Overwhelmed With Events

America is still here, awake, going about our work of the day.  Many are in turmoil, seem forsaken and lost for what to do, and overwhelmed with events.  Many are elated, over the moon, victory-lapping, and overwhelmed with events.  Such is life.  Life goes on, and no matter what side you are on most of life is lost to our understanding.  Good people die, laughter is good medicine, cancer happens, grandbabies are born, North Carolina is flooded, planes fly, everyone can’t sing, roses, bad people make out, dogs are nice, and we get old and broken.  Life more often than not, does not make sense.  What are we to do.  I am a follower of Christ, and if He has taught me one thing, it is this, I will not understand most of life.  It is what He came to help me with.  It is called faith, faith that He loves me, that He has a plan for me, America, the earth, and the cosmos.  That His plan will be fulfilled…PERIOD.  It is a plan for good, good wins, love wins, He wins.  My role in life is to go about doing as good a job as I can today.  To love others.  To serve.  To pick up the errant piece of trash.  To smile at everyone and wave.  To be kind.  To be nice.  To try as best as I can to do the right thing every moment, every glorious moment He gives me to be alive today.  He is the only way I have hope.  He has a plan and He will work it all out.  For Good.  For His Good, and it will be forever and evermore, GOOD.  

 

We Interupt this program to bring you this special annocement

6-8-2024 AD

(Government regulations have forced me to withhold this blog written five months ago until they (the government) would stamp their approval on what God approved on the above date)

I have never experienced adoption.  Our youngest son and his wife have been in the process for three years.  It has not been easy.  This is life at its most meaningful, being repeatedly and tragically snatched away.  Added to this, many of these situations come with tragic circumstances forcing our hearts to face unbearable realities.  We go through these things as a family.  More than once, we have laid upon the mountaintop altar with no baby in the bush.  But yesterday, June the seventh, two thousand and twenty-four AD, Joshua James Benson was born.   Today he lies in the arms of his mother, “skin to skin” as our son puts it.  I have moved the stakes out, widening our tent, and know, of all truths, this is the truest.  He was worth it all.  He is now ours!!!

Our littles Inca grandson, Joshua James Benson!!!

 

Daylight Savings Court

The times they are changing; daylight is being saved, and instead of dark this early morning, someone has saved some morning for me to enjoy.  Clear skies break the butte we are camped under deep in Palo Dura Canyon in NW, Texas.  Yesterday was our longest journey as we drove from Marfa in the far SW to here, near Amarillo, in the NW panhandle, a 9-hour journey.  It is the Sabbath, and we will partake.  Sabbath rest is one of the kindest commands of Almighty Who needs no rest but knows, boy, howdy we do.  It rained yesterday, and as we arrived, the stream lying at the bottom of the canyon ran rust red, a liquid mark of beauty unrivaled by all the art we had just seen.  Creation is seconded only by Christ in their testimony of Your loving mercy, grace, and care for us.  If we don’t accept Christ’s testimony, creation will be the star witness against us.  As Paul Harvey used to say, “You better settle outta court”.  Creation is an expert witness.  

  

 

 

Rightly Overwhelmed Art

We are leaving early this a.m., our longest one-day journey ahead of us.  Seven hours from here to Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo.  We are going there to see another iconic land artwork, Cadillac Ranch.  We toured all of Donald Judd’s complex yesterday.  Powerful.  However, this is the truth of it.  The compound is a WW I and II army base and prisoner-of-war camp.  Many of the old signs painted in German still remain.  The history here, still very much in evidence, the location in the vastness of SW Texas, and the architecture overwhelm the art and place it rightfully in one's heart, mind, and soul.   

 

 

Marfa Texas, Art, Fashion, and Truth

Marfa Texas

We came to Marfa because it is the location of two great art experiences I have long heard of but never gotten to experience, Prada Marfa and Donald Judd’s compounds, where he established his art and art practice.   Prada Marfa is a land art piece.  It is a small adobe shop built to mimic a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texas desert, surrounded by hundreds of square miles of barrenness.  You cannot enter it but it has two large windows where you can look in at the Prada brand women's shoes and purses.  It is stunning in its implications, international fashion juxtaposed against the vastness of the earth.  I have never been a big fan of Judd’s work but greatly admire his great visual attempt to find meaning and purpose in the fundamentals of Art, form, and his dependence upon the idea that creating is the highest form of meaning for humans.  This is the power of Art for me.  It, like no other, shows us our human desire for meaning, for purpose in life.  Although many great artists never find the Ultimate Meaning Giver, I admire their all-out abandonment toward the search.  It gives me an example of how I am to follow Christ, not only in my faith and religious life but in all of my life, including my vocation.  Creating Art is one of the sincerest ways to love God, serve Him, and live to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.  

 

Choosing to Warm The Old Out of Me

We are on the move again.  The delightful trail always calls us on somewhere beautiful.  It has turned cooler, 56° this morning.  Sun is just outlining the Davis Mountains. Good Text, good coffee, and good morning.  It is a slow morning.  Nothing to do but rest and be present.  I am trying to read all of Zane Grey’s and Louis L’Amour’s westerns and this country underscores their brilliant writing.  Reading Grey’s Stranger From the Tonto.  It will fill much of today.  I may ease back in bed beside my lover to warm the oldness out of me.  Choices, Choices, Choices.  

In Mexico.  We boated across the Rio Grande and had 
lunch and visit in Boquillas.

As Alive As Dying

Death sets you down. Death of a large animal has to be reckoned with.  As we were hiking the other day, we came on a horse in the last throes of living.  Her eyes closed, her breathing occasionally, but no other sign.  A mass of dying, right here open to the heavens, dug into the earth, she seemingly more alive than me; her aliveness being just a twinkling away from her dead nothingness, all she was to do she has done.  Once a horse, now moments from being just dead, gone forever.  My lover and I are simple people.  We believe, really, really believe.  An example.  One day, while riding in Big Bend, a big buck ran across the road back into the scrub.  We stopped, and she whistled at him, and he turned and looked at us.  We marveled at his beauty, his being, his power, all the while, we were both talking to him.  As we drove off, she shouted, “We love you!” and, taking my cue from her, I shouted, “We’ll see you in heaven!”  Both of us were telling the truth.  We are simple.  So we looked longingly at this dying being, a horse, a good horse.  And in some way, we both experienced sorrow for her passing and joy in her crossing over…to the earned and welcomed rest.  And that is the simple truth of four simple, living and dying creatures.  Sparrows and horses fall to the earth only with His notice.    

The horse.

  

The buck.