One day I was sitting at the piano, just dinking around on the keys and I came up with a bit of music that I thought was pretty cool; I wonder what I’ll call it—I know! I’ll call it Citadel of Otherworldly Light. But then I got caught up in the everyday routine, and I forgot how it goes.
Years later, sitting at the piano, I came up with a bit of music that I thought was pretty cool; I wonder what I’ll call it—I know! I’ll call it Citadel of Otherworldly Light! But again, I got caught up in the routine and forgot how it goes.
Last fall our son Devin was visiting us from Taiwan, and one day I just sauntered over to the piano and started dinking around on the keys and came up with a bit of music that I thought was pretty cool. Devin walked over and said that’s good, Pa. What do you call it? Hmm, I don’t know. I think I’ll call it Citadel of Otherworldly Light.
A few weeks after Devin left, I was walking to work through Wilsonville’s Memorial Park on one of those crisp, cold October mornings with the mist hanging and the trees all gold and crimson, and I started thinking, man, I am so blessed! I am so blessed because I can sit down at a piano and dink around on the keys and come up with something that makes me feel so good and maybe it makes other people feel good too, and this was just something I started doing when I was a kid and I never stopped, and look at this world! Look at this beautiful, blessed world, with all its color and music and the lovely faces of people and the feel of cold air on your face and this WORLD… isn’t going to last forever. We have to leave it. And I started feeling sort of sad.
But wait. This world we live in. It’s just stuff. Mineral, animal, vegetable, vapor; Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Neither beautiful nor ugly, it’s just stuff. What makes this world beautiful is the light shining on and in and through it. That Light comes from another world. It comes from the Mind of God. And our consciousness is nothing more than the mind of God shining through us. When we look at the world and see it as beautiful, lovely, holy, that’s because we are seeing it through the mind of God.
And when we leave this world the only thing we are leaving is the stuff. The Light of God that illuminates our consciousness continues. It’s like a grasshopper slipping out of its old brittle body and moving on. The Light of God continues. Perhaps it goes on to illuminate another world, who knows? That’s not the point. The point is, the Light goes on.
Having thought that, I felt a little better.
—Jim Nail
To hear Citadel of Otherworldly Light #3, follow this link: