From The Smartest Human To Ever Live

 The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.  Ecc. 10:2

Finding A Cry In The Wilderness

One great reward of hiking is finding the mysterious sentinel in the woods, the silent artifact of history, the stele of meaning, the crying out in the wild that something meaningful happened here.  They are great mysteries that provoke fanciful imagination.  It also encourages our own desire to leave our mark upon the earth, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “I was here!”  God as I pass today allow me to sow You as The Sentinel into the hearts of those I meet as one crying in the wilderness and preparing the way of the Lord. 

While hiking with my lover Sunday 
afternoon we came upon this cry in the wilderness.

A Smile Might Mean you Met God

There are those moments, those events that open heaven to me.  I most often awake early, move to my chair, and begin my day with the Ancient Living Text.  From time to time I glance up at the window, black as nothing, just nothing.  And then the joy of the miracle occurs.  I glance up and light is there, the world is there, color is there, hope is there.  And i rejoice.  It is not like i am happy.  It is that rejoice has come to me.  The meaning of the word is a literal feeling, an experience i am having.  I always know it is Him, God, being present with me.  And i am grateful.  Such a small thing that splits all knowing apart; from not knowing to knowing.  YOU are good.  i smile as i write that.  Knowing God is good; light; is manifested in me as a smile.  i do it again—smile.  

A portal to rejoice.

 

SEX-SEX-SEX

Now that I have your attention.  

My being is set on edge these days, stubbed against current culture, the wrongness of America and Americans scaring my spirit and marring my visions of spring and wonder.  It has stopped my writing or really my finishing; lots of half-written blogs anguishing over the sorrowfulness of my beloved country.  My daughter teaches 2nd grade and told me this morning she is teaching them about how the National Anthem and Francis Scott Key and Fort McHenry.  I thought about how many citizens today would readily condemn the memory, defile the flag and dismantle our country having never done anything to build it.  The winter wheat is coming in.  My lover and I rode through the country Wednesday marveling at mile after square mile, thousands of acres of emerald green bounty that grew unaware and uncaring of the great effort to tear its country to bits.  Our country is more than the people that stomp around on top of it screaming at each other, hating, mean, and growing.  It is also beautiful land, 3.797 square miles, 2.43 billion acres of beauty, America the beautiful, what we have forgotten in our zest to be mean, sarcastic, and bitter.  Reminds me of a song we sang in the ’60s, “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…”.  Maybe just teach America, “Oh beautiful for spacious skies…”;  if they would stop screaming and being mean long enough to look...and sing along.            

 

We Are All "Me" With No Self-Help Book

One of the greatest difficulties in my life is how to be all the me’s that me is required to be; me, Christian, husband, father/grandfather, artist, teacher, citizen.  What makes this so difficult is that no other is me and I am as different as night is from day from all others.  That would require me to daily write my own self-help book in each of those areas; ie, “How to be a great husband” without having been a husband today much less a great one.  But in this quandary is a great joy, the joy of daily getting to know God who knows exactly how me should be in all me’s that need to be—and He is so very kind as to share that with me. Being me is very important since I will be me all day and being great at me, knowing me, is not something I am great at and often something I really don’t care enough to put in the effort to be.  Praise God He is—that’s me telling the absolute truth.  

  

One Crumb for one dog, and Maybe a Feast To Go

One great reward from teaching college students is the daily realization that I don’t have anything to offer.  I am rather dull as are all humans.  This conclusion is underscored every morning as I sit with God, reading, studying, meditating, and talking with him.  I often feel much like the Canaanite woman who pleads with Jesus to heal her daughter.  Jesus seemed to be hesitant saying he was sent to feed the Jews to which the women replied, “Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table.”  Any sincere movement toward being with God is met with an overwhelming sense of His Almighty-ness in Every way so that even a crumb of His wisdom would be a lifelong feast of creative knowledge.  A side note.  The time with him also always emboldens one to ask for a feast to go with the crumb.  

 

GONE GONE GONE

He is GONE GONE GONE, gone forever from the grave. He’s outta there!!!  I wonder what He felt, the first breath of eternal life in the human body he had to wear for those 33 years?  God what a miracle!!!  Sunday’s here and He is GONE GONE GONE.  “Where did they take him?”  Nowhere, He walked Himself, GONE GONE GONE.  Oh by the way, “death where is victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”  GONE GONE GONE!!!  Hallelujah! He is risen.   

 

It's done, now it's Silent Saturday

It’s done.  Friday’s over and we have killed our Savior.  It is Saturday, the grave is sealed, cold, dark, alone and the day begins.  It is the least known important day in history.  Humanity hangs in the balance, we are in great peril, our only Savior, our only Hope is dead.  What is going on behind the veil?  The Bible gives hints, is Jesus still about His Father's business, preaching to the dead in hades, in paradise with the thief he met on the cross, or just dead dead?  Whatever the case the fact remains that 1/3 of the Godhead is dead, the 1/3 who alone can save us is dead, gone.  

I received a great gift yesterday, my youngest daughter invited us to the Good Friday service at her church.  It was very meaningful.  Four things the pastor brought out that are worthy of our thoughts on this the silent Easter Saturday.

1. In the original text Jesus’ request, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing” implies that Jesus said it over and over again.

2. Up until this point Jesus was the one going about forgiving sins but now he is asking His Father too.

3. If Jesus had not continually asked His Father to forgive us might God in his sorrow have just vaporized it all and been done with us?

4. Jesus begins his ordeal calling God “Father” but ends it calling Him, “my God, my God why has Thou forsaken me.”

God help us all to meditate upon this day and the glorious day to come, TOMORROW.  

 

The Presence of The Silent Nothingness

Good morning Father, still and quiet You are today.  The river smooth, grey-blue the sky and a small gentle fire seeping warmth throughout my old weary bones.  It is morning with You that makes the day meaningful, gives purpose to the hours that come.  God, I love your peace, the stillness of being alone with you, acknowledging you in your Silent Nothingness.  It is this profound nothingness that is so everything, the fullness of faith, the clarity of every particle being vibrantly present because You Are.  It is your gift, faith, that assuredness, that Solid Rock that allows me to bow before it confident that behind the metaphor reigns The King.  Because I am flesh I need solidity, The Pillar of Fire, The Rock of Ages, The Son to help me accept your gift of faith.  He, Jesus, Your Son, my Savior, is hard into it now, morning has broken and he is already beaten, spat upon, silently withholding nothing, giving His all, headed toward his own horror of You as The Silent Nothingness—except for Him it was real—silent nothingness.  Oh my God how every particle must have shaken with the rage of Your sorrow at the Nothingness you both had to bear until even light could not move and became dark.  I awoke in the dark this morning and laying by my warm lover thought of Your Son coldly alone beginning His fateful ordeal toward You as His Silent Nothingness.  I told Him, “Thank You!”  I meant it.

God is so good!

God is so good!

God is so good!

He’s so good to me. 

 

 

Hocus Pocus Diddly Do

I built a fire last night.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a fire and having one more before summer’s heat makes it impossible to curse the cold.  Fire is one of the kindest conceptions of all time and putting it in trees is a magic trick of the Divine realm.  It is far easier to believe that something so kind and good would require a star-tipped wand or a “hocus pocus diddly do” than to think one needs only a tree.  That a tree can suddenly transform itself into fire is like a bird suddenly becoming a fish or a man suddenly become Superman, makes sense in fairy tales and comic books but not in our progressive minds.  My world at this moment is filled with a glittering river, green tinging mountains, blue sky, and a pure white flock of floating pelicans—the show never ends for those that have eyes to see the magic.