The best short stories leave out important information but evoke it in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections.*

These are my secret rules for making that happen:

1. Lead your listener toward a conclusion and then let them arrive at it on their own. If you state a conclusion and then try to support it with evidence, you are robbing your listener of the joy of discovery.
2. Give your listener the new, the surprising, and the different.
3. If you must give them old information, reframe it; give it to them from a new perspective, so that they will see it again for the first time.
4. Leave out the parts that people skip.

My Christmas gift to you is The Story of the Universe According to Roy.

I call it “Way Back in the Long Ago.” You will find it at TribalGospel.com

It is an auditory opera, a campfire story of God and the Universe told under a starfilled sky by an old man who is accompanied by musicians who sit at the furthest edges of that circle of light.

But your seat is closer.

You feel the warmth of the fire as it dances the dance of the story, and the stars twinkle their agreement with glittering laughter.

This is chapter one.

Way back in the long ago, the maker spoke, and light exploded across the darkness. Energy radiated across the nothing.

Time and space and order appeared from the nothing of the long ago.

Bits of energy shot like shrapnel from a bomb into the grid that was created by the ordering of the nothing. Bits of energy bonded with other bits to become great lumps that went spinning across the grid.

Their spinning caused these lumps to become spherical.

Some of the spheres were made of gasses; ice giants and dwarfs, gas giants and dwarfs, and suns of every size and temperature were created by the energy within them.

Others of those spheres became great rocks.

Oxygen bonded to hydrogen so that water splashed in the hollows of those rocks.

The maker smiled.

Algae and moss and grass and trees emerged, and the maker smiled again.

Winged creatures darted through the air and swimming creatures darted through the sea, and the maker smiled again.

And then creatures appeared on the rock itself. Creatures appeared on the land.

The maker looked at us and decided to make us into little makers with the power to choose whatever we would choose. We have the authority to say “yes,” and the authority to say “no,” as we stare into the eyes of the maker.

The maker gave us this watery rock we live upon, and complete authority over it.

We have the freedom to be guided by our choices. We are no longer the captives of our instincts.

The maker is not held captive by time and space. The maker created time and space from the nothing.

It is only we – you and me – who measure time and space.

Our history of deciding for ourselves and living with the consequences has not been a good history.

Seven billion of us are crammed onto a rock that circles an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through the nothing… at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.

We are passengers on a world spinning out of control.

Having wrongly been told that the maker is in control, we blame the maker for every sadness.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.

I hope you will take an hour to enjoy

What? You don’t see the happy times?

But they are right there!

Right there inside you.

Oh, I see. You have something that is keeping you from seeing and feeling and living the sparkling clear and happy times that are struggling to rise up from the depths of your soul.

I see that you are worried.

That’s the problem.

Worry is the cork that keeps the champagne of happiness from spraying a smile on your face and a sparkle in your eye and joy into your heart

If you will allow me, I will try to do for you what Julius Rosenwald and Thomas Jefferson did for me.

Julius Rosenwald was an immensely successful businessman who used his money – all of it – to help people rise above their circumstances and experience the wonders of the world in which they lived.

This is what Julius Rosenwald wrote to me 100 years ago:

“Early in my business career I learned the folly of worrying about anything. I have always worked as hard as I could, but when a thing went wrong and could not be righted, I dismissed it from my mind.”

Friend, when a thing goes wrong and cannot be righted, dismiss it from your mind.

An army of people surround us whose only job is to make us fearful and afraid. You must not allow these people to capture your attention.

Journalists have been shouting deceptive and inflammatory headlines at us since the days of the American Revolution.

But the journalists and podcasters of today have discovered new ways of shouting. Emails and websites and Youtube and cable and streaming services promise, pledge and swear to keep us highly informed and deeply unhappy. They feed our worries like stokers feeding firewood into the boilers of steam trains.

They want us to ride on their rails of steel so that they can take us where they want us to go.

Don’t ride their train. Jump off of it. Thomas Jefferson did.

He said,

“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.”

He went on to say,

“Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

Thomas Jefferson avoided the news and said he was infinitely the happier for it.

You should do it, too.

Julius Rosenwald and Thomas Jefferson discovered that Jesus was telling the truth in Matthew chapter six when he said,

“Do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Don’t worry.

Be happy.

Roy H. Williams

David Ackert is making his list and checking it twice — but he’s no Santa Claus. The gifts David brings are powerful insights for professionals who want to grow. David Ackert challenges the long-held belief that success depends on building a massive network of connections. In his view, quantity is a distraction. The thing to do is cultivate a small, curated list of at least 9 not more than 30 “high-value” relationships with people who have the ability to help you reach your goals.

Send everyone else a Christmas card.

Rotbart goes roving with David Ackert this week, at MondayMorningRadio.com

“Please Do Not Touch the Fence. You’ll Get Zapped. And the Goats Will Laugh at You.”

That is the advice the banner gives. Standing behind that banner, and a little to the right, are a group of goats who are clearly encouraging you to touch the fence. You can see it in their eyes and in the smirk at the corners of their little goat mouths.

All of that was in the photo that arrived with a text from my friend, Dan, along with this note.

“We have a new side-venture that uses goats as a land clearing crew for hire, and recently have set up a mobile cam to keep an eye on them while on the job.”

Although I do make up things for a living, I promise I am not making this up.

Twenty-three minutes later, I received another text from another friend.

“I have a problem. Do you know in ‘Peter Pan’ where Peter loses his shadow. I’ve seem to have lost my shadow. I used to be a very creative person. Somewhere over the last 5 years due to life’s circumstances I seem to have misplaced my creativity. I feel almost certain that I began giving out far more than I was taking in. I lost my wonder and my awe for the world. I’m not learning and growing, and it has caught up with me. If you have any insight or direction, it would be truly helpful. Thanks friend.”

I responded, “Is this for real?”

My friend said, “Yes, for real.”

I said, “You need to have a place to escape. A good fiction book can take you into an alternate reality where you don’t have any obligations, or people who need something from you. Buy a copy of ‘Cryptonomicon’ by Neal Stephenson. You’ll meet a guy named Shaftoe. I’ve known him for more than 20 years.”

My friend said, “Thank you. I’ll tell him you said hello.”

Both of those texts arrived, “Ping… Ping,” shortly after I posted the second restaurant review I have ever written.

Heads Up, friends!

Real pizza ovens. Real flames. Real char on the bottom of the crazy-good crust. You’ll never be the same. This pizza is SO GOOD that it’s illegal in 7 states and under investigation in 12 more. So good you’ll walk outside and look up at the stars and howl at the moon like a werewolf.

I have reviewed very few things during my 67 years because, frankly, there just aren’t that many things out there that are really remarkable. DeSano Pizzeria Napoletana is remarkable. Not the atmosphere. It’s plain, plain, plain. Nothing special. But the food is MAGNIFICO! (On Slaughter just west of Mopac, in front of Alamo Drafthouse.) And the people who work there are definitely part of the magic. They are excited about what they are doing, and their excitement is contagious.

We ordered a spinach salad. Best spinach salad I’ve ever had! I mean that. And big enough for two people. I looked at my wife (We’re having our 50th anniversary next year) and I said, “These people are buying ONLY the very best ingredients. They’s spending their money on the food, not the decor.” (We were both smiling so hard for so long that my face aches.)

Order the Verdura pizza. Be aware that it does NOT have marinara sauce. You’ll be throwing rocks at marinara sauce after you’ve eaten the Verdura. It’s really simple: perfect crust, extraordinary cheese, fresh spinach, roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic. HEAVEN.

Or you can go old school and get a pizza...