It Has Something To Do With Traveling

As my lover and I have grown to the beginning of ancient we are learning truths that we have no vocabulary to express.  It is as if we are just beginning to see ahead an enormity which clarifies the brevity of our past.  It summarizes the past by opening glimpses of the future, underscoring the prologue in the first pages of the eternal epic.  We only have brief memories, just twinkling’s over 65 and 70 years.  It condenses these experiences into how well we lived lovingly, caringly and arranges our memories into the moments when we learned to be and teach kindness, patience, adventuring, and above all, to hear God, to clearly hear Him to know Him not to respond to Him. And it has something to do with traveling.  It is difficult to express advancements of the heart and soul; it is much like seeing an unknown event in the night sky, you think you know you saw it, but you can’t exactly believe or explain what you experienced.

Our month-long trip camping above the Arctic Circle in Alaska.
A picture of a memory.  

            

Puppies In Dark Matter

Evolution, time plus chance, is such a dull theory devoid of the creative exuberance we see all around us.  Bluebirds and snow, lover’s warmth, and chocolate, shooting stars and goldfish all underscore a great vitality of kindness, cheerful energy.  Dark matter is aptly named, void of creativity.  But amid all that dark are stars, quasars, spiral galaxies, and nebula, and amid all that is our star shining on our blue earth and amid all that are puppies.  Only God can make puppies amid all this dark matter.  

 

Add You Here ( )

The coming of Christmas is a frenzy of activity, getting everyone to our home, corralling them from running and romping over Fair Haven.  Driving into the hills to the farm that has faithfully raised our tree throughout the years and unleashing our herd to select a dozen or two of “this is a good one”. Ours is finally found, harvested to cheering, triumphantly hauled by tiny hands to the truck, a hayride around the field before all are aboard the Christmas caroling caravan home.  Boxes and boxes of lights and ornaments are unpacked and tiny, young, and old gnarled hands, set upon our tree with abandoned, robing her in debutant fashion.  Cocoa’s hot chocolate is made, the sun sets, the star and angel finally crown the tree, the lights are off and another set of tiny hands plugs in the juice, and our tree is presented for her final destiny, she is the luckiest evergreen on earth, she is our Christmas Tree welcoming in Christ’s birth remembered once again, “Come let us adore (all) Him…”   

After the presentation of our tree, we all have dinner and watch a 
Christmas movie, Holiday Inn this year.

Will You Ever Be?

The sun momentarily goldened the far shore, grooming it as a starlet.  Those are ancient hills over there, seen the “Let there be…”. The same as the Mighty Tennessee, been here since the conception of earth, right there, nobly crowned, “Water”.  There are longings in one’s heart, primal, blood born, Spirit glimpses into the darkness of the eternal past.  These awakenings require greatness given, earned, awarded, sharp as lighting’s edge.  One need lie on the forest slope, smell the ancient scent of the beginning, buried in time to Eden.  One “must be born again!” or one will never be. 

A Thanks Giving Prayer

I give you a small thought of air which will quietly give you life all through this day.

Amen.

Our beloved Cades Cove filled with air.

It Is Raining

If I could make a tiny cloud and in that cloud a drop of rain.  And if I could stand under a bright blue sky and make the cloud drop the one drop on me, I would worship myself.  How clever I would be, how kind to let the drop, drop on me.  And in my worship, I might decide to be as kind as kind can be.  I might make bigger clouds to float around and circle the earth.  And each one filled with countless drops and each stamped with their number, 709,832,074,581,360,295…. and my name, AARON LEE BENSON, so everyone would know how really cleaver I was and how kind I was to share what I had made.  If I could make a tiny cloud and in that cloud a drop of rain…

 

I Experience Great Ecstasies

I experience great ecstasies.  My lover and I walked across Henley Street Bridge in Knoxville last night.  The Great Tennessee flowed below sparkling from the city lights.  We were arm and arm, old lovers helping each other.  Great desires are gathered to us in times like these.  All the world is right.  It is what clarifies tragedies, knowing often ecstasies.  She sleeps now, my lover.  Dawn has just outlined the mountains beyond separating the river and sky as sure as Genesis did.  Solitude is a gift we give ourself.  It is where we can hear His Still Small Voice, it aligns all things in us to Him.  Stillness is where our hearts know the great wonders, created solely for me, one human, to know, Him Who Knows No Bounds.  My lover sleeping encourages me.  She is never more mine than when she soundly sleeps near my wandering heart.  I experience great ecstasies. 

  

Incalculable Words

There is so much to see.  To Whom do we owe the enormous debt of gratitude for eyes which see.  I am often overcome by my eyes' capacity to simultaneously bring beauty to bear upon my mind, heart, and soul.  To feel the deep and prolonged pain brought on by seeing exquisite beauty, color, form, economy, intricacy, and vastness all seized by my eyes, and given to me.  Another great gift of retirement is it has given me time to turn back and go see.  My eyes keep me in the rears to Someone.  A picture is worth a thousand words but vision's value is incalculable. 

Swan Pond Wilderness Area where we bike every morning.

    

Why Put Your Bed on Wheels?

We have been blessed.  Our blessing is a private audience to the Eternal Play.  At every moment of every day the earth is spread before us and of all things this means, the truest is: it awakens our soul to Him Almighty.  Our soul is more capable of life-giving than our body is.  This is what Fair Haven has given us, our own Great Awakening.  I put wheels on our bed and every night we roll it up to center stage.  We see night become day and day, night.  We see summer become fall and fall waning into winter.  We see the sun, moon, and stars.  We see colors that are living and have names, ivory, violet, indigo, alizarin, sienna, and ebony.  Wildness is ever-present.  We see as a witness.  We can confess glory; yesterday, we witnessed a deer swimming the half mile across the river to the island beyond, planets passing overhead, and packs of animals howling their jubilant kill.  We call them by name, “Our flock of American Pelicans has arrived for winter.”  We see unexplained things in the heavens, moving lights, colors without names, great flocks perfectly formed, breeding birds locked in intimate ecstasy falling to earth.  Our view hides us to see a coyote walk in front of our door, pause to look at himself, and then lope off into the night.  We see wildlife living, dying, dead, and being born, fierce fights for life, nurturing mothers, and fathers of all types, building homes.  This epic never ends, climaxes over and over, and mostly lies silently still before us letting us know, feel, and enjoy our soul.