What Do You See When Your Mind In Solemn Stillness Lay?

What do you see?  We see one image a night of outer space produced by the Hubble and James White telescopes.  It is a part of our Advent celebration.  These two images are from the night before last and last night.  What do you see?  I see a declaration of glory so unfathomable it demands worship.  True worship.  I cannot turn away from this.  I cannot toss it aside like so many images.  It stops me cold confronts me with holiness. How can I believe in something so beautiful beyond all beauty I have ever known?  But the answer to this question and all life others is so simple as to bring my mind to solemn stillness.  It is the Christ Child, the I AM, the one who is said of, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”  It is like seeing the sculpture of David and thinking it’s amazing instead of Michelangelo.  The amazing Christ Child, my mind “in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing.  Still through the clovern skies they come with peaceful wings unfurled, and still their heavenly music floats o’er all the weary world…”  

     

 

21,535,200 Seconds of My Normal

21,535,200 seconds ago, 358920 minutes ago, 14955 days ago, 41 years ago this morning, I felt terribly sick. It was bitter cold, spitting snow.   My brother took me to the emergency room of UT Hospital.  The doctor laughed at me, said there was nothing wrong, gave me a B12 shot, and sent me on to my wedding.  If you had sat me down and told me all that would happen to me in the next 41 years, all the children and grandchildren we would have, the place we would go, the people we would meet, the things we would see, the adventures we would have, I would never have believed it.  The Three and her and me has been the greatest adventure I could have never imagined.  Bad times and great, deaths and births, mountains and valleys, life has been as real as I would have never hoped for or imagined it could be.  I married my lover, and to this day, she is her.  I have never grown tired of her, never thought she was anything but drop-dead gorgeous, never not longed for her, felt fulfilled in her, desired her.  From the first time I saw her, I loved her and wanted to be with her, and all these feelings and infinitely more have never gone away.  Is this normal?  I don’t know.  I hope so.  But the truth is…it is my normal.  God be praised.  I have never gotten over her.      

 

Ten Days Out

Ten days out.  Ten more days of Christmas.  Ten more days to see if The Spirit of Christmas stirs in our hearts, minds, and actions.  Most of my Christmas Spirit comes in nostalgia, Christmas past, those childhood days, mine and ours.  My Christmas present is also filled with Christmas past, Advent, the remembering of another Childhood, the God Child coming to be with us.  My Christmas future, although a mystery now, will be filled with more of the same wonderful memories of this Christmas and all the Christmas past, present, and future. If Christmas is anything, it is a thing of remembering, remembering long ago and far away, over the hills and through the woods, God came to be with us, forever and evermore.  Memory is the gift of remembering.  How kind it is that we can.    

The other evening it was snowing as a tug 
slowly pushed a barge up river.  

 

God's Visitation

It is my habit to rise early, start the coffee my lover has prepared the night before, push the coals from the long night into a pile, lay tinder upon them, and pick up The Ancient Text.  After a while, as the Spirit is moving in my heart and mind, a sudden coming occurs, lighting up the darkness in a Godly glow of hope and meaning.  Fire has suddenly sprung to life as if some angel had slipped into our home and, brightly appearing, announced, “To God be the glory!  Great things He hath done!”  I sit and marvel as I stare at the fire and think how many times this miracle has stirred the hearts of men and women, giving hope, warmth, light, and renewed love for a God Who not only conceived of fire but, in an unfathomable act of kindness, shared it with us.  Yes, to Him, The Fire Maker, be the glory and honor forever and evermore. 

 

 

The Worm, Me, and The Omniscience

I saw a long worm on our porch crawling along the wet concrete.  He didn’t know the concrete was deadly to him, and when the sun dried the concrete, the concrete would leach the moisture out of him, leading to his demise.  My lover and I are worm savers, regularly saving them from our porch by tossing them back in the yard.  I got up, went outside, picked him up, and tossed him into the yard.  If he had half a brain, he would have thought some hand of a monster had grabbed him and tried to kill him by throwing half a country mile.  He didn’t.  Have half a brain, that is.  I had actually saved his life.  If I had half a brain, I would have tried to explain to him what I was doing.  But I don’t either.  Have half a brain that it.  I have a whole brain and knew there was no reason to explain to someone without half a brain that I was saving his life.  He couldn’t understand it anyway.  I came back in and continued my quiet time with The Omniscience, the maker of the worm, and me, me saved, and the worm as well.  

