Good Morning

Yesterday morning I awoke to pouring rain, lightning, and a lake jagged and whitecapped, this morn to sunrise and moonset both in the same clear blue sky and the lake a mirror of all the beauty above.  I turned to my lover and said, “need moon glasses this morning” as its rays poured into our dark home.  Nothing declares the utter dullness of evolution quite like the morning.  Time and chance create many things but mostly chaos.  Morning is never chaotic.  It is unimaginable order on a cosmic down to a micro-scale which yonder white swan underscores.  But it is the peace of order which is always passed over in the yawn of the evolved mind.  Nothing helps the idle brain’s pitch toward absurdity quite like the security of daily order.  But if morning does anything for the open-minded it declares someone is both utterly brilliant and extravagantly kind. 

   

Bit Parts in the Show

Storms rolling in from the south assailing Fair Haven our front row seat to all its got.  We go with God which doesn’t always save but is eternally safe.  The windows vibrate with each lightning strike as the thunder concussions reverberate unhindered across the river and strike us full force.  Fair Haven is twelve acres of wild of which we are taming out one front acre that gives a stunning view but also the bulwark as it were to all that moves north by northwest.  Our view is 200° plus and the only sign of man is one red river buoy.  It’s us and nature, toe to toe, and God over us all.  The show must go on.    

   

Treasured Beginnings

Beginnings are treasures, often hard-won, years of toiling to allow you the opportunity to begin again.  Beginnings should start an already well laid out plan, the ability, skill, resources, and faith to put many things in place that will ensure your beginning has a longevity to become.  One critical part of beginning is counting the cost to not only begin but to play the beginning out.  Often beginnings take years to plan especially if you are beginning something of enormous importance.  We have all began something only to fail, a great meal, a greener lawn, a marriage, life, eternity.  Beginnings are a treasure but make sure your treasure is laid up somewhere that ensures longevity. 

Rosemary beginning.

      

The Hottest Fashion Line of Spring

Spring is such a tender season, billions of tiny buds each vying for their time in the sun still so vulnerable to winter’s freeze.  There is the slight coloring of the forest canopy, the hedgerows, and boundary ways.  Noonday still floods down into the earth but this hint of color promises dappling sparkles of summer shade to come.  It is the wooden earth, that layer of hearty hope that lies between the soil and the sky, those proud ones that live on-and-on and tower above us like great sentinels.  It is their summer line putting forth, the new style, the latest fashion.  What’s hot this spring?  Green in a billion shades of tender color.  

Betty and I saw this beautiful abandoned home the 
other day while riding in the country.

 

Small Price For Massive Flaws

Ok; can we say that gas prices underscore the price we are all paying for President Biden being elected.  It is the great equalizer.  Everything is going up in price because fuel is going up in price.  It does not matter rich or poor we are all paying more now at the grocery store, the clothing store, the airport, the daycare.  Can on this one issue we agree this is a real, very difficult burden on everyone, including those of us who are the least able to afford it.  And one other thing; the stimulus checks.  Where do we think that money comes from?  The government only has the money they take from us.  So if we got a check we can bet they are going to take it back in some other way, like at the pump.  I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I believe these are two minor issues in what is a shockingly and seriously flawed president and party but they are flaws we can all agree on.   

Papa Was A Rolling Stone

I was reminded today of my beloved rolling stone, my dad, now long gone to heaven, but still impacting my daily life.  My mom often said of him, “he could not stay still”.  I often feel that yearning in me, almost daily seeking to hit the road to somewhere else.  I see it in my brothers and sister and now glimpse it in my children.  A friend sent me the attached video, its audio and imagery set me to yearning.  I was once to give a eulogy for an ancient and most loved family member.  As I talked to a prodigal friend long back under our Father’s roof about my inadequacies of the task he said something that I have never gotten over.  It went something like this; ‘We rage against death because we were originally made to live forever.  Now locked in the sin-sick bodies but with eternal souls, death is incomprehensibly unfair and mean.’  I don’t know how to tie all this together but it has something to do with going with God, this narrow trail I am on, often with no blazes but with audio (The Word) and imagery, the earth, that always seems to keep my gathering no moss.  Happy trails—that I truly hope are always with and to God. 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL6eNmGxnbQ

The video that prompted this blog.  Thanks Steve for sending it to me.  

