Surprised by Beauty

There is a definitive connection between natural beauty and the consideration of the divine.  Beauty is the white matter of the universe.  It is everywhere and needs no human assistance or involvement.  This is most evident when one considers all the beauty that exists that no human will ever see like wildflowers in remote places.  But this beauty abounds in our very world but goes un-noticed.  One of the greatest gifts you can accept is to be ever alive to seeing beauty, a sure way to renewing the ‘joy of your salvation.’  However, as I am trying to learn from C.S. Lewis, it is not the beauty, nor my recognizing it, it is the seemingly natural jump my spirit makes to The Conceiver/Creator and always asks my mind, “will you accept The Truth—by faith?”  There seems to be proof there but not in the way my mind has been developed to acknowledge or know truth.  It is a sense of transcendent Absolute Truth, that beauty sparks, kindles my spirit, fires my mind and the The Blaze occurs across my being illuminating my understanding that I AM is.

A leaf on our porch.

It's A Boy

I do not fully understand the desire for fathers to have sons.  I guess the absoluteness of that can be understood in The Trinity.  My son is having a son is a brushing against The Ancient of Days, a breath of Eden, a twinkle of heaven.  In my lifetime my father had a son, I had a son, my son is having a son—and I AM did too. 

Betty holding our son who is having a son.

Super Computing A Nut Nut

The Benson Clan is just buzzing with excitement and anticipation.  Today we all find out whether we are having a new girl Benson or a new boy Benson.  One thing for sure, we are having a brand new human Benson.  I can’t fathom making a human…no human and then a human started—UNFATHOMABLE.   I often marvel at it all and the conception is the most enjoyable, not the act but the idea.  I’m smiling too.  Conceiving an idea in art making is the hardest part, which leads me to believe it would be so in all creative endeavors.  So as to not overtax my mental capacities I consider ideas and how hard it might have been to conceive of them.  A nut is one; like a pecan or walnut.  I can possible understand the making of it but it’s the “no nut” idea and then you think up a nut that is startling to me.  The other day the news announced that America has, for the first time in several years, the world’s fastest computer and it is just down the road at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  It can do 2 trillion computations per second.  I told Betty it should glow at night or something to let us know it’s there.  Without any input would that thing think up a nut?  Whatever the case, one thing is for sure, no matter how many we had or how long we had them, including 5.2 billion years, I am convinced it could never conceive of a Little Nut Nut Benson human much less thought up how much fun it is to “conceive” it.  

  

It Ain’t Nike

If I were a more enlightened savage or a secularist shaman I think I might worship the wing.  Living beside a great river one has enormous opportunity to observe the miracles of the wing.  Not only do birds of all shapes and sizes abound but also, by the traffic and height, I suspect I am in the ascending or glide path of three major airports, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Atlanta.  The conception of lift over curved wing had to be one of the greatest achievements of whomever conceives of all miracles and to give it away to birds, bees and Boeing is one of the kindest acts on record.  Bob, our local blue heron, glides along on two perfect idols, if you need gods to worship, which I suspect we all do; and that pure white Egret on the shore in front of me would provide relics of Notre Dame quality.  If you could know that Conceiver, They would be worship worthy or at the very least a prolonged “swoosh”* of your hearts imagination.

*I believe that is the name of the symbol on the side of Nike shoes.  

After Richard Long
A Line Made While Hiking

 

The Brutality Of Legal And Illegal Separation

The going American rage today is the separation of children from their mothers on our southern border.  Now this appalls me and it does not speak well of us nor truly represents our people.  However, it is also blatantly evident that the violent separation of children from their mothers by legal abortion and the devastating separation of children from their parents by divorce, unwed mothers and no show fathers is an epidemic far worse.  Add to that a media that champions sexual freedom that account for many of these dear but unwanted or uncared for children and the rights of the government to supersede parental rights and you have an irony of American proportion.  I do believe it is possible to solve all these problems but it will take a national policy that will be painful.  My gravest concern is that with the availability of local, regional and national platforms for every Tom, Dick and Harry to scream at every John, Pete and Paul nothing will get done except the norm. We will just get madder at each other while the most vulnerable, our children, continue to suffer the brutalities of our legal and illegal systems.