65,220 Seconds Left (a little less now)

The art is crated, the trucks are loaded, the show is over.  It seems complete, this act of creating, the life of living creatively, of making for yourself a life that allows your work to be made but it is not complete.  There must be a reason for making which begins with gratefulness for your desire and fortune to make.  But who is granting me all these gifts, starting with the wonder and the space to wander?  Who is actually creating all this creation, recreating it and renewing it over and over and then every day for four years adds a speck of time—because of the great joy of grace, which adds up to one whole, brand new, day, February 29.  A free day, the newest day in four years.  It is 5:53 a.m., we are 21,180 seconds into this free day.  Just in case you are wondering what could you do in 21,180 seconds it takes 5.43 seconds to kiss your lover (I just timed it) so that’s a lot of kissing.  Well, the timer has dinged, you have 18 hours and 7 minutes to go, 65,220 seconds of free time.  See what you can do with it.  Happy trails and let's be grateful (your job to find the One) out there!!!

Some of my Union Art students came to the show.

Stitched Love

Momentous events, milestones, and grace of love sewing family, souls, hearts, and bodies together.  Yesterday was a red-letter day for the Benson/Carbonell family.  Sissy, her family, and Sarah celebrated Sissy’s three year anniversary of life from her cancer diagnosis in Knoxville TN and Aaron, Zac and I had a reception for our three solo shows opening together in Florence Alabama.  States apart make love stitches all the more important.   

"Bye Pole" was what they would always say when the pole holding the chemo that Sissy
had to go everywhere. with was finally gone

I Gotta Keep Dancing--Restfully

My body continually reminds me of my ongoing neglect, pushing it too hard after much abuse when it was young.  I sit in the recliner now, my knee packed in ice, my fingers, elbows, and shoulders needing that, 800mg of Ibuprofen with breakfast and a leg stocking the size of a toothpick that I have to somehow get my big old leg in.  Sometimes I think my body considers itself a bit more highly than it ought, forgetting who really has to live with it, I mean, it can’t feel all this hurt, it just passes it along to my brain which always, sadistically I might add, dumps it all on me.  Half the problem with all this hurt is how much work it takes to try and relieve it.  Activity used to do the trick, I awoke in pain but afterward a walk down the hall, making the coffee, sitting and standing a couple of times it was all worked out. Now, all that morning activity just seems to wake up more of me that hurts creating long “stop the pain to-do lists.” It’s also raining this morning, been raining for two years, and that adds its own layer of sandpaper to all my joints.  I once read a book called, “I Gotta Keep Dancing” about an ice climber’s ordeal of trying to deal with injuries suffered from a fall from a glazier.  I have been thinking about writing a book, I Gotta Keep Resting, wallflower seems a better response to pain than rug cutter.   

Back when I had a back.

  

Jungle King as Jungle Bait

We awoke last night to a snarling, happy, yelping, chorus of a pack of coyotes or foxes who had undoubtedly made a feastful kill and was howling at the moon in celebration.  Wild it was, just beside our home and terribly impolite startling us like that.  I jumped out of bed ran outside but they were hidden from me by the dark.  I listened a moment just for the thrill of it and then clapped my hands like a shot.  The noise lessened with every clap until the only sound was rustling earth as their joy turned into fright flight.  That’s right, they had run into the real king of the jungle.  Me Tarzan—ish.  Them dogs.

I came back in and realized in all the commotion to go outside I had failed to grab my pistol.  An unarmed Tarzan ain't much of a Jungle King, maybe just jungle bait.   

Adventure and Rest

Night has become cobalt blue and with that slight change of richness comes a larger change of hope.  I love mornings and evenings, both filled with promises of adventures and rest, two of my favorite things.  God is so good to give us an adventure-filled earth and bodies with the heart and ability to be adventurous and afterward the ability to rest and sleep.  What marvelous concepts and creations.  Praise is never that hard to do if you want to praise, it’s around every bend in the trial and atop every soft pillow.  Happy trails and mattresses.  

