God Hidden In The Arts

For the 31^st time, I begin a college year, nine as a student, and 27 as a Professor.  College for me has been one of the greatest adventures of my life, a seemingly perfect fit for all that I vocationally sought to live.  I have much greater wisdom than I began with, know my subject matter much better, am more committed to its theory and concept and much clearer on the necessary skill sets young people need to acquire.  The benefits of a college education have never dimmed in my heart,  Its overarching ability to change a man’s life, to give him opportunities he never imagined were available to him, to create in him an understanding of life and subject matter that to this day still inspires him to exploration and living at the very edge of human experience cannot be overestimated.  Life in higher learning is to me like daily hiking the most beautiful, the most challenging, the unmarked and never hiked trail of vocational joy—there is always a bend in the river, a fork, a path that may or may not be there but is always so overwhelmingly filled with the possibility of meaningful experience that you take it anyway and by grace and truly grace alone, God is always to be found on that unmarked trail.  This is most inadequate to sharing my heart but it is true—“You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart.”  God, I am so grateful that you hid for me, in the arts.  

                            Aaron and me making sculpture during our family reunion.