CATHCING FIRE

Last night we attended a Billy Strings concert at the “Amp” here in St. Augustine. (Billy just won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2021.) Of course, the music was fantastic, the band members all superb, the light show stunning, the decibel level, well…livable…and the outdoor venue on a balmy night idyllic.

And it all happened for one reason: Billy Strings. 

Throughout the 3+ hour sold out concert I had the surreal experience that I was “in the presence of the extraordinary.” Billy’s technical wizardry coupled with his mesmerizing musicianship were wed so intimately together that I didn’t just see a man up on that stage.

I saw a man on fire. 

I saw the entire universe in microcosm. I was watching the big bang happen all over again. It was like Billy was there but he wasn’t. His fingers were so one with his guitar and his mind with his music that the man, while flesh and blood, was completely transparent. What the throbbing crowd experienced and undulated to was something so gloriously real yet so otherworldly, so raw yet so refined that it simply defied definition.

I wondered while he was playing, “What’s he thinking right now?” (No surprise there!) Well, I don’t think he was actually thinking anything. He was somewhere else. He wasn’t feeling either. Beyond that, too. 

So where was he? 

He’d merged with the essence of his being. The two had become one--one at such an intimately empowering level that what the audience saw and heard was someone whose whole being was ablaze--someone so on fire that none of us could adequately describe what we were experiencing. And, at least for the moment, none of us needed to. None of us wanted to. No, we wanted it to last forever. Because we’d caught fire, too. 

That’s the intimate and infinite power of becoming one with our own unique being. 

(BTW: Wasn't that the essence of Jesus's message?)

TODAY.

LET’S GIVE THE WORLD & OURSELVES A GIFT.

LET’S THINK ABOUT BEING ONE WITH THE INTIMATE & INFINITE FIRE WITHIN.