Inside The Serene Violence

Once again in this early fall morning, darkness still not giving in as he pals around with cold, I sit quietly beside a roaring kiln fire, the majesty of it transforming the roar to a powerful presence.  Unless one has spent years beside a kiln it would be impossible to perceive the beauty of the basic elements, earth, water, air, and fire, being mightily constrained inside a box.  The box roars, the fire spews forth every hole seeking air enough to burn, the heat continually drives you further and further back as these elements are violently but serenely rearranging atoms, neutrons, and protons with earth metals of copper, cobalt, and magnesium to produce colors unimaginable in any canvas painted by man.  It is truly God’s work going on inside this magic box and roar is a sound His creating well produces.  And I have been allowed to sit beside His workspace quietly reading His Ancient Text, having a cup of good coffee, and imagining the wonder of what my Savior's up to inside that box? 

Staggering Reality

As I grow older clarity of meaning grows clearer.  All of life, for all people, is a quest for God.  If one refuses redemption it eventually becomes a hollow search for self meaning through attempts of self-realization.  I have traveled that road briefly denying myself nothing I desired.  Self realized is a difficult and offensive one to live with after even a few years.  God in Christ, however, is as dear a companion as one could ever hope to have.  I, like most, used to consider my relationship with God in Christ a religion.  It was not until my late 20’s I began a slow understanding of relationship with God as a relationship between Him and me alone.  It certainly has a small religious part; I regularly attend and work in and for a local church but that is more maintenance than relationship.  The relationship with God that I have been given by Christ is more like God revealing infinitesimally small parts of Himself to me and me becoming staggard by His reality.    

God allows you to know Him even in 
a bird's home built like a sculpture.

          

The Coming Eternal Opening Act

I often think of the great power it takes to tilt our earth to fall and winter’s rest.  The unreserved kindness is what strikes me as odd as if the forest might someday decide to turn itself into brilliant colors.  I can never seem to be as grateful as these random kindnesses demand.  It is like the dawn, or warmth or love in my heart, whole-hearted love that causes a longing for fulfillment.  My life often seems a tryout for a grand play of euphoric gratefulness, as if someday I might be called for the lead.  Oh, the sets would be something else and the opening act eternal.         

Dawn in Milos this summer.

Big Old Jet Airliner

Up in the high rise, overlooking a great river and surrounded by one of America’s famed cities.  Our sliding door opens us to the ocean breeze and the healthy aroma of inland waterways, living the high life, many stories above the fray.  My lover sleeps.  My mind drifts away to the mountains.  I flew away yesterday.  I am not a big fan of flying but do like aspects of it, two or worth mentioning.  One is the idea of going to or coming back from an adventure and two, which prompted this short blog, is the ability to see things from above.  Above is a great perspective, you see everything.  Everything is mostly wide open empty spaces, forests, rivers, mountains, farms, lakes, and oceans.  The earth is mainly empty wilderness, but from above you miss the people.  I imagine that is one of the reasons God sent Christ; he missed his people.  That is always meaningful to me, God feeling so much like I feel, loving the wilderness but wanting to share in it with those I love.

         

Who Will Save Us?

I travel regularly to America’s large cities and stay for days in their centers.  In the last several years I have seen a troubling trend; large sections have been given over to decaying squalor.  I do not understand.  Why does a culture, a community, a country decide there are certain parcels of its domain that ceases to be civilly addressed, abject surrender to degradation.  Our media devices feed us an ever-increasing gruel of political slop pitting you against me, which we lap up, while our country decays around us.  “Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of this death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” 

Gloria in Excelsis Deo

The earth is ripe and being harvested, and all of west Tennessee is under the harvester’s scythe.  The earth producing bounty is a perfect proclamation of The Loving God.  The richness of harvest, corn, soy, cotton, and more rises in row upon row of exuberant abundance.  I will miss this about West Tennessee.  Every fall I have my lover drive me into the fields to experience Gloria in Excelsis Deo. He never disappoints.

Where The Wind Blows?

Have you ever felt the fight, been in a situation tense with violence needing only a spark to become an instant inferno?  Have you ever known it spiritually?  As if you are keen to the Veil, ear to the mirror no longer dim?  My lover and I feel that way about our town.  She suggested we drive around its border and pray.  Yesterday we did just that.  It was holy.  As the miles tripped by our prayers became more urgent, our spirits more tender, and our hearts and bones burning within us.  We desired our praying to be connected with others praying, that lives, churches, schools, businesses, authorities, families, governments even the very land, air, and vegetation would be bound up under His authority.  We also prayed against with great fervor.  However, it was the ending that meant the most as we both wept under the Lordship of God’s Almighty presence in our prayers.  And then it ended!  Abruptly.  And The Wind blew away where it might and we were tired.  

 

My Well Soul

The river is like shimmering mercury this morning, veined with dark blue steel, cold but beautifully living.  Everything at Fair Haven is alive and no sign of man.  My lover and I lounged around the edge yesterday, reading, napping, me beholding her, warming me as much as the sun, and both, like sundials, often turned to rest in the warmth.  So free we were that often my mind would instantaneously create for me a memory of some sweet time long ago.  I was living peacefully while simultaneously viewing reruns of joy-filled bygone days.  Peace, upon peace, upon peace with my lover aside the river; “when peace like a river attendeth my way.”  Fair Haven.   

      

My "Cheatin Heart" In The Belly of the Fish

I have been up since 2:19, 5:35 now.  I struggle with insomnia but truly it’s worry and concern that so often causes “sleep won’t come, the whole night through.”  God and I have had a time this early morning, Him searching me, me finally listening.  All of life comes down to loving Him and loving others as ourselves.  It’s the latter that I often struggle with.  Reading Jonah I see a lot of myself, enjoying my love for myself, quickly forgiving all my transgressions while bemoaning all others' transgressions toward me.  Jonah wasn’t written by Jonah but about Jonah.  This blog is about me and is mostly written by God.  "Who will save me from this wretched man I am?"  Hank didn’t answer that, God did; “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”   

I am in the midst of attempting to write
the Bible.  The illumination for the book of Jonah.

  

A Brother of a Young Jewish Man

I was shamed the other day.  Several men, collogues actually, surrounded me calling me hurtful names, laughing at me, and running me down in front of many of my other collogues.  I have lived through this so many times, mostly in church where I learned early on, many Christians can only feel holy by making you feel unholy.  As a preacher's kid, we moved often, mostly because these “Christians” would throw my dad out of the church for being “unholy” in their holy eyes.  But I digress.  One thing about moving so often is you would have to go into a new school alone, defenseless, no gang to have your back.  Often this would lead to fights or scraps but mostly to just being an angry kid.  This anger eventually turned into rebellion and a long trip down the highway to hell breaking every speed limit.  I have thought a lot about what happened the other day.  It was just ripping the scab off an old buried wound, I was once again just that new kid, “hippy boy”, who many loved to make fun of.  There is a moral to this story.  While on that highway to hell a young Jewish Man “had compassion on me, ran to me, wrapped his arms around me and kissed me” and made me His Father’s son.  The other day, that shaming day, a brother of that Jewish Man heard it all, came up beside me, put his arm around me, and reminded me, “your cool” because That Young Jewish Man, now lives inside of you!  Thank you David Ward!

The Young Jewish Man's brother, David Ward.

A Charming Tale

I am often charmed by The Word of God. I sit quietly alone in the dark reading and thinking and being set upon by Him.  This morning I read Jonah and Numbers' account of Balaam.  I was carried away by God’s sovereignty over winds, worms, plants, donkeys, men, religion, and kingdoms. This overarching kingship awakens me to the dearness of faith, faith in the above-described God who also lives in me.  My faith is often carried away in emotion.  Such was the fire this a.m.  But the reality of life is faith is only faith when one is not charmed by emotion but changed by God in Christ by the Holy Spirit. This truth came to me when it was not the talking donkey or the killing worm that enchanted me but the God, the One and Only God who strives with me alone, who demands a personal relationship with me, me, in reality, not much more than the worm or donkey and yet here I am, He and me and the very air I breath is His and the chemical makeup of that same air that satisfies my lungs and my lungs and my movements that type out this short note.  And the band marches on and I am again charmed by this God, my God, I am His and He is mine and I am His heir.  The fairy tale that is no tale.     

Child of God

A child was named for me last week.  A new human being bears my name.  It is not a minor thing this naming a human after another.  It is more like a compact, an agreement between father, mother, child and me.  It goes something like this.  They agree that my life is worthy and the worthiness is titled, Lee.  I agree that their new life is worthy of the titles as he is to manifest the qualities the father and mother see in me.  It is also a gift of thanksgiving from the parents to me and a pact that I will continue to live a life modeled to be watched and imitated by the son.  The entirety of this compact is based on one absolute Truth; anything good and worthy of emulating in the father, the mother, the son or myself is due completely, wholly and with all gratefulness on Him who lives inside of us and His manifestations in us are those that are the ink on the compact.  It is this ink, God in Three, that will eventually live in Lee Alan that will someday be passed from him to his which will be titled his name sake.  It is the way of God, passing Himself from generation to generation, for all earthly time, His compact that we are literally His children, here and forevermore—the children, Lee Alan, child of God.