The Concrete Jesus

The Concrete Jesus is a novel I started about 20 years ago. I was mostly exploring my skills at fiction writing, or creative nonfiction.

But I enjoy essays and other nonfiction as well.

Most writers I’ve met over the years, either in person or through their work, claim to be obsessed about one particular book idea that ” they are always working on.”

For me, it’s The Concrete Jesus. First, just a seed my imagination developed. Then, it became deeply personal as my research for realistic details led me back to my hometown of Kinston, N.C., where a literal concrete statue of Jesus stood in a churchyard. A figure I’d seen almost everyday when I lived across the street from Rivermont Presbyterian Church.

I was sprinkled into baptism at that church. I didn’t understand much at the time, except Jesus Christ was someone I should include in my life.

Years later, The Concrete Jesus became the graduate thesis I never wrote when enrolled in the Master’s program at East Carolina University.

Although it may not officially be credited all these years later, the thesis would represent my worldview as the product of diverse literature and personal experiences post-graduate studies.

Writers, and graduate students, live a life of continued studies, in all kinds of contexts. Sometimes we end up where we started!

T S. Eliot wrote, from “The Four Quartets”–

loosely quoted, that at the end of our explorations we ” arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

I guess I often return to The Concrete Jesus because, honestly, it never left me. The little girl in me who clung to hope through every disappointment in life. The little girl who kept the Bibles given out one day at Southwood Elementary School.

The Psalms, the Proverbs, the Prophets, the Disciples, and the Gospels– all worthy of serious inquiry, by any serious writer.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Fight to take your talents to the limit!

Use all your God-given & hard- earned skills in every way possible that makes you unique, happy, and fulfilled.

Self- fulfillment may be the only reward some of us receive in this world.

That’s why I keep writing.

And why the concrete Jesus lives on, despite its removal from the churchyard, and the new name of the church building on Richland’s Highway.

I still believe in the power of the human Spirit. And C. S. Lewis reminds me with his words, that:

“When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest.” (from Mere Christianity)

Amen.