Blog
November 29, 2020
Writing Two Books at Once? If you scroll down to the middle of my home page for my new website, linwilder.com, you will quickly see that I am writing two books at once- a first for me. Each book is scheduled to be released next year. Certainly, I did not plan it this way. However, the antagonist-and even major parts of the plot for Plausible Liars have proved to be so elusive that it makes a strange kind of sense to take a break from all things transgender to return to a place that feels like home: The ancient world. […]
November 23, 2020
The problem with the Catholic Church is the crucifix. That was the first sentence of an article published shortly after my conversion to Catholicism. That there could be meaning in suffering was a concept which both beckoned and baffled me. My career in academic medicine and doctoral studies had been aimed at preventing or at least mitigating suffering. Consequently the Catholic spotlight on the Cross, and St. Paul’s exhortations throughout Corinthians … …But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles fascinated and repelled, yet felt eerily logical. A lifelong writer, finding the search for […]
November 23, 2020
Extrovert, introvert or Ambivert? Extrovert, introvert or Ambivert: Which one fits? “Hey Margaret, I’ve discovered I’m not an extrovert but an introvert!” After listening to my score on author Susan Cain’s twenty- question introvert versus extrovert questionnaire, along with my observation of my husband’s classically extroverted behavior contrasted with my own, my friend from undergraduate days response was a hearty laugh followed by, “Lin, we’re both introverts! It’s just taken us years to figure it out!” If you have spent more a week in the corporate world, then the Meyers Brigg Inventory is undoubtedly familiar to you; perhaps you too […]
November 23, 2020
Quo Vadis America: Revolution of Jefferson or St-Just? The satanic character of the French Revolution does not lie in the deposing or even in the execution of a king but in the raising up of that ancient god, the State, in place not of the king but of God Himself. “The general will” is what the regicide Saint-Just called it, identifying it with morality and virtue that come to be by the inexorable march of historical development. “Our aim is to create an order of things,” he said, “which establishes a universal tendency toward good.” [Italics are mine]. And the […]
November 23, 2020
“Arrogance and scorn have now grown strong; it is a time of disaster and violent anger.” The speaker is Mattathias in the first book of Maccabees. “King Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, each abandoning his particular customs. All the Gentiles conformed to the command of the king, and many Israelites were in favor of his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath.” Taken from the Monday Office of Readings of the Divine Office, the words of the ancient king ring eerily familiar 2300 years later. All should be one people meant […]
November 23, 2020
A tribute to wisdom. Even as a a college kid, wisdom was frequently the word I used. Not education, but it was wisdom I was after. Looking back, I see the desire as providential, because I got into the habit of searching—a good thing, I think. That is… if one is clear about her goal. Once back as a believer, one of the very first things I did was to read the Bible. Although much of what I read was opaque-even incomprehensible, two books seemed oddly familiar. Reading the books of Wisdom and the Psalms felt right…fitting…packed full of precisely […]
November 23, 2020
Why look back to the Ancients: Aurelius, Seneca, and the Stoics? Why would we want to return to one of the last Roman Emperors and Greek philosophers who personified rigorous self-denial, extreme fortitude and emotional indifference? Perhaps because we live in an age characterized by self-indulgence, cowardice, and untrammeled emotion? One of the very first books I devoured as a college undergrad was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A college professor I admired greatly and have written about in previous posts would liberally quote Aurelius’ pithy observations. I had walked away from God and all things religious but was ferociously searching […]
November 23, 2020
Fatima: A new and magnificent film Most of us know the story, or at least its outline. But for me, it was history, Fatima statues and primarily warnings from the Mother of God. The recently released film produced by Origin Entertainment highlights the oldest of the three visionaries, Lucia, with an astounding and mesmerizing performance by fourteen-year-old Spanish actress Stephanie Gil. Astounding and mesmerizing because of the seeming ease with which Gil portrays the simple faith of a child. A child who becomes a visionary, seeing what no one else sees, hearing what no one else does and suffering the […]
October 4, 2020
