The Great Debate

I was reminded of something missing this morning, I hadn’t heard the birds.  I was actually walking back into the house from our porch and after that sudden realization came a saddening one, I hadn’t heard them in a while.  Last night was the big debate, I didn’t watch because I don’t need that kind of event in my mind which so quickly passes it to my heart.  It’s not because it wasn’t loud enough; culture, technology, and media were in a rage over it.  We mostly choose who and what we listen to.  Popular culture isn’t hard to hear because the volume is always set on scream.  But there is Another Voice, stiller and smaller, which often comes from the mouths of birds, but one has to be quiet enough to hear and needful enough to listen.  Birds are singing and culture is screaming, the great debate? I have to decide who is worth listening to.  

   

The Looniness Response Of The Aged To Warmth

Oh, the joy of glancing up and seeing the first rays of the sun turning the leaves that glorious golden green.  It is a reminder that God is so faithful.  It is cold this morning and the sun, as only it can, is able to provide warmth.  Warmth to an old body is the balm of untold value which is often made available for free.  Walking your old body in the sun is an amusement ride of unparalleled excitement muted only by your body’s ecstasy of the experience.  Hands raised and screaming in glee is appropriate but at my age a thoughtful act more than physical.  Joyful praise, at my age, is most often a heart event, a stirring of the soul with no physical evidence other than maybe a slight smile and a certain twinkle of the eye.  So often the explosive rapture of ecstasy is contained inside ourself for to physically express it might land us in the loony bin and most assuredly in the eccentric group for our neighbors.  Oh, the wonders of life as age clarifies the magic of being alive.   

  

The Cathedral Row Crops

One of the great acts of worship for my lover and me is riding in the country during harvest season.  Yesterday we did it again and the fields are bursting with the His holiness, wave upon wave, mile after mile, as far as we could see His earth is providing a bountiful hymn of life, the verses in unison singing of His kindness.  And our machines, great mechanical marvels, the space shuttles of earth, harvesting great swaths, as they grind away engulfed in the cloud of chaff like smoke from the incense altar.  Corn and soybeans taken now and cotton coming in.  No cathedral built by man can wall in His glory like the great plains of the Mississippi Delta with its towering horizontal steeples of grain, its rolling isles of abundance, row upon row of seated crop, altars of round silver bins storing food for the world and the green stained glass tracery of tree lines dividing one cathedral from another.  Heaven as its ceiling, earth as its foundation, the Great Cathedral of Row Crops is now open daily for all the pilgrims with eyes to see and hearts yearning to worship Him.  

A Smile Warming, Cold Colding

Two parables.  

1. I often tell my students that your greatest evangelical tool is your smile.  It works! I then go around the room and smile at each student until their natural inclination occurs and they smile back at me.  I then ask them to imagine how many people will go to bed tonight without having one person look at them and smile.  You know the feeling, someone sees you and their face just lights up in a smile, how wonderful that makes you feel.  Well go out and do that.  This parable was reinforced in me this morning as I turned the corner and saw the smiley sponge and caught myself smiling back at it.  

2. I had read my Bible, The Puritan Prayer Book, New Morning Mercies, and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.  I had prayed, meditated, celebrated, and worshiped.  It is my morning routine.  I then threw a blanket over my legs to protect me from the coldness of my MacBook Pro as I placed it on my lap to write.  At that moment I wondered if there was something in my Eden-primordial spirit that knew this thing was evil and I didn’t need to let it touch me.

 

Your Senses Make Sense Of Your Senses

One of my favorite passages of reading is the story of the prodigal son, it is my story.  In the story, the wayward son finally comes to the end of himself while he sits in a pig pen and the passages reads, “When he finally, came to his senses…”. This is such a powerful affirmation of how we are made.  What does coming to his senses mean?  It means that he suddenly became aware of the truth his senses had proven to him over and over again.  He was reminded of the touch of his father’s hand as he as patted him on the head over a job well done, as he cleaned his skinned knees and carried him often to bed.  He was reminded of all the wonderful smells of his father’s home, rich with the aroma of wonderful meals the father had provided, the smell of the father’s fields abundant with crop as the summer rains nourished them.  He could hear the father's voice encouraging him after a setback, praying over him as he was put to bed, telling him a joke, imparting wisdom as they worked together in the fields.  He could remember seeing his father’s kindness to his employees, the many times he had helped the poor, forgiving those that had wronged him, seen him weary at night from a day of laboring for his family.  This prodigal in the pen remembered the taste of the cool water from the well his father had dug, the savory steaks from the cattle his father had raised, the sweet pies from the orchard his father had lovingly labored over.  But his senses also gave him evidence of the results of his own rebellion.  He could feel the slime of mud and slop as he stood barefooted in the pen.  He could smell the stench of pig dung and the filth of his new home.  The lingering taste of rotted corn, fit only for pigs, still clung to his teeth and the roof of his mouth.  He heard the rutting pigs as the pushed at him and savagely threatened him for their food he was now eating.  And he could see where all his rebellion had finally landed him.  It was him in the pen and it was him that had walked every step of his journey there.  But his senses also brought to him hope.  Beyond the pen he could feel the breeze of summer, the wind filled with sweeter pastures, cut grass, and wildflowers momentarily filled his nostrils, used to being filled with stench, with the sweet fragrance of the open glades that reminded him of his home far away.  He could hear the singing birds, the buzzing bees that even now filled his father’s hives with sweet honey, he could hear the rustled trees which reminded him of those that surrounded his father’s house providing shade in the heat of summer and shelter from the high winds of winter.  The very air tasted like fall as the tiny particle of a harvest feast being prepared at his employer’s house had, as it had many times before, filled his mouth with imagination.  And then it happened, he looked down at his feet, once fitted with the finest sandals made from the soft leather from his father’s herd, now covered in filth and he came to his final sense.  These same feet that had walked him to this sty could also walk him back home.  He saw the potential of the feet that had once tottered him to his father's outstretched arms as he learned to walk could also hobble him humbly back to his father.  He had come to his sense, after the long stupor of ignorant rebellion, his senses, a gift of unparalleled kindness, had awakened his heart to Truth—and he headed home. 

