Ray Bradbury: Et Lux Perpetua Luceat Ei

Today I read the reports of the death of author Ray Bradbury at age 91. Another of the favorites of my youth has passed on. I remember the pleasure and the creeps I got while reading Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).  Last year, while cleaning out the old family estate, I recovered my copy of the book and spent a little time reading through it again. I enjoyed seeing this one through the new lenses I have been given thanks to the effects of maturation. Time and life experience help one see more of the eternal truths the author was trying to express. 

Here is one example:

"Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells." - Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

In an interview with CNN that he gave a year ago he said,

 "...he will sometimes open one of his books late at night and cry out thanks to God.""I sit there and cry because I haven't done any of this," he told Sam Weller, his biographer and friend. "It's a God-given thing, and I'm so grateful, so, so grateful. The best description of my career as a writer is, 'At play in the fields of the Lord.' "Bradbury's stories are filled with references to God and faith, but he's rarely talked at length about his religious beliefs, until now.'Joy is the grace we say to God'He describes himself as a "delicatessen religionist." He's inspired by Eastern and Western religions...
Bradbury's favorite book in the Bible is the Gospel of John...

One of the major themes in the Gospel of John is that of light and darkness.

Et lux perpetua luceat ei.