An After Christmas Walk With The Gardner

I am reminded this morning of God’s requirement that land must rest.  The care for the earth is a paramount concern for God.  I meditate on this only as a way of reinforcing God’s same concern for us. His desire that we rest, that we regularly abide in His ownership of all, then allows us to rest from our overconcern for those people, places, and things He places in our care.  In all roles in life, we are His ambassadors, which basically means we must spend quiet and focused time with The King in order to know what our ambassadorial role is for any given day.  This time should be seen as more a walk in the cool garden with the Gardner rather than a meeting with a General in His Situation Room.  My prayer this morning for me, mine, and our world is an after-Christmas rest walk, on the Eden trail with The King.          

December 25 S.C. Some Glad Day

December 25, 2021 A.D.

I read a devotional this morning which told of a Christmas Card written long ago that told the story of life on earth if Christ had not come.  The gist of it was that the Bible would end at Malachi, all death would truly be “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, no blessed reunion with loved ones and this day would just be December 25, 2021.  But praise God.  He did come and is coming again and then, if time were kept, this day would eternally be Christmas Day S.C. (second coming).  Merry Christmas. “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared.  This day is sacred to our Lord.”  Nehemiah 8:10

The Shrouded Star from the Hubble Telescope
Advent, day December 23. 

Good Christmas Eve Said The Sunrise

Merry Christmas Eve morning.  It is so quiet here.  I stood outside in the cold pre-dawn to listen to the earth and hear what I could hear.  Quiet.  A few geese way across the river.  A rooster on some farm.  Still.  A warm Christmas they say but winter rules the morning.  Quiet and still.  I wondered if in some Godly decree the earth and animals know the day?  I hope.  Life in stillness often lives in fairy tales of ancient lands, mighty kingdoms, good common folk, warm fires, mountains, rolling hills, talking trees, and conscious animals.  In the end, faith reigns, and reality is the truth of ancient lore found by the few who seek The Quiet and walk the trails of old listening for singing geese and talking oaks. 

Our daughter sent us this image this morning as she and her 
husband sat listening to God's good earth.

How to get the Great back in front of Grandparent

Let me see if I can write this next sentence understandable.  What the world needs are great Grandparents, Great Grandparents, and Great, Great Grandparents.  If there were ever a need for wise, discerning, and committed leadership in the American family it is now.  It is not easy to be a solid senior citizen, life grows increasingly hard with every passing year.  Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual trials are not only magnified and intensified but are borne by us in our years of seeping away, our stamina in all areas decreasing.  There is an old custom in the country church, now forgotten in these more enlightened times, one which can serve us seniors as we undertake our roles of Patriarch and Matriarch of our families; Rededication.  This custom was applied when an examination of one’s spiritual life revealed a need for a new start, a strengthening of one resolve to live out God’s call, and an acknowledgment that only Christ can so abide in us giving us His stamina.  This Christmas, this Christmas morning, December the 23, 2021 I have Rededicated.  God’s first job for Christ in me?  Call my children to their on Rededication to call their children to their on Rededication—Betty’s and my, 10 grandchildren.  The point, only God can add the great in front of Grandparent!

 

Taking our grandchildren to see the graves 
of their Grandsaints that have gone before.

Sticking To The Storyline

Great writing is as much about what you don’t say as to what you do.  Stick to the storyline.  Merry Christmas.    

The Christmas Holiday cannot sustain us.  It now begins at the first of October and often culminates with a day that has been thoroughly wrung out of its meaning by commercial and emotional interests—and consequently, we feel let down.  It is worth repeating; the Christmas Holiday cannot sustain us.  There is a solution!—but it takes your greatest effort as a human being, your most sincere self, your truest you.  But isn’t that what life is all about, living the absolutely authentic you?  That sounds meaningful.  ABSOLUTELY!!! There is no downside to being authentically you.  “What’s the solution?”  It’s in believing in the title, not in the holiday but you must know how we came to get the title—Christ Mass Holy Day.  That’s worth repeating also; Christ Mass Holy Day.  

Great writing is as much about what you don’t say as to what you do.  Stick to the storyline.  Merry Christmas.  

  

 

True Sustenance

I love reading The Most Ancient Text.  Hearing again and again of the mighty deeds of both God and humans as they interact chiefly in a wrestling match for true realization. Alongside this ongoing tug of war, are earnest human acts of sincerity where humans will do something purely for the adoration of God.  (Reading Solomon’s Temple building this a.m.)  I also have a deep longing to build something for God, to match my abilities to the task of true adoration of The Only True God.  Making Truth Art is one of the most profound acts of humanity and is always linked to God/gods.  Even though this desire may never be realized the longing is deeply sustaining. 

Nature always seems to trump our Artistic endeavors.

 

Man/Women Up

One of the great responsibilities of life is maintaining our patriarchal and matriarchal roles in our families.  Betty and I take this very seriously.  It takes some talent otherwise you’re just sticking your nose into your children’s business but with a lot of thought, and desire, and a little effort you can do it.  Our main emphasis is on Spiritual matters but we also are committed to recreation, hobbies, fun, safety, and much more.  It is not only one of our greatest responsibilities but it is also one of our greatest joys.  Below are two actions photos that demonstrate.   One is teaching my grandchildren (Zachariah in the photo) how to praise God and the second is teaching my grandchildren (Bray and Aaron in the photo) how to safely fire a gun and the joy of shooting competitions.  You are so much wiser now than you were at their age and another gift of that wisdom is sharing it without being intrusive.      

