Monday, September 28, 2009

Be Quick, Win Book

Reading Girl Mary by Petru Popescu set me pondering the books I've read in the last few years about significant women in religions. I thought it must be rather difficult to write about them, especially in light of the current tensions among different groups. Would I dare to fictionalize one, or not, because of fear of retaliation?

I asked Popescu that question, and he indicated he had no trepidations at all, but he did offer to tell us about writing this book. He has advice for approaching historical figures as novel subjects. He said to write with "passion" and that: "When you write about the mystical, you believe in it. That is the rule of thumb and the best advice I can give to writers who attempt to write about religion and its formidably puzzling characters and events."

I have copies of Girl Mary to send to the first five people who comment (US addresses only, please) on the post at A Writer's Edge.

2 Comments:

Dorothy said...

This is my first visit here and I'm so thrilled I fund you.

Wow what a blog..

I'll be reading more and I'll be back.

Dorothy from grammology
grammology.com

ideaman said...

Girl Mary sounds interesting. I am recovering from recent open heart surgery and in researching health and nutrition issues I came across numerous books pertaining to the human heart and how it works. At first my inquiry attempted to be purely scientific but what I discovered quickly led to deeper sources. For instance I discovered that the heart is not just a muscle for pumping blood. Sixty percent of the heart is composed of neurons the other forty percent is what can best be described as an intelligent muscle, this led me to study the research of the Heart Math Foundation on Neuro Cardiology, and read the book, Heart Math Solution, which that organizations provides, further inquiry led me to read a book called the Psychology of Mans Possible Evolution by Joseph Chilton Pearce, and in it he described how the human organism develops prompted by the heart. In fact the heart develops in the fetus before there is a brain and regulates and guides the formation of the circulatory system and all the organs of the body. The last to develop is the brain. Now here's where religion figure in this story. Research has shown that there are as many as 100,00 nerves funning directly from the heart to the forebrain, the seat of higher functioning, the problem solver. If the mother is threatened as the child develops this development does not take place but instead something called Neural Pruning takes place and the child does not develop the necessary links to complete a fully function brain, but relies on the fight/flight mechanism of the so-called reptile brain. This lit a small bulb in my heart and my head and I remember the many pictures I had seen of Mary and the child on her lap. She was pointing to her immaculate heart and the child was pointing to his. It was obvious to me that whoever made that picture understood, perhaps intuitively and directly rather than scientifically the relationship of mother and child and the development of those higher faculties of compassion which allow for problem solving in the mature individual. I think this is important news. I think it should be Prime Time information. (If the mother is well nurtured, the heart and mind work in the proper combination and the child is able to solve problems rather that simply retaliate to every threat. Sorry it took me so many words to say it but isn't this the real discovery of the age?