I forgot who said it, but I once heard that, in order to be a writer, one must merely put one word after the other, over and over again, until the book is complete. It's that easy, and that hard. Because a novel is a long thing. And if we're talking about writing one you can truly call complete, it gets even longer. Your first novel will have some things missing. Characters may fall flat, the prose might be unexciting, and the plotline might be uninteresting. And you don't know why, because you truly wrote to the fullest of your competencies, but something was missing. So we try again in Novel 2. And things are still missing, despite the year or more that's gone by writing it, but somehow, as if by a miracle, simply assuring that every day you showed up and typed one word after the next, assuring you put in a little bit of effort each day into your writing, has somehow transformed something in you. Somehow, this book feels closer to who you are. Slowly, so slowly, it is working. Years go by, novels start and finish, short stories come and go, you try and fail and try and fail, and in a rare moment of perfect grace, sometimes you succeed. And then it comes time to submit. Over the course of months and sometimes years, you experience a steady, slow stream of rejection emails. The literary agents respond slowly--submissions sent in January are returned with a rejection in March--but you wait. Because it will happen. But it won't happen without patience. One day, if I just show up and work on my writing each day, it will happen. And it will be worth the rejections, and the years, and the patience.

At the end of each day, I try to ask myself: was the world a better place today because I was in it? I like to think that I have important goals that could lead to substantial positive impacts in the world if they are achieved. I seek to better my communities through my advocacy work, I want to help people unlock their best version of themselves through my work as an educator, and I hope to create a piece of art one day that helps someone, somewhere. But these are quite large-scale action items, which I conceptualize through the lens of decades as opposed to months, weeks, or days. Most days, we will not have the opportunity to make an impact as large as creating a piece of artwork that benefits others. On a day-by-day basis, if I ask myself if the world is a better place because I'm in it, I can appreciate a different kind of positive impact. Maybe it's that I listened to someone when they had something to express, I said thank you to someone who rarely hears it, I took the time to think critically and mindfully about a situation so that my role within it will be a positive one. At the end of each day, these are the things I notice. Most days, if I say to myself, "Yes, John, the world was benefitted today because you were in it," it's because of the little things. Taking the time to appreciate the little things I have done for others or myself, and to appreciate the little things others have done for me or themselves, gives me a better conception of what genuine, consistent goodness in myself and others looks like. It's a little thing, and it has a big impact.

Have you ever gotten lost in a daydream, stuck in another world, and, suddenly, you feel a desire to enter into that world you've made up in your head and explore it, feel it, see what happens within it. That's step one for me when I'm writing. First, we find another world to explore. Sometimes, that world has magic, heroes, powers, unlike anything we see in our world. Sometimes, that new world is like our own, but with the key difference that, in that world not-unlike our own, I will have the opportunity to map out the course of events. And therefore, in this new world not-unlike our own, I can see those aspects of our lives that mean the most to me more clearly reflected before my eyes. And here's the thing: a reader is a gift, but this hobby is as much about understanding myself and respecting the story I've created--this third party between myself and the reader--as it is about giving my story to another person. Writing, for me, is all of these things at once, and never any of these things alone. It's never only about me, it's never only about the story, it's never only about the reader. We're all on equal footing on the page. I can't count the number of times I've thought I understood something about myself, a belief I had, or an experience I've lived through, before I took to the page to realize that the fullest version of my understanding only arose through the act of writing. I think I understand something, I go to the page to express that thing I feel I understand, and upon reading this new creation born out of my memories or thoughts, I can say to myself, "No, John. This is so much closer to who you are." And writing is also just fun! Have you ever written a perfect line, a perfect sentence, where everything lined up just right like a solar eclipse to make it so that, out of all those jumbled and nebulous thoughts, the perfect, exquisite combination of words comes forth from that disorganized mind? There are few feelings as wonderful as doing a little dance in your desk chair upon writing exactly what it is you meant to write when you began your project. When you finally get it right. There's a reason we writers will talk your ear off about what we're working on. It's fun! How could exploring another world not be? No one returning from a trip to Mars stays quiet about it. Something that I love about my writing is how different my writing feels to me from how we often conceptualize writing and writers in our culture. I don't need to write something revolutionary which will change the course of the artform and of history itself. I like that my writing can be a simple source of daily brightness, and if that is all it ever is, it will be more than enough.

Does a material explanation for a phenomena necessitate that that phenomena is no longer divine? I tend to think not. If there is a fountain from which existence flows, that fountain's favorite creation tools are what we call "material forces." If there is any kind of creator, those things we call scientific came from them. In making this universe, in setting up its laws, the creator would have had to be the ultimate scientist. From the fountain of existence, the laws of physics flowed, it chose matter as its building blocks, chemistry as its page upon which the story of existence is written. If there is a creator, all these things which we call material, would come from them. How would a material explanation for phenomena, therefore, make those phenomena any less divine? After all, we can look around us and recognize that, upon the canvas of creation, the phenomena we observe with math and science--material forces--were the paint and easel for the creator. I feel this realization is vital to do away with the dichotomy between faith and science. All science, to one who believes there is a transcendent, pre-universe cause for creation, is a study of the creator's artwork. So, in the near future, we may come to learn that consciousness is purely material--the result of physical processes in an organ called the brain. Are the feelings generated within that organ--love, grief, creativity, wonder, mystery--now no longer divine? If in my lifetime we learn that everything we feel is merely the result of a material process, I would say to myself: Lord, how truly wonderful you are to have allowed us to know ourselves, one another, and you, to have made for us such wonderful emotions, through purely material means. How spectacular of a feat is that? There was a time when many humans believed that the sunrise was caused by divine powers flowing in the sky. Now, we know a material cause for the sunrise: earth's orbit, the sun's rays interacting with ozone molecules, a globular earth. But here's the thing: that sunrise is still just as divine as those ancient peoples believed it was. If science and spirituality are pitted against one another, believers might feel an urge to resist science because they feel as if science is attempting to deconstruct their beliefs. The scientist, on the other hand, might mistakenly interpret their findings as evidence that believers are misguided, and therefore they will, even if subtly, look down on their worldviews. I was an atheist for very many years--most of my life. I did not have a spiritual conversion because of a dramatic event in my life, or a change in my personality. Through researching the perspectives of scientifically trained believers, I came to discover that there are far more mysterious than a popular understanding of scientific discoveries led me to believe. We don't know if consciousness is caused by the brain alone. We don't know how the universe began--why there is something instead of nothing. Here's what I discovered. There are incredible scientific questions which a misguided understanding of materialism discourages us from exploring. How do electrical currents in cells produce the feeling of being conscious? Why is there something instead of nothing? If there is a creator there is one force we know of that can conceptualize it. The human brain. One day, I hope we know the material explanations for everything in the cosmos. And in the meantime, we can conceptualize the creator, ponder it. To me, this is how we're always connected to that fountain we flow from.