On the back side of a place named Back Side

6-1-2018 AD

Cannaway House B&B

Macroom County Ireland

Yesterday I stood in the sanctuary of a church first mentioned in the Vatican records of 1492.  Its floor was a garden of green plants, its roof the sky and a tree was growing in the choir.  Its walls were thick with neatly laid stone and its arches and windows were still leading our eyes upward to God.  It was no bigger than your living room, its tower still in tact and its Nave neatly squared.  What Holy Ground, what Sacred Space, what hope filled souls had first ventured into the barren landscape and said, “We must build You a home.” 

We had traveled down a two lane, down to a one lane, down barely a lane, the deeper we got ourselves in the higher the rugged mountains and the more knarled the earth.  We were on the backside of wilderness, a stream named Lee on one side a ragged range on the other and we weaving along on a sheep’s path somewhere far below when the road opened up and there was this Hallowed Home of Yore.  We walked the space, Betty weeping, me in love with The Object of this gift and all the world seemed bowed in honor of the long departed who had consecrated this ground. 

We ventured on and later, as we had passed through a forest of green where all ground, boulder and tree where wrapped in a cloak of emerald moss the earth held in trust another Tabernacle, this one built in 700.  Oh what treasures the earth holds for those on a pilgrimage.  Betty wept again.

Side notes:

One of life’s great pleasures in setting up your own Holy Ground.  While I’m on the road I always stop at the end of the evening and make ready my morning place to be spent with The Almighty.  It is a very special time for me.  I consider it throughout the day and then before laying down for the night I set it up, The Most Ancient Text, my seat, my coffee cup and glasses, my pen, is there a view available, and what light will help me see.  Lastly I plan how I will seal my sounds from the precious sleeping ears of my beloved.  If one considers it for a moment it is like readying for a meeting with a most esteemed dignitary, making sure everything is right for an honored visit, relaxed, comfortable and with respect for their position.  And so I ask myself, “How will i meet GOD?”

Yesterday we lite a candle for our newest Littles Benson, homed by Britt and soon to be welcomed onto The Tree Benson.  We held hands and prayed under a small stained glass window, the warmth of the candle warming our hands, You warming our hearts.  Oh we are ultimately grateful.  Betty wept again.    

Most places we venture we seem to have alone, churches, and yesterday we visited seven.  Dad, mom, Mary Kate and Ann Bristow would be pleased.

Turn north today.    

    

connecting with All There Is or a long blog for my children

5-31-2018 AD

County Macroom Ireland

We are a thousand years up a country lane, behind a long green hill where white sheep graze.  We are behind that hill down an overgrown hedgerow running under giant trees along a gravel path.  Entering a two columned iron gate the lane runs up a hill lined with old iron lamps to a three story square country estate, circle stone drive and another green hill running for miles behind.  It is an old white home, filled with old wooden things and old smells and abides you like an ancient aunt, tolerating your intrusion but secretly pleased by you, reminding her of her own youth.  We are on the second floor, back, twelve foot ceiling with great paned windows overlooking the stone walled garden and the small pasture beyond where two mammoth working horses are kept.  It is what you picture.  Betty gave me Ireland for my 60^th birthday.  We flew in yesterday; old cool like you know it’s coming from the ancient ice fields above the north Atlantic and sunny like it knew Betty was coming.  We high tailed it out of Dublin and got on a country road headed south where we will begin my gift, slowly moving west from Cork along the coast turning north where we will end up in Northern Ireland ten days from now.  We spent yesterday mostly lost but keeping the sun along as our guide knowing it and global tracking devices would eventually lead us here.  We picnicked at a local Catholic church in Limerick, hiked castle ruins and walked an old graveyard surrounding a primeval church where only the half tumbled walls remained.  This is an ancient land marked everywhere with man made stone makers of worshiper’s desperately building to connect them to The Most Ancient One.  The kind of people Betty and I are and have tried to raise.  Why on earth would anyone be here if it were not to try with all we can to connect with All There Is.  Such is Ireland. 

Some side notes:

Yesterday evening as we were leaving the country B&B to find some dinner, at the end of the lane, was a small field, freshly mowed surrounded by old trees and underbrush.  In the field where four large flopped eared rabbits on their haunches chewing their evening cud.  Also in the field were two old dogs, barely able and I am sure mostly blind.  They were stiffly lopping around stopping every few feet to sniff the ground.  For all the world it seemed that they were all old friends, the rabbits moving about to lay a trail and the old mutts trying desperately to find it, a game they had all grown to old to be serious about but playing along anyway.

