Beauty Proves A Good God

“There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.”

Walden, Thoreau

There is no more awakening for me as a human than to walk in the mountains, to wonder through the wood on no trail but the one that is the forest.  To see the beauty of the earth is to rededicate yourself to The One who made the earth for no artist made art but that art did dwell in him.  Good, all good, of which beauty is one of the mains, is from God.  To seek beauty and to recognize it is humbly pursuing God.  To acknowledge this is to worship God!

A Hearth And A Stone Walled Promised Land

I am reading in Deuteronomy and Walden or, Life in The Woods.  Both are stories of mans move into the Promised Land.  Yesterday Betty and I were hiking along no trail in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park when we walked upon an old fireplace and a stacked stone wall that went on for a quarter mile or more.  The fireplace had no chimney attached and the stone wall was more a broken and given away line than a wall.  I am always moved by mans marking of planet earth, the physical self left neatly behind.  Oh what a feat someone must of thought as he surveyed his walled in Promised Land.  A hearth and a wall are perhaps the best things to leave behind to mark our sojourn here on earth because they speak of hope and prosperity.    

A Cigarette, A Budweiser or A Bible?

Several years ago I was facing the greatest crisis of my life.  I was out walking in the mountains trying to deal with the weight of it.  I found myself walking along this rock face when I came upon this crack.  I put my hands upon the rock, one on each side of the crack.  I had come to the end of what I could handle.  This crack represented for me the cost of crisis to break me but also a dividing line, I could go on with Christ or I could escape into my self.  It was a seminal moment for me.  I came home and made the sculpture, “A Cigarette, A Budweiser or A Bible?” which is now part of West Tennessee Regional Art Center’s permanent collection. 

The crisis still lingered on for several years but my testimony today is that it concluded in the greatest miracle of the last 20 years of my life. 

(I took these images yesterday as I went back to renew my faith in Him.)

Flawless Beauty

As I glanced at moss this morning I was suddenly, although briefly, aware that beauty, flawless beauty, perfect beauty is as unknown to the creative hands of humans as trying to concoct a new primary color.

Balm For A Hardened Heart

The world is so bleak and marred that it often becomes for me an object of scorn and disgust.  Evil triumphing over good is now an American epidemic.  Reading the Old Testament emboldens my disgust and ripens my desire for vengeance.  However, it seems my heart, mind and spirit are never so set on revenge that I am unable to hear a Still, Small Voice saying, “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”