I have forgotten to check the Powerball numbers from Monday night, so I have not yet confirmed that once again I am not a multi-millionaire. I wonder which would be healthier: to imagine what I would do with all that money, or to imagine what it would take for me to become a multi-millionaire the old-fashioned way, by earning it without the benefit of insane luck?
Well, let’s imagine I picked the magic numbers. I would tithe the money, of course, pay off my debts, and pay cash from now on. In other words, I’d live the way I’m trying to live now, only on a grander scale.
OK, let’s check those numbers.
OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG!
Yep, I didn’t win. Well, that was fun. On with life.
We measure our days in terms of light and dark, and I prefer spring and summer because I believe people seek the light and thrive in the light. I know a common belief is that human nature is innately dark, but I have not found that to be the case. Those who roam the dark are unhappy creatures who behave contrary to our instinct to survive.
And who am I anyway, that I think my thoughts are important enough to post and share every day? I am no more important than you, who is reading this. All I have to offer are the sum of nearly 73 years of living day by day, and my experience may be totally irrelevant to yours. I have come to certain conclusions about life and the world, but it occurs to me now that “conclusion” is not the greatest word to describe a person’s views about anything.
Saying “This is my conclusion” implies that the process of forming that view has concluded — it’s finished, and my mind will never change again. Wrong! Our “conclusions” are always evolving.
Oh, certain foundational views don’t change much, but I think it’s dangerous most of the time to say “my mind is made up and that’s that.” At least that’s my conclusion at the moment. In a world where more information is accessible at our fingertips all the time, it’s always possible to learn something that will shake up our conclusions all over again.
A couple of weeks ago I was reminded of something I wrote a couple of years ago, “How to start a good week,” which directed me to Romans 12:9-18, Matthew 22:36-40, Philippians 4:8, and Galatians 5:22-23. They are excerpts that I find myself reviewing time and again.
Paul told the folks in Philippi, as he was starting to wrap up his letter, “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”
So often we find ourselves diving down rabbit holes of darkness, themes that direct us away from the best we can be or aspire to. We should not need a reminder to seek out the true and the noble and the pure, but of course we do need reminders from time to time.
We live in a dark world where darkness is celebrated and advocated and admired, and we need to remind ourselves constantly that there is another path, a brighter path, and a nobler path that is healthier for our souls.
The start of a new week is a good time for such a reminder. By close of business Monday, we may already have been knocked off course; it helps to focus on whatever is excellent or praiseworthy in a world full of so much that is not.
And so, besieged on all sides, we seek out love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and we rediscover daily that we can find them as a natural byproduct of delving into the Holy Spirit.
“Man!” he said with more than a small amount of incredulity. “You should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe.”
“So now you’re a walrus?” asked his companion.
“No. Well, I suppose I could stand to lose a little weight,” he said, “but it was a crowd of people who don’t ‘get’ great literature.”
“Literature is how we interpret or try to make sense of a crazy world,” she said.
“Exactly!” he said, but then he looked at her askance. “Now, do you actually believe that, or did you steal it from an old literature professor?”
“Plead the Fifth?”
“But at least you have some love for Poe?”
“Nevermore!” said the companion. “Kidding! Of course I love old Edgar Allen. Don’t I raise a glass of amontillado at his grave every year on his birthday?”
“That’s you?” he said, but then he saw her grin. “You had me going there for a minute.”
They were listening to an Artie Shaw album, and all conversation ceased for three minutes when “Frenesi” began to flow from the speakers.
When the music moved on, she murmured, “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
“Perfect arrangement, perfect recording,” he agreed.
“What does the word ‘frenesi’ mean, anyway?”
He tapped on the screen of his phone for a few seconds, then read out loud, “‘Frenesi’ is a Spanish noun that translates to ‘frenzy’ in English. And over here it says it’s Portuguese.”
“Huh. That music doesn’t whip me into a frenzy, it’s pretty mellow,” she said.
“It makes me warm and fuzzy on the inside,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “which can lead to a frenzy eventually.”
“Hey buddy, don’t get fresh,” she said, but she leaned into the embrace.
“I can’t help it, you send me into a frenesi,” he said.
“In everyone’s life, at some point, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” — Albert Schweitzer
This quote appeared in my web wanderings on Friday morning. I’m grateful for people who post research online about just about any subject, so I can confidently know that Schweitzer did, in fact, write those words — or to be precise it’s a faithful translation of a passage from his 1924 memoir.
I’m also grateful for web archives, so that I know I was writing every day between the end of June 2023 and December 2024, and some of it was very good writing, if I say so myself.
The truth is my inner fire was out. I was stuck in the hospice room where I left my beloved partner, best friend and wife.
I was driven by the words I was reading to her when she passed — “Love God and love your neighbor” — but if I’m honest, I felt hollow. The life I had known was over. This was a time in my life when there was only one set of footprints in the sand, to recall the old story about Jesus carrying us through bad times.
