Welcome to Alfred J

Authorsden.com has served me well as a convenient repository for my novels, articles, blog posts, and poems. The site also serves as a pretty effective marketing outreach to a monthly audience of 1.4 million visitors.

Of all the items I've archived on AuthorsDen, I've listed those that have received the most hits on my page. Why these lead the pack, I can't begin to explain. Personally, I would have chosen others. Here goes:

Poem: "A Wedding Toast" (10,960 hits and counting)

May the sun give light and warmth to the days ahead of you;
May the moon soften your nights with never-waning romance;
May you be each other's North Star and compass through life;
And may our God walk with you to make you strong, loving and wise.

Novel: Finding Isabella (8,345 hits and counting)

Article: "Welcome to the Family: A Parent Talks to Children About Lent"
(6,455 hits and counting)

I've always marveled that some children reared in wretchedly dysfunctional families grow up to be marvelous, well-adjusted human beings. Others born into loving homes and Western-style comfort and privilege choose an opposite path, living their lives in seemingly self-inflicted misery. Those who have scratched their way to maturity--even happiness--against the odds now have a new model and patron saint in Lisbeth Salander, the female protagonist of the late Stieg Larsson's internationally best-selling Swedish trilogy: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Purists will argue that a literary (and now film) character cannot qualify as a saint.
There was a time when I, too, delimited my understanding of the spiritual world along
the boundary lines of fact and fiction. A crack appeared in my dualistic (either/or)
thought processes in 1969, when the Catholic Church admitted that only shaky
evidence existed to support the historicity of some saints who had long enjoyed their
special annual feast days. Among those demoted was everybody's favorite co-pilot,
St. Christopher.

Archbishop Jacopo de Voragine, author of The Golden Legend, a thirteenth century
compilation of saints' lives, set off a seven-hundred-year run of popular devotion to
the muscular Christ-bearer. Over the past three decades, the saint's medals and
dashboard bobble heads have virtually disappeared. What became of those billions of prayers sent heavenward by travelers who relied on him for protection? Jesus assures us, as he did the people of his own day, that our God wastes nothing: "Your faith has saved you" (Luke 7:50).

Humans, whether religious or not, have always drawn inspiration from legends, as well as from certifiably historical people and events. So, why not adopt Larsson's protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, as a saint for our time, especially as a model for young adults? I won't give away the details of her life story here. There just might still be a few people on the planet who have not read the books (or not yet completed the trilogy). Personal discovery of her inner life, values, and unique, but finely tuned, morality is one of the trilogy's great rewards. But I give nothing away by saying that the Universe dealt Salander one of the worst hands of any child, fictional or real.

Canonizing Salander does challenge us to shift our understanding about what is moral and what is not. By rigid Judeo-Christian standards, the behaviors that enable her to survive as a functioning human being are immoral. But behavior alone is not the ultimate determiner of morality. For me, the most sensible and hallowed definition of morality is enshrined at the core of my own tradition. For Catholics, individual conscience is the final arbiter of morality, superseding everything else. The essence of morality is being human in the best sense, according to each person's unique capability at any given moment in life. Since we are made in God's image, whatever attitudes and behaviors help us to grow emotionally and spiritually--and thus become more like God--are moral. An intentional decision or action is immoral to the extent that it causes us to be less than the person God created us to be.

In The Girl Who Played With Fire, co-protagonist Mikael Blomkvist says of his friend Lisbeth, now a murder suspect, that she possesses a highly developed sense of morality. By this he means that her moral compass is a trustworthy guide and that she consistently operates from that core principle. In view of that, by what right does anyone judge her or condemn her choices? This is especially so, in light of the abuse she has suffered as a child and teen from the very adults responsible for guiding and protecting her (mother, father, legal and social welfare systems, and government at the highest levels). That she survives and arrives at womanhood as a still-moral human being is miracle enough to merit this fictional character the titles of role model and patron saint for the twenty-first-century.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The Mystery of "Hits"

Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Saint With the Dragon Tattoo