Mike Root

I have always had a love/hate feeling about writing. I love to write, I just hate getting started. My journey to write more than church bulletin articles and articles for some religious journals and magazines, began during my sixth year as a Police Chaplain. I came home from a particularly messy suicide scene, where I tried to clean things up a bit before the distant family came into the house where it had happened. There had been many scenes just like that one during my six years with the Department, and I was beginning to feel like they were going to all become jumbled together in my memory, or maybe forgotten all together. That day, when I came home, I went straight to my new Apple 2E and began writing about what I'd just experienced. The "joy" of writing is the focusing of thoughts and the creating of something that will come alive, enlighten, and entertain others every time it is read. As a minister, between my studying and thinking, my brain regularly feels like it's overflowing with ideas, concepts, and valuable truths that I need to organize and make manageable, and that's what writing does for me. And then there are just times when a story is in my head and it needs to be told before I lose it to time and age.

I see them as seekers looking for something to enjoy, inspire, and learn. I have never felt like the expert on anything, but what I have felt, is the responsibility to study, be prepared, and treat whatever material I was working on with respect and accuracy - especially if it has spiritual connections. It's difficult to not want affirmation and acclaim about anything you raise up the proverbial flagpole, but my goal is not so much agreement as it is being thought provoking. With over four decades of presenting sermons every week, I'd by lying if I said I didn't appreciate the compliments and back-slapping. What I love even more, however, is someone telling me that I caused them to think. A challenging lesson causes others to think, and thinking goes way beyond the time it took to listen. An entertaining lesson may keep the attention, but it tends to be forgotten with the final "Amen." The same is true of writing. I want to be entertaining, that is, keep attention, but I want even more to make sure that I didn't waste the readers time. I like the idea of giving something to think about, and that goes way beyond the reading of a book.