Spark of Faith

I mentioned a few days ago how the breakthrough in my writing career that began with the mystical/magical series, The Claire Saga, was predicted by Rev. John White of Lily Dale back in July of 1990.

Dancing As Fast As I Can – The Wise Novelist

And in that blog, I included the jump site to my FB posting of the Lily Dale recording:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1JUZxjnM2W/

I also mentioned how I was a little worried about starting up my writing process again, since I hadn’t written a novel in over two years — since I completed Where The Ley Lined Meet in the summer of 2023.

But the universe stepped in when it unexpectedly ended my legal career, which provided just the right combination of free time, anger and angst to sit back down before my blank screen and start channeling that legal thriller.

Changes – The Wise Novelist

Between us, I think I nailed it. Doc, if you’re still out there, thanks.

But there was another story percolating in the back of my mind during my two-year writing hiatus that I had once tried writing in the form of a screenplay back in the last century. A medical/mystical/spiritual drama. That work product did confirm to a lot of people in the film business that I could write screenplays, but the project never made it past the finish line of production. As with everything I write, even my novels, I’ve never been able to go back and read that script.

However, I really wanted to take another crack at the underlying concept behind that story idea, based on another thirty years of life experience that I believed had provided me with a whole separate layer of emotional perspective. Start it all over from scratch.

The problem was that I really didn’t fully consider all of the modern medical knowledge I would have to familiarize myself with and assimilate into the storyline when I raised the possibility with my publisher, Reagan Rothe, just as I was about to turn in Free R.A.D.I.C.A.L. at the end of 2025.

I just knew I wanted to write this story that considers the topic of having faith in this often turbulent, modern world.

Now, if you’ve read my blogs and/or Finding Jimmy Moran you will know that I was raised as a BIC – Bronx Irish Catholic – with all the religious trimmings including a stint as an altar boy back when the mass was in Latin. “Confiteor Deo omnipotenti” 

I did a lot of confessing back in the day, but nowhere near enough to save my immortal soul.

Over my many years of human experience since then, I have lapsed into more of a pre-Christian druidic paganism that was prevalent at the time of my Celtic Ancestors back when there still were snakes in Ireland. Animistic, energy based, formed in equal parts by Magic and Quantum Physics. Call it an “all dogs go to heaven” and “we are not alone” kind of approach to the universe, with a sprinkling of an earthy patina of Buddhism.

I really hope I leave this energy plain more spiritually evolved than I entered it. But I’m not going to lie, as difficult as that journey has been, it also has been fun.

Now the one constant that I have retained from my childhood religious indoctrination and maintained in my belief system, is that there is one creator of everything.

My creator is the source of everything, everywhere, on this planet, in this galaxy, in our universe and in all of the multiverses.

Why We’re All Made of Star Dust

Glad to see that modern day science is finally catching up to Nicolas Tesla – and refer you to On the Equality of All Things, by acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli.

I accept that my creator is a perfect being, in all senses of that concept. As such, my creator is without the anthropomorphic limitations – insecurity, jealousy, anger and judgment – imposed by humans and their respective religious cults trying to convince the masses – by faith or force – that they have the only proven recipe – the my-way or the highway track — to eternal salvation. Follow me or be damned – a perfect punishment.

Think about it: How many people have died over the centuries because of the exclusionary religious dogma professed by the various religious sects? The idea of it defies a perfect source.

Instead, I believe that all roads lead to Rome. We all get where we are supposed to be in the end, whether we follow all of man’s rules or not. I don’t expect and certainly don’t demand that anyone agrees with my perspective. But, whether or not we share the same secret handshake, we’ll all end up on the other side of the energy veil.

My creator has one inspiration and one rule – Love.

No judgments. The only expectation is that you do your best with what you have and try to do everything you do with love.

I think a lot of the biblical prophets, and Jesus, understood this better than others. Indeed, I think Jesus would be appalled on many of the things done over the centuries in his name.

We all carry the creator in each of us. Luke 17:20-21.

So, we arrive in this world with our respective gifts factored by our physical and mental limitations and do our best to learn the lessons we came here to learn and evolve into an existence or form as close to the creator within us as we can.

While I’ve been on this spiritual journey, I’ve tried to follow the Golden Rule – “Do to others what you would have them do to you,”—or inversely, —“Do not do to others what you would not want done to you.”

Anyone who knows me knows that over my past seven decades I’ve gotten this wrong far more times than right. I am an extremely flawed creature. I’ve intentionally and unintentionally hurt others along the way. It’s no excuse, but my creator knows I’m trying my best, and I that am truly sorry for all the many times I’ve fucked it up. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

So, given my hodgepodge solitary, esoteric and eclectic spiritual belief system, I wondered how others have managed to maintain their respective faith in their creator in this turbulent world in such challenging times.

