Inspiration

In response to a teacher friend of mine who asked the question, “what inspires you Jon?” I offered the following answer.  I walk into my downstairs office.  Closing the French doors, I light a stick of incense and sit down.  I close my eyes and take some deep breaths. It is then I am reminded that I am surrounded on three sides by walls of books and other sundry items.  The fourth wall is a very large bay window looking out into my neighborhood.  As I turn my chair to the left, the books on that wall form an eclectic collection of titles.  Dictionaries, WordPress resources, biblical and spiritual resources, books written by some of my favorite authors, and “how to” books fill those shelves.  Also on those shelves are artifacts and gifts given to me by family and friends to remind me of a particular person or moment in time.  Chief among those treasures is an oversized hour glass full of sand, a thirty-minute supply, that a parishioner gave me to use as I rehearsed my weekly sermons.  This good natured gift was to remind me that when the sand had run out I should stop talking.  Every time I turn it over, all I think about is the Wizard of Oz.  When the Wicked Witch’s hourglass was empty…  On the shelves, there are pictures of my favorite fly fishing spots in Colorado and Wyoming and even a few pictures of fish I actually caught.  Every once in a while, I must show proof of the veracity of tales that I tell.

On the wall behind me are two model sailboats, a skipjack and an old sail powered whaling ship.  I did not make either model.  That would have been a lifetime of work for me.  The folks who modeled those two boats put countless hours of toil into each of their finished products. Theirs was a labor of love. I am grateful for the inspiration those models provide.  I used to sail in weekend regattas and those models remind me of days gone by when sailboats weren’t all about pleasure cruises but were working boats delivering various food and goods up and down coastlines.  The books on those shelves are almost exclusively books I have used in my study of the Holy Bible.  I also used them in sermon preparation.  These are in fact, two different activities.  There are also some assorted coffee table books that have been retired from active use lying on living room coffee tables.  These are books that feature topics such as US National Parks, the 50 Greatest Photographs ever taken, that kind of thing.  They have had their season and they have found space of the two piles of books next to my cabinet full of CD’s.

The wall to my right contains sets of books I have collected over the years.  There is a two volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, a three volume history of the world, and a multi-volume set of 18^th century authors.  There is also a six volume set of Winston Churchill’s collected works. Each set of books was picked as my interest in the people and places recorded in those books compelled me to immortalize them in my own library.  Behind the glassed protected shelves rest my collection of miniature toy soldiers, wizards and American Indians.  I am a small time collector of medieval knights.  Besides fly fishing, two of my other interests, sporting clays and upland hunting are represented on those shelves by classic literature concerning those diversions.  Most people who stop in to my office comment on these two interests of mine.  It seems sporting clays and upland hunting imply some defect in my character that shocks folks when they first encounter those books on my shelf.   Finally, on the piece of wall just before the final corner to my office, hangs a print I was given celebrating an American Indian brave, holding an injured eagle, calling on healing spirits to settle on the eagle.  Inserted in the print is an actual eagle feather recovered from an eagle that had died.  The feather was a reminder of how the eagle used to soar.  Someone very special to me gave that print to me.  That is an inspirational story unto itself for another time.

In front of me is my neighborhood.  In the past 10 years we have lived here, it’s changed beyond recognition.  When we moved into this development there were three houses and, for the longest time, it was just the three houses.  We bought this house in 2006 just before the housing market crashed.  The land all around us has been transformed from an old, family owned farm that grew corn and soybeans, to a huge residential development housing 100+ families along with their collected hopes and dreams.  Just an aside, one of the first funerals I ever conducted was for the daughter of the family that had owned the original farm for generations, going back to the middle 1800’s.  Ruby was almost 90 when I met her and helped her find peace in her dying.

When I need to gather inspiration for writing or blogging I come into my office and sit.  Inspiration never fails to show up.  The books, gifts, mementos, models and prints surrounding me and the new housing starts that I can see out my window are all the inspiration I need.  A lifetime of stories, mine and the folks represented in all that I have collected and in all that I can see, serve as my inspiration. Life itself inspires as it unfolds out the window and on my bookshelves.

I used to be able to get around without a cane or walker.  I used to be able to travel, to visit the sites on my bucket list, to take off at a moment’s notice and go exploring.  My body doesn’t allow me to do that anymore.  Thank goodness my mind still can be trusted and it helps me wander back to places I have been and to wonder about places I can still imagine.

I spend time each day considering what my world will be like when I am left with just my imagination.  No one else will know what I am thinking or what scenes I am creating.  I wonder what that will be like for me.  I wonder what that will be like for my family and friends.  What will happen when my five senses fail me and memories are only two minutes old?

Here’s what I hope for – I hope that as my ability to be inspired by this world decreases, my imagination will kick into overdrive and take me to places no one has ever seen or experienced.  It is my hope I can figure out some way to let you all know what I find.  Like Harry Houdini, I want to come back and tell you what’s going on.   Maybe that’s the price for new inspiration or maybe it has always been the price for imagination, people can’t always believe what we can imagine.  Thank God for artists, writers, poets, and dreamers.

Author: Jon

Aspiring Writer and Blogger. Former Banker, Teacher, Headmaster and Pastor. View all posts by Jon