P.S. “And while he was yet a long way off his father saw him, was filled with compassion for him, ran to him, wrapped his arms around him, and kissed him.” 

 

A Fox Helps Us Acknowledge Who Is Tilting The Earth

God, you are so kind, the seasons are changing, the old summer being laid by for the mild chill of fall.  What a wonder, the earth tilting.  No one has enough wonder in their life or a sure source, but you are.  At every moment, (a small fox just lopped by unaware of me), which is a better end to this sentence than I can write.  But God you are only there for those with eyes atop a heart that wants to see.  Wonder has been replaced by entertainment, such a cheap trade.  Wonder is that which keeps us childlike and we have traded it in for a handful of Hollywood baubles and technological gadgets which dull our eyes and ears and hardens our heart.  A soft heart is a gift we have to help God give us, by acknowledging him, in all our ways, acknowledging Him.  

                                I saw him coming in time to get my phone out and ready.

It Is Still Morning

It is still this morning, the leaves, the trees, the grass all silent.  Sculptures stand quietly in my yard, each a part of the stillness.  Fall is slowly nibbling away at summer, a degree here, a colored leaf there, a silent resting morning signaling the long value colored days ahead.  It is still this morning and stillness is when God is so easily heard, for those who have ears to hear, for those that are listening with those ears, for those who know the voice of God—He sounds something like a cool wind, a small stream, a lover’s whispered love—or maybe just the warmth of their breath upon your ear.  The knowing that life is in the breath, and you are aware you are alive because you are loved.  It is still this morning.   

God On The Mount and God In The Box

                            
 

God As Air Traffic Controller

As I was sitting outside praying this morning a plane quietly roared past miles above me.  I marvel at planes, at wings really, that they exist.  This morning I thought of all the celebration that had to of occurred when God thought that concept up, then made it, and showed it to all the Angelic hosts of heaven.  Humans have yet to conceive of any amount of time necessary for all the partying that went on in heaven as God brought out each new invention for each new concept.  Can you imagine God getting all the angels together to roll out the wing; “Ok here it is, A WING, and here is a dragonfly, a  bluebird, a Boeing 747, and a Space Shuttle.   All will fly because of wings.”  Obviously, heaven was attentive as God showed them all the things that were going to use WINGS to fly.  But it gets better.  You know how Oprah used to give gifts to all the audience, “look under your seat and you all get one” or the day she said, “YOU ALL GET A NEW CAR!!!”  Well, imagine at the end of the WING demonstration God said, “AND YOU ALL GET A PAIR!!!”   I would say that was a few thousand years of whooping it up and a few thousand more of God just trying to get them all landed back in heaven.   

   

Living Aware Of Being Un-condemned

Good morning Father, I love you.  I am overjoyed by your graces but I am so underwhelming as a cheerleader for you.  Help me to do better.  God, you are so Holy and in that, I am confronted with Your reality and mine as well.  Spare me from fear and from turning away in the face of such overwhelming condemnation by my unholiness being in such close proximity to Your Holiness.  “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ…” but there is that sin in me and I am reminded of it when I read where you were present with Isaiah and he was “undone”.  I am so grateful for the fact of “no condemnation” and, for even the human weakness of feeling condemned, because they both serve to make me worship you.  I can celebrate in worship while understanding the humility owed you for this act, This Greatest of all Acts of Kindness, “there is no condemnation!”  Thank You, truly, truly, Thank You.

The Greatest Undertaking Of My Life

One of my greatest concerns today is what ministry will be mine when I leave the college studio?  I have spent years teaching art as a way to thank God and to live a life of ongoing gratefulness as one way to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  In a few years, I will walk away from that life and embark on the last journey of life on earth.  What ministry will be mine in those final years of my life?  It is no small thing to reinvent yourself, especially when your physical self is gnarled and knotted in the reality of the aged.  It will require a tremendous economy of effort and exquisite wisdom of living to do what ministry and art-making require.  That is going to be one of the greatest undertakings of my life, meaningfully living my aging years.  I have found that following God is above all things, a great adventure.    

