Faith & Spirit Quote by Ken Hensley

Gratitude is the safest way to accept praise without getting swallowed by it, and Ken Hensley uses it here like a shield. On the surface, he is being gracious: compliments are “encouraging and kind.” Underneath, he is refusing the story the music industry loves most, the one where the artist is a lone genius who manufactured transcendence through sheer will. By saying “it is not me,” twice, he’s not just being humble; he’s relocating authorship. The work still matters, the listeners still matter, but the ego doesn’t get the final vote.

That repetition does a lot of work. “It is not me that did it then and it is not me that is doing it now” collapses past and present into the same stance: whatever his peak was, whatever his current output is, he’s insisting on continuity of source. It reads like a personal theology, but it’s also an artist’s survival strategy. If the “then” was a high-water mark (as it was for many classic-rock figures), this framing offers a way to live with legacy without being imprisoned by it. If the “now” is quieter, it protects him from the cruelty of measuring worth by charts and nostalgia.

“God living in me” is intimate language, not abstract doctrine. He’s not pointing upward so much as inward, making creativity a kind of residency rather than a trophy. The subtext is a gentle rebuke to celebrity culture: celebrate the art, sure, but don’t confuse the vessel with the source.