I wrote this three years ago and think it is good enough to offer up to you.
Life is really a gold prospecting trip. Each day we set forth on a journey looking for gold. And most days if we are lucky we find some in loving relationships, honest creative work, families, prayer, the hopeful messages from God that come our way each day if we are awake, and in miracles (per the theologian, Jack Shea: "events and people that occur in our life that allow love to be expressed"). All these things are gold nuggets. We collect them, hold them tight; and they bring us spiritual wealth, serenity and happiness.
Today, the gold I gathered started with a delicious night's sleep, a fine prayer, feeling my body run through an eight miler with ease while treading on a new path of snow just deep enough to give me firm footing. All my god-given protective clothing kept me warm and cozy on a five degree below zero Chicago morning.
Then, after clean-up and the donning of the crisp garb of a trial lawyer, I found a favorite seat on the Blue Line to stretch out on. I jumped into a conversation with Ray Bradbury, who in "The Zen of Writing" told me to sit down and make a list. He suggested a list of nouns and ideas from story, childhood and life that I wanted to write about. His list in his tender years gave way to nouns and then to prose essays. A page or two into Bradbury's essays, a new character popped into his life. He then let that character come alive and run freely, following that character into a story. The list that Bradbury started making as a youth propelled that fine soul into stories and books and plays and poems over a rewarding forty years as a writer.
I have found many gold veins in my life and hope you do too.
Voltaire