Zachariah and I listening to Lauren Daigle's Rescue and Holly
Williams' (Hank's granddaughter) Waiting on June teaching him
to raise his hands in praise.  We do it at the Eagles concerts we 
shouldn't be timid about doing it in front of God. 

Aaron teaching Bray how to fire a gun.  
Nothing makes a young boy understand  the
responsibilities of manhood
like learning gun ownership. 

Bass Tournament Devotional

Yesterday as I was with God in the early morning hours when 12 bass boats came screaming by in the pre-dawn cold and pouring rain.  A tournament had begun upstream somewhere and they were heaven bent on being first to the best spots.  The event added great meaning to my morning.  These men and women were up against it, pouring rain, cold, dark, a river lined with forest and mountains and them, not creeping along, but racing into the teeth of it all.  It was humans and earth at each others most raw, most primitive, most natural; neither backing down but neither contentious.  They were what they were, great humans in the midst of the great earth and both being their most sincere.  An hour or so later Betty woke up and I was relaying the story to her.  I said, “You know we don’t raise men and women like that anymore.  But we are!”  

I think Jesus still thinks, “that was a great decision to pick those fishermen!”  

Teaching the younger Benson/Carbonells to shoot.

  

 

Your Ears Need Adjusting

There is a heavy rain on this morning and the quiet is so meaningful that I feel as if I can hear every drop.  Listening to rain is a great gift you can give yourself, much like listening to leaves hit the ground, night sounds, birds wings pushing air aside, your lover breathing, and breezes in the deep woods.  Ears are to hear sounds that are becoming harder to hear and the second hardest is quiet.  The world has grown increasingly noisy and the ability to hear quiet leads to the ability to hear the hardest sound to hear, the Still, Small Voice of God.  The world is in a frightful free fall in large part because of noise, the constant screeching of current culture has prompted us to adjust our hearing so that we are now unable to hear what our ears were made to hear.  Placing your body with its senses in places/positions where their ability to help you to be a fully realized human being is one of the greatest gifts they and you will ever give yourself.  

And a great P.S. joy—you have four more!!!  

Last night at Fair Haven.  We were outside
listening to Doris Day's Christmas Album.

    

 

My Ground Hog Day Life

This morning, 38 years ago, I was sick to the point my brother took me to the emergency room in Knoxville.  The doctor examined me, gave me a vitamin B12 shot, and said there was nothing wrong except I was getting married at 2:00 that afternoon.  I have to admit I was very nervous.  My biggest fear was not making the right choice.  I had witnessed first-hand two divorces in my family and they had a severe impact on me.  But there was a significant, other side of the story; who I was marrying.  I knew I already loved her with all the love I had at age 24.  She was drop-dead gorgeous.  She was kind, brave, adventurous, and had a way of making me feel that I never wanted to let her down.  But more important than everything else I had never met a human like her who seemed so positively happy and naive because she actually was.  It was the direct opposite of me and I wanted that/her to be a part of my life forever.  For 38 years that has never changed.  She is still drop-dead gorgeous.  She is still the kindest, bravest, and the most adventurous woman I know, and I still never want to let her down.  And above all else, she is still the most intriguing human I know, positively happy and sincerely naively un-self-aware.  My marriage testimony remains the same today as always; I would give everything I own (which is a lot) to go back and live it all over again, only because…I would get to live it with her.   

Encouraging Winter Seeks Warm Lover

The cold barrenness of winter always encourages me.  The trees shed their leaves and open the earth up for closer examination.  Beauty hidden in the abundant greenery of summer is exposed, the silver sliver of mountain streamlets, small waterfalls, boulders, and trails are winters feast.  Winter also bears up against me forcing me to seek warmth and shelter and find renewed interest in my lover's warm body.  Winter quietens the earth and me and allows the natural sounds of life to filter in, the crows, the wind, and the sincere sound of quiet itself.  Winter is self-reflective, giving me time to think about sleeping lovers, to stare as a child at our Christmas tree, and to write with the ease of those silver slivers, bouncing too and fro on every rock of my unhurried mind. 

My lover sleeps in the early morning dawn.  I put our bed on rollers
so we can roll it up to the windows every night and go to sleep 
looking out at the stars above our Great Tennessee River.

Peace oh, Peace on Earth, God please!

12-11-21

Storms coming.  Whistling winds awoke me at 5 and have the river swirling as the prelude to the event.  The power of natural forces enhances my relationship with God, the awe of His power and need of His protection over all those I love, are juxtaposed against those times I have experienced His silence, seemingly being part of the audience of my life rather than the Conductor.  Faith by its name and nature is Faith.  However, beauty in its natural exuberance and most, almost entirely hidden from us, always bolsters a faith that storms might seek to blow away.  I am privy to an infinitesimal fraction of all the beauty of our earth and cosmos but when by the grace of scientific advancement I am given a view of works of sculpture staggering in their scale, color and power my faith becomes a rampart in the storm.  Such is the new image of The Pillars of Creation, done in new infrared light by the Hubble telescope and part of NASA’s Hubble Advent last night.  “Creation” being the faith part.    

(Next day) God, I plead for Your comfort over all those who now face a dying and damaged Christmas life.  Oh God, the tragedy of life on earth—as you so well know!  

The Great Awareness

The act of art-making as liturgical seems to hinge on humbleness;  personal humility, humble materials, the humble loss of your self-image as an artist, humbly forgetting you are making art, humble mark-making as intuitive instead of deliberate. Deliberate precision is harmful but hovering just above unconscious movement of hand on materials, there is a sincere humble precision, your mind, heart, and soul are deeply somewhere else, lead there by the act of precise mark-making—this is genuine studio practice.  In that state of unconscious making, you are the most aware of the Devine gift of Image-making.  It is that carried away state that each artist longs to create in, the unconscious awareness of The Great Awareness.  

 

Window Worship

I often raise my eyes to view the natural world that lies outside my window.  I am a great fan of windows and find their history a telling understanding of my own Christian worldview.  No group worked harder at bringing the outside inside than the church.  And once they achieved that ability they immediately filled it with color by staining the widows.  Their ability to bring the outside inside was one of the greatest achievements of humans.  Not only do windows give us a tremendous number of visual cues that help us successfully navigate life, give us light by which we can enhance our productivity and personal meaning they also provide us with a greater world of positive creative energy.  Seeing the natural world without always having to experience its physical reality is a gift of kindness almost never considered when thinking of your local church.

P.S.  The long and difficult struggle by the church to bring light inside is often overlooked by that very group, the Church.  It saddens me that in so many modern sanctuaries the first thing to be abandoned is widows followed close behind by light.  My own churches’ first act of Sunday morning worship is to turn off the lights; in our sanctuary without a single window.    

  

A Platform of Peace Gift to Give You and Your Loved Ones

It can be difficult to begin the Christmas season in a world that is continually screeching at us through our infinite device sources  with pain, violence, and hopelessness.  I am old enough to remember life without media, the quietness of a world that consisted of our home, our church and our small town.  With these realities in mind my lover and I began a habit several years ago to observe Advent as not only a preparation for Christmas but also as a rampart against the overwhelming tide of culture.  It has worked.  I want to share three sources of Advent that we practice in hopes that those of you who have a Christmas Faith and those who have a Christmas Holiday can both disembark this maddening coaster for a platform of peace.  

We close every day sitting together with our dog Hounder, soaking up each other’s body warmth and listen to John Piper, look at NASA’s Hubble images of majestic beauty and then my lover and I, in our old broken voices that are out of tune, sing a Christmas song.

The sites are posted below.  Happy Advent and a Merry beginning to Christmas.   

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/prepare-the-way

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2021/12/2021-hubble-space-telescope-advent-calendar/620865/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO7ySn-Swwc

      

An American Family Gets a Christmas Tree

November 26, 2021

Yesterday we cleared the land of dead trees, deadfall, vines, and scrub.  We are making a small park on the side of our mountain intersecting the sculpture trail we are making through our forest.  We contested our shooting skills on smaller and smaller targets and all qualified—even the 3-year-old.  We nursed babies, bandaged wounds, and walked the shoreline throwing rocks at floating targets.  We drank good coffee, cool water, and cold milk, ate fresh bread, warmed turkey, and all manner of sweets.  We clustered together, all 19 of us, in our small place by the river and literally allowed our warm bodies to warm our home and each other along with the wrestling, laughing, and good talks.  There was warm sunshine, warmer hearts, and warmer yet the single Blood that flowed through us all.  And then the reason for the whole event, we drove way out into the hollers of East Tennessee, dead-ending down a long one-lane path at a 200-year-old farm next to the Clinch River to get our first East Tennessee Christmas tree.  All 19 laughed and searched for the perfect one, the one that would usher in our First Noel.  It was such a joy, all of us knowing exactly what we were doing, from the three-year-old to my 69-year-old lover.  We found it.  All agreed.  Littles Bray cut it down and the celebration began.  We are a cheering family.  Any reason for an ovation and we whoop and holler.  Returning home we set upon the decorating, 3 dogs, 36 elbows, 36 knees, and 18 bodies all in the happy dance chaos to Bing Crosby, ornaments flying, sun setting, colored lights swirling, sunsetting oohs and ahhs, food making, drinks refilling and then the final SHHHHSSSHHHHING!!! LIGHTS OUT—And Littles Oliver with the help of Cocoa (Lover’s name for grandmother) lit the tree.  Another celebration, this time a standing O, and then the nestling down for the traditional Christmas movie.  All the children and all the parents of this American Family, and all is well with The Spirit garland all through us.  And the end of the beginning came. Littles Zachariah held by Good Zac placed the star atop our tree.  We held hands in the UN-Broken circle, sang the Doxology, Sarah prayed, and thanked Him for His ongoing sewing of our circle, and Christmas 2021 has come and Advent soon to begin.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.    

