It's Not A What, It's Three Whos

What holds us together?  In a group, you might have one woman who is a reader, poet, idealists and haired mother or a man who is fatherless trying to figure out how to be a father.  You might have a spared hippy model, a child praying “God our Father, God our Father”, a young writer a young singer, you might have a man who was born a man, a woman who is more beautiful than all others and a woman who rides fairy tale animals.  In a group you might have a littles from a Vermeer painting, a mighty strong boy in a slight body, a lover boy raising his own family, a blonde blessing doll, a child with the love of God, a baby boy trying to see his way, a dancing baby princess, another man, three dogs and they are all held together—but how?  “because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”  Someone loved someone before anything else was.  It is that love, found in those Someone’s, which is the only way any of us human someone’s, especially those as crazy as the ones listed above, can ever be held together.     

Happy Thanksgiving from our crazy family to yours.  

Giving Thanks To The Right Person, Place Or Thing...or

It is Thanksgiving Day and boy do I have a house full of reasons to give thanks, seventeen Bensons half of whom are children and three dogs all under one big top.  The question struck me this morning, who am I giving thanks to in this Thanks-giving Day?  I could give thanks to all these adult Bensons, including myself for making all these other Benson humans.  I could give thanks to the Utility Company for making heat, electricity, and water to keep us all comfortable.  I could give thanks to the dirt, which grew all the food we are going to eat today.  I could even give the sun thanks for still being there when my part of the earth rotated back around to face it so that day could begin for without it there’s no day for Thanksgiving day to…well you get the point.  Giving grateful thanks is one of the greatest gifts we give ourselves…as long as we are giving it to the right person, place or thing…or God.   

The Gift Of Gratefulness To The Artist

I often relate to my young art students the following statement about the difficulty of making art, “you walk into an empty room you have labeled your studio, and say to yourself, “I have to make a work of art.”” The concerns become overwhelming; what is art, how do I make it, what material do I use, why make it, who is my audience, can and/or should it be understandable…(the three dots stand for an almost limitless list of concerns the artist is faced with when assigning himself the task of making art.)  Two things I have found most helpful in this dilemma is to focus on the six elements of art (form, shape, line, space, texture, color), there is a reason they got that name and secondly and infinitely more important, focus on The One that not only conceived of those elements, then was powerful to make them but mainly was so very kind that He shares them.  At this point, I stop being paralyzing bewildered and become overwhelming grateful, a much better state to begin the process of maybe making an actual work of art.    

A test for a new work of art I am considering gratefully attempting.  

The High Holy Act of Intellectual Discovery

The main reason for Universities was originally the concentration of disciplines under a single banner of belief in a cannon of absolute truth in each discipline, most of which had yet to be discovered.  It was the role of the professor to discover more of the remaining truths of their discipline thereby moving their discipline forward while involving their students in this process of truth discovery.  The administration's job was to expect and promote the highest bar for each discipline and acquire funding for these truth searches to move forward.  The foundation for all this was all truth existed in God.

My beloved Union

Baby It's Cold Inside

The rise of evil in our culture cannot be denied.  What is at stake is will the good rise to the occasion?  The Bible clearly states that love is the ultimate good in us and, by faith, that love becomes a free gift of God in Christ, exchanging our unrighteous love for God’s righteous love, His Son, through salvation.  The Bible also states that there will come a time when “the love of many will grow cold.”  What a dreadful day that will be when the love that exists in us is allowed to freeze into nonexistence.  The truth is that love will cease to be in us.  There is no human accounting for love, it is a gift to all as rain to the just and unjust but there is a better love that can be had, the gift of God’s love.  The stakes are so high and yet so few are aware that what they consider righteous indignation is really a seeping away of love in them.  I know of no cure except the one that is always offered to me in the early morning hours spent with God, listening, reading, studying, meditating and talking to Him.  In this process, my worn-out love from yesterday is renewed in me for today.  I know myself as the chief scoundrel and in that, I stand in greatest need to place myself in a position whereby I can regain the love that can truthfully be used up or in the worst-case scenario of life, I can allow to die in me.  Oh God Almighty renew again Your love in me.    

Attention, Salute, Pledge...

There are times when an event realigns our lives to reality, the event itself doesn’t have to be a major event nor the alignment tectonic, it need only to liven a reality that had become forgotten in the day to day screech of contemporary culture.  I attended such an event last week, the Knox Co. Retired Teachers Association annual luncheon to celebrate the recipients of the Associations education scholarships (our daughter being one of the recipients).  What made this event awaken me to a better reality was the sincerity and genuine honor displayed for the profession of teaching and its foundational nature to a flourishing culture.  There was no sarcasm, no cynicism or decrying of all the ills currently in education or demoralizing irony comparing the past to the present.  There was no blaming, no self-aggrandizing one alliance over another, no tearing down of one group to elevate another and none of the victim orienting self-centering that accompanies so many of our celebrations these days.  What there was, was two hours of humbling, old fashioned honoring of education, educators, and the care for a field that proclaimed loud and clear that those of the past or fully willing to allow those of the present to stand upon their shoulders to view clearly what it means to be a teacher.  As an example, I need only to share how the luncheon began.  A small neatly dressed and poised elderly women came to the podium and said, “Will each of your rise for the invocation,” and then she spoke to her God requesting His blessings upon those present.  She then turned toward the American flag, so often present but mostly invisible and said three words I haven’t heard in decades that made my realignment complete, “Attention, Salute, Pledge…

Our daughter with Mr. Tom Underwood, the man for whom her scholarship was named.