Who's the Red Neck Here?

We live in the wilderness.  We chose to move in.  We found 12 acres of native forest beside the river.  We cut a road in, cleared an acre off the riverfront, put in water and electricity, tilled a yard, built a studio, and moved in.  What surprised us is all the wild things that are our neighbors.  It’s like moving in next to a bunch of red neck drunks, who raise fighting roosters in blue barrels, and keep their worn-out washers and dryers as yard decoration.  EXCEPT, these wild things eat the trees we plant and gnaw down the shade trees we keep.  They eat all our flowers and bulbs, and dig up our yard.  They look at us at night like “WHO ARE YOU???!!!” and run away and disappear into the woods where they live.  It’s then that it always dawns on me: “They live in the woods.”  Literally, they live in the wild, and we have dumped our big drywall, asphalt-shingled, glass-painted, plastic-floor, and concrete home right in the middle of their pristine home.  I have to ask myself, “Who’s the redneck here?”

 

Long Live the Queen

On January 14, 2024, the 52nd anniversary of her accession, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicated her throne, and for the first time in over 200 years, the world was left with no Queen serving as Monarch.  However, in just over one year that ended, on September 19th, 2025, Reese Jane Benson was crowned Queen of her Monarchy (high school), when she was crowned Homecoming Queen.  Now, once again, the world has a Queen on her throne.  Long live Queen Reese and God bless her reign.  

Reporting from Kingston, TN. This is Aaron Lee Benson, her proud granddaddy.  

 

 

Living on LP

I am decaying.  I know that is harsh, but getting old is a harsh reality to live through.  However, aging has its rewards, and one of the most sincere is the serenity of the knowledge of being.  It might be my experience alone, but I have found that I only discovered the miraculous joy of a sweet bird singing when I became slow enough to listen to it.  You can only hear the music of water raining on your window pane when your spirit is silent and unbothered enough to hear it.      

I am not communicating well.  

That’s a downfall of decaying, trying to find the right words explaining my life experiences in a mind full of all the words it's ever heard.  The point I am trying to sharpen is this: hearing is a gift of listening, and listening is done better by those of us living on LP and not on 45, a reference also shared only by the aged among you.*

*My granddaughter Cora has discovered and is buying old LPs, a hope-filled event that gives an old soul new encouragement for new souls.

Fair Haven with my lover is a Triple Platinum LP.

 

An Obedient Tree

Yesterday, as my lover and I were biking through a mountain valley of East Tennessee, aptly named Swan Pond. We passed a dogwood tree in full fall colors of scarlet juxtaposed against a sky of lazuli blue.  I said to her, “Isn’t that beautiful.  That tree’s being just what it is supposed to be, it's being a tree and bringing glory to God.”  In every way, it was doing and being what it was supposed to be doing and being.  What a wonderful witness of encouragement to me and my lover.  We biked on changed; thanks to an obedient tree.   

Concieved

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Sometimes a line is why you see the light. 

I Am The Light of the World

It is black outside, my windows just reflect the inside of my home, and me sitting in my easy chair.  It is never a good thing for a window to be a mirror.  No one needs to be reminded of what they can see with their own eyes.  A window is an opening to a wonderful world made just for me.  Many of us have replaced our widows with mirrors, a reflection of what we can already see, a reminder that all we see is all there is until all we see becomes all we see.  

I always see my windows as mirrors first.  I long for the dark indigo of morning, the first glimpse that a wonderful world is there just waiting for light to reveal it, to turn my mirrors to windows again.  Oh, if I only knew who made light, I would owe them my absolute devotion.  

“I am the light of the world.”  

One of my windows waiting for light.

 

Soft Soul Sunday Morning

Sunday morning coming down.  We lost.  Beat ourselves.  Duck season has opened across the river.  Can hear the muffled boom of shotguns fired by men.  My lover is busy in the kitchen making her fountain of youth breakfast, which is unnecessary; she is stately and gorgeous.   I listen to a piano play softly while the burning incense carries the last of my prayers to Father.  It is a soft Sunday morning made for an old soul needing a bit of rest and worship.  Sunday morning coming down.    

No Human Needed

I am almost always sitting by a window, the first thing in the morning.  I stare out upon the world, the earth, the sky, the water in all their glory, with no human help.  No one has to lift a finger for them to be and keep being.  It takes so much of my energy to mow my yard, but no human energy is expended to make it grow.  There is a profoundness here that I cannot even think the thoughts to write about it.   “The heavens are also remote from human influence and unchanged by time.”  A single sentence in a Bible commentary can change everything outside my window.  The glories of the God of our minds.  

 

Thank God

I am sorrowful.  I am broken.  No need to say.  Many who oppose will oppose to death and in death.  Hearts are deceptively wicked.  Who can understand?  Who can save us?  “Thank God!  The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

 

Baubles of God

Oh, the deep; the very, very deep things of our hearts.  The ecstasy of pain that knows no name, the joys of meaning that can fill our being.  Our hearts’ raptures can be as full as the moon and as there as a handful of air.  Meaning is everything.  As the sky is blue, so is meaning, the color of our being.  We name its house, heart, but who can place the blue of the sky in our heart?  Our heart is the treasure box of our meaning, filled with trinkets of stars, baubles of God, lost jewels from heaven.  Oh, the tender, aching, deep, deep things of our hearts.   

A deer swimming from our yard to Long Island.

 

A Stake Pounded in the Jungle

The earth is a jungle, a force always demanding a reckoning.  It is relentless, defeating every tool we have to tame it, including man.  My lover and I bought twelve acres of jungle 15 years ago.  We carved out about an acre to cultivate and live on.  It continues to grow and push into us.  Our lawn is the small plot we war over, us against the jungle.  The jungle sends out underground roots to reclaim it, seeds of wild plants blow over it, and wild animals see it as their feeding ground, literally eating everything we bring in and plant.  We keep marching over it, cutting back its grasses, planting more flowers and fruit trees. adding nutrients to the soil, tilling, and killing wicked insects.  At best, we can claim a stalemate, but as I have grown older, I am realizing nature will have the final say.  If I were to walk away today, the jungle would have it all back in a year.  

It is a full-time job dominion-ing one acre.  That “sweat of the brow” declaration is a stake pounded deep into the jungle that no human can ever remove.  

Part of the taming is cutting up the jungle 
Sentinels that fall, which also provide us heat in the winter.

 

A Practice Prayer

Once upon a time, in a cosmos, very, very near, there was a God; a real God, not like Superman, but God.  He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present, all the time.  Forget “faster than a speeding bullet,” he thought up light and made it that fast.  He wrote this Book to tell of all the marvelous things he made to make our lives wonderful, like light, love, taste, mountains, blue skies, and baby elephants.  However, the main thing this God wanted us to know was that He is for us, He made us, He loves us, and wants us to acknowledge Him for His kindness, grace, mercy, generosity, creativity, and abundant blessings, which shower us with blessings every day.  It should be easy to be grateful.

A practice prayer;  “I am so grateful for your Word and you leaving me with this great story of you and your love for me, the earth, the cosmos, everything you have created you love and want me to acknowledge you for your kindness, grace, mercy, generosity, creativity and abundant blessings, showers of blessings, rain down on me every day.  Thank you.”

God's sun setting and lighting up our home like a cathedral.

 

Parenthood

Parenthood never ends but becomes an increasingly complex traverse, and ascension of effort and beauty reserved for only those determined to summit.  Patriarchy and matriarchy are laid by at death, left to the effects of the effectual prayers prayed while we were on earth, and continue long after we have left here; those hallowed grounds we have sown. 

Too Good to be Untrue

Is life to good to be true?  I often think this.  “In solemn stillness,” I sit alone and often see “the world in solemn stillness lay”  My window reveals “it came upon a midnight clear.”  Day comes, night is softly laid away, and there it is.  Life, conscious life of living here on earth, the bright blue Shangri-La of life, chosen of all the specks in the cosmos, “Let there be life,” and it has never been anything but too good to be untrue.  God is good.  God is great.  Let us thank Him. 

