Surviving Is The Art Of Waking

How to survive.  Wake up; try to do this before dawn.  Kiss your wife on the head and whisper you love her.  Sit up.  Put on really good house shoes.  Get up.  Make good coffee.  Put it in a really great cup.  Go outside preferably in the wild or the wild you have created.  Sit down in a good chair.  Allow you being awake to create gratefulness.  Listen.  Identify all the sounds you hear.  Allow the earth to create a state of thankfulness.  Relax.  Read the best book you know made from the best materials you can afford and use a pen to record everything on the pages of the book that the book is giving you.  (Plan to give that book to a loved one.)  Talk or write to the greatest being you know or have ever heard of, just tell them what is going on with you.  BE HONEST!  BE GRATEFUL!  Layout your day consciously trying to help out.  Relax.  Be still.  Be quite.  Begin. 

Years ago I spent many a morning waking up
in this old cook tent.

Old Sculptor

I have arrived at a point in my life where I am radically changing my day-to-day engagements.  I am not altogether sure of the process or the outcome other than what always drives humans, to find meaning.  Finding meaning, in my case, mostly means discovery, to engage in exploration, the meaning of wander and the skill and courage to make a trail into the unknown.  Art making and higher education are both ripe with the hope of discovery but age can lull one into the dull ease of habit.  My greatest issue is to find a way to of using an old body to still sculpt, managing to find ways to explore the wild, which always requires physical proficiency, with a body that is painfully aged.  That in and of itself is adventurous and requires great creative thinking and doing and, although at any age the body is an exquisite sculpture, I am finding making sculpture with mine much more challenging. 

Making sculpture 20 something years ago.  Oh
boy was it easier.  My first and best studio assistant, Preston
Saunders, in the hole, is helping me find the exact center of the footing using a plumb bob
on one of the coldest days in the history of Talladega AL.  My four year
old son Zac is taking the picture. 

Joy In Creative Gratitude

I lunched Saturday with a young artist who has laid down her art-making, more like surrendered it, because it became for her no more than self-examination of her pain.  I encouraged her to see this season as a time of stopping not quitting and urged her to see art-making as a hopeful act, a most holy act for those that are called.  Art and Art making can and needs to be, a redemptive act, a manner of knowing The Redeemer, a way of living a continual gratitude.  For if God be real Whom else is there to declare for where else lies hope?  All creative acts are an acknowledgment of The Creator, for all creative acts are a response to that which is already created.  It is impossible for humans to exist in a formless vacuum and conceive of a creative act.  Being is why we create, compelled to create, and in faith, joy in creative gratitude.   

Purposeful Faith

I believe reading, studying and meditating on Scripture, is like sitting at the feet of Christ longingly listening to everything He has to say.  Is there a more devoted act than actually, lovingly wanting to be with someone?  I wonder in the great scheme of things if that one devotion will supersede all other acts of our faith including evangelism?

Mary and Martha by
He Qi.  This artist is now featured
in Union's Art Gallery

   

Fighting To Save

Red To Black To Blue

Christ was so engaged with humans and in his earthly ministry right up until he was betrayed but after that he became passively disengaged.  In fact, if you read a red-letter edition of the Bible the text goes from mostly red to mostly black.  Everyone else in the event is very engaged, pitiless mostly, some out of fear, most out of the heartlessness of the fall.  Christ just selflessly gave himself over to the fall for each of us.  We are still mostly pitiless, fallen, heartless, given over to our self-promotions, while politicians and the media fan our heartless flames.  I was reminded of the harshness of heartlessness this morning, how everyone and everything is mired in the fall and is groaning under its weight.  Our bluebird box, which we have anxiously watched for days because it held five little pale blue eggs, was set upon overnight by a heartless force.  There was a war in the box, blue feathers, nest, and one lone egg was all that was left from the violent encounter, something killing, something fighting to save.  I walked away down to the river and stood looking out over the earth praying that me and mine will always be fighting to save, red to black to blue—To Light.