Episode 402 - Last Show of 2020 (LIVE) - Fred Rogers Quotes and More!

Rick Lee James here inviting you to join me over at rickleejames.substack.com. Substack is a great new free platform that helps me connect directly with all of you who listen to my music and podcast. All you have to do is subscribe with your email address and that's it. It's easy to use and we can interact right away. So go to rickleejames.substack.com for some inspiration in your box.

Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code voices and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure Be sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSays. Where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Hey friends, I hope you're doing well and I hope you can hear me okay. Uh, here I am in my office at church, actually just shut the door, and I'm trying one of these live shows again. And it's not going to be a terribly long episode, but it is going to be the last podcast I do of this year, 2020, and what a year it has been, right? I don't think any of us could have foreseen what 2020 was going to be. In fact, there was a meme that went around just a few days ago that I thought was really funny because it was— oops, sorry, hang on, let me turn off this. Uh, apparently the intro decided to play again. Uh, there was actually a meme that went around a few days ago, which was posted just before 2020 last year. It was right around the time of New Year's Eve, and somebody posted this: 4 reasons why 2020 is going to be amazing. And we had such high hopes and expectations for 2020. Said Cinco de Mayo is on Tuesday, so, you know, Taco Tuesday actually was on Cinco de Mayo in 2020. Another reason 2020 was going going to be amazing was July 4th was on a Saturday. Another reason, Halloween was on a Saturday, and Christmas and New Year's Day both on Fridays. And other than that, you know, nothing went wrong with 2020. Everything was great and is all just exactly as we hoped for. And, you know, 2020 has been a rough year for sure, for all of us, I think. And just because we go into a new year doesn't mean that some of those struggles aren't still going to be there, but I do feel like there is a felt sense of hope, and I hope that that's true. I'm feeling that a little bit myself. I'm hoping that as we get into spring and as the vaccines start getting into our arms and we're able to move among each other a little more again, we can start visiting with each other more, worshipping together more freely than we have been able to. Such a difficult year. But I'm grateful for what it's taught us. And hey, Evan, welcome. Glad to have you here on this live show. And we're still working out some of the bugs, but hope you can hear us okay as we're tuning in. I just wanted to come on here for a couple of reasons today for this last show of 2020. And I wanted to say how grateful I am for all of you that have been listening and have been a part of this show. As you know, just 2 episodes ago, we celebrated 400 episodes, and we had the great Phil Keagy on the show and listened to a lot of his really amazing guitar work and, and vocals from over the years. And he shared some really great stories, and it ended up being a pretty supersized episode, and that was a lot of fun. So I'm looking forward to new things in the coming year with 2021, but I don't want to miss out just because 2020 was a hard year, I don't want to miss out on some of the good things that did happen as well. I think many of us reconnected maybe with our family, our immediate family, more than we had before. We didn't always get the time at home together that we would have liked to have had, and boy, did we get an abundance of that this year. So, you know, overall though, I'm grateful for that. It's been a good time for me to to be with my family and love them more and, and get to know them even more. Um, you know, even though I see my family every day, the extra time I'm grateful for. We don't always get that. So hey, uh, as we also go into this last show of 2020, I wanted to let you all know that there's something happening, um, actually tomorrow, uh, December 31st. I'm going to be, uh, unrele— unleashing— I was going to say, uh, releasing a new music video, uh, for my song Be My All. And, uh, this is something new that I'm trying, and we'll see if it actually works out or not. I'm releasing it early, uh, to only paid subscribers on my Substack page, and that's rickleejames.com, uh, slash— actually, it's rickleejames.substack patreon.com. And if you go there, you can do things like, for $5 a month, you can get bonus features like this music video that I'm releasing tomorrow. And if you subscribe to it, you'll be able to, to watch that before the rest of the world is able to in the coming weeks. And just a little bit that I'm trying to do to, to help with things like this podcast, keeping it running, paying the bills on those type things. So if you're interested and want to be a supporter of this That's one new way you can do it is through rickleejames.substack.com. The new music video will release to all paid subscribers tomorrow on, on New Year's Eve, and the rest of the world