I arrive at the Opry House a few minutes before rehearsal. My guitar and fiddle cases trip the metal detector, so the security guard makes me open them.

“You ain’t smuggling moonshine, are you?” says the guard with a watchful eye.

“No, Officer. I have no moonshine.”

“Well,” the officer replies. “You want a swig of mine?”

No. I’m only kidding. The guard doesn’t say that. But I wish she would. Namely, because I am a little nervous right now.

This is the Grand Ole Opry. And I’m me.

I do not belong here. When I was in middle-school gym class, wearing a clingy white T-shirt on my chubby body, and shoes with holes in them, some of the boys called me “Little White Trash.” Such things never leave you.

I enter the backstage lobby. Jim Schermerhorn sits behind the check-in desk. He’s the guy who IDs everyone. He has to ask all backstage guests’ for their driver’s licenses, even if this guest is, say, Garth Brooks. Jim still has to say, “Mister Brooks, I’ll need

to see some ID, please.” What a gig.

Jim puts me at ease right away. You can tell he’s just a regular guy. He’s not high and mighty. He cracks jokes.

“We are so honored to have you back at the Opry,” he says to me.

When he shakes my hand, he holds on just a little longer than I do.

They put me in dressing-room Number Two tonight. Which is only fitting. My performances have often been compared to fresh offerings of Number Two.

My room is called the “Bluegrass Room.” Located right next door to Roy Acuff’s old room. Long ago, this would’ve likely been the same mirror where Sarah Cannon transformed herself into a self-effacingly beautiful…

I don’t know if they have radios in heaven. But I hope they do. I hope the angels find one tomorrow night.

I hope they tune this radio to 650 AM WSM, Nashville. I hope they listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Start to finish. I hope my entire ancestry gathers around that little speaker. All my forebears. All my deceased relatives. Even the ones I don’t know.

I hope you’re listening, Granddaddy. After all, you were the family musician. The first musician I ever knew. The multi-instrumentalist who came back from a Second World War with an Italian fiddle in your rucksack.

You were the one who, as a skinny teenager, would sing on the gospel-hour radio shows, back during the Depression, howling into a microphone that looked like a snuff tin. You played piano, guitar, accordion, mandolin. I still have your fiddle.

And, dearest Granddaddy, I hope your mother is gathered around the radio, too. The same great-grandmother I never knew.

The woman with violent red hair, who was a young widow before age 40. Who lived on a desolate tenant farm, with four kids, one of whom had polio. The woman who, at times, worked the land herself until her hands bled.

She struggled to make ends meet by giving piano lessons to every child in that backwater town. She went without eating sometimes, so her children could have supper.

Sometimes I feel her spirit with me. I have felt this presence ever since childhood. I have felt a strong, redheaded musician. And this spirit is feminine. I don’t know how I know this. She’s watching over me. She loves me. I’m never alone.

I also hope my Uncle John is also listening on Saturday night.

Uncle John, the man who wore overalls every day of his adult life. The man who transformed cussing into a sophisticated artform.…

Joe came from a well-off family. They weren’t uber-rich, mind you. But they were comfortable. He grew up going to decent schools. He wore high-end clothes. He may or may not have worn monogrammed underwear.

When he turned 18, he was going to join the military like his dad, the officer, wanted. But there is a well known saying in the military, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken excrement.” We are who we are.

Joe just wasn’t the military type. He was creative, he wrote poetry, for crying out loud. So he went to college instead.

Turns out, the poet was a great student. And he realized something important during college: He liked teaching.

So he got a job as a private tutor. It was a fun gig. He taught the children of a good family, and life was shaping up nicely.

Things got even better when he met a girl. She was lovely. Charming. They became obsessed with each other, constantly annoying all those around them with PDA.

It wasn’t long before

they were engaged. Joe was probably happier than he’d ever been. They started planning the wedding.

Only days before the big event, there was an accident. It all happened so fast. His bride-to-be drowned. The accident happened right in front of Joe. His was the last face she saw.

Joe was catatonic. He had PTSD. Night terrors. He couldn’t stop seeing her face. His friends and family didn’t know whether he would ever get over her.

The worst part of it all, he often said, was the loneliness. Loneliness is the worst sensation in the human experience.

He finally left home for a fresh start. He took a job in a rural town with a tiny population. A town so small they the city-limits signs were nailed to the same post.

He lived in the sticks. He joined a church. Mostly, Joe kept to himself.…

DEAR SEAN:

I had an unexpected medical emergency that took me out of my job as a first responder. The month before, I found out my mother has cancer. Also, my car broke down. So I can't return to work, and my temporary disability pay hasn’t gone through.

I'm useless. It seems like the world just doesn't want me here anymore. What happens if I give up and send myself same-day shipping to God? Would it truly be a loss?

There's no more fight in me.

DEAR FIRST-RESPONDER:

Little Opie Taylor was dressed for school, finishing up a daily breakfast of eggs, bacon, pork sausage, hamsteak, cheese grits, biscuits with pepper gravy, toast with jam, cinnamon buns, oatmeal cookies, pancakes, whole-fat milk, tomato juice, grapefruit juice, fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice, and a subcutaneous injection of insulin.