  

 

Venerated Relics of the Covenant

We are wrapping up our home build, all the main things in place, beds, refrigerator, easy furniture, silverware, cups, bowls, and plates.  Now, the hardest part of all: the boxes of memories.  Where to put 139 years (our combined ages) of boxed up memories.  Some are momentos, some souvenirs, and some, those that mostly fill our boxes, are relics.  These hold such vivid reminders of our life, when life reminded us how grand living could be.  Consecrated events now held in objects of sacredness stored in cardboard boxes of the covenant, the covenant of, let there be life. Life is the most sacred of all, the time of being alive on this earth.  It is easy to say the hereafter is the reality, and obviously, this is true.  But living itself, as we only know it, is as sanctified an experience as we have, and in that having and being come sacred objects, that now confront my lover and me.  Cardboard boxes…so many cardboard boxes, filled with venerated relics of the covenant of let there be our lives.   

 

 

Even After 10,000 Years

I have great longings in my life, longing for the new body I had years ago, for more time to see the earth and His glory in it, and a longing to personally renew the great friendships of my past.  

One of my greatest longings is to sing.  The miracle of pushing air from one's lungs between two pieces of vibrating meat, out through your shaped mouth, and it sounds like Elvis is a gift I long to have.  

I see my longings as gifts because God has great longings as well.  He longs for us to praise him.  He has given us the means mentioned above, and then we write songs using symbols, and we sing.  We all can sing, just some better than others.  One of my other longings is that when I get to heaven, God will give me the ability to sing like Emmylou Harris or Johnny Cash, and as I often tell my lover, “I am gonna go around singing all the time!!”...even after I’ve been there 10,000 years.

Altar building in the Smoky Mountains.

An Edited Blog for an Unedited Play

A mourning dove moans off in the woods, sorrowfully singing its plight.  Nat King Cole plays softly on the piano.  A few birds accompany him and begin to sing in notes divine.  Morning has broken, like the first morning.

Day has come.  Seeing night become day is as hopeful an act as the earth gives us.  A new day is filled with a set of time, blank, waiting to be filled in.  It is like an unedited one-man play.  What will the play be: a comedy, a tragedy, a narrative love story, a drama, satirical, longing, documentary, or historical?  All the above…in doses I hope I can handle or live up to.

 

Me and my dog.

Old Long Since

Last night, I sat in a circle of old people as the sun had moved on and turned the eternal west into shades of scarlet, orange, and purple.  Old clouds, old star, old sky, old west, and much younger people.  Truth is relative.  Much of my youth I had cannoned into this circle, the unbroken circle of memories so deeply lived as to make them nearly sacred.  The unbroken circle of youth.  They are now my ancient of days, those days when we first realized we were alive, and lived in gusto and meaning, when our bodies were exquisite vessels of life and beauty, now scarred and worn, holding all those memories I had poured into them.  Compassion and love are the drinks of God, mixed in vessels lived together, and I was draining mine to the dregs as I sat among these dear people, my ancient of days, those souls that now held so much of me in my memory form…and I held theirs, their memories of our ancient days Old Long Since.         

 

Lee Boy Benson

In order for me to write, a practice I began when I was 14*, I must be living in a harmony of gratefulness and a quaking of the intensity of meaning of living.  This can come in quite peace, overwhelming ecstasy, bitter sorrow, or grief, a fellowship of being in relationship with the Ancient of Days, the earth and cosmos, my lover, my memories, and other people.  

It can also stop coming when I am in conflict, under stress based on circumstances, or suffering some great illness or pain.  

I write every day.  If I can’t, I try to discover why I can’t and try to write about that.  This is why I am writing this.  

* I began writing at 14 when I started watching the television show, The Waltons.  The main character was John Boy Walton, and he wrote every evening sitting at his window.  He wrote about his family and where he lived because he found great meaning in these.  I thought I felt the same, and so I began to write.  I have never stopped writing every day.    

 

Made New Moon Again

We spent the evening on the Great Tennessee, quietly talking and laughing.  Peace like a river flowed through us as we rode with her slowly along.  And then like a cosmic creation, our moon rose in a peach glow that trailed out to us like the old narrow way, and like the river she whispered, “Come to me, all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  And I was drawn to Him, and as we all sat quietly, I began to praise the Ancient of Days in my heart that he had made us new; again.        

