1952 Perfect Warmer Model

Reading 1 Kings account of David and his virgin warmer on his “bosom”.  Old is a powerful period.  It is not you who are old it is all your parts, eyes, nose, toes, muscles, joints, all of you.  And each part has its own issues which you must attend to.  You know your body is wearing out, it doesn’t work as good or perform as well as it used to.  But this also requires a certain level of creativity to do things in ways that compensate.  God, I am glad you make us creative and wise to know how we can get things done.  One way is to break tasks down into time frames which allows for accomplishment as well as recovery.  We become sensitive to our bodies as never before.  We also pay attention to things that matter and not to those that don’t.  Full moons and baby raccoons come to mind.  We become better lovers, land users, prayers, ecologists, and parents.  We linger, piddle, put off, dawdle, hang back, and stick around.  We tend to wounds, listen to long songs, cup our ear, and make better art.  Warm water is a great miracle, and a warm lover is better.  No young virgin here, something better, a 40-year-old model who works, fits and warms perfectly. 

         

Exuberance

Being an artist is much about exuberance.  This word and its experience have become rare in today’s culture.  But artists are soft-wired to its possibility in every aspect of life.  From eating and drinking on beautiful handmade ware to lounging on handmade furniture, and sleeping under a handmade quilt.  We notice the caterpillar, the red bird, and the full moon.  We try and hear the fall leaves hit the ground and every singing bird gets our attention.   We have lovers instead of spouses, we adopt dogs as family members, and we revere the time to see day becoming night and night becoming day.  We are regularly found looking for falling stars and satellites and we have holding our breath contests.  We praise the last flower of summer and talk out loud to animals.  Our family is royalty and at the same time stooges, we laugh at each other and bleed over every tear.  And above all else, we are always humbled by God.  He is all we have, and He is enough.  This is what it means to be an artist, we are exuberant about living.  

Aspire to Live...

I awake and go to sleep looking at the earth.  Our bed is on wheels and every night we roll it to our windows so we can go to sleep and wake to the beauty of God’s earth.  He’s loaned us the woods to the right and left of us, the mountain behind us, and the hard-won acre we cleared to live on.  It is a great encouragement to wake up here, the beauty of the earth laid out before you slowly becoming visible as the earth turns itself to our star.  It awakens a great feeling of potential for good in me.  Its beauty spurs me to contemplate what beauty can I accomplish today, what good can I do, it incites in me a desire for kind adventure, “to aspire to live quietly…and work with my hands.”  

Being Given a Life Loving Heart

I was at one time a very valiant young man.  I thought myself capable of lethality.  Over my 65 years, I have been violent toward the living and have experienced shocking and bloody violence against my body.  I have grown deeply troubled by the death of any living thing.  My lover and I daily bike in a wilderness preserve in the foothills of the Crab Orchard mountains, Swan Pond it’s named.  It is bordered by one country road.  The other day we witnessed the violent, breaking asunder death of a small fawn stuck by a car.  I am always armed.  I could not kill it.  I cried.  I cried mostly for God, “How can you stand it, all this death?”  A few days later, once again driving to our secluded bike path we came upon another fawn, in the same but more peaceful condition.  I took a picture.  I felt it should be recorded.  A life is a life and should be acknowledged when it is no longer a life.  God felt this way, recording the passing of every sparrow and allowing us to be born again.  Death can only sting our human heart but cannot render us dead any longer.  I am not as valiant as I used to think I was. 

       

Aptly Named Fair Haven

Retirement is a working life at Fair Haven.  Our little patch of earth was 10 years ago as wild as Borneo, hanging unkept over the peaceful Tennessee.  We have pushed back an acre and nature pushes back twice as hard.  You cannot defeat nature, it has been thriving since “Let There Be Light and Land” and now thrives against me since, “Here take a bite.”  I have found it to be a jaw-setting endeavor.  We will have a lawn, a few flowers, and some new trees if I set my jaw on it.    My orchard has died off but remains a dream yet set to my jaw.  Grass and weeds thrive on our driveway and our lawn has many a bare spot.  But this is the joy of it all, nature will abide and often welcome a quiet interlude with itself as itself.  Nature is basically peaceful, it lies around looking beautifully natural and if I will, I can sit with it.  Nature never looks at me admiring my beauty, it is above all things, nature for God’s sake.  The trees, river, and sun cannot talk back to God, they keep at his command to be until he altars that command with a few words like, “Peace!  Be still!!”  One day He will push back on nature and say, “Be made new” and it will then have peace with me and stop pushing back…and Fair Haven will finally be aptly named.