Here's a puzzle I'm working on. I'd enjoy hearing how you'd solve it -- outline notions only.
A premise to a novel I've got in the stewpot is the partnership between a pastor and an angel. After the initial encounter, both pastor and angel acknowledge this partnership to be a major departure from the historic relationship between these kinds of creatures. The reason for this departure is hinted at through the tale, but it is never fully revealed (stuff for sequels, dontcha know).
The partnership remains "private" throughout the novel; only the pastor ever sees or hears the angel, the angel never communicates with any other human. Much of the conflict in the various story lines is initially generated by the pastor's struggles to accomodate himself to this partnership (what they're partnering to accomplish is irrelevant for the purposes of the puzzle). As you can see, the pastor just can't go around telling everyone he has this angel pal now without instantly losing all credibility for sanity, character, dependability, and other qualities one would like to maintain in society.
The puzzle is NOT this one: how does the pastor decide that he's really dealing with an objective personality outside his own imagination? The solution to that puzzle is not difficult; the Bible presents some solutions (Gideon's and Zachariah's encounters with angels provide ideas here).
Rather, this is the puzzle: how does the pastor decide that the angel is really one of the "good guys" of heaven and that he should undertake the project which the angel brings to him? It's as much a puzzle for the angel as it is for the pastor. The angel must deal with a human who is rightly skeptical, for he presents himself to the human pastor in a capacity different from the presentation of angelic personalities in the Bible or in history.
Homesar
A premise to a novel I've got in the stewpot is the partnership between a pastor and an angel. After the initial encounter, both pastor and angel acknowledge this partnership to be a major departure from the historic relationship between these kinds of creatures. The reason for this departure is hinted at through the tale, but it is never fully revealed (stuff for sequels, dontcha know).
The partnership remains "private" throughout the novel; only the pastor ever sees or hears the angel, the angel never communicates with any other human. Much of the conflict in the various story lines is initially generated by the pastor's struggles to accomodate himself to this partnership (what they're partnering to accomplish is irrelevant for the purposes of the puzzle). As you can see, the pastor just can't go around telling everyone he has this angel pal now without instantly losing all credibility for sanity, character, dependability, and other qualities one would like to maintain in society.
The puzzle is NOT this one: how does the pastor decide that he's really dealing with an objective personality outside his own imagination? The solution to that puzzle is not difficult; the Bible presents some solutions (Gideon's and Zachariah's encounters with angels provide ideas here).
Rather, this is the puzzle: how does the pastor decide that the angel is really one of the "good guys" of heaven and that he should undertake the project which the angel brings to him? It's as much a puzzle for the angel as it is for the pastor. The angel must deal with a human who is rightly skeptical, for he presents himself to the human pastor in a capacity different from the presentation of angelic personalities in the Bible or in history.
Homesar
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