He Made Adam First It’s almost fall and I am behind in the writing of Plausible Liars, the fifth in the Dr. Lindsey McCall medical mystery series. Way behind, for I had intended that the first draft be completed by the end of October. Although it is true that we have sold and moved from our beautiful northern Nevada home of eighteen years and my eight-year-old laptop finally bit the dust the week we got here, (the reason there was no article last Sunday) those are not the reasons that my deadline will come and go before the story is […]
September 20, 2020
It’s just a little incense-Saints Cornelius and Cyprian In the Christian liturgy, Wednesday, September 16 was celebrated as the feast of two early martyrs: Saints Cornelius and Cyprian. Men persecuted by the Roman Empire for their Christian faith…fourth century Rome and therefore irrelevant to us seventeen hundred centuries later. But that is because I never bothered to learn anything about these two men. Father Mitch Pacwa celebrated the daily televised mass on EWTN and delivered a riveting homily on these two saints. The polyglot Father Pacwa (he fluently speaks thirteen languages) is a bit of an oxymoron in that he […]
September 13, 2020
Thomas More- A Man For All Seasons Most of us know the movie, and not the play, a misfortune. Because the film, although excellent, is incapable of conveying the complexities, nuances, and timeless relevance of Robert Bolt’s two-act play, A Man For All Seasons. Had it not been for my undergraduate English teacher, I’d have missed this stunning, starkly written drama about the most important battle any of us face: conscience versus obedience. In the preface, Bolt writes a piercingly sardonic explanation about why he selected a sixteenth-century Chancellor of King Henry VIII as his archetypal hero. …why do I […]
September 6, 2020
I live in my head until suddenly something happens to vault me down to my heart. Naturally, I’m a writer. And am therefore constantly conjuring plots and characters. Or working on an article. So this move from our Nevada home for the last eighteen years merely consisted of jumping through the hoops of keeping the house as nearly perfect as possible for all the showings. Then negotiating with realtors and buyers. And accepting the offer, jumping through more hoops of all the inspections-you know, you’ve been there. And then deciding to divest…free yourself from stuff. Books, furniture, clothes, paintings. All […]
August 30, 2020
The things I’ll miss constitute a very long list. So I will share only the top few. The items on my list of the things I’ll miss competed with one another for top priority as the boys (Shadow and Seymour) and I hiked to the top of Pipeline for what may be the last time. Given that the home inspections next week reveal no awful stuff, we will leave our sacred place to buyers who will take over 36 Grant Drive, Wellington, Nevada in just under a month. It was eighteen years ago that we moved here. Eighteen Years!!! Really? […]
August 23, 2020
He fascinates me, this Karol Wojtyla and the sign of contradiction- this man who shocked the world to become the first Polish Pope: This was so long before I had any inkling that I would become a Christian Catholic. With ease I can recall vividly my reaction to an article in Harper’s Magazine. In an article she called, Arguing With the Pope journalist Barbara Harrison wrote about Pope John Paul’s trip to Denver in August of 1993 for what the Pope called the eighth, World Youth Day. I remember little more than my complete sense of bafflement that a man […]
August 9, 2020
Reflections on The Lincoln Conspiracy There’s a secret on this train. With their first sentence, Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch had me captivated. In fact, I could barely put the book down, the story was so engrossing. Complete with the world’s first detective agency, first female detective, undercover cops and crooked Police Chiefs, The Lincoln Conspiracy rivals a Grisham, Connelly, or Lee Child mystery. One reviewer calls it a first-rate nonfiction thriller. Indeed, that it is. Here’s my favorite review: Think you know everything about Abraham Lincoln? Well, think again. The Lincoln Conspiracy not only revitalizes history, it transforms it, turning its […]
August 2, 2020
The tale seldom heard about Martha The three siblings are well known: Lazarus-the man who is raised from the dead, and his two sisters are close friends of Jesus. So close is the family to Jesus that He goes to dine with them. Martha is remonstrating Christ, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!” We hear only from the two sisters, Mary and Martha, who are compared frequently, usually with Martha as inferior, at least spiritually, in the earlier part of this tale. Lazarus is silent. Focused on the work of welcoming and feeding Jesus and […]
July 26, 2020