A Biased Un-Biased Review

Our granddaughter had one of the leads in her school's production of Aladdin; she was the Genie.  She is normally very quiet and shy and the Genie is anything but; he is flamboyant, over the top witty and moves and grooves like The Supremes.  It would take real acting to pull it off and as a sixth-grader just coming into herself I wondered if she had it in her.  I even told her a couple of times, “they call it acting because you are acting!”  Well, the night came, the local college playhouse was packed and we were sitting front and center, all excited, me nervous.  The lights went down, the curtain went up, the music thundered on and out on stage jumped this granddaughter I recognized in character I didn’t.  She sang and danced and sparred like the witty genie, moving across the stage in her Chuck Taylor All-stars like she was born to run away with the show and she did.  I was so proud and honored the entire play because I saw a granddaughter I love displaying that she not only had it in her but also had the commitment to learn her role and pull it off—SPECTACULARLY!!! 

GOGOGO BENSON-CARBONELL BORN STAR.   

Our Granddaughter, Cora Willow Benson-Carbonell
strutting her chops.

In Service to the Court

We are moving seven great marble boulders across the state, from East Tennessee to West Tennessee, the largest weighing out at 32,000 pounds.  They will become a part of our sculpture Seven Pillars to tell the story of a great people's contribution to the success of Jackson Madison Co.  Yesterday Betty and I oversaw and documented the loading of two, on one of the three 18-wheelers that are bearing the transport.  It was bitter cold, wet and snowy, which just added meaning to an already meaningful experience.  We are sculptors.  We desire to build a world where we have been placed.  We seek to leave it better than we found it.  Why?  It is the greatest honor of our life to be allowed to serve The King. 

The Kindness of Sharing Space

In my freshman-level 3-D class we have begun the section on Space.  Space, the actual and perceived areas in which all exist is enormous in all directions.  If we look outward toward the macro there is seemingly no end and if we look inward toward the micro the same seems to be true, ongoing, every increasing largeness and smallness.  The better equipment we invent to see these spaces the more of it we discover.  Infinity in every direction is the norm.  However, we are very limited in the space we can actually occupy.  We have made it to the moon, which in the expanse of the cosmos isn’t truly going anywhere and we cannot occupy any of the spaces in the micro.  And none of this accounts for the transcendent spaces that are better known by our hearts than our rulers, the Grand Canyon and Saint Louis Cathedral come to mind.  As an artist-teacher, it is all this space I am trying to get my students to acknowledge to meet my objective for them, which is to live in an all-consuming personal relationship of love, gratefulness, and praise with Him who conceived of all this, created it, and is kind enough to share.

That white dot is an image of our space, Earth, taken by
the Voyager spacecraft.

Celebrate The Off Button

Let’s celebrate!  So much to make much of!  I have a friend that had open-heart surgery a month ago and is up and about, shiny and smiling as never before.  Only in America.  I always marvel at Wal-Mart, every time I walk in it is overflowing with food from around the world but there is another reason, when I walk into the produce area the colors are so wildly vibrant, like walking into a Peter Maxx painting.  We have the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon, and the Giant Sequoias.  My road is paved, my Google is playing instrumentals which I just asked her to do, remember stacking too many 45’s on the black rectangle and it dropping two instead of one, and I have a phone that connects me to everywhere when I am anywhere.  I can hear and see, walk and talk, sing and fight, and my lover continues to maintain 98.6°.  There is so much well but bad can also be found at the slightest touch of your TV remote on button, which on the brighter side, remember when you took turns getting up to change the channel? 

Getting Quiet

Quiet is a gift given to those that will be there and do it.  It allows for great understanding because you can hear so much more.  Quiet solves many of your problems because your brain and heart thrive with it thereby enlarging your mind.  Peace is found there and strengthened to be yours in the coming clamor.  Quiet clarifies your life, your past, your present and girds you for the future, it also disperses of all that to allow you to focus on the moment to make sense and plans for the coming moments.  Those who look for it find quiet and those that look for it know the miracles that will occur by being present there.  Quiet allows for a reasoned and confident understanding of God and His will for you as well as your need for Him.  It is that good, it is that true, it is and it can be yours.    

Front Row Seats to an Epic

Nature bears up against us and the closer we are to it the more we bear its force.  We have layers of isolation, home, community, town, state, country each one adding its layer of insulation, ramparts to nature and its forces.  At Fair Haven, we have thin sheets of glass, a long southwestern facing wall of glass.  Most weather comes from that direction and The Great Tennessee River lies 80 feet in front of us.  Weather hits us straight on into our wall of glass, most storms and winds straight on, once or twice every year, like last week, the river pushes over its banks and into our front yard leaving its mark, a winding trail of debris.  We have a front-row seat to nature, its peace and its force.  It is never boring, nature is a born exhibitionist, always displaying its fancy and its brooding, its peace, and its turmoil.  It’s epic and we have front row seats and strong glasses. 

