That Ancient Trail

There is a quiet trail always there; in the harrow and hell of everyday life it is just set to the side, there, along the quiet waters and green valley.  And no matter your state or station, your trials, tribulations or setbacks, that trailhead is always right there waiting to be taken.  It is not well traveled or easily seen but it is well marked, “Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, Mark, Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, The Old Rugged Cross…” But we must choose the trail, not some mental agreement to go hiking but a determination to set our foot to the path.  This is the ancient way, the path laid down before Eden, the trail of “the cool of the evening”, the way everlasting.  The trails name?  Joy! Description? For all ages and abilities. Length? Infinity. 

There Is No Thought In A Vacuum

No one can sit in nature and not consider the overwhelming evidence that not only was this created but also its creator is beyond all comprehension of man.  Creation mocks the fool who says “time and chance” and sneers at those that hold that all has come from nothing; nature’s remarkability will not be trivialized especially by the trivial theories of humans who seek absolute truth in the mind of man.  Creation will always remain outside of mans understanding because man can understand nothing in a vacuum but only in the rich laboratory of the already created.   

American Gothic

Just to put this blog in context.  I am sitting in front of a pump working on it to irrigate our Fair Haven.  I am eating a tomato sandwich on homemade bread looking out over the Tennessee River.  We are country. 

This is country.  Two hard luck lovers standing on the edge of life, love and the earth, pushing back on America to make room for them; willing to take the risk, make a home, sew children deeply into one another, wake at dawn, mold the fabric of hearth and stone into their life.  Make art, make love, make Godly all that they walk, lay and toil upon.  This is country, drinking from a coffee cup of grave dirt and watching the sun rise and set over the earth that they have now staked claim to.  This is America, Zac and Britt taking hold of the plow and not looking back and Bensons spreading our corner stakes.  Bensons.  We are country.  We are American Gothic. 

July 25, 2017

Hot tears on cold pillows as I lay away awake in the dark morning in a hotel room in Xenia Ohio singing silently to myself, “Blessed assurance Jesus is mine…”

A Father's Thoughts On Failure

Sitting at the Pet Scan

Remember all those hopes and dreams you had for your child or the thought that you would take a thousand bullets for her or the lethality you felt for anyone or thing that would hurt or scare her?  Remember all those thoughts that every cell of her was sacred and anything that would hurt one was sacrilege?  There comes a time when all of that is for naught.  You just sit in a clean, pretty waiting room in utter failure as all these things swirl around your child.  “Mary Carbonell” you hear and you reach out to hold her hand and pray and she stands to go, turns and looks back and in tears quietly says, “Pray for me.”  Utter failure is not something a father handles well.  Not utter failure in the sense that you didn’t try or that you tried and failed.  Utter failure in the sense that there is nothing in you that can do anything to what is in her.  It is one of the surest signs that God exists because only He could set out balm in front of you and say, “I can handle this too!”  He knows what it means to sit and watch helplessly and silently as they have their way with His Child.  Utter failure in that you have nothing, you can shake your fist at the heavens and curse a blue streak across the sky and still be left with silent nothing.  It’s those times when you try to turn your head every which way to find that one place where you can cry in private.  Only God, ONLY GOD, can be for her everything that you would if you could and you are left with ONLY GOD.  I wouldn’t wish this on anyone but if it happened He would be the only One to leave them with, ONLY GOD.   

   

No Consciousness of Clarity

I have spent my entire life working at art making.  It has been exceedingly rewarding as well as difficult.  Art is the complete essence of the idea and is able to cast its whole on the viewer with startling clarity.  The issue is that we have been trained to desire the startling with no longing for the clarity and now we know not that clarity exists or what it means when art casts it upon us.