A sweet quote crossed my social media feed the other day. It goes like this:
“Life’s short … You don’t get to live this twice. This is it, the messy, beautiful, imperfect ride we call life. The late-night talks. The reckless laughter. The tiny wins no one claps for. So take the risk. Tell people you love them. Chase the things that set your soul on fire. Dance even if you look ridiculous. Stop waiting for the “right” moment, this is the moment. Make it count.”
There was no name attached to the quote, and I wasn’t able to find out who wrote it using my usual tricks. Did the author send it out into the world anonymously? Probably not.
But, as some people say in these days, the exhortation hit me in the feels. It hit me because there have been more than a handful of times I hesitated at the brink, on the verge, and ended up not doing. Life has turned out just fine, but every so often I think about one of those moments and wonder — “What if —?”
I think a worthy goal would be not to collect as many “what ifs.”
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.
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.
I have a great deal of trouble following my own advice, even though it’s rooted in Scripture: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” and in popular wisdom: “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.” Jesus and Tom Petty (in that order) are very wise. And yet here I am worrying about stuff.
I do consider the lilies of the field, and they are lovely — maybe not this time of year, but at least while they’re blooming. And I do consider the sparrow, who manages to eat and fulfill his destiny, which is to maintain the species and add beauty to the world.
And so I ought to feel safe in the knowledge that if he cares about the lilies and the sparrows, he will keep an eye on me. Of course, there’s also that notion that he won’t throw anything my way that I can’t bear with his help — and what can THAT be? — but then he also says don’t worry about tomorrow because today has enough troubles of its own. Wait, what? Today has troubles?
The point always comes down to “Trust Jesus,” and I do. He did, after all, give himself as a sacrifice so that we who trust in him are OK for eternity, which includes today and tomorrow.
I look out at the bird feeder expecting to see some feathered friends enjoying what I can share from the Lord’s bounty — instead I see two fat squirrels. This agitates my two dogs, of course, but when all is said and done, I just sigh and decide to enjoy a sunny morning. If he cares about lilies and birds and me, surely God loves squirrels, too. They ARE pretty fat for this time of winter.
The blogger who goes by the name Toirdhealbheach Beucail posted McLaren’s thought on Sunday. There’s a lot of hammering going on in this world these days, and not many people seem interested in melting hard hearts.
There’s an old saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.”
The McLaren quote gave me a new perspective on the old folk song “If I Had A Hammer.’ In the final verse the singer reveals he does have a hammer, and it’s “the hammer of justice.”
There are a number of ways to deliver justice with a hammer. You could build a courthouse. You could also build a gallows, or a guillotine. You could bash someone’s head in. In fact most ways of wielding a hammer in the name of justice are pretty violent. And violence may provide what you consider to be justice, but it’s not going to soften many hearts to win arguments, let alone the world.
The world has plenty of hammers. It’s in desperate need of kindness.
