All Comments on 'Forty Years of Hesitation'

It's hard to pass on piety from one generation to the next!

5

You've turned an exploration of allegory into a piece of writing as compelling as your fiction. Well done, and 5 stars.

Compelling. I think I’ll wander back into the studio and ponder some of those old unfinished canvases stacked up against my easel.

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My first read from MelissaBaby was ‘My Fall and Rise’. A stunning piece of storytelling. Knocked me on my ass.

Thank you

Remembering my late parents now and the times they dragged (almost literally) us to church! Thank you, NTH!

Another fantastic entry from this author - proving his 'handle' is wrong.

He is neither 'no talent' - nor is he a hack!

Interesting perspective. People do take very differently from stories, I see that in the comments. Even humor can poke someone where they hurt, sometimes. I enjoy your writing.

I’m always surprised how much Church enters into American life.

GREAT! Wonderful! And now, no more praise, you are too good for such things.

"None of them are who they first appear to be." This sounds good, but not 100% truthful.

The wife is exactly what she appears to be: a woman who cheats and leaves a note written. Why does she leave a note? In the Guest Preacher's account, she craves a punishment for her sin!

Abner is precisely a cripple, who judges with his will but cannot put it into practice. What has Abner decided? That Paul does not deserve to be killed. And how dare he, Abner, pass judgment on life and death?

And is this Paul Watkins a horrible egotist who "deserves" death?

Or does he?

Rashomon. Points of view. "Let's just say that if a tree falls in the forest you'll get three stories: yours, mine, and the tree's." (Inspector Nicky Flippers: "Hoodwinked!" Yes, I'm a humble man of erudite culture).

Plot twist.

Abner really was the lover. The wife always called him "Paul"; his real name is Abner Paul Watkins. Abner sends away her cuckolded husband, who will kill an innocent Watkins before unalive himself. The wife is not over there, she is hiding in the woods, or Abner's basement.

And the son calls him "Pa." Or is the son correcting the father? "Daddy, your full name is Abner Pa..." "Stay back, boy!" and so, the boy runs, but then, he stops...

"Brother had practiced it so much that he simply told that portion of his sermon excellently..." exactly. Fifty or sixty years ago I saw preachers tell as "autobiographical eyewitness experiences" miracles that I later found out were told in the Middle Ages. Preachers are the most persuasive actors (or, the audience is prone to be persuaded, and sets, lights, candles, and especially hypnotic songs can have a devastating impact on a dense ADHD population). And don't underestimate the "Sermon Too Long" old trick: that, too, is a tried-and-tested technique, to make the audience think it's over by now (but the venom is in the scorpion's tail). Much used by Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo (1969).

PS: "Hoodwinked" is a parody of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. The Sin of Little Red Riding Hood is that although Mom warned her to go straight to Granny without delay, she stops to smell the blooming red flowers (the vagina lips, under the clitoral hood) and only then is she molested by the Wolf (the Male, who would not have even noticed her before). In the distant hut, three souls die: she, he, and the grandmother (without the woodsman).

Hey, good job, NTH! Pretending to tell us a sermon, you told us a fable!

Just joking. It was a masterpiece, thank you.

I think your stories dominate my ‘Thoughtful’ folder more than any other author. This one will stick around for some time.

It's a powerful story when you can see yourself in several characters. Well done, Hack, as always. Thanks.

I agree MB is a good writer and that her story was very good but I do not think you should offer your praises in this manner.

Uh, there are some of who cannot come up with a dozen writers better than you. I'm one.

You are top 3. I wont choose between the three of you.

Raised in my folks religion I can think back to a sermon that’s true meaning eluded me …at the time. This story was very well told. Tks. for sharing.

When one of your stories comes up in my notifications, I don't always bother to check the catagory, because I know it's going to be good. So I was surprised at what wasn't in this one. Regardless, It was good.

Like Monogamous, I'm firmly convinced your handle is a lie...

