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