 

Elegy For A Dying Butterfly

My experience of life is lived in constant awareness of my body aging and dying in pain.  It is deeply troubling, like a dying butterfly or shooting star.  I had never marveled at the intricate beauty of a fully realized, living body until mine began its current decline.  Its dying is painfully rejected by all its dying parts, and its mind and spirit rage at the injustice.  I remember it so well, showroom condition. There is no smell like the smell of a new body.  My new memories are often of the many times I recklessly abused this beautiful thing, using it carelessly, flinging it at life as if it would last forever.  Living now is an exquisite dance of compromise, an adjusted newness of being, and rejoicing as it overcomes.  Nothing is so satisfying as creating new uses for an old antique; new ways of being, who I used to be.

 

Getting Prepared by Thanking

In a foreign city far from home, sitting in a hotel lobby with The Ancient of Days, preparing myself, my body, and soul for building a sculpture.  This has been my life.  On the road all over the world, building sculpture and being with Him.  My lover, my two sons, and one of my grandsons lie sleeping four floors up.  It is going to be hot, 96°.  We are building “Come Let Us Reason Together,” the third piece in The Trail of Truth, a sculpture park we are building to tell the story of the African Americans’ contribution to the success of West Tennessee.  It is good work we can do with our hands.  It is a simple life, hard work, quiet, peaceful, beautiful, in and on the earth.  God is good.  God is great.  I am thanking Him.

The central first work, Seven Pillars.

Building the third of 5 smaller works surrounding
the central piece.

  

 

Biking In Glories

There is nothing that lifts and confronts the heart of man as standing before the ancient earth.  Mountains, rivers, trees, skies, all sing glory.  I biked by a shallow inlet of the Emory River yesterday and was offended by the smell of rot and decay baking in the hot morning sun of mid-July.  Immediately, I was also confronted with the presence of God, reminding me of His ongoing providence to “make all things new.”  Nothing to something, formless to form, void to creation, no life to life, stench to the perfume of the glorious refrains of “Let there be!”  I biked on loving that my God Reigns!... and began to smile. 

 

It Came Upon a Dawnday Clear

“The world in solemn stillness lay.”*  This is such a profound line of beauty and adequately describes the mornings here at Fair Haven and across the mighty Tennessee and to the Appalachians beyond.  Oh, to think one day I might write a sentence that's beauty equals the beauty of what my eyes are gifted to behold.    

*Edmund Sears, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Will I See The Day?

I almost always see night become day, dawn.  In this, I am gifted a new day with all its possibilities.  What can one man accomplish in one day?  The possibilities are limitless, although the man is limited.  But the gift is this: who might I love?  Who might I help?  Who might I forgive?  Who might I think about, pray for, and hope for?  Who can I reach out to?  What can I see?  How much can I praise? and worship? and learn about and walk with?  How much of today will I be conscious of?  Will I hear the birds and love songs?  Will I smell the river rich with life?  Will I feel the warmth of my lover?  Will I taste the fruit of the earth? Will I see the day I have seen become? 

Last night I saw a hole in heaven.

An Always-Filled Glass

I am transitioning from being old to being aged.  Aged to me is the end times when I must accept that my body and mind are becoming unable to support my desires and dreams.  I have always been a dreamer, with dreams that are greater than I could ever accomplish or live up to in order to achieve.  I see myself aging like this, and I have dreams for my life that my body and mind could never accomplish.  This may seem despairing, but it is anything but.  It is only acknowledging that my intentions are always best imagined as “my cup runneth over.”  I dream of the abundance pouring over the lip, but drink from an always-filled glass. 

My cup overflowing.  Saw this group of big bucks 
while biking with my lover.  There were actually four more,
but I couldn't get them all in my shot.

How To Know The Highest Mountain Top

It is amazing how states of being and states of mind dictate my ability to think good or bad, even to be in a state of good or bad.  These are simple words to explain an infinitesimally greater meaning.  Add to this the amount of me that is given over to grieving over the plight of those I love, and I can live in valleys so deep. The dearness of this is that only in the deep valleys can I fully understand the ecstasy of the mountain top.  And I have been to the mountain top.   

Left my shovel out in the rain and this is what
gifted me when I found it.  

Trying to Keep Those Many Memories Ago

I have known my mother longer than I have known any other human.  She is the first person I can remember knowing.  Her actions toward me are my earliest memories.  I can remember on cold mornings she would lay me on the clothes dryer to keep me warm while she folded clothes.  The story I am trying to write is how wonderfully beautiful and kind she was, how present and vital to my life, how filled with life and meaning.  This is how I first knew her.  These days, I often think through these thoughts, hoping to keep the memory of her now that they are juxtaposed beside the mom I now have.  The vitality of her life is so important to my knowing her.  I am trying to keep my memory from being deconstructed by my current reality.  It’s like clinging to a vapor, a vague dream upon waking.  But her current condition is startlingly clarifying, bringing the vapor into absolute, solid remembering.  She was so alive, so beautiful, so important to me.  She is the video of my earliest life, the one person who was present in those many memories ago.   

Family Photo, mom holding me at 4 months.

    

 

Growing Up In One World, Growing Old In Another

When I was growing up, there were only two ways to say anything to anyone.  You could say it to them face-to-face or on the phone.  This was my technology.  It was also limited to a very few people, those with whom I wanted to have physical contact.  My talking crowd, my friends, were physically near me every day.  It was a very small world, but filled with meaningful relationships.  Those friends I loved!  As much as a young teenager can love, I loved them.   Such was the small, loving world of my youth. 

It would be hard to function in my world if you did not grow up in it.  Person-to-person, physical contact was the key to all my enduring relationships.  It still is today.  However, it is hard for me to function in a world that is best suited for those who didn’t grow up in mine.   

A Blood Filled Fountain In Laughed Filled “Hollars”

We are at the Benson Family Reunion.  Every three years, we get the entire clan together. We number 50 something of which 39 are here.  All came from two only children, my Dad and Mom.  Dad died many years ago, and Mom is 9/10ths in heaven.  Their four children, of whom I am the third, are all here, as are many of each of ours.  

Yesterday we were all sitting around visiting, and my brother, talking of getting old, said, “We were going like gangbusters, forging ahead, and then all of a sudden you get old and you just fall apart.”  

I added, “And the fall is so much faster than the rise.”

This morning, I am sitting in a quiet corner thinking of our family.  We are clannish, all for one and one for all, mountain people, Tennesseans, and it's passed on by blood.  We don’t take each other serious, but we take the blood serious.   We are followers of Jesus Christ, and it's his blood we take serious.  He is all we have.  Nothing else matters but passing on His blood to our next of kin. 

We are as goofy a family as you will ever find.  Our laughter fills the mountain hollars as we once again tighten the ties that bind, that blessed “Tie that binds our hearts in Christian love…”  

“There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.”  

From Fall Creek Falls State Park, and the Benson Family Reunion, sinners all, plunged beneath the blood-filled fountain.  If you pass and hear the laughter-filled mountain hollars, it’s just us. 

  

 

Why An Artist?

Art is a word we have made up to identify what we do to declare our overwhelming desire to praise whoever made the universe.  It is this one ecstasy we are always trying to express.  We often confuse the object of our desire with the self, and then art is not made but only a self-expression.  Art is reserved for the deepest desire of our soul, to help us be in a personal relationship with Whoever made the universe.  The universe is that good, its beauty that beautiful, its existence that spiritual.  If the universe and art are anything, they are a Spiritual/spiritual expressions.  This is the most sincere reason one chooses to become an artist.   

My daughter, Sissy, gave me these roses for Father's Day.
They have been a constant companion for me during my time with 
The LORD.  They remind me that even in death, their beauty is a part
of the Divine realm of love, that art can never play in but can only
lead the artist to a life of praise and worship for the example.

 

 

Tired of Hearing Myself

“Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness.”  Getting old ain't for the weak of heart. the frail of spirit, the weak of character, or the uncommitted to Christ.  Old takes such wisdom.  Wisdom to find meaningful and practical ways to compensate for the ongoing failings of our bodies and minds.  It takes grit, true grit, to muster on even in pain and hardship, and to do so without complaining or giving voice to it.  At one time, I made a New Year's resolution to not make any sound when standing up or sitting down.  I got tired of hearing myself moan and groan. 

Old age is the time when you gain so much wisdom because life requires so much more. I now have grown children, with spouses, and grandchildren, and all of them need me to live a life of righteousness and reason, and to often share it with them.  However, I must be wise enough to do so in a way they can kindly accept and apply.  Frequently, it takes greater wisdom to know how to share wisdom than the wisdom you are sharing.  

 

Meanwhile, At Fair Haven

 

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

As one grows old, one receives many opportunities to be reborn as old things wear out, new things are given.  As we see less, we begin to look over more.  As we hear less, we are more forgiving.  “Oh well” comes to mind more and more as we accept the things we can do nothing about.  As we slow down, we give up more of the horizon and see more of the earth beneath our feet.  We sit more, so we see more.  We are cold more so we hold each other more.  We have more time, so we begin to love more, pray more, and allow empathy, sympathy, and caring to take up a greater amount of our feelings.  Getting old is a tough role to play; it's like when all your children were small and needed constant attention and care.  Being old requires constant attention because so much of our body is vying for our attention. Remember when your small child used to stand beside you and say, “Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! That’s how your old body does, Hey! Hey! Hey! it says. 

I once read a book about a hiker who, because of a hiking accident, had to live with constant pain.  He eventually realized pain was the only way he knew most of his body existed.  His example was when your fingertips get cold, you are suddenly aware you have fingertips.  Being old is the only way we will ever know much of who we are, and of many of life's goodnesses.  

The cicadas were out in 
force this year at Fair Haven

                  

Meeting Again A Mighty Man

I am going to the great parting today, one of my mighty men has passed on to his Father.  There are very few great men in one’s life, those men who you meet and who change the direction of your life.  In fact, he changed the direction of all of my family's lives.  He is the artist who modeled what it meant to be an artist.  42 years ago, he was my art professor, but over my nine years in Art School, he became a man I wanted to be just like.  It wasn’t that I wanted to model my life after him.  I wanted to be just like him.  He was the type of man, artist, Christian, man of God, I wanted to be just like.  I have seven mighty men in my life of 68 years.  He is number three.  A mighty man has parted from earth, and all of earth is poorer, but I am richer.  We were to meet a few months ago, and he had to cancel the day we were to meet.  He texted me and closed with this, “I love you too, Aaron and Betty, and all the kids.  Have a wonderful life. We will meet again.”  Yes, Dr. Darrow.  We will meet again. A mighty man has parted this earth. 

The last time I saw him.

   

These are how I came to know him.

Bearing Your Name and Your Blood

5-18-2025

Number 13 has arrived, making us the luckiest family on earth.  Elijah John Benson is ours, our 13th grandchild.  He is tiny, beautiful, and laid back, squawks only when hungry.  He is a peace-filled balm to this aging old soul.  He is so new, so fresh, a life just begun.  Only the aged can see the depth of joy and satisfaction in the exquisite presence of a newborn human being bearing your name and your blood.  

Pushing Our Limits

It is a rainy Sunday morning coming down.  We are in a distant state, caring for a family in need.  We are pushing our limits, using up physical resources, bending our backs to the plow, setting our feet to the needs, hands to the task.  We have become old, not in essence but in the present.  Our hearts and souls don’t feel we are, but our bodies do.  We are young and filled with great hopes and desires, encased in bodies worn and weathered.  Our hearts are so free, so silly in our joinings to each other, memories of adventures, all day and nighters, on the edge, racing for the brass ring.  We have beheld Him, lived in His presence, seen His glories, and now, aged and bent, our meaning is a great aching in our hearts of knowing who we were is still who we are.  My lover and I.  We are again...pushing our limits.    

 

The Wonders of Your Love

What are the wonders of your love?  If you asked your spouse, children, or friends, what would they say?  This morning I read in the Psalms, David asking God to show him, “the wonders of your (God) great love.  We are all recipients of God’s great love wonders.  Love, light, warmth, beauty, and hopefully, salvation.  After I read this, I spent some time thanking God, and now, as I meditate on it, I wonder how I am doing sharing the wonders of His great love?  I am a great recipient.  I hope I am a great giver.     