     

 

It Is Christmas Time

It is Christmas time, the Christmas season.  Which means what to me?  A grasping at the marvel of it, God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”  That Person came from heaven, and became a baby on earth and grew up here, and became a man, and is our Messiah, our Sinless Savior, Who we killed, but He raised Himself from the dead, “And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.”  This is the Who I am trying to grasp.  This is Christmas.  This is us trying to grasp His birthday.  “What will we do with this Man called The Christ?”  God bless everyone in grasping this meaning of the season we are all experiencing.      

Hounder looking at a deer looking at her.  

 

 

18°, 98.6°, 800° All Have Their Place

18°.  That's the temp outside.  That’s cold.  I like cold better than hot.  Or, I should say, I like getting warm better than I like getting cool.  One, my lover can get me warm but never cool.  Fire, one of my favorite things, can do the same thing.  And better still, I like the process of getting warmed by both.  I am confident enough in my manhood to admit I like snuggling, and I also like building a fire.  I like getting up in the dark, banking the coals in the fireplace, and setting tinder, which, later, while I sit in the dark reading The Word and drinking coffee, will suddenly, as a heavenly visitation, burst into flames, filling our home with glowing light and the promise of coming warmth.  It is 18°, my lover is 98.6°, and my fire, Google says, is 800°.  I keep 18 outside, 800 in a steel box, and my lover in my arms.  I like getting warm. 

       

 

Humbly Home

We had been on the road a few days.  Returning yesterday in the bitter cold, we unloaded, and I sat about making a fire as Betty put our traveling gear away.  Soon, we were reclining with our dog in front of the fire as the sun set over the Tennessee.  All was calm, all was bright.  Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home. 

 

 

The Realms of Glory

Yesterday, I wrote to encourage you to participate in Advent as a means of experiencing Christmas in a more meaningful way.  One of the great treasures of Christmas is meditating on the Virgin Mary being with child, God with us.  In the Christian faith, we also experience the same condition.  At salvation, God comes to dwell in us as Spirit.  We are the new Temple for Him (1 Corinthians 6:19).  For some of us, this is a great treasure, for others, a great troubling which might cause us to say, as Mary said, “How can this be?” (Luke 1:24).  All of life is based on faith including our sincere celebration of Christmas, for it is all about Christ being with us.  Not just a man named Christ but the Son of God Almighty.  Advent is a help to our belief and our unbelief (Mark 9:24) because we all need help to believe in Christ, Whom the Angels from the Realms of Glory sang of.    

 

Will You Join Me and Mine?

Advent begins today.  For you who read this let me encourage you to join me and mine and celebrate Christmas by observing Advent.  Christmas can often seem lost on me, like standing outside looking into something I never quite am a part of.   As if the greatest party of the year is happening but I never seem to be invited or at least never seem to be as affected as the whole world seems to be.  Advent is an invitation to your heart to come in and join in the true meaning of Christmas that causes all the other fanfare.  It also adds some liturgy to my life and I long for personal liturgy.  Liturgy is a physical act of worship, it is a doing to commemorate, celebrate, and observe deeply held Christian truths; it is religion being performed.  The liturgy of Advent is 5 candles, (you can use any you have) one lit at the beginning of each of the four weeks of Christmas and one on Christmas Day.  There are many Advent guides you can access online which give daily prompts for each day of Advent.  My lover and I use The Atlantic Magazine, Hubble Space Images Advent along with one our daughters-in-law, Britt and Allison shared with us, which I have posted below.  You don’t have to be a follower of any religious tradition to find some meaning in a holiday that never seems to live up to its hype.  But celebrating Advent can be a way to be a better you, and to be a part of something bigger than the hype of Christmas, to actually be a part of understanding the meaning of Christmas.  Merry Christmas       

https://ccca.biola.edu/advent/2024/before-the-fall-living-in-a-sacred-sanctuary  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Q8ByNT1m8V4 

