On the Eleventh Day

We are at Day Eleven of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Epiphany is looming like that bright star in the sky. The Wise Men will be here in just a couple of days but for now we still celebrate.

I consider the piper of the eleven pipers piping. I remember the story of the Pied Piper who did his job of leading the rats out of the city. When the city refused to pay him, he changed his tune and led the children away as payment. What an awful tale, but the moral is a good one. Pay what you owe, or the payment you end up making will be much more costly.

In my day job and my moonlighting, too, I feel the debt owed to write-get cracking on that sermon. It's not going to write itself, you know. What are you going to do-stand in the pulpit and stare at the gathered faithful for ten minutes? Quit fooling around. This is God's Word, for goodness' sake. Or else....finish the story. Don't leave your characters in mid-sentence for weeks and months at a time. Resolve their problems. Give them the HEA (Happily Ever After). They deserve it, as much as fictitious people deserve anything. This is YOUR story before it can be theirs. You can't put this off on anyone else. Get busy.

So at 2:20 this morning the piper began to play. That's what I'm calling that Muse or Holy Spirit--whatever that being is who prods me to write. I give her a different name depending on which writing she spurs me toward. And I've been writing enough to know that the words can be very elusive, like smoke in the air. It's impossible to catch it with your hands. When you see it, you better get a bag or something and contain it. The 'something' that works with words is paper or the computer. And I WAS in bed at 2:20-not alone-so in the dark I caught those words in the back cover of a book since I couldn't put my hands on a notebook.

And considering I wrote without visual sight, the words are legible.

The piper played, and I followed.