Stiff-Necked and Hard-Hearted

*Two nights ago, a terrible storm swept through our area. As usual, I found myself worrying and praying, specifically for the trees in our front yard at Fair Haven. I asked God to protect them. While the storm raged, I watched the news, and the newscasters were dramatic in their descriptions of its intensity. It sounded like devastation was inevitable.

The next morning, as we left downtown Knoxville and drove toward Fair Haven, I braced myself. I fully expected to see trees down all along the way. But as I drove down the interstate—lined with trees as far as the eye could see—I noticed something strange. Not one was down. I thought to myself, “That’s odd. I was sure I’d see storm damage by now.”

And in that quiet moment, God spoke to my heart:

 "Lee, your glass isn’t just half full—it’s running over and spilling into your lap. Look at all the trees I protected. But you’re focused on the one you expected to fall."

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud and share it with Betty.

By the end of the day, I realized—I hadn’t seen a single tree down. Not one.

This morning, while reading the Bible, I was reminded how often God called His people “stiff-necked” and “hard-hearted.” And I had to admit… I can often be a stiff-necked, hard-hearted Christian.

I’m sorry, Lord.

*Checked with Grammarly and ChatGPT 

Mother's Day Code: Faulty Sensor

I have a camshaft sensor fault in my truck.  It makes all the other things run in order.  Now it runs really rough when it idles.  My mom is in a state of idle.  She can sit in a wheelchair.  But her life sensor has become faulty.  She doesn’t run right. There is very little of my mom left, nothing really that I knew all my life as her.  I think she knows me, sometimes, and sometimes knows my name.  I can see it in her eyes when all things are clicking correctly, twinkling clarity I call it, a momentary glimpse that all is there.  But it's gone as quick as it comes.  She is 100% my mom, but only a little percentage of herself.  How do I have her in my life?  The way she is!!!  I don’t know if she experiences happiness.  She had very little of it growing up, and so she struggled to be able to experience it when she was my mom.  It wasn’t that she wasn’t content or fulfilled in her day-to-day, but her years to 16 were surely scarred by unhappiness and regret.  Her greatest trait was that she worked all the time, kept us spotless, her home the same, and her life as well.  She was a good Baptist but a greater Christian.  I like to think I was her favorite; she would tell me, “You were the one I prayed for, and God gave me you.”  Years later, telling me her memory of my teenage years, she would say, “Lee, often was the nights I would walk the back yard praying for the Lord to take you home or me one.”  Eventually, He will take us both home to be with him.   My mom has a life sensor fault.  She is my mom.      

 

Last Thoughts on Spain

At the airport in Madrid, the day we were leaving, I noticed a young man lying on the floor squeezed in behind a pillar facing the wall. He was dirty, disheveled, and asleep, with a small, tattered bag for a pillow.  It dawned on me I had seen the same boy in the same state but in a different part of the airport when we had arrived two weeks earlier.  He must live at the airport.  At that moment, it struck me that in all my reality of validation of my worth in Christ’s love, it was no more or less than the validation of worth this young man had in Christ’s love for him.  We were equal in the sight of our Lord.  I had an overwhelming sense of knowing, of wonder, of the reality of life as I quickly passed him in my other reality of trying to navigate all the systems of a foreign airport to allow me to go from there to my plane and ultimately to America.  It was the moment of juxtaposing my two realities, one harried and rushed, one stark, clear, and the truer of the two.  I write this because our trip, my lover and I, was a grand reality of our relationship with God, with beauty, in an overwhelming variety of experiences.  But at that moment in the airport, I realized the reality of this young man and me over the preceding two weeks was the same, two children being kept by God who would someday stand before Him to give an account.   It was a spark of meaning like the flash of lightning.  I said a brief prayer for him and rushed on in my other reality. 

Landed in Knoxville, hard rode, and put up wet but
good to be home.

