“I believe in belief!”

– Ted Lasso

Belief is an odd, mercurial, mysterious thing. And “thing” is the best word I can find to encapsulate this wild, ranging idea. (According to most writing instructors, you are never supposed to use the word “thing”, but as one myself, I say go ahead once in a while.)

If you were to poll one hundred random people, children, adults, college students, retirees, and everyone in between about something odd they believe, you could likely compile quite a list before even reaching the eleventh person. Even in an age of staggering scientific progress on so many fronts, there are those out there in the suburbs of American cities who believe that the earth is flat. Others may say that the moon landing was staged on a film set in the California desert, or that there are mutant people living in the sewers of New York City. Some of these beliefs are fairly benign, while others, like election denialism or refusal to see the effects of mankind’s industrial impact on the earth form their own harrowing future for those effected by these beliefs. My lovely wife once went to a séance organized by a coworker of hers and experienced a mother, full of belief, desperately trying to communicate with a tragically deceased son.

On the lighter side of things, sports bring their own, odd sense of belief that is not necessarily grounded in any form of reality. In my neck of the woods, the Boston Red Sox baseball team went nearly one hundred years between World Series Championships and were deemed to be “cursed” by the great Babe Ruth (a belief that merits its own chapter) when he was unceremoniously traded to the New York Yankees for cash to fund a Broadway show. The years I grew up rooting for the Red Sox were full of “belief” language every season. “This will be our year” the old men in the barber shops or pubs would say. When that fateful year came that the curse was indeed broken, the airwaves were full of sports radio announcers saying “have faith” when the Sox were down three games to nothing against those detested New York Yankees. Cries of “have faith” echoed around the hallowed corridors of the boarding school where I live and work and the sacred language of organized religion was coopted by drunken fans in the streets when that final out of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals was recorded. The headlines of the storied Boston Globe shouted, “FAITH REWARDED” while tearful fans waved homemade signs that said, “I always believed,” as if to tout their devotion over those fans who had waivered and turned off their radios and television sets too early to see the great comeback.

Yes, the contagious, sparking flame of belief can be an intoxicating thing. And sometimes “intoxicating” is exactly the right word to use. Towards the end of the American Civil War, there were those on the Confederate side of the conflict who, despite all evidence to the contrary, believed that the South would win the war, or indeed had won the war despite the occupying enemy troops in their states. Newspapers touted the victorious Southern states for months and even years afterwards leading a generation into profound confusion about the state of affairs.

Belief versus evidence, unbelief versus faith has been a universal theme since the dawn of humanity and has been debated for thousands of years by those far smarter and accomplished than myself. But my wrestling with belief, with the thought that something that I cannot see, or touch or grasp is still altogether real is as much in my bones, in my very sub-atomic wiring as it was for my ancestors out in the fields looking up at the stars in wonder and awe.

While the monstrously big idea of belief could fill every library in all the world with volumes that would not even remotely scratch the surface of the concept, the humble tale of my own journey into belief, specifically in the Christian story of the fall, and redemption of humanity through the central character of a humble carpenter from a backwater town in the Middle East, is one that I desire to undertake, if only to remind myself of the long, wonderful journey that it has been for me. Add to this the great desire I have for my loved ones and friends to know this same joy and peace that “has found me,” or to perhaps aim lower, to understand what has spurred my belief in the grace and love of the Lord through the person of his one and only son; one Jesus of Nazareth.

To many of my friends, neighbors and coworkers, this faith I hold close to my heart, the faith that has changed (and is still changing) me is a mysterious, quirky idea who’s time has run out long ago, like the rotary phone I grew up dialing, or the video rental store that I still wish was just down the street from me on Friday nights. This antiquated faith burns in my heart and moves me to love those around me each day in ways far beyond myself (and reassures me that I am still loved when my love for others runs cold due to my choices).

This fiery belief, this molten faith springs up in me from an ancient source and has a wonderful story that’s still being written in me. And it’s this desire to share my story, in all of its odd twists and turns that spurs me to type ever onward. There are stories to be told, beautiful memories to be turned up like the soft soil of a garden in the spring. And there are stories still yet to be told in my life and yours. I believe (there’s that word again) that there is no life that cannot be the source of a beautiful story when the Lord is the author of it. My own life (at forty-six wonderful years as of the writing of this) is still brimming with stories to tell, adventures to be set out on and the continued refining of these rough edges day by day. (One wouldn’t think that learning how to get the laundry consistently done or the checkbook fully balanced would count, but those adventures are out there, and the good Lord provides energy for journeys big and small.)