 

 

A Givingthanks

There is a moment every morning that I often see.  It is the moment I can see the first shadows of reality outside my window.  I have two windows, one in a college dorm and one very large one at Fair Haven that I sit in front of now.  Here it is the trees that I first see.  What makes this meaningful is that it is the first earthly proclamation that I AM is so kind.  The earth is rapidly but in humans eyes, slowly turning toward our star.  The star is as joyously and creatively kind as any object in all the known and unknown cosmos.  Our light.  Our warmth.  Our life-giver—and as sincere a testimonial witness of Christ, in God, indwelling in us by The Holy Spirit.  Rapture is experienced.  It is like kissing or a waterfall or fall colors or a newborn baby or sweet taste.  I am an ancient scoundrel but I know kind when I experience it—He does that for me, eternally on November 10, 1986, and daily on this Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 2012 AD.  

 

25°

25°.  A thin mist blows up river encasing the morning sun giving hope of God’s serene kindness, our own private star heater.  The seagulls are back, a small floating island of white in the morning will swoop and swirl all day in their joy of being here.  Soon, I hope, they will be joined by the flock of Great American White Pelicans and the goofy troop of little Coots that always seem to winter next to Fair Haven.  East Tennessee attracts all kinds of snowbirds.  God is good.  All the time.  God is good.      

The American Coot

Re-knowing

We have prepped the land for winter, put the yard to rest, the beds to fallow, the wood box full.  The lake is being drawn down to winter pool, bucks rut in our front yard, the geese are forming up and moving out, and fire is kindled in our iron stove.  Wool, fleece, and flannel are brought out, heavy blankets, and heavier fogs and our star is now setting west by southwest at half-past five.  Winter is seeping in, its frigid soft fingers stretching out from the north to hold us quietly for its season.  She wraps my lover around me, a holding time where in the middle of the night one can smile at how kind God is for making her 98.6°.  Winter is the season of miracles like that.  Fire, warmth, softness are all gifts of winter, a season perfect for Thanksgiving and for re-knowing; “For unto us a child is born, unto us, a son is given…”  

God Being known

There is not a large leap from the Tabernacle of the Old Testament and the art museum of today nor even from there to my large windowed view of the natural earth from my chair this early morning at Fair Haven.  A space filled with beautiful art-ifacts which for those with eyes to see and ears to hear point to the Actively Engaging Personal God Alone using beautiful objects.  If one’s greatest desire is to know God, then in all ways, especially in objects of beauty, the sublime and the creative, God will graciously offer Himself to be known.     

Where God Is

Being in the presence of The Ancient of Days is not a normal experience.  Most of life is spent in the grind of living, the great sweating struggle with “thorns and thistles”.  But every now and then God or The Angel of The Lord (it is a great mystery) moves across your path and invites you to experience a glimpse into the Other Realm.  Such was my last four days as we fired the wood kiln.  It is always difficult to explain but here goes.  Our wood kiln is 7’ tall and 22’ long and as it is named, it is fired using about 10 cords of hardwood.  At its peak, the kiln is around 2400°.  That is hotter than any normal human will experience in their lifetime.  And experience is what you have because every few minutes you open a large door, stare into the heart of this scaredness and throw in more wood.  It is blinding, knocks you back 10 to 15 feet, and demands a reverential fear that is Truly Holy…if you are seeking God with all your heart.  Who thinks such thoughts, “Yes I AM going to put fire inside trees and it will be miraculously kind and a window to ME”  I am always surprised that more people don’t seek God just for the meaning of perhaps meeting Him.  Here is a clue I have found in the Bible; He likes fire, mountaintops, water, quiet, blue, purple, and scarlet, gardens, forests, hiking, dirt/clay, and mostly--your heart.    

the open door

         

A Window into The Other World

As I prayed with my daughter this morning I was looking out this window at His world and was suddenly struck with how great a testimony the world is to the love, goodness, kindness, and faithfulness of God.  How well it praise’s Him, how well it glorifies Him.  “Oh God,” I prayed, “help us to live lives that are as good at praising You as the trees and sky are.”  What a glorious understanding of Friday morning, a praise service without rival, inviting me to join in, OH OH OH, “Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder…”

Singing in Rhythm With Leaves

Absolute beauty is so interwoven into creation that only a Divine Being of Omnipotent genuineness can satisfy its reality.  Fall is one of that truth's greatest declarations.  The singular color of each leaf is like a poem in the greatest collection of poetry, a rhythm of hymns that all known collections couldn’t attend to the work of even one tree.  There is no comprehending that kind of overwhelming exuberant Divinity.  Faith, my God, it is all that can hold us to YOU in the reality of standing beneath just such a tree.  “How great Thou art…”  

 

  

  

Growing Old, How To End?

I am growing old.  I have never experienced anything like it.  As a youngster getting older is just getting better at everything you are.  You run faster, you are more agile, and able to navigate the physical obstacles of life as well as the social, emotional, and spiritual.  You are just getting better.  But growing old is monumentally different.  You are not getting better but worse.  You hurt in places you never knew you had and in all the places you did know.  You are slower, deafer, blinder, stiffer, broken and battered, and worst of all, absolutely aware.  I imagine the curse of the Garden will mean that eventually, I will lose my awareness as well; something my mom is living through now.  Is there a silver lining?  OH VERY MUCH SO.  You have lived and you, at least currently, can recall it.  I have visited and hiked all 50 states.  I have hiked the Alps and driven the Dalton Hwy.  I have found the lover of my eternity and love her regularly.  My family is safe, healthy, and present.  I have stood on top of the world, swam in all five Great Lakes, known my body ripped and burned asunder, Died—……….and lived to know it.  I have been a star and a bum; have had friends who would die for me and family I would die a thousand times over for.  My childhood was marvelous, my youth ill-spent, all together ice cold but memorable, and in the end, God in Christ found me and forgave me and spared me from myself.  I have memories that would awe any man and make most believe untrue because of their spectacularness.  I can above all things say…GOD is good.  And if time and eternity persist for me, my retirement is three semesters away and one of the grandest adventures awaits.  How will I move to the end?  The end is in view at least dimly and ending well is a great accomplishment—and as such should take years.  Here is to a lengthy, measured in decades, ending.  GOD, I love you but am so much more grateful You love me! 

Cotton, A Studio Assistant

Maintaining a creative mind and spirit is a daily task for an artist.  One way west Tennessee assists is its long view of row crops.   Throughout the year my lover regularly drives me into the country to see this amazing abundance and none is more helpful than a field of white cotton.  For weeks I watch the fields anticipating the coming miracle, miles, and miles of white fluffy lines of cotton—growing on a plant!!!—heaven had to erupt in a standing ovation when He described it to the angles, probably at the fitting ceremony where each one got their cotton cape.  Yesterday was the day.  My lover and I went to see the show and He did not disappoint, West Tennessee has put on her best cotton gown and elegantly sashays down the row runways.  

A Planned Day is A Great Plan

One great joy in life is applying your mind to a day.  What is possible in one day?  It is just before dawn, minutes away from being able to see outside and day will begin but what will it be like.  Planning a day is about as much as one mind can accomplish.  It is Sunday so we will go to worship at a local church, FGUMC.  We will load the truck, return our library books and head west.   Heading west is always a great lead in to a day and this journey will be the biggest part of our day, 4 ½ hours.  Every day is spent on a path, trail, byway, highway or interstate, here listed in preference to ability to add meaning to the day.  Byway, Hwy. 70, will be our choice, Tennessee’s first state road, Memphis to Bristol.  My day will end in a double recliner, my lover and I warming each others old bodies to slumber temperature.  Eventually we will ease into our tiny bedroom in our college dorm, pray and hold hands to end our day.  Our Good Morning to Good night, October 24, 2021.

On The Edge of Time Waiting On The Trees

Fair Haven lies on the edge of the Eastern Time Zone.  This may not seem to be meaningful except that it messes with the dawn.  It is 7:05 a.m. and it is pitch dark. For someone who is normally awake by 5, this means a substantial amount of day spent waiting on it to be day.  I love dawn, one of the most hope-filled periods of my day but I would prefer to live through it not wait on it.  The bright side of this is the anticipation.  The hopeful straining to see the first outline of the trees in our front yard appearing out of the darkness.  That is the first hint I get that the earth is indeed turning to allow me to bask in the starlight God made for us.  But right now, 7:11, still just black dark.  And there they are, 7:16, the trees and their joyous though quiet, “good morning!”

      

Oxymoron: Fix Your Eyes On THE Unseen

The other day I was reading in my time alone with God and read the following quote;

"The most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God". A.W.Tozer

Today I began to answer that question.  Below is #1.

1. Kind!!!  So very kind that you even know me or care anything about me much less make sure where I am, the world, seems fully capable, without any assistance from humans to take wonderful care of me.  That is what’s so important about a window; it allows your kindness to be present.

 

 

The Long View?

I am trying to develop a new show; brand new Art.  It is very difficult because at present I have no body of work propelling me forward.  I have cause, theme, or concept, a set of guiding principles listed below;  

ART RULES

1. Must glorify God.

2. Simple enough to not need to be explained.

3. Complex enough to be Art.

but no ideal ideas for work.  It is my last show at Union scheduled for the spring of 2023.  I feel the weight of it, the culmination of 30 years of teaching, the last lecture if you will.  When I leave Union I am not walking across town but leaving town.  It is the rear-view mirror that has got me, the glancing back without regret.  I had better get it right, a lot is riding on it for me.  

 

Enrapture

I am often startled by the dawn.  I awake in the deep dark of night with coffee and the Ancient of Days and His Word and sit with focused light as is my habit.  I will raise my head and look out into the night for any hint of light and finding none return to my mediations.  On occasion, I will be engrossed and dawn will begin without my notice.  At some point, I will raise my eyes and at that moment I am carried away with the rapture of the profound kindness of the light of dawn.  My view these days has dramatically changed from the deep woods of our beloved back porch to the long view and big sky of our dorm room.  But the result remains the same; a seminal experience of the Glory of God, His earth has once again turned toward His Star and my darkness has become day.   

  

BLM vs. ALM, The Rumble in the Jungle

I have been watching Muhammad Ali, Ken Burns's film on PBS.  It reminded me so much of how much we seemed to have lost.  Long before there was President Obama, who I never really cared for, there was Cassius Clay, who, along with Joe Namath and my father, shaped the world of my youth.  I can remember my dad taking me down to Cherokee Hardware in Athens Tennessee and letting me buy my first white football cleats.  I was in the 7th grade and Joe Namath had won the Super Bowl two years earlier wearing his iconic white cleats.  Likewise, I can remember sitting with my dad and listening on the radio as Cassius Clay now Mahammad Ali had his first great fight with Joe Frazier wearing his iconic white silk robe, boxing trunks, along with white boxing shoes.  These were the two great heroes of my youth.  But my dad was so much more because he allowed them to be my hero’s even though they did not model the faith he held so sacred.  The same sacred faith led him to always live out in front of me the truth that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore all were worthy of our care and even hero status, for a young boy who lived to dream of being a sports star one day.  Long before BLM my father lived ALM including the heroes of his son.   

    

Sailing Bells are Ringing

I have lived and moved all over, parsonages to and fro across the south, flopped down and washed up on mean shores through my early manhood, a sailing rack in the navy, and then Grace upon glory I met my lover and in that process, I met my Savior, Christ the King and the three of us made a home for our family.  A home here, a home there, and then the home we have lived in 25 years, longer than any other in my life.  Today that home passes to another and I write from a college dorm room looking out over fields and trees yellowing with fall, a transitional hearth until we can build in our beloved East Tennessee.  Our old home lies across town completely empty, not a sound, no lover making warm, no children growing, no laughter or heartache, no art…empty.  Oh but the memory that sweet half acre holds, deep in the wood, brick, and earth, cried in, bled in, life consummated, truly consummated.  At 4p.m. today we will sign her away to a young couple, 20 somethings, to see what our home will make of them.  She’s like a good ship, true lines, solid, beam and stern align, sails slack now in dock but still seaworthy as we disembark.  What a wonderful voyage she has brought us through, the good ship Countrywood, the ship that carried us safely into our old age.  Now on to Fair Haven.  Her sailing bells are ringing.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQYNM6SjD_o

   

Itinerarium Mea Cor in Deum

This morning finds me where I am been for almost 40 years, sitting in front of a kiln.  For a few years in the beginning, I sat alone not understanding that I was at the “burning bush”, a sure sign of something Devine.  But I did learn, the fire drawing me in, the roar, the beauty being made not consumed.  Now I sit, old and worn, with Him, with His Word, His coffee, His prayers, His fire and understand I am into Holy Ground; *Itinerarium Mentis in Deum—the journey of the mind or soul into God.  It is really Itinerarium Mea Cor in Deum—the journey of my heart into God.  God’s earth, water, fire, air, and me; a morning being!  

*The Creed, by Bishop Robert Barron https://creed.wordonfire.org/watchepisode1

You Better Know Who Has An A Game

It is on again.  Classes begin.  It is a joy to begin class, a chore in many ways thereafter but, throughout, it is a task of connecting humans to God, and there is a great meaning.  Even in the most secular classroom overseen by the most suspicious there is no denying that Art is a Devine enterprise.  Art and beauty go hand and hand with that which we cannot prove but we all know; life on earth is the most grand experience conceivable on earth.  That is the goal and often the result of Art/beauty; clarifying that reality.  If you believe you will make and have an overwhelming desire to teach others of the “great pearl” you have found; God connecting Himself to you. 

 

The Party's Over?

The party’s over.  I awake in a hotel and am relieved.  I will readily admit I do better on a mountain top than under the big top.  But boy howdy was it a shindig, over the top, an event not to miss.  Even God got involved as a slight shower turned into warm sunshine just as the groom kissed his new bride and then a black storm came pouring over the top of the mountains like a massive waterfall and it poured just as everyone had gotten under the tent.  And the party began!!! a Motown band played favorite soul tunes from the ’60s and ’70s, everyone was shaking everything they had or could get to shake and the wine and food came non-stop.  Joyous exuberance would be an understatement.  When the Scots get to partying they get to partying.  I’ll give them this, they got stamina, I have never seen so many people dancing the light fandango since my high school prom.  My lover and I finally threw in our linen napkin and called it a night.  We collapsed in my old Ford, took a breather, adjusted our gown and tux, and laughed at how old we have grown.  We drove off into the night, across the bridge, over the dam and stopped one last time to look back at the tent and could hear the needle still in the soulful grooving playlist of our youth and knew—the party is never really over.  God is good.  God is great.  Let us thank Him. 

The party is never over in God's good world.

A Grand Soiree

It is good for an old country Baptist to attend a grand party every now and then especially if it is a wedding much like the one at Canaan.  My lover and I are at just such an event.  Deep in the southern Appalachians, at a grand Scottish Country Club surrounded by beautiful golf courses, stately mansions, and mountainous glory that continually remind you that God’s wealth is unmatchable.  Last night was the rehearsal dinner, silver, china, fine glass; mighty timbers, wood floors, old art, and the most beautiful people.  The wine flowed freely, the conversation lively, toasts in abundance as the bride and groom’s character was upheld and applauded by all with the tinging touch of fine glass filled with the best reds and whites.  And Christ was there, invited at the start and several times throughout the evening His presence was acknowledged by His rightful title, Lord, Christ, Savior, Jesus.  By the end, many were flushed with wine and joy and my heart was filled with sincerity for the beauty of humanity's ability to celebrate…and all along I escorted the most beautifully elegant lady in the room, my lover.  Round two this evening, the wedding. 

