Farming Young Punk Delinquents

Commerce is a pervading activity; even God was a carpenter.  What are we to make of our day-to-day task of commerce?  Obviously money is important, we must pay the electric bill, but why are we daily dutifully at the plow?  Can lucre create in us a worthy workman for the workforce, desiring equally to work well as to earn our keep?  I am most driven by vision, vision of better than, better than yesterday, better than the record, better than the best so far.  But honestly that is untrue.  I am most driven to have others live, live in and with the Divine, casting a vision of what it means to live well and a path by which to live it.  I have struggled greatly to live well; that bar always nonchalantly laid before me by my parents.  My parents seemed to attract vagrant’s, vagabonds and ne'er-do-wells and spent their lives seeking to help them along the paths of righteousness; a commerce that now seems to makes sense as I pull the plow that cuts the path.   

This Simply IS

This is.  Warmth of a lover on cold nights, hearts literally sewn one inside the other, the other inside the other.  Training daily with humans who know they have souls.  Mending tasks using earth, water, air and fire, really white fire binding your mending efforts into art because every cell that is, is in need of some repair; and art seems a sincere tool.  Knowing the sky and the ground, the clouds, grass, trees, birds and the like; because you strain to see, hear, touch, taste and smell.  Sitting in the silent morn with The Ancient Of Days and believing there is no better or rather place to be.  This simply IS.  

Mending

Art making is a vocational calling that allows animation in humans need to mend.  We are made to mend.  Mending is a most sincere act and art making is one of the most sincere ways to do it.  It is not going to solve the great issues that confront humankind but it allows you the opportunity of being kind to humans. The beauty in the hand made cup that holds the offered “cool water”, has the attention of God Almighty because beauty is His Realm.  Mending and mending where we are toward who we are with satisfies the first and second greatest rules of life.        

The Bountiful Beautiful

Unless a man walks across America it is doubtful that he can ever experience a truly thankful Thanksgiving.  I have seen mountains of corn laid up beside endless filled silos, I have driven nine hours in grain and on a 1000-mile gravel road through only wilderness.  I have seen snow in July, green lightening in a blizzard, a small bowl valley of wildflowers atop a mountain peak, fish of every color, a wild wolf eating a steaming dear on a frozen lake.  I have seen heathen saved, the dead brought to life, the starved fed and the crippled walk.  I have seen acres of pecan trees, a lone apple tree fruited till its branches lay on the ground, winter wheat as green as God’s eyes and sat in trees bigger than my dining room.  I have seen my own humans come from love tender, death at 99, saints from evil homes and human beauty to match sapphires.  I’ve been a prodigal, been redeemed, washed up as refuge on a porch that took me in and been baptized more than once.  I’ve been carried off mountains by my wife and daughter, swam in lakes of my own blood, rescued lambs from cliffs and killed lambs with my bare hands.  I have been saved, been loved, loved, birthed and held a child before any other hand touched him, and now often, as this morning, laid in the dark bed while all slumbered telling God how thankful i am that He Is I Am.  Happy Thanksgiving God, You are doing a marvelous job with America the Bountiful Beautiful!!!

THE GREATER MIGRATION

The great migration is occurring, Americans of all faiths and creeds, ethnicity, gender, culture and stripe are moving toward home.  Ours has greatly enlarged already and several more Bensons are on the trail here.  Our tent stakes are moved out, barns, stables and cupboards are full, fires are lit, fresh linens out, Butterball harvested and littles in every nook and cranny.  Family!!!  It is the grandest idea and critical to all of human life, and is practiced and mostly revered, worldwide.  The great migration; where love moves toward love to experience peace and harmony and goodwill toward one another and strengthen the “ties that bind.”  It is also eternal; one day there will be another migration, another homecoming, a mass movement of family toward family forever.  THE GREATER MIGRATION.