 

A Happy Thanksgiving Tightening Binds

There are many, 54 at last count.  We are Bensons and those that marry us.  We all came from two only children, Wayne Lee Benson and Mary Nell Gentry Benson.  Both their fathers died at 41.  No two people could have come from greater tragedy and dysfunction.   If we had known them as children, we would have given them little chance to survive.  But both found Christ and found each other.  They were “old-timey" Christians,” mostly visiting, feeding, caring, loving, and welcoming others.  I have yet to know better examples of Christ.  And because of them, we all found someone we wished to be like and eventually found Christ in them to be the Christ we wanted in us.   And we are the rest of the story.  We are slightly less dysfunctional than them, but because of them, our dysfunctions are covered over by Blood.  We gather regularly and are loud, opinionated, big storytellers and bigger laughers.  We give each other no quarter and will abide no one outside us to quarter one of ours.  We are blood, family, exceedingly including, loving, forgiving (we’ve all been forgiven so much), and have a single tie that binds, Christ.  Yesterday, He tightened the bind.  Bless be the Tie that binds, our hearts in Christian love… 

2/3rds of us.  Mom, in the middle, is the only one of hers left.  She mostly
dwells in heaven now, little of her left here with us.
I only know one greater woman. 

   

OUR BRAIN SEEKS CLARITY

Happy Thanksgiving.  403 years ago, our Pilgrims, along with a host of Native Americans, had a celebration to give thanks to the Christian God for providing for them in the New World.  Stories vary in detail but not in celebration.  It was a three-day thanks giving for a good harvest.  They had prepared the soil, planted, and, as all farmers know, God brought fruit to their labors that they harvested and put up.  Today, most of us neither prepare, plant, or harvest but will enjoy the good fruits God has provided.  Do not allow yourself to be dull, the harvest is vast and plentiful for which we did little.  A good heart, open mind, and attentive senses will always lead to thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is us giving thanks.  To Whom will you give your thanks today?

Freedom From Want, by Norman Rockwell

I Will Not Know I Have Forgotten

There is beginning a forgetting.  I noticed it yesterday.  I used to listen to crows call, and it would immediately take me back to falls past, tramping over great fields of harvested corn, of football games to play, church socials, girlfriends, and the freedom to just hang around.  But yesterday, they were mostly just crows calling across Swan Pond, where my lover and I rode bikes.  As I rode along, I tried to remember the feelings those cries used to call up in me, the meaning of being, the memory of such wonderful days long ago.  I could not.   Now, only the forgotten dearness of my past.  My past, as I guess all past, is mainly the sweet joy of those days, tied to sounds, crows calling, smells, falls drying sweetness, and the longing to be young again.  Growing old is profound, filled with overwhelming meaning that can make you weep, and one, the forgetting of the knowing of meaning.  It truly turns me on to think of growing old and the poems, prayers, and promises I will not know I have forgotten.   

 

Seeing Is Believing

It is first light.  I try to always notice it; the moment darkness is first dispelled, I joyously, seek to recognize it.  First light fills me with hope, forces me to praise Him for His great grace and mercy, and sets my soul aright, heart steadfast, and mind at peace.  First light demands a verdict, I either do or don’t believe!!!  First light, by its very name, declares its eminence; first light.  First light is the moment we know we can see again, and seeing is believing.  

You never know what first light will reveal at Fair Haven.

