Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

I highly doubt I'm in danger of copyright violation, using the entirety of Percy Shelley's poem “Ozymandias”. It was first printed in 1818 and I had to recite this in senior high school English with Mrs. Hooten, I remember (one of the Romantic works, the other one being John Keats' “Ode on a Grecian Urn”) and I had fun learning it. Well before I'd ever heard of the graphic novel Watchmen where Ozymandias is the superhero name of a principal character (senior English was 1989-90, Watchmen debuted three years earlier). And now that I'm rereading that, I'm recalling that in the story the man bearing that name – an entrepreneur whose real name was Adrian Veidt – never smiled.

My plan is to do so, and do so more. I've got to admit, though, writing a fictional biography would be interesting. I seem to have started my year with reading real-life biographies though, and I find myself looking at what I do want to do and don't want to do with them. I want to make it sound less … what's the polite word here, less hagiographic (look it up, to stay with me you've got to do some homework) than Mary L. Williamson's The Life of General Stonewall Jackson (ISBN 1930092210). Published by Christian Library Press, you would naturally expect it to emphasize besides the details of the Civil War general's life you would find in any standard biography the details of his spiritual life and journey.

But the frequency with which the author refers to “our hero” and holds him up as a lesson to children … you've got to wonder if the position of the Christian church (parts of it, anyway, and the position of political conservatives, for that matter) is that the South should have won the American Civil War, or at the very least retained its independence; after all, the Confederacy of Davis, Jackson, and Lee wasn't trying to conquer the Union of Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant. Makes me uneasy that we want to dismiss history – the parts at least that we could do nothing about since we were not even conceived in our mothers' wombs when they happened!

Another biography that I had an awesome time reading was that of Henry Gerecke. Doesn't ring a bell? He's a Lutheran minister who joined the Army when he was fifty as a chaplain during World War II. With his experience in prison ministry and two of his sons already on the battlefield, Gerecke was shipped first to London and then recruited for a very special assignment … well, that's where the story of Mission to Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis (ISBN 9780061997198) really begins, with mini biographies of the defendants who survived Hitler's Germany as well as those who – I know this part's hard to imagine, even seventy years hence – defend them. What could have been a dull legalistic read becomes in author Tim Townsend's hands brilliant!

Unfortunately, you cannot get this book yet darn it! I only have an uncorrected proof copy that I got free from my local Main Street Books with a purchase because that store is moving at the end of the month to a new location; it will be available in March. (And I will not give mine up, ok?) To meet the spiritual needs of the most – we imagine – unredeemable people. It's what you and I are called to do as well. Not for the sake of our works saving us from hell (they don't) but for the sake of becoming more so the people we have always believed we were meant to be. Not to become worthy of God but to know that we can't redeem ourselves, it's only our Savior Who will.

Nothing beside remains, David