life in the ways of gracious living and culturally sound principles, in such a way that they are understood in the inner recesses of the human soul. I know it won’t eliminate wrong but maybe it would help, and just maybe, there could be a few less innocents lost in our schools or public settings.

Norma L. Brumbaugh Wieland
12/16/012

N. L. Brumbaugh, with a blog migrated from my former blog site.

 
PURCHASE:THE MEETING PLACE by N. L. BRUMBAUGH

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Writing is Passion and Message

Blog classics

Your voice matters.

Is writing about being a successful writer or is it about communicating a message?

Writers write to inform, guide, challenge, and create. For the purposes of this article, I will talk about one aspect of writing, the area of message, writing that is for the purpose of conveying a message. The non-fiction or fiction writer creates a message to sell an idea or to draw attention to a concept or societal problem. The message evolves over time. Soon it grows and gains a following. Most who have written a book that delivers a message, expect that their book will meet a need, grow a following, and address an area of concern with practical knowledge.  Expertise in the field helps grow their “brand,” dispensing and detailing expert advice and knowledge they are able to offer their readership.

However, writing is not only about becoming successful, creating a name for yourself, or building a following. I think not. Those things are part of the deal but not the most important element. I think, quite possibly, we have created a monster by the way we look at publishing these days. Established authors panic when their numbers aren’t up as if their worth as a writer is linked to positive rankings. This concerns me. I sense a desperation in some writer’s blogs as they implore their readers to participate in some activity to help them succeed in a measurable high-volume way. It is starting to become a turn-off.  It brings to mind an apt analogy. It is somewhat like a pastor who measures success by the members in attendance, be they low—he’s done poorly, be they high—he’s done well, forgetting that the message is multiplied in the listener and cannot be statistically proven. Some writers may never see the impact of their writing, but future generations may find their nuggets of value, recognized in the truths written long before these author’s became known for their writings.

Message-driven writing is about passion. It is about having something to say that is worth saying, something that the writer believes has merit and value. Their writing has an objective. Writing is communicating big ideas in carefully crafted wordings. Writing is speaking with a musicality endearing to the reader causing them to want more. Writing with substance is to take writing to a level of purposed endeavor which will influence and create something lasting for its intended audience.

I believe if we only write to make money or to be successful then we have missed the point of the greater reason.

If it is only about dollars and cents, writing will be of a temporary quality with little lasting value. Writing which captures ideas to bring them to life by incorporating understanding of human foibles, errors, and triumphs, will endure and become legendary. Cranking out volumes of text only to pay the bills—in itself is not what writing in its pure form is about. The test of time will sift the wheat from the chaff. Time showcases the people who know how to write, spill their guts, and make language speak in ways people can absorb whereby causing the cream to rise to the top. Real writing has something to say that is worth saying, if not for others then at least for one’s self.

Great writers write because their voices refuse to be silent.

The fire burns within them. Some writers did their writing from prison cells where they languished for their beliefs of no compromise or deliverance. Thoughts came to them in the quietness of the hidden place behind walls of seclusion. Yet, their voice did speak. It arose and overcame. It triumphed. There, some of the greatest works ever written, blossomed within the harshness of their crucible. The spirit within would not die nor would they disbelieve in the greater good that could be accomplished if the truth could be released from out of the bowels of their tomb. Some authors’ works speak louder in today’s world than in the day in which they were written: Tolkien, Lewis, Bonhoeffer, Solzhenitsyn, Bunyan, Hannard, The Apostle Paul, Saint John, Julian, Merton, and Chesterton to name a few. These writers had much to say that came out of lives bound to a greater purpose. The world is a better place, richer in dimension because of their contributions.

Passion and writing are like hand in glove, one needs the other to make it work. Writing is the observation of the nuances of language and emotions of life, showing the spirit of the spiritual and evil of the diabolical coming together in an on-going clash of plot and message. It teaches through subliminal message and characterization by skillful development of carefully constructed plots which weave the very essence of life and living.

Writers write like sculptors sculpt. The heart of the writer releases the image through the uniting of their soul with the material at hand. They see the hidden message found in the beauty or distress of the moment. By means of expression with unexpected and unusual clarity, they craft the scene and move the person into it. Their words take us to the place, emotion, belief, or conflict. Our eyes see through their words. They have fulfilled their destiny. The message has been given out and it has been received in. That is where the truth resides and is why the messenger writes.

N. L. Brumbaugh, with something to think about.