He asked his aunt Bee for a nickel. Back in those days, you needed a nickel to buy milk at school. No big deal, Aunt Bee thinks. She gives him the nickel.

It turns out, Opie had

already GOTTEN a nickel from his dad, Sheriff Andy Taylor. Come to find out, Opie had been slyly bumming nickels from everyone. Something fishy was definitely up.

Andy tries to ask Ope about it before bed, but Opie pretends to be asleep to avoid the question.

So the next day, Deputy Barney Fife decides to find out what’s going on. Barney is your man when it comes to recon work.

Barney follows Ope and finds out that—gasp!—a schoolyard bully named Sheldon is extorting nickels from him by threatening the subsequent delivery of a grade-A knuckle sandwich to the face.

And so it is, every day, little Ope sorrowfully reaches into his pocket and hands over his milk money.

With me so far?

Homegrown tomatoes. I love them. All kinds. Heirlooms, beefsteaks, superstars, Better Boys, Burmese sours, Cherokee purples, double-Ds, you name it.

A tomato is a magical thing. A love story in nutritional form. A tomato connects you with real life in a way nothing else can.

I want them room temperature. Sliced thick. Salted and peppered. Or placed onto a slab of soft white Bunny Bread, coated with enough Duke’s mayonnaise to suffocate a small woodland creature. Eaten as a sandwich.

Also, chocolate. Love it. We went to Spain recently, and there is chocolate everywhere. They sell it at every tienda, mercado, and café. I even bought chocolate once at the police station.

Since being home, I’ve developed a crippling addiction to cocoa. I’m plowing through a bar of chocolate every day or so. My wife sincerely believes that I would be easy to kidnap because I take chocolate from strangers.

Likewise, I love my dogs. I have three. Thelma Lou (bloodhound), Otis Campbell (alleged Labrador), and Marigold (American coonhound). They are not well-behaved dogs,

mind you.

Whenever company comes over to our house, for example, within seconds our dogs have coerced them into throwing balls and playing tug-of-war with various chew toys that resemble deceased hamsters. After only minutes in our home, many of our visitors suddenly remember urgent dental appointments.

And I love water. Big bodies of water. I love the lake, the Gulf, the rivers, whatever. I need water in my life.

American music. The old stuff. Fiddle tunes. Folk ballads. Old school R&B, when bands still had horn sections. And classic country before grown men wore glitter jeans. Old hymns.

I’m crazy about hymns. They hold a power over me I cannot shake. Why don’t we write spiritual songs like this anymore?

Many of the historic…

The letter was short. “Dear Sean, do you believe prayer works? I don’t. Please pray I survive my surgery today.” Signed, Anonymous.

Dear Anonymous, before they wheel you back, a few things:

New York, December, 2004, a national survey of 1,100 physicians, conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute found that 74 percent of doctors believe prayer-miracles have occurred in their career; 73 percent believe they can occur at any time.

Duke University doctors recently studied 20 heart patients. The patients didn’t know it, but their names were sent all over the world. To places like Nepal, Jerusalem, Baltimore, etc. Randomly selected people prayed for participants’ recovery. Patients performed approximately 50 to 100 percent better than patients who received no prayer.

At San Francisco General Hospital’s Coronary Care Unit, 393 patients participated in a double blind study on prayer. Participants remained blind throughout the study to prevent bias.

Those who received prayer had less need for mechanical ventilators; required less medications, diuretics, and

antibiotics; required less CPR; reported less occurrences of pulmonary edema, angina, congestive heart failure, and cardiac events. There were significantly fewer deaths.

In a study of 999 cardiac patients from Mid America Heart Institute of St. Luke’s Hospital, those who were unknowingly prayed for fared 90 percent better than heart patients who didn’t receive prayers.

The American Heart Journal studied the effect of prayer on 150 patients undergoing angioplasty with stent insertion. Participants were randomly assigned for prayer. The “prayed for” group reported significantly fewer complications than the control group.

Elisabeth Targ, a doctor at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, studied the efficacy of prayer on 40 AIDS patients. Half of patients who received prayers from places as far away as Alaska and Puerto Rico required fewer hospitalizations.

In two similar studies that…

Oh, to view a sunrise.

To see that huge ball of brilliant orange light, peeking above the trees, reflecting on the mirrored lake. The orchestra of colors in the sky, as the morning sun lights the clouds from beneath, transforming them into the pink and gold frosting on the Birthday Cake of Life.

It’s a new day. It’s your day. Made just for you. All 8 billion of you. It’s our day. And the whole world is waking up to all the possibilities thereof.

A family of ducks flies in V-formation, hovering above the water. I hear their voices bouncing off the waves. I wonder what they’re saying. (“How come Harold always gets to fly at the front?”)

And in the faroff, there is the perpetual noise of a barking dog, reminding its negligent owner that, hey, the sun is up, so it’s time for said owner to get off his or her fat assumptions and feed them breakfast. This turns out to be my dog.