At the terminal in Newark where we were waiting for our flight over we happened to be sitting in front of a young couple.  It’s a new arrangement in airports, one I had never seen before, where they set up stationary chairs by narrow tables, with Wi-Fi, electricity and small electronic screens where you can order food and drink from the many restaurants at that end of the airport.  It puts you closer to people than your own dining room table and that is where Betty and I found our self’s yesterday with the aforementioned young couple.  What first got our attention was that the young man was a big man with bright red hair and beard and his wife was a tiny thing and Betty and I both thought they were traveling back home to Ireland.  But why I am writing about them is tying them mostly to my earlier story about connecting to The Almighty.  The couple had ordered Star Bucks and when their coffee and bagels arrived, they turned to each other, held both hands, bowed their heads and she made the sign of the cross and then prayed softly.  Now we’re Protestants and they were obviously Catholic and we were automatically taken up into their visit in The Throne Room.  I was sure international peace had broke out and was delighted to have been there as my Spirit was equally glad—always good to be among holiness.  Turns out, (you know Betty, she immediately was gonna be friends…she has never outgrown the playground…why I find her so intriguing) they were Americans, two kids in love headed not for Dublin but for Dallas, in the good old USA.

I awoke early this morning, laying in bed at four thinking of laying in bed at four and listening well for anything else that might be conscious.  Four things happened.  I begin to think of the old hymn How Great Thou Art, an early morning song bird began to sing, it was Irish I’m sure because I had never heard the tune, Betty was deeply involved with sleep (she doesn’t snore but sleeps deeply) and fourthly it began to be just dawn.  I thought about all these things that were happening and... 

O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout the universe displayed

Then sings my soul…(that is who I want to be my Sculpture Teacher and what I try to teach in my sculpture classes.) 

I wondered at the joy of knowing that the same birds that sing outside my porch back home in the pre-dawn hours have cousins in Ireland.

I thought of how good it always is to hear Betty sleeping, knowing she is sleeping beside me, she is my bride and lover, she is resting well and most importantly, she sleeps long and unhindered which makes her the perfect therapist for me—she worries of nothing and I worry of everything. 

The hope of dawn comes even when you are halfway around the earth and the sun has just set at home.  

The Holy Water indentions in stone in a Most
Holy ruin.  Oh The Ancient of Days still was there.  

          

To Create or Imitate

I spend a lot of my time in the arts not making art but contemplating why art needs to be made.  One of my greatest challenges is to insure that young art students know why art exists and why humans seemed compelled to make it and make it a part of culture.  This seems to be the most creatively sensitive generation with the most avenues of involvement in the arts along with the greatest need to understand what art is and what is it purpose.  When I was young America had just begun to emerge as the leading edge of artist culture.  Today it is our greatest export.  It is critical that young students think critically and learnedly about the arts and its role to create or imitate culture. 

      

A Snap Chat Answer To A Cosmic Question

What is the purpose of Art?  That is a very serious question for an artist, especially a young student in the Fine Arts, to answer.  Many understand art as realistic rendering or modeling.  Many would say it is anything well done or crafted, like a finely prepared meal.  Art is hard to define but if we first define its purpose it might be more clear what it actually is.  Arts purpose has always been to declare a certain worldview, to establish the basis for building culture and community.  Art, at its pinnacle, is the declaration of Truth artistically.  What do I mean by “artistically”?  To begin to answer that you must first understand the elements and principles of art, which will take a lifetime.   

A Circle Made In Homage To A Line

      

Transcendent Alarm Clock

In my world, several miles of river, mountains and hills rolling away, great lawn and cloud filled skies it is obvious that apart from the wild things I am the only human awake.  There is something deeply meaningful to being aware of yourself in the animal kingdom knowing you are the only thing consciously observing.  All other things seem to be there, in part, so that you can rejoice for being human.  I like being a human, by that I mean being what it means to be a human and the natural world requires that.  King Solomon said, “He (God) has planted eternity in the heart of man.” Meilander says the human body is “the place where we come to know the person.”*  Both views point to being human as an awakening of our bodies to the miraculousness of being a human—nature is a transcendent alarm clock.   

*Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey