Watching the Great Awakening

I am glad that my last two years of teaching at Union are spent living here.  Being a resident of a college campus is hope-filled.  It is quiet here, large here, housing several thousand young people, and young people are unique creatures.  They are trying so hard to be their freed self and the process is deeply, autobiographically nostalgic.  When, after only 18 years of living, one is suddenly freed from all their supervising overlords the resulting choices of freedom can be refreshingly amusing.  From clothing choices, grooming, and the way you walk, talk and look to how you conduct yourself in all manner of life situations; absolute freedom means you are faced with unlimited choices and often leads to radically creative results.  Humanity, at the college level, is wildly unique and continually entertaining.  Freedom will soon enough be bridled with the wear and tear of responsibility but it is a grand thing to watch others having, what will be, one of the greatest awakenings of freedom experiences they will ever have.   

Change Your Drumbeat

America and Americans are becoming less kind.  This unkindness seems to be spreading rapidly.  In the past, if you were going to be unkind you had to be present with those you wanted to be unkind with.  However, today unkindness is carried along in media and devices at an alarming rate.  By this, I mean that media develops antagonistic ideas between us and then spreads those rapidly across our population and creates a certain level of hostility in us.  As our media and devices have become more prevalent in culture so does this unkindness.  It is like we have become a totalitarian culture leading rapidly to fascism, not as a political movement but as a cultural one.  When I was younger peace and freedom were the basic drum beat of culture.  Today it seems to be you must be perfectly aligned with me.  What makes this so unsettling is if you are not aligned then it is not only okay to be unkind to you but necessary to the point of empowered mandates of unkindness.     

I long to be free and be free indeed.  Thank God that’s still possible.  

My Letter of Intent to GO!!!

I left our dorm yesterday having written my retirement letter to turn in to the administration.  As I was doing it I told Betty I was somewhat depressed over the matter.  “Do you not want to retire?”  she asked.  “No!  I love my job, the essence of it, the making of art, and teaching others the love of learning how to make it.  I just don’t know why I should quit something I love.”  I had a troubled spirit.  But the task was at hand and I wrote the letter, tucked it in my briefcase, and got ready to go on our morning ritual walk around the campus.  As we walked out the door the sky soared above and burst forth with light of crystal light blue, the quad stretched out before me in brilliant emerald green and I longed to go, to be free to go.  In that moment God’s peace was mine, the peace of going, going forth freely to go.   To go see, to go explore, to be free to freely go.  And so the year of getting to the starting gate of going has begun and I have penned “My Letter of Intent to Go!!!” 

The Letter

I must write my letter of intent to retire.  It is before me to do.  I struggle to do it because it is my public declaration to quit, to stop, to lay down what I have strived at for 32 years, and on a specific day…walk away.  I am not deluded, I will still be busy and find plenty to do but the official teaching in the Academy of Higher Learning will be closed.  I will most miss the silent halls of early morning, late nights, and long breaks.  Those silent halls allowed me the time to know them as brimming with visionary possibilities, the place dreams were given the greatest chance to come true.  When one walks in those places the power of possibilities is Divinely overwhelming.  To walk away from that will be difficult.       

The Family Circus Comes to Town

My lover is turning 70 tomorrow.  We’ve had a month-long celebration.  Yesterday we surprised her with all our family, 19 and three dogs showing up for a big party. It was all knees, elbows, swimsuits, and food.  We are a partying family, any reason to jump and holler and we are all in.  We are also a crying, praying, and affirming family, every time we get together we find time to become more deeply woven together.  We build altars, tell favorite memories, lift one another up, tightening the ties that bind.  This morning the lover and I woke up alone with one dog.  Time moves on, tent pegs move out but under the big top it is she and me alone but the circus is still 19—the family circus still comes under the big top.   

42 Hours and Home

It is a quiet morning, early and the island's just coming into the sun.  We are vagabonds, my lover and I, wanderers on the earth.  It was one of the many great things she was that attracted me to her in the beginning.  Whether in Appalachia or Greece, we piddle, look around the bend, find a trail or make one.  We are explorers finding our way into adventure.  “The earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof”; we are looking for the fullness.  He does not disappoint, placing it around every bend.  In His fullness we find Him.  

We now must return from our wandering.  It is Sunday morning, we will build an altar, worship together and then begin the long trip home.  Over the mountain on our scooter, a long ferry ride to the mainland, long train to the airport hotel, 11-hour flight to Philadelphia, 2-hour flight to Knoxville, an hour drive to Fair Haven...in 40 some odd hours we will be there.   

Our Altar

we are off

on the plane in Athens

Our welcome home party.  If was so wonderful 
to see them.  

How Great Thou Art

I am road weary this morning, “out on the road for (15)days…” Bob Seger.  We leave Milos today; scooter, ferry, train airport hotel to get us in a position to leave for home tomorrow.  Awoke early after a fitful sleep, never sleep well when traveling deadlines loom.  Sitting with good coffee and Ancient of Days reading His Ancient Word.  I glance up and see the reflection of the sun topping the mountain.  “Peace like a river floods my soul.”  I begin to sing “…when I see the star(s)…how great Thou art.  How great Thou art.”  Who is this Almighty God who loves us so much that He shares one of His stars with us?  How great Thou art.  Yes!!!  God, kind God, how great Thou art. 

On occasion, we would actually pajama hike.

The reflection that caused this writing. 

True Grit, The Beloved True Grit!

In many ways, Greece is still a fledgling country, the remnants of pre-modernism still apparent. Lots of barely paved roads, electric lines strong like Christmas lights, small stores, modest homes, low and solid tying them securely to the earth. But where it is most evident is their economy of material. They still make use of scraps to improve their lot. Small boards of driftwood become a garden fence, bamboo becomes a shade awning on the porch, and the ever-present stone builds everything. I have grown to love this country and its people. The originals are short, sturdy, weatherworn to deep bronze, a good people, a solid people, they make do. I also do not know who all the others are, who is a tourist and who are immigrants migrating down from middle and eastern Europe. Lots of olive-skinned, dark-eyed beauty in men and women, mostly young and always more timid. And then there are Westerners, mostly European, very few, no Americans, and no Asians. If you were coming here you have to have a certain set to yourself a bent toward grit, true grit.

I have seen but a small section of Greece, southern all and one island. These are the lands of holidays, well-oiled bodies, white hamlets nestled here and there. Small restaurants, narrow streets, a mountainous, long country stretching out a long rocky and jagged coast, up steep hollows and along lonely passes. The wind keeps all things low, close to their sustenance, the earth. We learned quickly to keep all things with the wind if we expected to keep them. Between the wind and the rock, not much is available so low is what survives, plants and people. But then austere conditions sustain a certain flourishing, religion, and kindness. I do not testify to a current religious fervor but it has certainly animated those of the past. Churches are everywhere and like the people and fauna, they are strong, sturdy, beautifully built, and carved into the land as plentiful as the olive groves. This is a good land but one would have to set himself to it in order to stick.

These churches are everywhere even on the lonliest 
backroad like this one, high in a mountain pass.

Betty coming in the low door.

And ever thing ends in the sea.

 

Speaking From My Face on the Ground

We have sailed out into the islands, great brown rock towering above or laying streched to the horizon.  It is beyond  dreams that I would one day sail among the Greek islands but that is exactly where I find myself.  We landed at Milos late yesterday afternoon, a long white islnad with the “best harbor in all the Mediteranian” here for five days of rest.  We are on the southern side oriented to the N 28°, the winds stiff, out of the north.  The sea is cobalt, at four feet and cresting.  My lover sleeps soundly, the coffee ok, I have read the Ancient Text, listened and talked to The Ancient of Days, and now sit quietly with my heart and soul filled with the wonders of the last few days.  

Nothing prepares one for living on earth.  Its beauty and mystery both revive and mystifies.  How can this be?  How can every part, large and small be so endowed with beauty, so perfectly suited for me as I am made?  No matter where I turn, where I go, there beauty is, there is more color, more form, more sincerity of being.  And I leave and it is there left behind only to be replaced by more and more.  It is the greatest epic of all time on a set that isn’t built but just is, a perfect set, and us, being alive, perfect players.  Oh our earth, a stage of equisite splender but us so much more spledid.  It is powerfully painful because one is not normally so alive, so very much alive.  An awareness of the Divine casts one upon one’s face.  

from my moring window in Milos

Sunday Morning Coming Down

We are in Kalamata Greece on the Peloponnisos peninsula in a renovated old stone orchard home in the middle of a lemon grove.  So beautiful overlooking the sea.  We drove over from Nafplio along a coastal Scenic Byway the road clinging to the side of the mountains winding from barren peak to aqua-colored sea coast then repeat.  All along were small villages sewn into tiny cracks, stone homes, red-tiled roofs, and a central domed church.  This is a country with more churches than America and each one is an intimate work of sculpture.  God be praised.  This is Sunday morning coming down.  We slept 10 hours.  A day of rest.  We seek believers to sew our souls into.   

Churches along the way.

Our AB&B

Church were we were sewn.

Strung Out on An Ancient Road

Writings from Greece 

I am homesick; strung out from the road.  But this is an ancient road and I am so glad to be traveling it with Betty.  It is a wonderful experience to have history so well documented so as to live among it, see it, marvel at it—to step back in time.   Art History proposed the truths of the meaning of Art to culture and Greece as a great example.  This created in me a desire to see for myself; to be marveled.  And it has not disappointed.  In fact, it is far greater than I was taught.  A visit is worth all the words in all the Art History texts.  We are off 

as we were leaving the Acropolis 

We ate dinner here one night.

 

Be it ever so humble...

There is a glory to the daily routine, the old familiar ways.  We arrived back at Fair Haven last night around 10 from a 23-hour day to get us back.  Out on the road, 15 days was glorious but it does string you out, every day in brand new, no routine to guide you so that you must make up every moment.  Great adventures are just so, no routine to make it routine.  BUT… “be it ever so humble there’s no place like home.”  God is good. God is great.  Let us thank him.