  

The Hymns of Earth

It is raining, grey morning, clouds lowered to half mountain, the air filled with wet mist.  The earth lays still and quiet.  It is refusing to get up, taking a day off, a few much-needed hours of lingering quietly over rivers, hills, and dales.  It has earned a rest from its labors.  God commands a fallow year for Earth every seven years.  It is to lay up on its laurels, a year of repose to enjoy itself, to testify to God’s goodness even to its valleys, trees, rivers, and mountainsides.  This God is here for everyone and everything, to bring us all joy.  How desperately dull we are to pass by the daily life of the earth and never listen to the hymns it sings.  A man is so much more the man when he is deliberate in his notice of the earth; “That they should develop keen perceptive faculties is no more remarkable than that a carpenter should hit a nail instead of the thumb that steadies it.”*  Go man with God. 

*Horace Kephart, The Book of Camping and Woodcraft, pg 206

Aware-ingly Looking

I walk around and look at her, examining her for any joys or wounds she might have experienced in my absence.  This is my habit concerning Fair Haven.  After days of being away, I walk over her, up and down her hills and valleys, down her length and breadth, through her and around her.  I am reacquainting myself with her.  It is a great joy to have a bit of the earth and a little of her to call mine while I am here.  For she does not belong to me.  No part of the earth belongs to us.  It is loaned, by a great kindness of grace, of its Maker.  Its loan is also with the expectation of care and betterment.  I am to help the earth, keeping it clean and guarded against any and everything that might reduce its productivity and limit its possibilities.  I am also to add to it, plant, grow, feed, and nourish it with new growth and new growing things.  So I walk over her, lovingly looking at her, giving my attention to her, and in this, she gives me the satisfaction of showing herself to me, for I see her only as I aware-ingly look.  It is akin to seeing my lover…but I move to a higher elation there, so I will end here, with Fair Haven.    

 

Be It Ever So Humble

Nothing so endears one to home than tramping around the earth.  It is good to be home.  Being in the wilderness urges you to make it a part of your daily life, to place yourself under its testimonies and quiet assurances of goodness, beauty, and His care.  Home and hearth should always be abundant in the grace and goodness of His provisions, His creative abundance, and ways of liturgy nature has so displayed for you as you walked her hills and valleys, back woods, and canyon streams.  God should be as welcome in our homes as He is in the open spaces He created.  A mountain and a stream are as humbly welcoming as a warm and welcoming home…and be it ever so humble,  in your making, there is no place like home.  

 

 

An Expert Witness

Back in that same hotel, waiting to fly home later this afternoon.  I will wake up in Fair Haven tomorrow.  I can’t think of any place I’d rather be!  God has gifted me with a sliver of His world, and it is kind.  I am listening to Nat King Cole, my lover lounges on the bed reading The Ancient Text.  I have been with Him.  Everyone should go camping once a year.  It realigns you and gives you insight into your smallness and the earth's bigness.  Every moment it confronts you with your limits and limitedness.  You can’t do anything about the earth, it just is, but in its “isness,” it also testifies it does not run itself, its masterfulness, exactness, enormity, overwhelming craftedness, creativity, and beauty testified to its needfulness for a Maker.  And therein lies our need for it, its testimonies are true, it is an expert witness, all He needs to win His already stated verdict; I AM!

Betty, on our last hike in Abilene, SP, in a grove of Texas Live Oaks
giving us their expert testimony.

 

Never Saw Willie

Rode hard and put up wet

That old cowboy saying about their horse aptly describes my lover and me.  We are road-weary and long for home.  We are camped just outside Austin and turn our RV in at 11a.m.  These last few days have been a long haul across most of Texas to get us back to Austin, where we fly out tomorrow evening.  We have loved our time here, but the panhandle is broken up between oil fields, refineries, miles of open cropland, and long stretches of empty which they fill with wind turbines.  These things are so intrusive, overwhelming everything else.  But ending on a high note.  We were headed to our campsite on this backroad and came across Luckenbach, Texas, as in “with Waylon, Willie and the boys…”  What a treat.  Had a band of old men playing on and outside stage.  Never saw Willie. 