P.S.  For you good Baptists who are wondering--I drank water.

 

    

 

UGH!!! Taking A 200 Pound Load On A Road Trip

We are in Chesterfield MO preparing to move on south and be home by evening.  We are both somewhat weary, not from any great effort other than the effort of moving ourselves around the earth.  Moving 200lbs, my current weight, requires a lot of effort, especially when I do it all day.  Another startling revelation of growing old is how much your weight bears on you.  Understand it this way; if you were in a car and carrying a large 100 lb. sack in your lap imagine how sore you would be after six hours.  That is what my 200 lb. body has become, a burden I bear.  Old age is a constant awakening to the vast effort of being alive.   

Demoing throwing while sharing my faith testimony at Hope Farm School.

A Coming to One's Senses

We made it.  We are at the Hope Farm School in Stockholm WI or truthfully, in a deep mountain valley, forest ringed, in a hope filled communion reminiscent of the communes of the 1960s & ’70s, peace, love, and understanding with God in Christ.  I guess this is as close to Eden’s Church as it gets; believers helping youngsters by growing crops, harvesting livestock, teaching, playing and trying to live in harmony with God, His earth, His love.  My lover and I are here to learn, to see if there is a way to tie our life to their life; to tie our people with their people, our talents with their talents to harvest in the white fields.  God is like a great silent cosmos moving through the cells of all declaring, I AM—Good.  That is where I am, Hope Farm School learning from my cells being aware, HE IS; a coming again to my senses.       

God Blessed America

My lover and I are crossing America again, south to north following the Forever Mississippi currently in Hannibal MO.  We haven’t trekked the country in several years.  Nothing has changed; mostly beautiful, empty, natural, spaces filled with growing abundance.  America the Beautiful is such an apt description.  Now however instead of hiking the land to see, we bask in the glow of our devices to pseudo see; their white light growing discord instead of abundance; eyes burned blind that cannot see.  I am a very simple person, my needs mostly met every day with God, His Most Ancient Living Word, a cup of good coffee, my lover always near, and a long view.  America has always offered me that but required me to go.  Go far in America, long quiet roads through a mostly isolated wilderness that seem to go on and on, and still, I am in America.  The wealth is overwhelming, growing, towering, flowing, it is always unimaginable, even in your memory, unless you witness it again and again.  The song God Bless America is better understood God Blessed America but you must go see to understand.  When He made this expanse of earth, He was having a Red-Letter Day.  

      

Dog Days Will Eventually Always Be Puppy Days

The dog days of summer have come slinking down our lane, more a cur than a dog.  It is hot, humid, and still this morning as dawn seems dulled by the heat of the night.  These are good studio days spent creating behind closed doors with the air conditioner making conditions right.  Currently, I am being hounded not only by late summer but by a long labor that comes with my latest project.  I began with earnest and a five-year plan but have readjusted my time frame to double that.  Ten years on a single project will hound anyone.  Surrounding that project is another which is dependent upon a small little angle child away off who must fund its realization.  That project is not art so much as it is Holy work.  Under the fall our visions far outshine our productions but we are encouraged by the coming labors in eternity where vision and reality will be the same. 

A peek at the vision in my studio.

     

Human Advancement

After church one day when I was five years old, my dad took me by the hand and hiked me up Big Rock Mountain in Crab Orchard Tennessee.  I never got over that experience.  All of my life seems to be tied to God and mountains.  In a world where most individuals seemed to be realized by the world on their devices, my greatest earthly advance occurred when some great person took me by the hand and led me on a great adventure in the wild.   

Advancing my family up the Brooks Range above the Arctic Circle.

A Thought That Became A Love Letter To My Lover

There is a startling reality that comes as one grows older, the fading away of yourself as a human.  It is hard to decern because it is so subtle, there are no true markers that it is actually occurring and I have never read anyone’s account of it but it is happening to me. Let me try to explain.  When I was a child I felt very important to my parents, as a teenager very important to my friends and sports teams.  As I grew into adulthood I was very important to my career and then to my children.  Still, later I was very important to the vocational department that I built and kept running.  All of those roles required a tremendous amount of me to be realized, by that I mean the vestment of me and others for and with me engaged so much of my being, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  As I am moving into my later years I am meaningfully engaged with fewer and fewer people, tasks, and responsibilities.  It is not that I am not busy or that I have fewer relationships with other humans, it is that the meaningfulness of my contribution is less and less necessary.  It is also not a sad thing but more like a very slow passing of one's torch to those that will move it forward.  

Having said all of that there is the most silver of linings to my journey and that is my lover.  We are both going through this together but that does not adequately explain the silver.  What is happening is, what we both use to accomplish individually is now, more and more, taking the two of us to achieve.  The more we fade the more necessary we are to the other.  And here is the silver, most of the meaning of me is held only in her memory, she is the one that has experienced most of my life with me; the life that was so meaningful is now not so much lived as remembered being lived.  And the remembering is the necessity of still being, each to the other.  

