Roseanna White - Roseanna M. White

The Story of Truth

by Roseanna White | Jul 16, 2020 | Thoughtful Thursdays

One of the reasons I’ve always loved fiction is that it can take mere facts and make them mean something to us. More, they can take a familiar story and show us a side of it we’ve never considered. Stories can take the truth and shine the Truth upon it. They can help us see beyond OUR truth to HIS Truth.

It’s a curious thing though, isn’t it? For anyone who believes in absolute Truth, the idea of truth-with-a-little-t can be odd. If something’s true, factual, actual…then doesn’t that mean it’s True?

No. And here’s why.

The same facts can tell many stories. One story may seem true to you–absolutely, beyond reproach, undeniably TRUE. But to me, it will ring false. Because to me, some other story seems truer.

Seems. Feels. Appears. These are not words that belong to God’s truth, right? So how do we separate them from ours?

This is a theme I explore quite a bit in A Portrait of Loyalty. My heroine is a photographer who spends her days altering and creating photographs for the war effort–falsified photos meant to leak false information, protect agents in the field, and help the Admiralty tell a story. Sometimes that story is true, and sometimes it’s just necessary. But always it has its basis is facts. She takes pieces of this truth, pieces of that truth, and creates a story with them in a new photo.

At a key point in the story, when the Admiral is presented with facts that would paint someone in a terrible light, she reminds him of this: “Remember that the same facts can tell multiple stories. You’ve taught me that.”

We can use the same information, the same true things, to draw very different conclusions.

This is in some ways simply part of humanity. But it’s also a part we need to remain always aware of, if we want to guard against it in ourselves and in matters of spiritual urgency. If we want to #BeBetter, we need to remember that there really is THEIR truth, there is OUR truth…but even more, there is His Truth. And it is neither theirs nor ours, most likely. It is something different. It is something higher, better. More filled with love.

It’s hard for us as mere humans to separate our own story, our own perspective, from what is True. Experiences make us feel a certain way. And that feeling is more true to us than logical arguments people present. But here’s what I’ve come to realize:

Just because we legitimately feel something, doesn’t mean that the feeling is legitimate. It doesn’t mean we should feel that. Morever, we do not have to be ruled by it. Feelings should never be granted the power of a dictator over our lives. We don’t have to be a slave to our emotions. We do not have to feel a certain way.

This is why we’re told to take our thoughts captive. This is why Shakespeare, in a clever twist on that, talked about being captives to our thoughts.

The power of story is to take facts and ideas and possibilities and craft a new truth from them. Sometimes, a higher Truth than what we may actually see in the world around us. Fiction may not be true, but it is often True.

In our daily lives, we need to remember that too. That our own stories are only one perspective in this novel of Life. But there are others around us, and they are seeing facts we’re not. Having experiences we’re not. We can’t truly know what someone else’s life is like…until someone tells us their story. Then, suddenly, we can see a different side to Truth.

The challenge I’ve put to myself lately, and which I invite you to take up as well, is to pause when we hear something that immediately makes us feel. To pause, to examine our own reactions, and to seek out what other story someone else is living to make them think differently. Examine the story. Examine their truth. When you do, I bet you’ll come to see their side. I bet–and this is the key–you’ll start to empathize. You’ll start to love them as Christ loves them.

Only then do we really approach His ultimate Truth.

Word of the Week – Hot Dog

by Roseanna White | Jul 13, 2020 | Word of the Week

(A revisit from 2012)

Is summer hot dog season in your family? This year we’ve started grilling out on our campfire ring every Sunday with my mother-in-law, and hot dogs are pretty much always on the menu. But have you ever wondered where they got their name?

Well, a hot dog is defined as a particular type of sausage, usually served on a split bun. Check. And in the 1890s, sausages were sometimes referred to as “dogs.” Why? Well, ahem, there was apparently a suspicion that some sausages contained dog meat. And while I didn’t see any documentation on it, the articles said this suspicion was “occasionally justified.” Ewww. =(

Anyway. So earning the name “dog” was just because it was in the sausage family. The fact that they were served on buns made them a quick and easy meal when on the go, and apparently a little boy in the 1890s rushed up to a vendor and said, “Give me a hot dog! Quick!” and it stuck. (Yeah, sounds like lure, doesn’t it? LOL)

It was popularized by a cartoon that really got the name stuck. What’s even more interesting is that it only took 6 years from “hot dog” to go from the accepted name of that particular sausage to a verb used when someone’s showing off. By 1906, “Hot dog!” as an expression of approval had gained its place too. So now that we’re moving toward the season of picnics and cookouts, you’ll know why you’re tossing hot dogs on the grill and not frankfurters or weiners or plain ol’ sausages. 😉

Word of the Week – Quantum

by Roseanna White | Jul 6, 2020 | Word of the Week

I’m currently reading Siri Mitchell’s State of Lies for my book club (SO GOOD!!!!), in which the heroine is a quantum physicist. (Which her 6-yr-old son calls a fizziest, which made me giggle.) I’ve been thoroughly enjoying all the science jokes on her T-shirts, and her musings about things like black holes.