Corn Bread and Beans in a Mind Made Fairytale Worthy of God

My mom is beginning to lose her past, forgotten most of her lived life, unable to live in the joy of the memories of a life so well lived.  It is nothing that greatly concerns me, her faithfulness has and is being meticulously recorded for her crown to come.  What does puzzle me but doesn’t seem to concern her is what does her mind dwell on if most of her past is forgotten?  Are the memories of all those meaningful years still there often drifting by her consciousness but she is just unable to recall them on my command?  Or does her mind create a new reality that I am not privy to, a reality that is just as rich even if not reality at all?  I had a dream last night that was so real that it woke me.  I laid in bed and thought how real it seemed in my sleep but completely made up by my mind.  Is that mom’s experience, conscious consciousness of absolute reality but more a mind-made fairy tale?  In my dad’s last dying days he often spent the unconscious hours in his favorite pastime, playing golf.  I would come in and sit by his bed and he would suddenly say, “Hand me my 9 iron!”  It would bring me such joy sitting by my dying father knowing that to him, dying was playing a round of golf.  Maybe my mom continually plans Christmas dinner or cornbread and beans for Mamaw, Betty, and me when we show up this evening—only in the world of her mind, a grace worthy of her God.   

A photo of what a well-lived life's memory looks like.

 

 

The Overture Has Started, The Revival of the Blockbuster Begun

This is the browning time, all that died in winter is no longer covered in snow but carpeting West Tennessee in a decaying stain of dirty brown.  There is very little to suggest springtime and lots of left-over debris of winter.  But then the announcement comes, a herald from the buttercups, a yellow invitation to anticipation, springtime is coming.  And then the country fields turn emerald with wheat, the forsythia sparkles among the ditches in tuning voices, the cherry blossoms pinkly plead and the towering trees put on a tiny red canopy of coming shade and last; of the first glittering of putting the brown to enriching soil; is the faithful Redbud, its purple parade will line our lanes and busy byways announcing, GREEN IS COMING!  And we all lean gently back in our rocking chairs and attend one of God’s greatest plays, “Spring Comes Flourishing Across Tennessee.”

The Bouncing Marble of Insomnia

I often struggle with insomnia, a hereditary gift from both my parents.  Passing the late-night hours listening to the grandfather clock chime away your coveted sleep is maddingly boring.  My mind weirdly runs down odd trails as out of control as a marble bouncing on a tiled floor and every sound is thoughtfully investigated to determine what in the world is awake at this hour.  The worst part of it is the total helplessness to control or actually, to lose control of my awake-ness.  I seem to be able to make myself be awake but cannot make myself be asleep.  I listen to my lover’s soft breathing, smile at her great good fortune, and quietly wish we could be together during this difficult malady of mine but insomnia is always suffered alone.  My mom used to say that she and dad would pass each other in the middle of the night, one of them getting up, the other going back to bed.  The only thing I pass in the middle of the night is the time I am not asleep.     

Can I Get A Vision

I have been fortunate enough to be a part of the lives of several people who were good at casting a meaningful vision before me and expecting me to join in—"Without  a vision, the people perish.”  My parents, my wife, an art professor, a university president, dean and provost, and a department chair.  There is no greater assurance of meaning than God daily casting His vision before you and asking, “Will you take up My cause, seek the lost, help the hurting, be kind to the brokenhearted, love and encourage those that barely know me…be My ambassador?”  God how great a debtor I am for the grace of You imparting You and Your vision to me to give me cause to live with meaning today!

Two great visionaries.

The Grace Fetter

There is nothing so great as a daily self-assessment.  That is one of the great graces of a personal time alone with God every morning.   It is not a mystical spiritual deal even though it often is, it is more like a tune-up, an exercise regiment, a diagnostic of all my systems.  The sincerity of it is what always keeps me coming back, my old ford me is not judged but more like greased, oiled, and polished.  And what is the wax?  It is the grace polish!  It is that understanding of God that says to me, “Lee, I know you are human, and I am going to give you enough of Me to make it through today.”  And then my heart leaps to a line long forgotten but oft sung in those old country churches of my past… "O to grace how great a debtor..."

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wand’ring from the face of God;

He, to save my soul from danger,

Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter,

Bind my wand’ring heart to Thee

Teach me, Lord,. Some rapturous measure,

Meet for me Thy grace to prove,

While I sing the countless treasure

Of my God’s unchanging love.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;

Prone to leave the God I love:

Take my heart, oh, take and seal it

With Thy Spirit from above.

What Am I Thinking!!!

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."

I am thinking.