A Most Amazing Beauty Grace

Several years ago my father died at the age of 68.  We knew it was coming, the doctors informing us he had but six months to live.  I wrote him a letter every day of those last months.  The morning I received word that he had died I drove the 4-hour trip to see him one last time.  When I arrived at the mortuary the lady at the desk was hesitant to let me back but I was grievously persistent.  She ushered me into a large room where he was laid out, naked, on the most beautiful slab of white marble, the hoses already connected to him draining away the dead fluids from his body.  It was him, his beautiful body still massive from the diseases that had caused his bones to grow so large.  His great chest, hands, and feet still holding the slight color of life.  I was stilled by how much I still loved his body that was no longer him.  I rubbed his head and talked to him unable to separate what God had already, him from his body.  It was a time of enormous clarity for me, of a love and awareness I had never had before nor since.  It was one of those moments of beauty that you carry with you, cherishing at the grace of God for sharing it with you.  

I made a work of art about it titled Amazing Grace that I have shown but once and then hid away in the woods in West Tennessee.  A week ago I loaded the work up and drove it to East Tennessee and with the help of my lover and two daughters, installed it in its final and appropriate place, Fair Haven, where it, my lover, and I will await the final, Great Reunion.

God is good.  God is great.  Let us thank Him.   

Amazing Grace

    

Knowing Rocky's Gideons Bible

A few weeks ago our son-in-law found a dead raccoon in the woods at Fair Haven.  A bobcat had taken it.   Several weeks later as my lover and I were walking in the cool of the evening we came upon its remains.  I always marvel at a skeleton, one of the greatest metaphors for the real reality.  A marking of passing away, an exact record of being and non-being.  The profoundness of the creative process in life, the structure giving underlayment as you will, the guideline for the artist in the studio as he develops the human's outline.  It also stirs in me something of Eden, of The Almighty, of the final tolling of my own bell, what will go on and what will be left here.  Bones tend to be as eternal as life here on earth can muster but even ours will eventually turn to dust.  Dust to dust.  Ashes to ashes.  But The King Eternal has provided for a way to be neither and it is my hope for you and for Rocky Raccoon found in his Gideon’s Bible.   

 

You Shoulda Been There is an Invitation

If a picture is worth a thousand words then being present is worth a library full.  Yesterday Betty and I took an evening hike into woods naming sacred spaces as we stopped in them, a meaningful habit we have taken up.  At twilight, we returned, and exiting the forest we sat beside the Tennessee with our feet in the river watching the night come on.  We both were leaning on one another, two old souls propping each other up.  This picture is where we were but what was really happening was The Ancient of Days was drawing another one to a close and allowing us to watch.  Half our walk with God is just showing up. 

God Knows The Difference Between a Tortoise and a Turtle

The other day Betty and I were walking beside our mountain when we came upon a full-grown tortoise, the kind we have all seen.  I commented to Betty that I wondered why you never saw a baby turtle?  Two days later walking along the road above our home I came upon a baby snapping turtle.  I was so overwhelmed with thanksgiving.  He was all snapper from his pointed snout and long tail to the jagged flange of the back of his shell.  I smiled at the Kindness and Wit of God.  Two days before He saw me see a tortoise but heard me say “baby turtle”.   So here was my first baby turtle.  The little runt was on the road, the lake being 500 yards south of him and he was still headed north.  I picked him up, took him back to the river, and setting him down next to it, I waited to see what he would do.  After lying still for a few seconds he dived into the shallow water and immediately buried himself in the mud—already brilliant in his instincts.  God is good.  I have since asked to see a baby tortoise.    

 

Breaking the Bronco (Leviathan) Worship Service

I had two difficult problems.  I needed to remove the two blades from my lawnmower to have them sharpened.  The first problem was how to raise the mower so I could get under it.  I used the fulcrum and lever action of a 2/4 and a block of wood to lift the front of the mower up and set it on two other blocks of wood.  There is great meaning in using ancient tools to increase the efficiency of a 63-year-old body.  Now I had the mower up and with a socket and ratchet, I pulled with all my power to break the nut loose.  Couldn’t do it.  I had a one-foot pipe and slide the rachet into it and tried and tried but still couldn’t do it.  I laid in the grass cursed with weakness.  I drove to the hardware store and bought a 3-foot steel pipe.  Returned and once again crawled under the mower, set my socket, slide the ratchet into the pipe, slide my hand to the end of the pipe, and pulled, pulled very hard; SNAP, the bolt loosened.  I was hopeful.  I slide in the other side, repeated the process—SNAP!  Off it came.  I removed the bolt and blade and rolled over on my back and looked up at heaven.  For several minutes I laid there in a sincere worship service.  With all the things God had to figure out, the sun's distance from the earth, how to get the watermelon taste into the watermelon, kissing, how did He ever think of the lever and fulcrum?  “Oh, how I love Jesus, oh how I love Jesus, oh how I love Jesus, because He first invented the lever and fulcrum.”  This is an absolutely true story. 

The mower is named Bronco