And I also thought it would fun to take a quick peek at the history of the word. Quantum is directly from Latin, meaning “as much as,” which them in turn came to be “one’s portion.” This word has always been there in Latin, but it wasn’t borrowed for scientific purposes until Max Planck decided to use it in 1900 for these small portions of energy. It was Einstein who then took up the word and made it part of our vernacular, beginning in 1905 when he used the word in his Theory of Relativity; and then in 1912 actually coined the phrase “quantum theory” and, in 1922, “quantum mechanics.”

I do find it rather entertaining that if you look up the word in Merriam-Webster, the noun version means “small increments or parcels,” but the adjective means “large, significant.” Hmm…not sure how that one happened!

Thoughtful about . . . Watching, Speaking, Listening

by Roseanna White | Jul 2, 2020 | Thoughtful Thursdays

—Ezekiel 33 begins with the talk of a watchman:

Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ²“Son of man, speak to the children of your people, and say to them: ‘When I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from their territory and make him their watchman, ³when he sees the sword coming upon the land, if he blows the trumpet and warns the people, ⁴then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be on his own head. ⁵He heard the sound of the trumpet, but did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But he who takes warning will save his life. ⁶But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.’

When I read those words the other day, I just couldn’t shake the thought that some of us, the faithful in the Church, are appointed to be the Watchmen, like Ezekiel. We’re called to watch. We’re called to sound the alarm when we see the enemy at work. We’re called to protect those around us with that knowledge. If we speak when we ought, and people ignore us, it’s on them. But if we don’t…

If we don’t…then their punishment is our guilt.

Wow.

Those Watchmen, my friends, are responsible for the blood of their neighbors—literal or figurative, if we’re looking at the eternal—if they do not share the message God has given they.

Sometimes we’re afraid of the things God has called us to do—afraid of failure, afraid of disappointing people. We’re told to be afraid of God instead, because we revere Him. This is a kind of fear I hadn’t considered yet—the fear of what happens if we don’t answer the call. The fear that motivates us and gives us urgency. That keeps us alert. That makes us bold.

What warning have you seen as you watch the world? Are you speaking it? And if so, are you speaking it from LOVE? Because we all know just shouting it out from a soapbox isn’t enough. But even when we have the message, even we deliver it in the right way…what happens?

Later in that same chapter, Ezekiel says this in verses 30-33:

³⁰“As for you, son of man, the children of your people are talking about you beside the walls and in the doors of the houses; and they speak to one another, everyone saying to his brother, ‘Please come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’ ³¹So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. ³²Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them. ³³And when this comes to pass—surely it will come—then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

Again, this really jumped out at me! With their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain.

Anyone else go “WOW!” at that? Talk about summing up our society today! People talk so much about acceptance and inclusion and not judging others…but when it comes down to it, their concern for others falls short of their concern for themselves. And worse, we in the church all too often do the same thing. Our ideals fall away when it comes to actually sacrificing our own comforts for others’.

These verses make it clear that those two things are in complete opposition: loving others, versus our own gain.

What has He asked us to sacrifice? Have we done it?

It’s difficult—it’s meant to be. If we want to #BeBetter, we know work is involved. First in ourselves, so that then we can boldly speak it.

But these verses also show us what could well happen when we do. Our words SOUND good. They’re music. Melody and harmony. They tickle the ears of our listeners–in the case of Ezekiel, these are other Israelites, who should be following God. In our case, these could well be the people sitting in the pews around ours in church. They clap their hands and sing along in all the right places. “They hear your words; but they do not do them.”

Still, it was Ezekiel’s responsibility to speak—and it’s ours too, if He gives us a message.

I’ll leave you today with this benediction from our devotional book that really resonated as well:

Lord, you have appointed some to be prophets; give us ears to hear and mouths to speak. You have appointed some to sing of your goodness in the streets; make us bold to celebrate you. You have called some to be still, listen, and act; give us steadiness of mind and singularity of purpose. Amen. (Common Prayer, Claiborne et al, June 24)

Are you called to hear and speak? To sing His praises with boldness? To listen and act? Whichever category you fall into, let’s obey together.

Word of the Week – Fence

by Roseanna White | Jun 29, 2020 | Word of the Week

Originally posted in May 2015

So, duh moment. Did you know that the noun fence–like, you know, the thing around your yard–is from defense? Yeah. Duh. I’d never paused to consider that, perhaps because the spelling has ended up different, but there you go! It has been a shortening of defense with the same meaning since the 14th century. Then sense of that enclosure followed in the 15th century.

It had a similar verb meaning at the same times too, with the “to sword-fight” way of defending oneself arising in the 1590s.

But the reason I looked it up was for the meaning that has a fence being someone who buys and sells stolen goods…and to fence being to sell those stolen goods. I expected it to be a pretty modern use, but no! As the verb, it’s been around since 1610, and it was then applied to the person doing it right around 1700–all from the idea that it’s accomplished under “the defense of secrecy.”