    

 

Overwhelmed With Events

America is still here, awake, going about our work of the day.  Many are in turmoil, seem forsaken and lost for what to do, and overwhelmed with events.  Many are elated, over the moon, victory-lapping, and overwhelmed with events.  Such is life.  Life goes on, and no matter what side you are on most of life is lost to our understanding.  Good people die, laughter is good medicine, cancer happens, grandbabies are born, North Carolina is flooded, planes fly, everyone can’t sing, roses, bad people make out, dogs are nice, and we get old and broken.  Life more often than not, does not make sense.  What are we to do.  I am a follower of Christ, and if He has taught me one thing, it is this, I will not understand most of life.  It is what He came to help me with.  It is called faith, faith that He loves me, that He has a plan for me, America, the earth, and the cosmos.  That His plan will be fulfilled…PERIOD.  It is a plan for good, good wins, love wins, He wins.  My role in life is to go about doing as good a job as I can today.  To love others.  To serve.  To pick up the errant piece of trash.  To smile at everyone and wave.  To be kind.  To be nice.  To try as best as I can to do the right thing every moment, every glorious moment He gives me to be alive today.  He is the only way I have hope.  He has a plan and He will work it all out.  For Good.  For His Good, and it will be forever and evermore, GOOD.  

 

We Interupt this program to bring you this special annocement

6-8-2024 AD

(Government regulations have forced me to withhold this blog written five months ago until they (the government) would stamp their approval on what God approved on the above date)

I have never experienced adoption.  Our youngest son and his wife have been in the process for three years.  It has not been easy.  This is life at its most meaningful, being repeatedly and tragically snatched away.  Added to this, many of these situations come with tragic circumstances forcing our hearts to face unbearable realities.  We go through these things as a family.  More than once, we have laid upon the mountaintop altar with no baby in the bush.  But yesterday, June the seventh, two thousand and twenty-four AD, Joshua James Benson was born.   Today he lies in the arms of his mother, “skin to skin” as our son puts it.  I have moved the stakes out, widening our tent, and know, of all truths, this is the truest.  He was worth it all.  He is now ours!!!

Our littles Inca grandson, Joshua James Benson!!!

 

Daylight Savings Court

The times they are changing; daylight is being saved, and instead of dark this early morning, someone has saved some morning for me to enjoy.  Clear skies break the butte we are camped under deep in Palo Dura Canyon in NW, Texas.  Yesterday was our longest journey as we drove from Marfa in the far SW to here, near Amarillo, in the NW panhandle, a 9-hour journey.  It is the Sabbath, and we will partake.  Sabbath rest is one of the kindest commands of Almighty Who needs no rest but knows, boy, howdy we do.  It rained yesterday, and as we arrived, the stream lying at the bottom of the canyon ran rust red, a liquid mark of beauty unrivaled by all the art we had just seen.  Creation is seconded only by Christ in their testimony of Your loving mercy, grace, and care for us.  If we don’t accept Christ’s testimony, creation will be the star witness against us.  As Paul Harvey used to say, “You better settle outta court”.  Creation is an expert witness.  

  

 

 

Rightly Overwhelmed Art

We are leaving early this a.m., our longest one-day journey ahead of us.  Seven hours from here to Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo.  We are going there to see another iconic land artwork, Cadillac Ranch.  We toured all of Donald Judd’s complex yesterday.  Powerful.  However, this is the truth of it.  The compound is a WW I and II army base and prisoner-of-war camp.  Many of the old signs painted in German still remain.  The history here, still very much in evidence, the location in the vastness of SW Texas, and the architecture overwhelm the art and place it rightfully in one's heart, mind, and soul.   

 

 

Marfa Texas, Art, Fashion, and Truth

Marfa Texas

We came to Marfa because it is the location of two great art experiences I have long heard of but never gotten to experience, Prada Marfa and Donald Judd’s compounds, where he established his art and art practice.   Prada Marfa is a land art piece.  It is a small adobe shop built to mimic a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texas desert, surrounded by hundreds of square miles of barrenness.  You cannot enter it but it has two large windows where you can look in at the Prada brand women's shoes and purses.  It is stunning in its implications, international fashion juxtaposed against the vastness of the earth.  I have never been a big fan of Judd’s work but greatly admire his great visual attempt to find meaning and purpose in the fundamentals of Art, form, and his dependence upon the idea that creating is the highest form of meaning for humans.  This is the power of Art for me.  It, like no other, shows us our human desire for meaning, for purpose in life.  Although many great artists never find the Ultimate Meaning Giver, I admire their all-out abandonment toward the search.  It gives me an example of how I am to follow Christ, not only in my faith and religious life but in all of my life, including my vocation.  Creating Art is one of the sincerest ways to love God, serve Him, and live to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.  