To Know

Peace and quiet, an hour our so alone, it is the beginning of every day for me.  By faith, I believe it is God’s time to spend with me.  Believing there is a God seems like the only rational fact that undergirds all I know about me, my world and the great beyond that.  Believing that leads me to believe that I should need and want, above all else, to spend a significant amount of every day alone with Him.  I have no sense data that provides proof for anyone or me that the above is factually true but if you believe that He is it would be the depth of stupidity not to allow yourself to spend time alone allowing Him your undivided attention.  That is what I so desperately need, my attention undivided for Him. 

My greatest understanding of God is exceedingly personal, just Him and me.  I rarely venture outside that understanding.  The older I get the more important that understanding becomes for me because I seem less able to maintain a sustained time of being genuine, of being faithfully following and being with Him.  This might sound overly spiritual but it is nothing like that for me, it is more like me be honestly me and Him being completely Him and the two of us existing in a right relationship, Him God, me knowing Him thus and  He alone allowing me to know either of us.     

How I often feel I would be me without Him.

The Rain Returns To My Heart

The rain returns.  We have come so far in our ability to protect ourselves from the elements.  I am dry and warm just moments away from breakfast, a hot shower, clean clothes, where I will transition to a nice truck and to a nice classroom studio each abundantly able to allow my flourishing, in large part, because they too keep the natural elements at bay.  But my heart rains this morning because as good as we are at keeping the elements at bay we are equally unable at keeping ourselves from becoming entangled in the corrosiveness of the self-destruction of sin.  No greater need do I have than to fully gird myself with Christ as my only “strong tower” of protection.  Oh, how the “vultures gather” to gorge themselves on the dead that sin will kill.  Please Lord protect me and mine from the elements that work tirelessly to stop us from serving You and bringing You glory.  You alone are our only hope. 

Heart preparing as we repair Sissy's Healing Altar.  God keep us
for Your service.

     

Snow Of Ages Cleft For Me

It finally snowed!  It’s not a blanket but a dappling, spotting the earth with tiny mounds of miracles and each azalea leaf holding a scoop as dazzling as full spring bloom.  I can imagine becoming bored with snow if it sat around in foot upon foot creating daily labors on top of all my other work.  But I live in the south and snow is cause for celebration here, it creates hopes of cancellations, makes covers warmer and fires worshipful.  It draws me to the back porch in the middle of the night just to hear its quiet, to be a part of it turning night into Silent Night.  Now here in the bare light of dawn, I am drawn over and over again to the window, to the joy of a renewed contemplative gaze reserved only for the holy, holy snow, as it whispers, “God is so kind”, and I am so much better Lee when I am worshipping; Oh the snow of ages cleft for me.   

Expressing Exquisite Thoughts

“High thought seeks exquisite expression.” The Interpreters Bible, vol. 2, pg. 517. Words can often be exceptionally phrased and these five underscore that truth.  Words, like art, are themselves powerful tools gifted to humans.  Today we will read all manner of words, many low ones, seeking to tear down and hopefully some, like those above, encourage us to live well in serving others and the world, in building and rebuilding what others seek to tear down and destroy. Creating and using beauty as the bar allows for the building and rebuilding of what is good; exquisite expressions of The Creator as a way to re-sow Him into the world we occupy.   

Exquisite Expression in the Smoky Mountains

Waiting On Betty

We attended church in Knoxville yesterday and the young pastor spoke powerfully on “Marriage According To Jesus”, spouse always first, all we have is ours, no secrets.  One thing I have found in marriage is the importance of how to be together.  Three things are invaluable to our marriage.

1.   We walk/hike together, in our neighborhood, in the woods, our whole marriage, we walk in the natural world almost every day, together.

2.   We picnic all the time, yesterday at a football stadium in Cookeville TN.

3.   We have had a double recliner for 20 plus years.  It is our only seat in our home.   

To us, being together means touching each other, being together.  Reminds me of a great song by Holly Williams, Hank’s granddaughter, Waiting on June.