I am grateful for my pastor friend, who invited me to join the worship team, because without any weekly commitment to be in that church, I’m not sure where I would have been, and I certainly would not have been there when a beautiful woman named Mary prayed for a companion, and when God answered that prayer by showing her a guitar player behind the singers in that church.
When I saw Schweitzer’s quote on Friday morning, I saved the meme and forwarded it to Mary, adding, “You are my rekindle girl.” She is the human who found the ember of my inner fire and burst it into flame again. It began with the warmth of a hug offered one Sunday morning after the service, and it continues to this day.
I told her Friday I was lost for ideas about how to celebrate Valentine’s Day because, in all seriousness, every day has been Valentine’s Day since the hug grew into something as special as I’ve ever known.
Mary has become my Valentine. I thought I had lost my inner fire forever after my Valentine died, but God had other plans and gave me an encounter with an amazing other human.
I picked up my guitar on the morning of Jan. 1 and glanced out the front window of my house, which faces east. The sunrise was a brilliant red, calling to mind the old aphorism about red skies and sailors.
I grabbed my pencil and wrote, “Crimson sky on New Year’s morn, Old sailors take it as a warning; Crimson sky on New Year’s night, Sailors ready for delight.”
That seemed like a good start, so I lifted the guitar again. I decided to try starting the song with a more exotic chord than your plain vanilla C or D or G, so I droned out an Asus2, which has a strange, lovely sound made by pressing just two strings side by side (four strings on the 12-string guitar).
I called out the lyrics I’d just written, and my mind seemed to say the moment called for a rather standard transition to G and then D.
Somewhat to my surprise, the words that I sang next sprang from the Old Testament book of Joshua.
“As for me and my house, we’re gonna serve the Lord.”
A short time later, I had a composition of eight verses that have not changed much since then, my first new song of the new year. And the adventure was on.
I had ended the old year by crafting a medley of songs about peace and love that I dubbed “Peace Trilogy,” reminiscent of Mickey Newbury’s “American Trilogy,” and a romantic song for Mary titled “What You Mean To Me.” “Me And My House” continued that musical momentum, but I couldn’t have foreseen what the next six weeks would bring.
Between then and now, 11 more songs emerged — 10 newly minted and one ancient cover — and now I have enough material for an approximately 40-minute album. Wednesday night I fiddled with ideas for the album cover, and a natural title came to me: “Crimson Sky On New Year’s Morn,” my first lyrics of the new year.
They are songs of peace and songs of love, folk songs and rock songs, serious songs and silly songs. I have eight completed recordings that may or may not require further tweaks, and I have six songs yet to be turned into what I hear in my head.
As I said a few days ago, I expect to be ready to share these recordings in the spring. At this pace it may be the very first day of spring. In any case I have the structure of a 14-song album and now a title and a cover.
On New Year’s Eve I made a list of 9-15 creative projects I thought I’d like to produce in 2026. “A collection of new songs” was the 15th idea on the list. I could not have suspected it would be the first project I’m likely to finish. It’s going to be an interesting year.
On Monday I shared my 10-year-old recollection of the first time I encountered Ray Bradbury’s prose poetry in my youth, and how every so often I need a booster shot of Bradbury to jumpstart my creative juices.
Wednesday morning the Ray Bradbury social media page shared a moment I had never seen before, from a 1974 interview with a journalist named James Day. The author talks about the importance of imagination, saying the ability to fantasize is the ability to grow.
“Boys and girls at the age of 10, 11, 12, 13, right on up through, the most important time of their day, or especially at night before going to sleep, is dreaming themselves into becoming something, into being something,” Bradbury says in the clip, “so when you’re a child, you begin to dream yourself into a shape, and then you run into the future and try to become that shape. When I was 10, 11, 12, I began to dream of becoming a writer …”
I love that image of “dreaming yourself into a shape.” When I was 10, 11, 12, I was writing dozens of songs and putting them on Top 40 lists on imaginary radio stations, and I was drawing my own comic books, and writing poems and collecting them into “albums” of 12 poems each, because the average record album had 12 songs, so why not poetry books?
As an adult I found myself fitting into those shapes. I went to work for real radio stations. I kept writing songs, started recording them, and tinkered with sharing them with the world, but it remained basically a hobby. My making comic books evolved into making newspapers, and I spent the second half of my career primarily as an editor.
In my semi-retirement I have published a couple dozen books as both a writer and editor, and thanks to my pastor friend who invited me to add my guitar to the worship team, I have reignited my love for making music. And thanks to modern technology that makes it easier than ever to create recordings that reflect what I hear in my head, and share them with the world, I am more than tinkering.
Ray Bradbury never stopped dreaming himself into new shapes. He dreamed of becoming a writer of science fiction stories, then of becoming a novelist, then a movie screenplay writer, then a TV and movie producer, a playwright, a poet, a mystery writer, and many other shapes.
When he died at 92, he was probably the oldest child in the world. May we all aspire to keep dreaming ourselves into a shape and running into the future to become that shape.
Ray Bradbury remains my single most important human role model.