 

Choosing to Warm The Old Out of Me

We are on the move again.  The delightful trail always calls us on somewhere beautiful.  It has turned cooler, 56° this morning.  Sun is just outlining the Davis Mountains. Good Text, good coffee, and good morning.  It is a slow morning.  Nothing to do but rest and be present.  I am trying to read all of Zane Grey’s and Louis L’Amour’s westerns and this country underscores their brilliant writing.  Reading Grey’s Stranger From the Tonto.  It will fill much of today.  I may ease back in bed beside my lover to warm the oldness out of me.  Choices, Choices, Choices.  

In Mexico.  We boated across the Rio Grande and had 
lunch and visit in Boquillas.

As Alive As Dying

Death sets you down. Death of a large animal has to be reckoned with.  As we were hiking the other day, we came on a horse in the last throes of living.  Her eyes closed, her breathing occasionally, but no other sign.  A mass of dying, right here open to the heavens, dug into the earth, she seemingly more alive than me; her aliveness being just a twinkling away from her dead nothingness, all she was to do she has done.  Once a horse, now moments from being just dead, gone forever.  My lover and I are simple people.  We believe, really, really believe.  An example.  One day, while riding in Big Bend, a big buck ran across the road back into the scrub.  We stopped, and she whistled at him, and he turned and looked at us.  We marveled at his beauty, his being, his power, all the while, we were both talking to him.  As we drove off, she shouted, “We love you!” and, taking my cue from her, I shouted, “We’ll see you in heaven!”  Both of us were telling the truth.  We are simple.  So we looked longingly at this dying being, a horse, a good horse.  And in some way, we both experienced sorrow for her passing and joy in her crossing over…to the earned and welcomed rest.  And that is the simple truth of four simple, living and dying creatures.  Sparrows and horses fall to the earth only with His notice.    

The horse.

  

The buck.

 

We Are Overwhelmed

Big Bend has done us in, worn us out, stepped us down, we are overwhelmed.  It takes our whole being to be here, the vastness of it, the barrenness, hopelessly without sustenance, dry, hot, and covered with fine dust.  We are mostly alone, rarely do we drive, walk, or hike in view of other humans.  The vastness, your lover, you.  This also forces you to live in a sense of self-reliance that you're not quite sure you have enough of.  Going armed helps but you can’t get water from a gun.    But this is not the whole truth.  It has overwhelmed us with its vast beauty.  A beauty unknown is a beauty that overwhelms. It is more than we can conceive; it is new and utterly different without analogy so that our minds strain to categorize, our hearts strain to find a rightful place to put it, to think about it, and to praise appropriately.  It is a verge-ness, on the tip of our soul how to describe what we see–the sky is sapphire crystal, as big as heaven gets, the land saturated, filled to the brim with colors of earth, red, white, purple, all in a million hues.  The stars are so vast they give night, light, the moon still below the horizon.  The greens are so sparse they startle when we turn and there’s some.  All of this and this: nature though itself thriving, would, could, and has killed us weak humans by withholding the one thing that makes all this beauty overwhelming, an utter lack of moisture, water, life.  We are overwhelmed.  

Leave this morning for some rest for a couple of days.

