The Belly Of The Beauty

I never tire of sitting beside a great river meditating on the many ways it carries The Almighty’s message.  In all the eon’s humans have imagined would we have ever conceived a river?  A slowly moving liquid gem, heavy as iron, transparent as shade and is kinder still than our kindest thoughts.  Its form, flat atop, always seeking a horizontal level whose line no one can see while its belly is as organic as the newest baby.  For the sculptor the belly is the rivers glory, a Devine idea for the mortal idealist. I imagine it so beautiful, so sculpted, that He must hide it from me or I would be tempted to worship the created over The Creator.  

God is good, God is great, let us thank Him!!!

What Sense Shapes You?

It is cold this morning, the wind blew out of the north all day yesterday and today we are living and breathing what two days ago lay in the cold north.  My dogs are on the porch with me playing and sniffing the air.  Do they smell the north, the caribou, and the vast Canadian plains?  Smell completely shapes their worldview.  What sense most shapes my worldview?  Hearing, “faith comes from hearing the message...”

A Burning Bush

I live in a world that has very little understanding of the arts.  It is difficult to daily feel and know The Holy presence of The Lord in the arts while most whistle by your Burning Bush.  The Great Peace that comes to me is that those most understanding of the meaning and power ensconced in the arts are those in most need of its Maker.  They know the scared power that abides there but “how can they believe on the One in whom they have not heard?”  It also causes me pause when I consider how those who choose not see the Sacredness of art can know the full joy of His salvation?

1985

I sit quietly and look at Art History slides as the professor drones on and on.  Dust floats in the celestial light of the projector as it casts heavenly visions before us, dust that might actually be these ancient artists re-proposed as the image passes through them before appearing to us.  That would be like God, the image never appearing without first again passing through the artist, a Divine Intellectual Property Guard.

Rembrandt's Women Taken in Adultery 

Treats For Being Good

On what will I structure my day?  In every way may I seek to with God where He is and about what He is doing.  In all of that may I be with those He places me with.   And with all sincere gratefulness may I practice art as the finest treat for being good. 

A Muddled Thought From A Muddled Heart

I find it unsettling when death, the Mississippi River or a baby confronts me.  I regularly place myself with the later two and try not to avoid the first.  I do not know what the three have that makes me place them in the same category or even in the first sentence of this short thought but they seem to simultaneously define The Divine and what it means to be a human being.  They also seem to place art into correct perspective.  They make it border line inconsequential if I juxtapose them but absolutely necessary in order to live with them.  Life, if it is to have meaning, require that we are with these, and if we are to know God fully we must be fully committed to the understanding that art alone provides for living with them.