With apologies to Lew Hunter and Ray Bradbury, since it was only in Screenwriting 434 that I could find it. This is for us all who strive to live a creative life.
Dear Lord....Help us to remember the gift of excellence that lies with us if we but call and bring it forth.
Help us to recall that in excellence is surprising profit, for the soul, for the mind, and for the life we live, beside that soul, and with that mind.
Help us to know that only in our loves can we create, and out of that creation change some stray, small part of the world we touch.
Remind us to know that the more we create out of love of an idea, the better our work, our lives, our influence, becomes. Tell us again, for we forget, that work done without love is stillborn, mindless, and lost in the very hour of its deliverance.
Help us to love ideas and their creation, even as we love our neighbors, and, because we are proper creators, ourselves.
Tell us to lie down with that one inescapable person, our lonely selves, knowing that if the work of the previous day was a surprise of joy that we stumbled upon through curiosity, true need, and rare zest, and the energy that comes from wild discovery, we are good company for the night.
Teach us not to hesitate atop cliffs, but to leap off into our writing without wings. And teach us, with passion and love, how to build wings on the way down, hoping for a soft landing.
We ask these things because, poor creatures that we are, we do forget, and must remind ourselves, as you remind us, that love is the final answer, and excellence its hallmark, and profit, which is peace of mind, its everlasting residue.
Please, Lord, hear this, amen.
- Ray Bradbury, his invocation to a Humanitas Prize gathering
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kylecassidy and I at the end of the shoot. As you can see, I am just goof ball happy. (He'd shown me a couple of 'em on the camera as we went, so I had an idea.)