 

Beauty Produces Conversation About Life

It is big.  It is vast.  It is barren. It is present.  We drove mostly alone all day in Big Bend, its vastness separating us from the few others here.  Coming to Big Bend is not a trip it is a pilgrimage, it's not a place it is a feeling, a meaningfulness like the power of being present. To come here you have to want to come.  This is not a land that welcomes.  It intimidates first.  Even in the luxury of our cars its vastness still intimidates.  You live here because she reminds you how quick nature can take your living.  All living things here display a certain level of hardship, a picture of life being hard-won.  This is what it does, but it does it with beauty.  I told my lover, “Beauty produces conversation, " which is always about life and living.   A well-lived life overcomes the many great obstacles to living while seeing the cherished Providence provides to flourish under those hardships.  This produces beauty, and that is what Big Bend does.  It produces the beautiful borne out in visible hardship.      

   

 

MAGA

My mind drifted back over the centuries when men and women struggled over these lands to find a better life.  This land's vastness, bareness, and hardness pitted against their desire to make for themselves a life.  We passed through the Davis Mountains, past Fort Davis, then Alpine, and then the long plains of barrenness, thousands of square miles of heat, scrub, and bare rock mountains, our invitation to Big Bend National Park. I now sit at its gate, Ancient Text, coffee, me, pen.  How many of those before me sat by the fire, with Ancient Text in hand, hoping against hope to be sustained another day till they could find water and land to prosper by.  This is America.  Wild, untamed, vast goodness like no other on earth. Goodness relinquished to only the most hardy, the ones holding to their God and guns, to tame a wildness that could, and often did, kill them.  My mind returned to the present as my lover drove us along empty Hwy 118.  Her grandfather came here in 1919 from Eastern Europe, hidden in the steerage of a freight ship running from inscription by the Czar of Russia.  And here I sat beside her, royalty, really.  Her’s built the America we know today.  God bless America!  Yes, dare I say, we are Making America Great Again. 

Her standing in the Rio Grande

  

 

A Final Stroke of Meaning

My lover and I walked along the path surrounding the pool the young men of the CCC built in the 1930s.  It is still very much as they built it.  I was amazed at their workmanship, attention to detail, quality of their materials, and craftsmanship of the result.  It was late in the evening, the sun setting, and I was filled with the meaningfulness of it.  The earth is so well crafted, the sun is the same, and the cosmos is still more of the same.  And here are men doing the same.  Making for the long haul, working skillfully to make it last, living and working, a quality of life that was the norm, if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right.  The earth, the sun, the pool…done right.  We were alone, loving, meaning was the norm, perfection, a moment of completeness.  We took off our shoes and sat with our feet in the cold spring water.  A final stroke of meaning.  

 

Water Hole to Water Hole

Balmorhea State Park, Texas

I have read enough cowboy books to know South West Texas is a no-man's land.  So, it was my thinking yesterday as we continued to push further west.  The abundant green of the Frio River oasis I had awoken to faded quickly as the sky and land turned bare and pale. This morning I feel the old cowboy saying, “Road hard and put up wet.”  This is more the RV mattress than our 6-hour drive deep into the desert.  We are moving like pioneers from one water hole to the next.  Today is the Balmorhea Springs pool fed by the Davis mountains stretching along our southern horizon.   The pool was built by the young men (back when men were men) of the CCC Civilian Conservation Corps.  It is a crystal clear gift of American antiquity.  It remains mostly as it was built in the 1930s as President Roosevelt tried to keep our depression ear country alive by putting young, jobless men to work building parks all over the country.  This is a gem of that program.  A large circular pool with two long arms, one for shallow ease and one, 30 feet deep, for diving.  A covered promenade on one side and a shaded park on the other.  It was just a cure for my belabored mind and body.  The spring-fed pool remains 72° year-round and in the heat of the desert afternoon was a welcome balm for my lover and me.  We had it mainly to ourselves.  Mornings breaking here.  May take a cowboy nap.  Happy trails.   