...the impact of what was an early experience in your life had enough of an impact on you that in some form or other, you brought it here, and conveyed the emotions it evoked in you in a very well-written story here.

I am also following your suggestion to check out MelissaBaby, as I think what impresses you will.imoress me as well.

Five stars from here, and my 'very nicely done'.

(I'll let you know what I think about MelissaBaby and her work.)

I really appreciate the humility of NTH. True, he may not be the best writer on this site, but he's definitely top 10 and arguably top 5. The perspective of the characters in the story was substantial. Great work. The many years I was forced to attend the Baptist church by my mother produced but 1 memorable sermon, and it wasn't the entire sermon rather a single sentence. From the age of 7 till I was 15, and all I remember is that one sentence. What a waste traditional religion can be.

a clue shows that this story has an autobiographical root in Sunday sermons:

a cast composed exclusively of males: from the preacher to the Brother, from the father to the son (and the son has messenger duties, that is, in ancient Greek, an Angel).

Everyone has a name: Jeb, Abner, Paul, Brother Jones,

Almost all the males have a name.

The only one without a name is the Sinner Woman (there is in the preachers' lexicon, a biblical word that is the opposite of "faithful wife").

as in Bechdel's Test: the only one with no name and no voice is the woman.

As if this were the cast of a Shakespearean-era drama, with a single Primadonna among many male actors.

Thank you for this. A good telling. Well done.

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Be well!

Thank you for sharing this.

****.Wow it would be great if other writers would follow an example like the February Story in Loving Wives with some sermons they remember for Non-Erotic. Great read. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for guiding me to Melissababy's story, and by extension her other writings. I am not a writer. I thrill at being an audience of one for the many talented writers, yourself included, who have woven their tales through my brain over the years.

Again, thanks.

Thanks for giving us a little insight into yourself.

Again, "No Talent" is quite the misnomer, as your body of work here exemplifies!

I really loved this. I feel like it manages to neatly explore all the parts of the creative process. The desperate desire to write (or the desire to create, the desire to run, leap, live, be important!), paired with all the other things that get in the way. The need to connect with others. The power of negative commentary. And the way a great story sticks with you, continuing to challenge you years later. Thank you for the insight!

,loved the idea, but for me it was just that bit wordie, I lost the will to read every word and skipped some.

Thank you for your heart-felt memory of a story that had an impact on your early life. We are all molded by our experiences: sometimes for good, sometimes for not-so-good.

On a lighter note, I also have a strong memory of my times in Church on a Sunday. Our parents would boot us kids out of home, sending us to Church by ourselves on a Sunday. (I found out years later it was so they could have some "alone" time without us in the house!)

I would sit at the back, along with my friends. Sexy Mary, also in our class at school, would make a habit of wearing the shortest mini dress she could, sitting directly opposite our group... and pull it right up exposing her white panties. No one else could see: just us. Every Sunday we guys would be there with massive, embarrassing, erections! Thinking we were all going to Hell for our thoughts. LOL. She loved teasing us.

Your humbleness is appreciated and noted.

Your stories evoke emotions of understanding from even the worst of characters.

The core of our humanity and choices is shaped by our feelings at a particular moment.

In this regard, your writing has helped me personally understand a lot about my self from the way you are to describe the state of mind, reasoning, and choices thereafter, of the characters you describe.

Thank you.

This is probably one of the few times where I read some of the other comments by previous posters to help me decide on how to shape my response because of the tangents the story raced off on at the end. I second the observation by one that yes I most definitely appreciate your humility and willingness to not try to elevate yourself at someone else's expense. That's a rare quality! Second, I can appreciate that you want to draw attention to effectively one tale in your story, and then around the last 4 to 5 paragraphs of this one, draw attention to something else. I will get back to that, but the first thing that everyone should understand is that whether you look at measuring oneself from a Biblical perspective or from a psychological perspective, one should never compare oneself with someone else (2 Cor 10:12): the reason is that no two people have the same talents, abilities, focus, nor drive nor determination nor even family environment. The minute we make that comparison, we set ourselves up to fail --in fact we guarantee it if we persist in it. If you subscribe to Dr Jordan Peterson--which I strongly recommend everybody should follow and listen to--as he's a very pragmatic and realistic kind of person that tells you exactly what you need to do in order to improve your life. It's a question of truth and if you want to truly understand yourself and improve yourself. The thing is you have to discover what your talents and abilities are, and that may take you much of your life before you understand it. If you want to understand yourself, take a Myers-Briggs interest inventory test, take Jordan Peterson's personality test, which is very accurate about to 95%, take the color psychology test, and especially know what your first and last name mean. I would admonish you as an author to discover what you're best at (if you haven't already) and I would say this kind of piece (excepting part of the ending) was very heartfelt and had this been written outside of the competition and placed in the nonfiction category, I imagine it would have received a an exceptionally high score. I would say that you should take your own advice and use your strengths to your advantage. If you have identified weaknesses in your writing that you wish to correct, there are plenty of ways to address those as well and fix them in a way that benefits you. I don't think that you lack talent, and you certainly have something unique to offer.

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This tale's thrust intrigues me, although I have to address some of the biblical interpretations, as unfortunately they are incorrect. The one thing that is correct is that if someone is baptized really means they should understand their full responsibility and what they're supposed to do because they're an adult and they effectively want to please God. But part of that is a huge key: they have to first be an adult; you should never baptize a child because a child is a minor, and still in the process of maturing. Therefore to hang a huge responsibility on a child's shoulders is just wrong--especially theologically. If I remember correctly, the youngest example of somebody possibly having been baptized because he was claimed to already have the Holy Spirit was David and sometime before he slew Goliath. At best he was maybe 15 or 16, but that was a different age and time where could be more mature than their actual age. In most cases however, most males were not considered men until about the age of 20 (Ex 30). So when some of the audience said this was too much to hang on a child's shoulders...those people were right. In fact, the interpretation that Jeb was somehow looking for Earthly pleasure or treasure was wrong, as the story itself manifests he was thinking of helping feed his family, which is a selfless act. It was not on his shoulders to save the adulterer and adulteress from being killed. In the Old Testament, anyone caught in such an act had already damned themselves in the fact that once it was discovered, they would be taken out and stoned to death (Lev 20: 10-12). The idea was to dissuade sin and also to respect personal boundaries of others as well as God's Commandments. Furthermore, both of them were consenting adults, and the Bible is plain in Jeremiah that anyone who sins is responsible for their own death and their own actions--not anyone else (31:30). So for anybody to say that Jeb was to blame for the two people dying? They don't understand the Bible. The explanation for who's responsible aside from the people that committed the unlawful act of adultery would have been anyone that might have known they were having an affair, and as being adults did not bother to try to talk them out of it or dissuade them in some way. However the story never stipulates that anyone else knew. The other thing someone could say is that the woman's own stupidity killed both her and her lover because she didn't have to leave her husband any kind of note: she could have just ran out and taken what she could carry. At this time of the story it could have been far easier for her to disappear, and while the cheated-upon husband would have been spitting tacks, he quite possibly never would have found them. By way: the shortest verse in the Bible is when Christ arrives at Lazarus's tomb it simply says, "Jesus wept." That's a real man, and anyone saying that a real man doesn't weep is greatly mistaken.

***

While stories do take on a life of their own and people will focus on different things in it (as the comments prove), this story is within a contest with rules that stipulate there is to be some kind of sex involved as a significant portion of the account. That doesn't happen. It's passionate, heartfelt and relays several messages...and totally diverges from the intended purpose at the end. Had several paragraphs been omitted and assuming this story had been posted in non-fiction and outside of the requirements, I would have rated (had it been possible) 4.25. As it is...2.