Mary Called Magdalene is a woman alternately thought to be prostitute, mystic, secret lover of Jesus, and the apostle who reached higher levels than did any of the male apostles. Throughout the ages, Mary beckons both believers and non. Her relationship with Jesus is a curious one, implying an intimacy that our age can conceive of only as sexual…think Sarah Brightman’s I Don’t Know How to Love Him. While at the Baptistery in Florence several years ago, my husband John and I saw Donatello’s wood sculpture of Mary, Called Magdalene. The sculpture of Mary Magdalene is a study in human […]
July 19, 2020
Ever had a week that looked like this? Several days during this past week seemed, virtually anyway, like a humongous pile of dirty dishes that kept replenishing themselves, independent of me. Meaning that my productive intentions for the day were cast aside and piling up. That there was very good reason for my lack of productivity did not help-the fact remains that I’m behind. Way behind. By now-the middle of July- I should be writing like crazy, clear about the plot and direction of my newest book, Plausible Liars, but I am so far from that destination that I am returning […]
July 12, 2020
Real Poverty-Not knowing what we lack. We hear the phrase a lot: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” And most of us are more or less aware that St. Mark qualifies St. Luke’s with two words: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Until hearing this morning’s EWTN daily mass and homily by Fr. Mark Mary, I’d not given any thought to the qualifier, “poor in spirit.” When hearing that beatitude, my mind almost automatically interpreted the words of Christ to mean material poverty: the poor have far more chance of making heaven than […]
July 5, 2020
I will be lowly in your esteem-Lessons from King David Filled with awe, wonder and the wisdom of God, the Israeli king, “girt with a linen apron, came dancing before the Lord with abandon, as he and all the Israelites were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts of joy and to the sound of the horn. As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Saul’s daughter, Michal looked down from the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord and despised him in her heart…He then distributed to each man […]
June 28, 2020
The Most Powerful Force in the world is not thought to be the human will, not by a long shot. Maybe an earthquake? Or hurricane? Tornado? But the human will? A resounding YES! Only we-of all His creatures-have the capacity to deny the Creator Of this world. Of this universe. Of all universes known and wholly unknown. Only human men and women have the capacity to refute our nature as sons and daughters of God. To deny the divinity of Jesus Christ. To walk away from salvation and Eternal Life. Because I think about Eden-right, the Garden of- a lot, […]
February 23, 2014
I think there was a book by this name- or close to it- published a few years back…or maybe it was a movie. Regardless, I think about that question now and then, perhaps we all do. When I read something that prompts me to consider this possibility ( CS Lewis is almost always my catalyst, more on why in a moment), I get stuck on a few details. Like these: Will I get there? If and when I do, will there be a recognizable I…? Will who I was while here, what I did and what I thought be accessible […]
March 27, 2014
When Christ meets her, she’d had 5 husbands and is currently living with a man to whom she is not married. But in the eastern Catholic Church, she became St. Fantine…Fantine, the mother of Cosette in Les Miserables, Victor Hugo’s tragic story we know because of the splendid-at times celestial- music from the Broadway play and the recent film. We are taught that the Gospel is the living Word…despite all the iterations of translations through the centuries, that truth becomes evident to me with a March 9th homily on the conversation in the Gospel of John which should never have […]
April 15, 2014
It’s been a little over a month since I lost my best friend- a Doberman named Ally. And this is the 4th post I have written in my attempts to come to grips with the loss of this remarkable creature with whom I was graced for a little over 7 years. Over 3000 words before I felt that the tribute had been written. As I write about what I have learned, I think of one of my many teachers, CS Lewis, when he talked about experience: ‘But we learn, by the awful grace of God, we learn,’ because that’s what […]
April 17, 2014
The last couple of months have been filled with difficulties-ranging from trivial to awful. And so we decided to spend Holy Week and Easter weekend down here. I was dreading yet another series of “firsts”; this RV suffused with memories of our boy, now gone, the 4 mile walk along the ocean that the boys and I took so many times while on holiday down here over the last several years. Both Shadow and I had lots of trouble last night with those parts of this RV that were Ally’s…I could see Shadow carefully avoiding them…tough to do in less […]