    

A Mighty Boulder In My Wretched Stream

Oh, what a wretched mess we are in, COVID, politics, riots, and the constant screeching heads!  I’ll admit it is pervasive but not for me.  I struggle with sorrow and sorrowfulness but like a massive boulder in a stream, it flows around me but not over me and certainly not in me.  As an artist, I am prone to depression, melancholia, anxiety, an overwhelming sense of responsibility for the world but I have found a balm in a quiet and prolonged aloneness with God.  He is the boulder I sit upon which keeps me in the stream but not overwhelmed by it.

    

Good morning Father, nice cooldown!!!  I can feel fall around the corner, trees are waning, days are shortening, crops are coming in.  You have a marvelous way with routine that comforts humans, a season seems long enough, summer has almost been spent, and then comes fall with its leaves, pumpkins, flannel, and putting in firewood.  God, what was your process?  Did you think about seasons for a while, did it take you years or centuries or millennia or was it just a twinkling of your perfection?  God, you are a great mystery that shared yourself with us in Jesus but that was certainly a twinkling, and the Bible, again a twinkling, just moments of sacred ecstasy, purest gold, red gold, heavy with meaning but with a cosmic storehouse of secrets.  God, you are so good, so kind, seasons are just a sampling of wonder unimaginable, of goodness that if only momentarily considered produces a physical response of smiling, contented joy.  Dawn is now pushing the darkness back west, the Great Tennessee is reflective of your heavens, the world is waking, my night has once again become day before me.  You are a good, good God and a Mighty Boulder in my daily stream.  

 

 

Good Morning

It is always good to say good morning because morning is one of the great kindnesses.  It is like love, and water and touch; like color and fur and smelling; like wings and trees, hair and snow and lips and stringed instrument’s vibrations, like fire and birth and a human being growing inside another human being, like taste and the moon and sex; like your lover being 98.6° and worth repeating, love being in us, the ability to be in love and for another to be that way toward us—a kindness like no other.  Good morning! 

                                   If morning doesn't do it for you maybe our granddaughter will.

Your Greatest Gift Is To Pay Your Greatest Debt

I once heard the great land artist Andy Goldsworthy say,  “Sometimes I am truly amazed that I am alive!”  This morning I read this statement by Henri J.M. Nouwen, “There is no tinge of death in God.  God is pure life.  Therefore, living in the house of God is living in a state of constant ecstasy, in which we always experience the joy of being alive.”  These are both very true statements about the state of being aware that one has won the greatest prize in all the existence of the cosmos by being allowed to be.  The great quest of life is to be found by The One to whom you owe such a great debt of gratitude—so you can thank Him!    

Virtual Teaching

Virtual teaching.  I will be the first to admit, that is not the way education should be done but it is a current reality for many of us including my youngest daughter who is doing it with second graders.  A bit of advice for all of us who are, have, or will be trying to pull that off.  The number one rule of teaching is to ensure the student knows you have this great secret, a secret that will change their life, (art in my case) and that your overwhelming desire in life is to show them how much you care for them by sharing the secret with them.  Art for me, as I hope math and science are for my fellow teachers, is the way in which God reveals so much of himself to me.  Now in order to hear me fully, you must realize I am not making a theological or religious statement but a factual one.  Everyone will admit that this cosmos we call home is fabulously, exquisitely, thoughtfully made in one of the premier kindness ever conceived.  Not only does the cosmos keep us alive it also serves to offer us great secrets that all humans seem to be hardwired to explore, find in it a fascination that keeps us exploring.  Everyone will also admit we are born explorers, adventurers, trailblazers.  Most of us find these traits in movie stars and sports heroes and live vicariously through them but at our base, we really would like to be that person our self.  And therein is the secret to education, we are that person—and a great teacher will bring that out in us.  It is called loving enough to care to lead the way to the greatest adventure of all time—Life (and that is a religious statement). 

                                Saw on my walk yesterday morning.  What Kindness makes things

                                and colors like this and then just randomly places them in our cosmos!

The Benevolent King of the Jungle

Yesterday I sat and watched a mother raccoon and two offspring slowly climb down from one of our big poplar trees in our front yard and scamper off into our woods.  So fair to witness.  I praised God.  This morning I raised my head from prayer and saw the fleeting image of a red fox running silently along our bank, bushy tail tipped in white making him some sort of silent missile of meaning.  I praised God.  I use to read the James Harriet books beginning with All Creatures Great and Small.  I seem obligated to write all of this, not really sure why. NEXT MORNING.  This morning I was reading the Ancient text and a mighty owl bellowed his hoot into the darkness.  I laughed out loud and said, “well aren’t you full of yourself.”  He hooted once again; I do believe a tad louder.  Later a bullfrog began to croak, just four or five times but he was a big fellow too.  It amazes me how close we are to the wild.  I live in town but the wild ones are always crossing my path.  But I am the wildest one, found my wildness at The Cross, free, free indeed, to be the wildest one in my animal kingdom.  Adventure is at every turn, the good earth beckons to me every moment, come and be a part of His great Kingdom, walk its length and breadth and allow the milder wilder ones a glimpse of the benevolent king of the jungle.