I was thrilled my screenplay “Allah’s Fire” won First Place at the wonderful Gideon Media Arts Conference & Film Festival at Ridgecrest Conference Center in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. My screenplay is an adaptation of the novel Allah’s Fire (by Gayle Roper and Chuck Holton). It was wonderful to rendezvous with great friends and awesome artists; lovers of truth and grace.

Truth and Grace can change the world.  The problem is the world never stands still long enough to be a target for those change agents.  The world IS the change agent.  If we hope to shed Truth and rain Grace on the world, we will have to anticipate the world’s next revolving, the culture’s next turn.  

            Do you recognize the following words?  “The world is changed.  I feel it in the water.  I feel it in the earth.  I smell it in the air.”  If you’re a film buff, you would say those lines are the “voice-over” from the opening images of the movie “The Fellowship of the Ring.”  If you are a “reader,” one of those ancient types that opened books and turned pages and used artifacts called “bookmarkers,” you recognize the powerful, mystical sentiments of Galadriel, the Lady of Lorien in Tolkien’s story.

Change is like a haircut.  It’s hard, or impossible, to see change in process.  But it’s impossible to ignore after it’s happened.  So Galadriel’s observation doesn’t just tell us change is taking place; it tells us Galadriel has a gift for sensing (smelling?) change while it’s still cloaked to those without such a gift.  Galadriel is a special type of prophet.  She prophecies what IS happening in front of our open eyes, but we cannot see, we cannot recognize.

            We Earth-bound mortals are always surprised by change.  Like a lot of our tendencies, this is quite odd.  It would make more sense if we were always surprised when things stayed constant, stayed the same.  The world is a two-year old child.  It’s constantly moving and falling and crawling and walking and changing.  One of the first philosophers historians still remember was a guy named Heraclitus.  “Put your foot into the river and take it out.  Put it back in the river again and it’s not the same.”  He meant the river, in those milli-seconds, had changed, because the water’s constantly moving, and the foot-dipper is also changed in those milli-seconds, so.  Furthermore, the river’s change affects the guy with the foot, and his change affects the river’s change, so “No man steps into the same river twice.”  Which means EVERYTHING IS IN FLUX and ALL THE TIME.  This was a revelation to the other Earth-walkers and River-dippers with whom Heraclitus shared this.  Actually, they threw him into the river for interrupting their business day with ridiculous notions about what changes what and what not.

            If you ever had a dog, you know how much they like routine.  They live by it.  My master’s world has an arc, and it is my quest to bend with my owner’s arc.  Time to walk me, time to feed me, time to get up on this chair because the sun’s in this window, time to move to the next chair with the sun’s moving.  Time to get off the chair because Master is coming into the room.  Time to get back on the chair, because Master has left the room.  I’m told cats aren’t near as predictable.  They live by their own private arc, and this person that lives in their house can join them in their arc or not.

            Our songs and stories are full of this question of change.  Sixties songs: “I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do, so I leave it up to you.”  Seventies songs: “Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky.  It slips away.  And all your money won’t another minute buy.  (All we are is) dust in the wind.”  Eighties songs:  “I’m looking at the man in the mirror.  I’m asking him to change his ways.  Take a look at yourself and make a change.”  I don’t have any song quotes after the eighties, because the music world kind of stopped for me then.  Well, what it did was CHANGE to hip hop and rap and I guess I didn’t change with it.  Much of popular music was far more prophetic and lyrical in those long ago decades than today’s sexual base beats.  Although I’ve heard that lyrical depth is making a comeback.  It’s about time.

The above Seventies’ lyrics are right out of Ecclesiastes, which is right out of that book that doesn’t change.  The rest of the Bible proves Ecclesiastes’ reference to the Earth and sky lasting forever is “poetic license,” since the Earth and sky will not last forever in its present form.  There will be a new heaven and a new Earth.  Change is coming, certain to happen.  The only thing that doesn’t change is that everything changes.

Civilizations and culture are like the weather on an open plain.  If you don’t like it, wait a few minutes and it will change, because there are no mountains to hold the weather in a fixed pattern.  The trick is to recognize change before it recognizes you.  What I mean is we may want to anticipate cultural shifts and new informational transfers before they buzz over our heads like new supersonic aircraft. 

Or we can foolishly retreat from “the fight,” until the fight storms over our supposed “retreat.”  We were born into a struggle.  Take the fight to the enemies of Truth and Grace.