June 2019

(2 years after retirement)

Lately, I’ve been thinking about writing. About missing it, actually. For 40 years before I retired, I wrote a sermon nearly every week and an essay every three months for the Good News Paper. That’s 2,000 sermons and more than 100 essays.

People listened to what I said. People read what I wrote. I heard cheers and boos. I was relevant and didn’t even know I was relevant until someone asked me soon after my retirement how it felt to be irrelevant.

I wasn’t sure whether that was an insult or a joke. But I took that question into my cave. I sat down, sighed, and unwound. After 40 years of being in the arena, I quickly got used to being in a cave. It was bliss.

And then one day, out of the blue, the devil found me.

You know you used to be somebody. But now you’re irrelevant. Looks like you’re hiding your light under a bushel, and I like that because when you were letting it shine you gave me fits with your relentless chattering and scribbling about peace, love, and understanding. Stupid people fell for that crap but I wanted to throw up. Such garbage. I hope you rot in this cave and never write a single word again.

The devil left in a huff. But he left a gift.

I started whistling. This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine. Hide it under a bushel? No! Never! I had forgotten how much I loved that song.

Yes, of course, your light may be small—but it’s yours. Who knows how or why that light gets in us? It just does. One day, out of the blue, you see something in yourself you’d not seen before.

One day at South High School in Youngstown, Ohio, my 11th grade English teacher, a certain devilish Mr. Ted Moore, said to the class: Take out a clean sheet of paper and write a 300-word essay entitled “Time.” You have 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes! 1,800 seconds. Half an hour. 1/48th of a day. I was good at math. I wasn’t good at creative writing. I could write a book report. I could not make things up out of thin air.

I scrawled “Time” on the top of my paper and stared at it. I slowly underlined the title and added a period after it and then darkened it a little more—a most emphatic period that should have been a most emphatic question mark.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

For the first time in my school career that feeling of “I think I’m going to pee my pants any minute now” seized me. I mean, really, who knows what time is? Sure, we know what timeit is. But what istime? Who thinks about such things?

Nobody had an inkling what to write. We were 15-year-old kids for cryin’ out loud. Any second now we’d all throw up our hands, claim stupidity, and plead for mercy. Of course we would. Any second now.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

I looked around at my mates only to see every last one of them leaning over their desks, writing fiercely. Scratch scratch. Erase erase. Scratch scratch. What did they know that I didn’t?

I looked at the clock. The large hand jerked forward. Time was passing. I could see that. I could feel it. I couldn’t stop it.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

I stared at my blank paper. I tapped and twirled my pencil. 10 minutes gone. Blank. 15 minutes gone. Blank. 20 minutes gone. Blank. 10 minutes left. I felt time judging my whole reputation as a top-notch student.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

I gripped my pencil, licked sweat off my upper lip, gritted my teeth, held my breath, and blindly drove my pencil onto the paper, little knowing that would pretty much be my experience of writing for the next 50 years.

The bell rang. I handed in my paper.

Two days later Mr. Moore returned our essays. He trod up and down the rows slapping down a marked and graded paper on each desk. Everyone got theirs back except me. What?! Had he lost mine?

Mr. Moore returned to his desk. You all did quite well, he said. But one essay stood out above the rest. I’d like to read Randy’s.

I didn’t become a writer that day or the next. I brushed it off as sheer luck to have muddled through.

I’m not sure anyone becomes anything in a day or two or even in a year or two. We’re always becoming. It takes time for all that’s good in us to arise. It takes time. It takes opportunities.

Seeds constantly blow about in the wind. Some fall on hard ground, some among thistles. But now and then one falls on fertile ground, takes root, and blossoms.

So devil beware. I’m stepping out. I’m gripping my pencil. I’m getting back in the arena. I will bring prosperity to West Virginia, democracy back to America, and peace to the world.

But first I need to take a nap.