60

I am 60 today—I can remember being so young that 60 was akin to death; how life surprises.  Nothing is more grand than growing old, the aging like vibrant moss on stone.  I feel as if I have just begun to live to know how to live, to appreciate living.  My body, old and aching at ever move is still mine, the best fit, my own human body, worn like an old shoe but being the most comfortable to house me.  It takes a certain type of living to be old, a letting go of the less and a tighter grip on the more, sincerity replaces activity, contemplation exploration, meaning over much.  Being old is nothing like I thought it would be, love and life are richer than I ever imagined and meaning, the encompassing of the totality of it all seems to dawn on me continually and I cry.  I am 60 and it is life as I never dreamed—thank YOU!!!

My most beloveds and the greatest gift of
growing old.  

Art can tell The Truth

Perhaps the greatest burden of humans is the responsibility of declaring the truth.  When most believe or act as if they believe in all truth being relative the burden is increased.  To have placed before your name, Professor, means you have been deemed responsible for knowing the truth of your discipline and professing it to others.  Not only have I never gotten over that fact but its burden has increased over time.  Knowing the truth is extremely easy, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”, getting others to believe it is not.  And there lies the key.  It is never my responsibility for those under my watchcare to accept the truth much less act upon it, my only responsibility is to clearly and unceasingly profess it.  What causes the responsibility to be truly burdensome is how few will believe that Art can profess The Truth.     

Balaam's donkey; Damien Hirst's work
The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

T Minus 2 Days

One must continually ask ones self, “What is my purpose?”  The answer is almost always found in the heart not in the mind.  Purpose is not your job but it is how and what you were made to do.  The greatest success vocationally is being able to have a job that fulfills your purpose.  Very few do that.  I have found that teaching others why to make art fulfills my purpose, and making art is the gift for willingly fulfilling my purpose. 

“It is sweet and entertaining

to look into my being

when all my powers and passions

are united and engaged in pursuit of thee,

when my soul longs and passionately breathes

after conformity to thee

and the full enjoyment of thee;

No hours pass away with so much pleasure

as those spent in communion with thee

and with my heart.”

                                   

Puritan Prayer Book

Model of the sculpture we will build in Arkansas this spring.  

The Fog

I sit in a deep fog laying above the Tennessee River and hiding most of the wild and beautiful world before me.  Western culture is in just such a fog so deep that all we see is our self.  Self completes and guides our total reality!!!  Even though reality still lies before us it has no bearing on our truth, it is hidden in the fog of western relativism that we have ceased the strain necessary to make it out.  Eat, drink and be merry for all there is is me.

Art for me is one of the surest ways to burn away the fog; to recognize there is a true reality out there and also to being able to discover, see and know it. 

The Fog

I sit in a deep fog laying above the Tennessee River and hiding most of the wild and beautiful world before me.  Western culture is in just such a fog so deep that all we see is our self.  Self completes and guides our total reality!!!  Even though reality still lies before us it has no bearing on our truth, it is hidden in the fog of western relativism that we have ceased the strain necessary to make it out.  Eat, drink and be merry for all there is is me.

Art for me is one of the surest ways to burn away the fog; to recognize there is a true reality out there and also to be able to discover, see and know it.