So may my story, in its humble form inspire your own faith. For without faith, without belief that adventures can be had, and growth can be achieved, this living of life is a sad story indeed. May yours be surprising, with unexpected roads and new trails cut every moment.

I believe it can happen because it happened to me.

Have a great week, and may your fire burn brightly.

– Tin Can Caldwell

Surprise me like the shepherds

Out in the cold of night

Huddled around fires small

Surprise me with angel choirs

Singing the joy of this holy night

To a ragged, humble few

Surprise me in the daily grind

In the chilly, early drive

The hum-drum rhythms of life

Surprise me with who you are

Surprise me with what you do

Invade my story too, o Lord

If one by one the miles come

If two by two they pass

Then traveling now

Means striking out

Then let us go at last

With stars our guides

And deserts wide

To seek what shall not pass

Peace on earth is a simple thing

And as complex as the stars

Peace on earth is close at hand

But sometimes seems so far

Peace on earth is medicine

To heal the hurt we hold inside

And peace on earth is a symphony

Sung by angels in the sky

Peace on earth was a little boy

Born humbly and small

And peace on earth was a sacrifice

Saving mankind from the fall

Peace on earth I can’t describe

The change it’s made in me

Peace on earth I wish for you

Flowing graciously and free

• Tin Can Caldwell 2010

Christmas is for broken people

A fallen world, a busted steeple

For no institution do I see

That sets the hearts of mankind free

And no institution can I find

That does not bare the scars of time

But broken people they remain

Each has a face, each has a name

But if I’m honest, if I’m true

They look like me, they look like you

Our brokenness we hide so well

Like wrapping paper and jingle bells

But a rescue mission was started that day

Born in that manger so far away

And no answer can satisfy then

But a baby born in Bethlehem

In my own personal Garden Of Eden narrative, the forbidden tree that I would be tempted with would have chicken tenders hanging from the branches. These savory, crispy little balls of fried death have no nutritional value, save for perhaps the ten percent that is chicken, yet they have a hold on me that I can’t shake.

I am the luckiest guy around, and I love my life, (my wife, my kids, my extended family, my friends, the place I call home) so I have no business shortening it by eating fried food.

But brown food is the best.

When I am having a particularly long day, and I find myself out on the road somewhere, far from home, the desire for fried chicken morsels sometimes sweeps over me, and I am forced to confront the central theme of my life, immediate gratification verses seeing my daughters grow up into young ladies.

The following is a true temptation story, told with the caveat that my wife wishes I would not ever tell this tale. (Objection noted honey, but I’m working on a temptation theme here, and this story is too perfect to leave out.)I once found myself at a movie theatre near where I live that serves food during the film, and I, desiring to both eat healthy and not spend any more money, brought a granola bar inside with me to snack on. But the problems with eating a granola bar while others all around you are partaking in “pub fare” are numerous.

The first is the smell.

It’s not fair that you can smell fried food for miles around, and most healthier options (say a salad or tofu) emit little to no smell at all.I need to keep a strict tab on the air currents where I live, so as to avoid the wafting smell of a fryolator. (Or as I like to call it, the “see-you-later”)Those same scientists who gave us the seedless watermelon and the baby carrot need to work on making a Caesar salad smell like a chicken tender.

So while sitting in that theatre, desperately trying to hold on to my resolve to eat healthy, a basket of steaming chicken tenders (dubbed the “Love Me Tenders” on the menu) was placed directly in my line of sight.

They were for the group sitting right in front of me, and they somehow went untouched for the entire length of the movie.

This group had lots of food delivered, and somehow they didn’t seem to want this particular basket of vitals that was placed at the end of a row of orders. This basket of tenders was so close to me that I could practically read the ingredients on the packet of honey mustard sauce. And so, there, for the course of an entire movie, I was face to face with my nemesis, the freshly fried chicken tender, with only a thin layer of civility separating us.

It was my George Costanza moment.

As the movie ended, (near the dinner hour) and the group in front of me filed out of the theatre, the basket of tenders (on a golden bed of crispy fries) remained unmoved and completely untouched.

