Thank You, Ray

Let me say it up front. I love books and I love reading. There are some who would say that is kind of a wimpy statement. If so, let me say also that I love so-called manly things like football (especially if chili or buffalo wings are available), rock and roll, and wearing jeans to church. But before loving those things, I loved books.

I was raised an only child. Very early in life, I learned that books can make wonderful companions and friends. I read all kinds of things, from elementary science to history to fiction. I enjoyed science and history. They allowed me the chance to explore the universe in a way that I never could on my own. Still, it’s the fictional stories and novels that really captured my imagination and thereby set me truly free.

Jack London, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and others showed me what adventure could be. It was wonderful! Whether it was The Call of the Wild or The War of the Worlds or other stories like them, I relished the opportunity to experience the danger, the action and the heroism found in those pages.

As I grew, I found other things to love in my books. I began to see that real storytellers can show us what it is to be human by allowing us to get to know the people in their creations. Even in a work of fiction – or especially in a work of fiction – we can see what it means to be real. When we immerse ourselves in the dramatic interplay of person and life situation, we can understand what it means to be a true and living person.

Piers Anthony helped me to understand that, through his writings and through a number of conversations we had through the mail. Others did as well. Head and shoulders above those others is Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury is known by most as a science fiction writer. The truth is that he was so much more than that.

We lost Ray in June. He had been sojourning here on earth for 91 years and it was far too short a time. Even at the end, Ray was still writing, still thinking and causing us to think. It wasn’t his science fiction content that kept me coming back to his novels and short stories. It was what he knew of being human.

The latest edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading was published recently. Each year a creative artist is invited to write an introduction. This year the invitation went to Ray Bradbury. Editor Dave Eggers and a committee of students working on the volume were surprised and delighted when Ray accepted the invitation and contributed a story. They were completed just before Ray’s death in June 2012.

In the words of his introduction, I found the essence of why I love Ray Bradbury. He writes about visiting the Waukegan library at age 7 and borrowing 10 books a week, astounding the librarians. Here is what he says:

“The books I brought home from the library caused me to think about the origins of life and the universe. How did it start? Where does it end? I recall Midwestern summer nights, standing on my grandparents’ hushed lawn, and looking up at the confetti field of stars. There were millions of suns out there, and millions of planets rotating around those suns. And I knew there was life out there, in the great vastness. We are just too far apart, separated by too great a distance to reach one another.”

Ray Bradbury looked at the stars and was convinced that there is life out there. It is only distance keeping us isolated, unable to join the community of the universe.

Today I look around at a world that Ray understood and, I suspect, grieved over. I look at the great constellation of humanity, brightened by shining examples of what we can be. I also see the dark emptiness between the points of illumination. The darkness tries to separate us and make us believe that we are not great cosmic sources of light, but are only weak candles fluttering against the utter absence of light.

I want so much to believe that it’s a lie – that we are separated only by choice and not by a gulf of darkness that cannot be bridged. If we can believe that the separation between human beings is a separation of choice, then we are free to choose otherwise. We are free to reach out to one another and to share our warmth and illumination.

Ray Bradbury was able to help us see the universe and understand ourselves a little better. We can look at the stars burning in the deep black and see a reflection of the divine fire that burns within us all. True, there is a distance between us that sometimes looks insurmountable.

It isn’t.

We can bridge the distance. We can traverse the gulf of empty darkness. We can, if we choose to make the effort, understand (or at least appreciate) the light within another human being.

Ray was right. There is life out there.

Thank you, Ray.