And everything just feels brand

new. Fresh. Perfect. Untainted. Newborn. Newfound. Newmade. Unspoiled. Original.

There have been one trillion six hundred fifty-eight billion one hundred ninety-five million sunrises since the earth was formed. And each one is STILL just like the first.

Sunrises have not changed in the last 5.453 billion years. Each dawn is identical to history’s inaugural sunup. And I think that’s nice.

Because, God knows, everything else on this planet has changed. Forests have been cut down. The Fruited Plains have been mowed over to make space for another Red Lobster, Ulta, and Best Buy. The Purple Mountains Majesty have all been bought by real estate developers. Everything is always changing, from Sea to Shining Oil Slick.

But not sunrises. Each daybreak is still unsullied by the hands of man. No corporation…

The boy didn’t have a lot going for him. At least, that’s what his parents first thought.

His parents were concerned. The other children would not stop laughing at their son. The other kids had turned him into a joke.

His name was Al. And there was something definitely different about the child. Foremostly, his speech. He didn’t speak until age 3. Not a word. Which means he never used any of the obligatory babytalk words like, “dada,” “mama,” “bye-bye,” and “poop.”

The doctors said it was a developmental delay. The long gaps between his verbal responses. Speaking only in fragments. Al didn’t start using complete sentences until age 4.

When his folks put him in school, it was hard going. The other kids teased him, incessantly giggling at him, whispering. He was bullied. Degraded. His teachers couldn’t connect with him. He was frustrated. He once threw a chair at his tutor.

The school was perpetually sending letters home, mostly about his behavior. He was a daydreamer, socially weird, he hated authority.

One teacher’s note said: “he will never get anywhere.” Another teacher said he was “mentally slow.”

The final straw was when a teacher’s note said the school was unable to teach this kid. So his exasperated mother purchased several books and tried teaching him at home.

Eventually, he found his way back to school, but he wasn’t your model student. And nothing had changed.

He still got crummy grades in geography, history, and languages. He still had a hard time making friends. Still disliked teachers, and all forms of authority. The kids still laughed.

By his teenage years, it was all he could take. He would inevitably leave school to join the prestigious ranks of us High-School Dropouts. (We were happy to have him as a club member.)

I’ve got your back today.

You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you since you were a baby. I’ve been here beside you. You could call me your guardian angel, I guess. But we don’t really call ourselves anything.

Try not to think about the medieval depictions of us. Forget the wings and Grecian gowns. We’ve been trying to outlive that stereotype our whole lives.

We are not tall, muscular, blond, asexual creatures who wear glitter foundation and no underwear. There are no halos floating above our heads. Neither are we fat flying babies with bows and arrows.

What we are is highly advanced spirits who stand with you all the time. We are a cloud of witnesses to your entire life. Some of us have been human before. Throughout history, some have called us saints. Which is sort of ridiculous, because when we were on earth we were anything but “saintly.” Sometimes, we are the souls of your loved ones. Sometimes we are angels.

Either way, we are

a multitude of souls, sitting in the nosebleeds, watching your life play out. Some of us have been where you are. We have done what you’re doing.

Your religion is a funny thing. While nearly 80 percent of the world population believes in us, a lot of people are afraid to talk about our existence. Churches don’t mention us for fear they might sound like heretics. Ordinary people won’t talk about us because they don’t want to sound like they have been taking hallucinatory substances.

But 80 percent. Come on, people. Have you ever seen 80 percent of the globe agree on ANYTHING? Historically, humans can’t even agree on whether to use the metric system. But they agree on us.

Why? Because too many people have had experiences with us. There are septillions…

DEAR SEAN:

Shut up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. …Just who the hell do you think you are?

DEAR READER:

Who do I think I am?

My life begins at age 11. That’s when my father took his own life.

He killed himself probably because he was going to prison. The night before Daddy died, he was arrested for attempted murder, assault and battery, and threatening his family with a firearm.

He spent the night in county lockup. And I knew, as an 11-year-old boy, that he was freaking out. One of his worst fears was incarceration.

The last image of my father is imprinted on my brain. I am a little boy. Officers are reading Daddy his Miranda rights. My baby sister is screaming. My mother is battered and bloody. There are deputies in riot gear who entered our house with short-barrel shotguns.

And I’m saying goodbye to my father. Forever.

The next morning, his brother posts his bail. It's crazy expensive. He drops my father off at his house,

then goes to work. When my aunt gets home, her car comes charging into the garage, and she hits a body.

There’s a shotgun in the decedent’s hands. The body’s big toe is stuck in the trigger guard. It’s Daddy.

Nobody is ever the same.

Everyone is in shellshock. All the adults are worried about me because I’m not crying. They expect me to be a wreck, but I’m not. I’m just stunned. I can’t cry.

Oddly enough, I am relieved that he is dead. I am actually glad he’s gone. My father was so difficult to live with. He could fly off the handle at any moment. You never knew if you were getting Good Daddy or Abusive…