I am not proud of what happened next. I made one of those deals with myself that says “If you go to the restroom and return to the theatre and see the basket still there (untouched by the cleaning crew, who was just then filing in) then it was meant to be.

It was meant to be. And they were delicious.

With the new year in full swing, and my love of fried food not abating any time soon, I know some drastic steps need to be taken. (Hypnotherapy, olfactory nerve removal, etc.) So keep me in your thoughts as I attempt to eat more oatmeal and granola and less of the “other stuff.”

And please, for goodness sake, eat all your fried food when it comes to your table.

That guy in the booth next to you, who is drooling like a toddler, will thank you.

May your fire burn brightly.

– Tin Can Caldwell

My coworker has fur, and he’s currently snoring away in the corner of my office. This might not be the time to mention this, but he also recently ate his lunch by directly sticking his face in his bowl of food; and afterwards he licked himself all over before starting his nap. (He also jumps up on my desk while I’m teleconferencing with my boss, which disrupts the flow of the conversation something awful.)

This month marks the one-year mark of working at my new job at a university, and the one-year mark of sharing my workspace with my cat Starbucks. And it seems an appropriate time to look back and do a little reflecting on this most crazy of all years.

Back in the late winter of 2020, just before things got serious, pandemic wise, I accepted a position at my alma mater in the academic advising department, and was really looking forward to working in a one of those fancy, open-office, Google-like spaces that comes with a coffee bar and the kind of towering windows that look over the city and river flowing by. But as the news began to get ominous, it became apparent that my start date was in doubt.

Then, one morning a few days before my first day of work, a series of large packages appeared on my porch. My lovely wife’s first statement was “what did you order?” But there, stamped all over the tower of boxes was my school’s logo, and inside was a complete workstation, the likes of which I had never seen before; monitors galore and electronic doodads and gadgets aplenty. There were rudimentary instructions for setting everything up, and it took a complete weekend to get everything in place in my home office.

And since that first few weeks of virtual orientation, I’ve been dutifully interacting with my students and coworkers from my office up the stairs and two doors to the left. Let me say that I feel more than blessed to have a job that I can do remotely in a time when the current pandemic has taken away the livelihood of so many in this world. In no way do I want to ever seem like I’m complaining. I’m just working through the unique situation that I find myself in over the last year. I’m wired as a writer and storyteller, and it’s in my very bones to mull over any sort of changes in my life.

And changes have been, like anything else, full of their pros and their cons.

PRO #1, The Commute: On a good traffic day, my job is a thirty-five-minute drive. On a bad-weather day, it can hit potentially fifty minutes. (Even though I’ve not officially made the drive on a workday, I have made the drive on my own just to see what it will feel like.) For the last year I’ve simply walked up my stairs and entered my office to “get to work”. I have yet to be late to work, and the extra hour of sleep is a true blessing.

CON #1, Work Life “Comes Home”: Like any other job, mine is occasionally stressful (especially early on), and it was strange to be stressed out at home, a place where I feel most at peace in this world. I’ve had a few tough days, and to have my family right there is sometimes an invitation to be grumpy with them for something they have nothing to do with. Thankfully my workspace (my wonderful office that overlooks the scenic Winnipesauke River) is one that I can leave and close the door. This helps to separate my work life and home life a bit. I feel blessed to have a space that “represents” work and houses my music collection. Which leads to pro number 2…

PRO #2, The Never-Ending Concert: In my workspace, I can blast music loudly almost all day (except for those team meetings on Zoom, or in an important conversation with a student). But when there is mundane work to be done, out comes U2 or Bob Marley or Tobymac or any other artist or band that I’m in the mood for that day. I’ve taken to having an “artist of the week”, (next week, the great jazz saxophone player John Coltrane) and the music fills up my office and makes the work easier. I would not be able to play music at this volume in my workspace at the university.

CON #2, Missing In Person Interaction With My Wonderful Teammates: I have gotten to know my teammates pretty well, virtually speaking. But I know that as a rabid extrovert, I would love the energy of an office space with these folks in it. The throb of movement and conversation, the short, funny interactions of the everyday, I know that I would derive energy from this, as classic extroverts do.

PRO #3, Family Time: Early on in the great quarantine, all four of the members of my household were home and working. My two wonderful teenage daughters were doing school from home, and my lovely teacher wife was here too. I will never have “family time” like this again. My family served as my coworkers. My wise wife talked through struggles with me (she’s a veteran of the educational world, and just a plain old brilliant person to boot), and my girls and I developed inside jokes that will linger long after the world “returns to normal”. Someday my daughters will go to college, and then move into their own spheres of life, and my wife Julie and I will look back on these times and marvel at how much good family time we had. In the sadness of these times, a flower grew out of the pavement, and that was a family closeness that I will always treasure.

CON #3, The Loneliness: My girls and wife have gone back to school, physically speaking, and when they are gone, the day can get long. I feel the emptiness of the house and miss them.  

PRO #4, The Basketball Hoop: When it’s nice weather, and I have a break, I go play basketball in my driveway. It’s exercise and relaxation all at once. There is nothing like it. I have told my boss that I will need a basketball hoop installed at the office when we all go back.

PRO #5, My Furry And Slimy Coworkers: My cat Starbucks is as an affectionate and social an animal as you are likely to find. Having us all home for a year has been the dream of Starbuck’s life, though we occasionally interrupt his massive sleep schedule. (Seriously, how can one animal nap this much and still sleep all night!) Also, this past Christmas we added a tank of fish to our home menagerie, and watching those crazy animals navigate their fun, aquatic home (complete with a pineapple and castle under the sea) has been a relaxing feature of the day. Animals are a true treasure and can fill up a room with their presence. Yes, there are copious moments of clean up and maintenance, but the tradeoff is worth it.

And so, it would seem that the pros here outweigh the cons. I wasn’t expecting that when I began this little venture in taking stock of the past year.

It’s really nice when that happens.

Have a great rest of your day, good friends.

May your fire burn brightly.

 – Tin Can

At the risk of being preachy, let me say that celebrating the life of Saint Patrick by getting drunk is like celebrating Gandhi by eating a 32 ounce steak or remembering the life of Mother Teresa by buying a McMansion. (And St. Patrick’s Day comes on the heels of Valentine’s Day, another saintly day where folks celebrate by eating too much chocolate and buying lingerie.)

Now, I enjoy a Guinness as much as the next Irishman (actually Scotch-Irishman, my people have the great distinction of getting kicked out of two countries) and boiled food as much as anyone else. (That is to say “no one”.) But the more I learn about the life of St. Patrick himself, the more I want to pass the day doing what he did and not getting snookered in a pub while waving an Irish flag.

Here is a quick primer on the life of this Saint (truly a man worthy of that title). He was born at the end of the forth century in what is now Wales, and at the age of sixteen he was captured by a band of Irish raiders (I’d use the word “pirate” but that just conjures up jolly images of eye patches, the letter “R” and Johnny Depp) and sold into slavery in Ireland. As a slave he most likely wore an iron collar around his neck to show his status and spent six of his formative years in abject servitude, tending sheep for a tribal chieftain before he miraculously escaped to the coast and convinced a ship’s captain to bring him back to Great Britain.

If that were not incredible enough, what happens next will blow your shamrocks off. He went back to Ireland!

Well, not right away, but after a hearing the Lord call him into full time ministry he trained in Rome for a few years (the dark ages equivalent of Bible College) and, according to his own writings had a repeated dream where he was visited by various Irishmen who pleaded with him to come back and “walk among them”.

And back he went.

Now if you take an understandably dim view of organized religion (one of my favorite bumper stickers says “when a religion starts to get organized, watch out!”) and particularly when it comes to the Church and Ireland, you can still find much to admire in a man who would willingly go back to a place where he had been formally a slave.

And it was no picnic when he went back; he was robbed, beaten and threatened constantly. Yet he spent the remainder of his life in Ireland, telling anyone and everyone that God loved them and had a purpose for their life. These are no small words from a man who had seen the dark side of life in the way Patrick had.

So maybe we could celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by finding someone who we need to forgive. This person might not deserve it or even ask for it, but maybe March 17th could be a day of reconciliation as well as booze and boiled cabbage.

Or how about we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by getting out of our comfort zones? Perhaps you could get to know someone who you might otherwise pass by? Maybe you could serve the community in some aspect or volunteer at a St. Patrick’s Day party at a retirement home or a soup kitchen.