won't get to hear it until down the road a little bit. With that being said, and, and I do— I would love to have you even if you're a free subscriber at rickleejames.substack.com. I can send podcasts like this one straight to your inbox. We also have a Substack for the Mr. Rogers podcast that I Welcome to the Neighborhood, and just lots going on there. So please join us over at Substack. I'd love to have you. I'm gonna close 2020 this way on this podcast by sharing some words from one of my heroes, and you're not going to be surprised at all when you hear this, but Fred Rogers. And it's good for us, I think, to, to hear the kind and calming and incredibly generous words of a person like Fred Rogers. And you know, I do this a lot through Twitter every day. @MrRogersSay, the account there. And I'm grateful for all of you there that follow along. But I just wanted to take some time today because I can't think of a better way to close out 2020. Boy, do we need some words of kindness and wisdom and generosity. And so I'm gonna just on this show share a few quotes from Fred Rogers, and it won't be a long show, but I hope that it will be beneficial to you as you listen in. So here's a few from the book The World According to Mister Rogers, important things to remember. All our lives we rework the things from our childhood, like feeling good about ourselves, managing our angry feelings, being able to say goodbye to people we love. In order to express our sense of reality, we must use some kind of symbol. Words or notes or shades of paint or television pictures or sculpted forms— none of those symbols or images can ever completely satisfy us because they can never be any more than what they are: a fragment of a reflection of what we feel reality to be. I remember after my grandfather's death seeing Dad in the hall with tears tears streaming down his face. I don't think I had ever seen him cry before. I'm glad I did see him. It helped me know that it was okay for men to cry. Many years later, when my father himself died, I cried, and way down deep I knew he would have said it was alright. It isn't only famous movie stars who want to be alone. Whenever I hear someone speak of privacy, I find myself thinking once again how real and deep the need for such times is for all human beings at all ages. Now here's a good one for 2020 with all of the, uh, the aloneness we've experienced. Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing. Bounty, hey, welcome! Glad to have you here listening in on the live show today. I hope you're enjoying it. Sharing some quotes from Fred Rogers today to close out our 2020 show. You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices, and hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are. Most of us, I believe, Admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words like aggression and even violence. Real strength is neither male nor female, but it is quite simply one of the finest characteristics that any human being can possess. So I want to wish you guys real strength in this year to come, 2021. Who knows what the year may bring. We can't control the wind, but we can adjust the sails. We can decide what kind of people we're going to be. I want to thank you all for loving each other so well in 2020 when I know it's been so difficult. I want to thank you for caring for those around you, and sometimes caring meant wearing a mask and and not having people in your home you'd like to have, but still it's caring nonetheless because you're trying to protect those others. And I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for you when you have shown real strength over this past year. And I'm proud of you all who are listening for doing that. Just like that Fred Rogers quote that I just read, you know, I do respect strength in others and I do desire it for myself and I desire it for my children and I desire it for all of you. But let's not confuse it with words like aggression. Strength is such a different thing. Strength comes from an inward place. And I think that solitude does not have to be a lonely thing, just like we said from this Fred Rogers quote as well. I wish you, I wish you a wonderful 2021. I want to thank you again for being a part of this podcast, over 400 episodes now. We'll have some new guests in the new year, but today is just kind of a way to close close out 2020 on kind of a low-key note. And I thank you for those of you that joined into the live show today. I know it's a different kind of episode. I look forward to bringing you new interviews in 2021 with authors and musicians and artists and creative people of all kinds so we can share together in the goodness of what it means to make art and what it means to create together and what it means to build community. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head this week. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James. I look forward to 2021 and walking this journey with you.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at RickLeeJames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be. Be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Thank you for joining me.