   

From the Taj Mahal

When I was a little boy, my mom always read to me.  One of the books she read  was titled “The Man Without a Country.”  It was about an army officer who was tried for treason during the Revolutionary War.  During the trial, he said he wished he would never hear of America again.  He was convicted, and the judge sentenced him to serve out his life sentence onboard ships and never again be allowed in America or to hear or read a word about America.  I never got over that story.  This morning, I woke up in the Taj Mahal, the penthouse suite in a high-rise in Knoxville, the whole top floor.  It is owned by a dear friend of our whole family.  They have loaned it to us while our home is being built.  Our contractor still needs a few days to get the basement finished, so we can at least move back into my studio while the remainder of our home is finished.  So we are a couple without a home.  We long to be a Fair Haven, but–the Taj Mahal is a grand substitute.  

My view this morning in America.

 

Elton's song "Daniel" in reverse, Leaving Spain

Going home morning.  I am awake early, make cowboy coffee, read the Ancient Text,  and write my prayers.  My lover sleeps.  I love sitting with her this way, she always sleeps the rest of the innocent.  It is who she is.  We fly home today at 1:45p.m., eight hours to Philadelphia, a three-hour layover, and get to Knoxville at 8:55 this evening.  Coming home from abroad is an ordeal; it will be a 16-hour day.  But it is a part of a grace-filled life.  One cannot expect to travel halfway around the world and arrive feeling like you had just strolled through the tulips.  Travel is one of the deepest desires in humans, to explore, to search out, and reach beyond our vision to other worlds.  It is Godly and from God.  Why else would the earth be so beautiful if He didn’t intend us to go see it and, in the seeing, give Him praise?  My lover awakens and kisses the top of my head.  From far away.  lee

Leaving Spain.

 

Marked by Faith, Hope, and Love

Fifteen days since we left, and now I sit in a hotel room at Madrid’s airport, weary after a day of travel, waiting to fly home tomorrow.  It has been a crusade; we have dwelt in many houses of our Lord.  We have traveled some 5000 plus kilometers and seen the width and depth of Spain and Portugal.  It is a garden of earthly delights; the whole is a bloom of wheat, crops, and orchards of every kind, rolling across every square inch of her.  Only her many mountains interrupt the abundance.  And there is one constant, thousands of homestead relics, dilapidated sentinels of a past filled with people of the land, stone Ebenezers declaring a rich history of farming peoples who took God at his Word and took dominative care of this land.  I often see abandoned homes and think about how ambitious the old souls were who had built them, now gone the way of all things, dust to dust.  We all leave some mark on the earth, and these have left a mark of hopeful planting, tilling, and bringing forth from the land.  Faith, hope, and love, this is way we leave Spain.  It has marked us!  From the Axor Hotel, Madrid Airport.  lee

 

The Adventure of Returning

We turn for home today, a ritual we have done over and over again from points all over the earth.  We turn north for Madrid, a two-day journey, and then fly away home on the third day.  It is a great blessing to go home, to have a home, a loved family, to know this is our bit of land, our piece of the earth the Lord has loaned us to grow old on.  My dad was a rolling stone, my mom always saying, “He can’t stay put for long”, and I am a lot like him, always wondering what's around that bend in the trail, over the next rise, at the top of the mountain.  But even so, going home is a great joy; to turn one’s face homeward is to know another adventure, the adventure of returning.  From southern Portugal.  lee

Our beloved Fair Haven from our new porch.  Taken the day
before we left.

 

Don't Hurt God

We do nothing well.  Lounge around, read, piddle, it's called.  Everyone needs piddle time.  Time with nothing on the schedule, no engagements, no deadlines, checkout times, checkin times, nothing but deciding if we’ll get up, continue to write, have another cup of coffee, or just sit and stare out the window.  One of our great piddle pastimes is looking, seeing, and acknowledging.  There is so much beauty in the world, a cornucopia of sensory delights, and most are naturally occurring.  Well, naturally, meaning God made them.  I mean “who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it wth dew…”  The Lord God can.  But it is the “acknowledging” that we can often skip over.  If you could take a sunrise and sprinkle it with dew and no one acknowledged you for it, that would hurt.  Don’t hurt God.  That’s not nice.  The Candy Man can!!!