Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places, if you look at it right. — Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter
The above lyric can be found in the song “Scarlet Begonias” from the album/CD Live From the Mars Hotel.
Yes. I confess that I was once a Deadhead.
There was a time in my past that I sought wisdom from the music of the Grateful Dead and their leader, Jerry Garcia, the primary singer and lead guitarist. However, when Bob Weir, rhythm guitar player and alternate voice of the Grateful Dead suggested that, “Too much of everything is just enough”, I recognized that line wasn’t clever or wise — it was stupid.
That line was from the song “I Need a Miracle Every Day” and it reminded me of the band’s participation in the infamous “acid tests” conducted by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, documented by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Too much of anything is too much of that thing.
Too much of everything will more than likely cause your premature death. Case in fact: Jerry Garcia is no longer a member of the Grateful Dead because he is dead. So I soon decided to stop seeking to gain philosophical wisdom from people who gained fame through their abuse of LSD, in favor of slightly more conventional sources.
The line from “Scarlet Begonias” will always remain true, though.
If I hadn’t first read Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion advocating atheism, I never would have ultimately written my books Divine Evolution and Counterargument for God.
That is indeed a most strange place for me to have begun to truly see the light, and to begin the assembly of what has become my “Big Picture” argument in support of a supernatural Creator.
The God Delusion was a very strange place to begin my journey, indeed.
As another famous Grateful Dead song once proclaimed, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Speak Your Mind