This old world didn’t send out invitations, for you young men and women — no fancy cards with gilt edges, no polite “RSVP” for the grand show of existence. Most of us tumbled into this big, roaring, wonderful room we call the earth by pure mischance, like a prospector stumbling on a claim he never filed. We didn’t ask for the ticket, nor the rough ride that brought us here. For me, it was a near thing from the start – kicking and screaming down the birth canal, fighting the dark tunnel like a wild mustang bucking a blizzard, half sure I’d never see the light of day. The doctor later said it was touch and go, but touch I did, and go I didn’t. I came bawling into a world brimming with hope and promise, only to find shadows waiting, the old evil that prowls every path, sniffing at every soul like a wolf at a campfire.
Yet here’s the queer part, the part that makes a man stop and scratch his head in wonder: so many of us, battered and bruised by the trail, still manage to turn our faces to the light. We don’t just endure – we spit in the eye of despair and keep marching. There’s a music in it all, you know, a deep, thundering song that vibrates from every atom, every grain of dust, every frozen peak and roaring river. We may not hear it with our ears — Lord knows the wind howls too loud sometimes — but we feel it in our bones, that cosmic tune that started playing the moment we drew our first breath. It’s the spirit singing within the breast, filling every pore with the wild harmony of the universe, the same music that set the stars to wheeling and the tides to racing. Continue reading →