What Gets Me Out of Bed

quote by Chris Gardner (The Pursuit of Happyness)

I have little use for George Burns. He belonged to the prior generation and I never got his humor. However, he did say one thing I remember. When asked what advice he would give about what it takes to live a long, productive life, he simply replied “Don't stay in bed.” 

Today what got me out of bed was poetry. My dad’s. My own. A woman wrote from Maryland this week asking for music for one of my dad’s songs. She and her sisters had learned it from listening to one of our record albums and it would make a good theme song for an upcoming women’s retreat and would I be willing to allow them to have a copy of the printed music. Of course I said yes, and multiple copies were fine, and off I sent a PDF version I scanned out of my dad’s song book.

As I mused on it this morning, I realized the song was my father’s take on Psalm 23, which he named the Good Shepherd Psalm.  What’s more interesting is, the day before, I had written my own version of this psalm, in part, for my husband, who is drawn to the old westerns and grew up reading Louis L'Amour paperbacks.

A poem started to rise about all this, and what gets me out of bed, but now that I’ve posted both my dad’s poem and my own, the original poem I rose to write has gotten tired of waiting and left me sitting here stranded.

So, enjoy my Dad’s view of Psalm 23 here.

and my quirky take here.