Now I don’t want to be a kill joy, I’m not anti fun. One of my favorite memories of St. Patrick’s Day was seeing the river in Chicago turned green. (I saw it a few days earlier and it was naturally a shade of green that no body of water should be.) And I enjoy Irish music and corned beef (although not every food should be boiled, I’ve been to Ireland, and I’ve never seen such grey eats as they serve there) and the color green. In fact I have a daughter named Ireland. (In these pages she is mostly known by the nom de plume “Princess Genius”; now you know her secret identity.) But the more I reflect on the life of St. Patrick, the more I want to be like him and the less enthralled I am by leprechauns and shamrock shakes at McDonalds.

So next year, before planning an evening of inebriation, please take a minute to consider the patron saint of dear old Ireland, and consider how you might uniquely celebrate such a remarkable life.

But make sure to boil the breakfast early.

May your fire burn brightly.

– Tin Can Caldwell

Some Encouraging Thoughts For When Your Blue Skies Turn Grey

Fire has been a well used metaphor / simile / word picture since the dawn of time. In an ancient story, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity to use for warmth and light. Fire can either be tremendously destructive (almost every day the fire trucks from my local firehouse roar past my house to go face fire’s consuming force), or incredibly useful. (Don’t ever let that furnace pilot light go out!)

In my backyard is a fire pit that I love to see in full bloom. Whether in late spring when there is still a chill in the air, a late summer night with the fireflies out in full force, an autumn night with the first frost on the ground, or mid-winter with the snow piled high all around, and a million stars out, the flickering light is a welcome, hopeful site.

Many years back, when my daughters were little (they are now high school age, and ready to take on the world), I wrote a song for them that, as I look back on it, was perhaps a little more poignant than I realized at the time. It was meant to be a lullaby that we sung at bedtime, but the words I wrote (and that my wife Julie sang so beautifully) are still a prayer I pray for my family from time to time; and for myself too.

“In a cold world my daughter / May your fire burn brightly/ When those blue skies turn grey / In a dark world my daughter / May your lantern shine clearly / When those blue skies turn grey

And now we get to the heart of the matter.

How is your world right now?

Because the world around me sure feels cold at present. I’m writing this near the one year mark of the world turning upside down. A year ago I took my family out for a surprise night of pizza and a concert by our favorite band in a swell new concert venue in my area. It was a magical evening I will always treasure. (It was on a school night to boot! Don’t tell me my family doesn’t live on the edge!) A week before that my extended family spent a glorious few days going to art museums and enjoying the ocean during a school vacation week.

And then the world turned dark and ominous.

People started dying, and isolation and loneliness became the norm for so many of us. Even the glorious summer months where I live in New England had the tinge of sadness with half-empty beaches, quiet movie theaters and restaurants and suspicious looks at those from out of state. (I live in a vacation spot that usually throbs with life in the warmer months.)

And the news of the world was heavy too. At the risk of understating things, and not giving important issues the proper weight or perspective, old evils of racism and political division raised their ugly heads and joined the national conversation with a renewed force.

In dark, cold times, what small hope, what small fire of encouragement really matters in the face of monumental sadness and grief?

I think it’s all about small things though.

My yard is ringed with wonderful trees that bring my family and neighborhood so much joy. We line them with beautiful lights in the winter months (a special thank you goes out to my lovely wife who scaled their high branches this past fall to hang the lights after I fell from a lower branch doing the same thing a few years back) and hang bird feeders to both bless the fowl of the air that find their way there, and to enjoy looking at while sipping coffee in the wee morning hours. Those trees, those wonderful, majestic pieces of vegetation that serve us so well with shade in the summer and color in the fall, were once the size of some of the seeds that I scoop into to those bird feeders each week. It’s beyond comprehension that a small seed carries the genetic potential for that massive tree.

Fires likewise starts small. A spark is a minuscule thing compared the the roaring fire it can start. But where would the bonfire be without it? Where would the neighborhood oak tree be without the acorns? And where would we be without encouragement?

My goal with Fire Burn Brightly is to encourage. With humor, wit and a little folksy, hard won wisdom I pray that whatever words and thoughts that I can conjure out of the air might serve as a spark to your soul on a long and cold day or season of your life.

Because we all need that spark from time to time.

So have a great rest of your days and weeks, and check back here as often as you like for a bit of a laugh and a smidgen of hope.

You never know what it might grow into…

May your fire burn brightly.

• – Tin Can Caldwell