That is the inspiration for what evolved into my just completed novel, Spark of Faith.

Which brings me back to the universe answering my need for a crash course in modern day medical practice. I knew I could rely on my four decades of experience as a litigator to be able to sufficiently research, understand and absorb the theoretical foundation and practical application of modern medicine to convey it, in a simpler way, as part of a storyline. A good litigator becomes an overnight expert in whatever field he/she is practicing and that skill has survived my retirement. Being married to a dedicated nurse for almost fifty years allowed me to absorb the hierarchal, interpersonal and professional relationships in the medical field.

But I was really worried that I could not properly convey the love, empathy, anger, fear and hope that I wanted my characters to portray in the novel. I wanted these emotions to both challenge and imbue them with their respective foundations of faith.

That subject matter insecurity was spinning in my head when I agreed to deliver the completed ms of SOF to BRW on 9/1/26.

Now, after I made that agreement at the end of 2025, my wife was diagnosed with malignant breast cancer. Luckily, as the oncologist and surgeon explained, “it [was] small and well behaved,” and Lisa has fully recovered from her surgery and a draining post-surgery treatment. But until we reached that milestone, I was scared shitless. However, Lisa is a trooper and bravely hid her own fears while selflessly shielding my emotions with her fearlessness. But not before I learned what it meant to have the fear of her potentially terminal prognosis reduce this grown man to an emotional fetal position.

This event meant Lisa and I ended our thirty-year record of personally staying clear of doctors and hospitals. Over the first four months of 2026, we visited many hospitals and met with every kind of professional associated with cancer treatment. And that was an all-immersive education, on the doctors’, nurses’ and staff’s professionalism, consideration and empathy, up close and personal. Shout out to Kaiser Permanente. Without me realizing it, all of it went into my literary hopper.

But the universe wasn’t quite finished with my education. During Lisa’s treatment, she made me promise that I would finally see a doctor for the first time in the twenty-first century. I did everything I could not to make that promise, but she wore me down, and in the end, I was really hoping she’d forget. She didn’t.

That promise resulted in the second quarter of 2026 becoming a continuation of the first. Let’s just say that my subsequent and unexpected diagnosis of type-2 diabetes and Basel-cell skin cancer,

gave me a whole new level of writer’s insight into the practice of internal medicine, including all kinds of fun tests, labs, surgery, and subdural viewings through x-rays, sonagrams and a pass through a very cool CT Scanner.

Again, all of it went into the literary hopper.

When the summer solstice arrived, I knew I couldn’t put off writing the novel any further, so I sat down and merged my and my wife’s spiritual and physical experiences, and all of the emotions that come along with them, into a very intimate story about how a number of innocent and decent people discover what it means to lose your faith in the modern world and what it takes to find it again.

I turned the ms of SOF into BRW two days before my deadline.

Now, SOF is not a religious story. It’s not presented to proselytize or support any particular religion, and many are respectfully covered as the story unfolds. SOF is just a small story about a large subject, filtered through a collective spiritual experience of a number of wonderful characters.

After SOF was submitted to BRW, I went back and listened to the July 6, 1990 recording from my reading by John White in Lily Dale, New York. During that reading, as he sat in the darkened room, his eyes closed, JW spoke the words “I want to talk about the spark of life or the spark of god,” and went on to predict that I would never reach my potential as a writer until I understood and embraced what flowed from that concept.

At the time, I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to write action-adventure films. Guns, and fights, and blood and gore. I had no intention of considering anything spiritual, given that I was, at the time, in the process of jettisoning anything considered organized religious.

Growing old, and surviving a demanding profession, parenthood and now enjoying grandparenthood, has given me a larger perspective to the meaning of life and what lies beyond.

Thirty-six years later, I believe that the medical adventures Lisa and I recently experienced over the first half of this year were the final missing ingredient necessary to provide me with the authentic emotional perspective to sit down and write a novel like Spark of Faith. I’ve been told by those who have read the manuscript so far that it’s my best work to date. Time will tell.

Well, now that I’ve gotten all that out of my system, the good news is that my fine five readers have again reached another magical Friday.

If you must work, slip in one door and out the other. The weather is suggesting the Autumn Equinox is almost upon us. Life is good. So, get out there and enjoy the weekend. Watch football. Read a book on the porch.

But no matter what else we get up to, let us make today a great one.

And keep the faith, in whatever it is that works for you. It’s really worth it.