"Come on, baby, light my fire . . . try to set the night on fire!"  Most of us are familiar with these lyrics, written by the late Jim Morrison of the Doors and, through countless replays on radios and concert halls across the world, indelibly engrained in our listening minds.  Their force and passion are hard to forget.
     When I read of the passing of Ray Manzarek, organist (and bassist for the band), I thought of these words, and reflected, once more, on the wonder of the artist muse, the poet creator, the kind of person who seems to possess an extraordinary ability to peer deeply into reality and find things most of us do not.  It's a rare gift, one that Morrison, for all his personal foibles, ignited time and time again in his music and the numerous poems he wrote.  For those of us who lived through his heyday, he seemed most amazing, the reincarnation of the Byronic hero in our time.
     Whatever we may think of Bryon and his fellow Romantics, and whatever we may think of Morrison today, we can, I think, nonetheless see them as windows into the marvel of human creativity and imagination.  Perhaps they broke boundaries some of us wish had not been broken; perhaps they went places some of us wish they had not gone; perhaps they communicated things some of us believe are better left alone; or perhaps all of the above.  But they were willing to take the journey.
     In singularly profound ways, we can see in these creators a mirror of who all of us are:  studies in magnificence and tragedy.  Magnificently gifted in so many ways, but tragically condemned to deal with inner angst that at times seems to defy reason.  Incredibly blessed and favored, enormously burdened with emptiness and sin:  flawed pictures of the image divine.
     This is one of the grand challenges of our time, really, to embrace the glory of our magnificence while bracing ourselves to confront and deal with our angst.  For we will never have one without the other.  That is who we are.
     Light your fire, whatever it may be, and remember that when you do, you are in fact affirming the truth of a ground exceeding all form and imagination.  And if you're ever in Paris, take time to visit Morrison's grave.  Thousands of others, the numerous memorials left at it attest, already have, all drawn to, whether they know it or not, the rich and remarkable wonder of a human who, though bent by angst, nonetheless expressed the fact, image, and gift and life giving capacities of God.
     Life is deep, but God is deeper still.