The Shaman of Life

Garner State Park, Texas

Everything pulled away, the clouds, the trees, the vegetation all seemed to draw back into themselves, paring down to their essentials, not stunted but powerful acts of preservation toward living.  These were my thoughts as we drove west out of the clogged and smogged commerce of Austin and San Antonio into the plains and opening up of the hill county of west Texas.  The sky cleared into iron blue, and the vastness cleansed the land and brought out its hardscrabble nature.  We are camped beside a wide emerald stream, the Frio River, an oasis of life.  Water is like a savior, a shaman of life, allowing ancient trees, gnarled masses of hope and beauty.  It is apropos to The Holy Scripture’s high regard for water, even to the naming of the Divine as Living Water.  So here we are, sitting in the morning dark, listening to King Cole, drinking good coffee in an exquisite cup I carry with me, and thinking of my Good God.  I have read the ancient prophet Ezekiel, and God’s declaration in the desert of sin that He will establish His new covenant with me, to save me, and this piece of west Texas declares the Truth of His Word…Living Water’s Living Blood brings me to life everlasting.   From west Texas; happy trials. 

The Frio River beside our campsite.

Betty with the massive Texas Live Oaks
that line the river.

    

 

Off Adventuring

Austin Texas

I am in a hotel far from home, and my lover is just stirring.  We are off big adventuring today.  We are good at it.  My lover is good at it, which allows me to be good at it.  She is the most ambitious person I have ever met.  We can be lost on the barest back trail, and suddenly she will begin to dance along to a divine voice she hears in her head.  This allows me such freedom to lead us on the most beautiful seclusions the earth holds, places where it is just Him, us, and His earthly delights, and nothing more for miles and miles.  She will swim in cold streams, cover her shoulders in cathedrals, struggle up to high glades, and talk pleasantly with Presidents.  She is the best partner, allowing me to take us to the wilds, nature's best faces, man's greatest achievements, and highs and lows of experiences we could never imagine but often get to.  It is the greatest adventure when your lover loves it.  Happy trails.  Off to Big Bend.   

   

A Ten Year Old On An Eternal Playground

Sometimes I feel a thousand years old, my body worn out like an old tree fallen into a river for 900 years and now lies beached at Fair Haven, cracking up like water-logged wood lying under the sun.  I know so many more of my parts than I used to.  Each one vying painfully for a bit of attention.  The fall is a reality for the aging, the grip of dying a squeezing gnarled hand one wants desperately to smack down like a curr dog.  I used to go all day and all night and now it takes a great effort just to get up and watch night become day.  I long to be 10.  I rejoice in elementary school playgrounds filled with happy children.  I praise Him every time I pass one and long for His coming.  “Rejoice always…”, I repeat often, “be thankful in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”  Here is the rejoicing.  There is a part of me, part soul, part spirit, part heart, a part of me, that has never aged.  It is always young, it remembers the feeling of no feeling of my body, just the joy of being alive and having fun.  It is always with me, this feeling, and in some way is me.  “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”  I cannot know everything, not much in fact, but this I do know, my eternity will be spent in a body that has no pain, heartache, sickness, or worries, just like a ten-year-old on an eternal playground.  

This butterfly had died on our mums, covered in the
cold morning dew of the night, a 1000 years old.

  

 

A Sabbath Song For You

 

The Soul Feels Its Worth

The unimagined life being lived is always a joyful and powerful surprise.  Every moment is brought to attention, one’s senses are utilized, and one's life is brought to keen sincerity.  It makes color, and warmth, and love suddenly a part of our awareness.  It gives us things to make our eyes delightfully see. We hear the songbirds singing to us, we are always seeking out our lovers' warm flesh.  We cherish silver moonlight, feeling the deeply cold of getting warm, thinking ecstasy thoughts of times, and seasons, and being here and far off.  The unimagined life is a gift, a lost pearl found, the buried treasure unearthed, offered every moment, abundantly living for the asking.  It is the world coming alive, the stones praising, the winds blowing, the sun's warmth felt, the snail watched; The Soul Feels Its Worth.   It is giving away everything you have to get everything you could never imagine.  Unimaginable?  Yes; until you live the imagining.   

And we always tell our toads hey, when they
come by.  

Not The Blog You Wouldn't Read

Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by God’s creativity that I have no praise worthy, and can only stand hopelessly by and know that He knows the words He would have me use and hears them instead of the ones I can’t seem to know to say.   These pictures tell the thousand-word blog I didn’t write, and you wouldn’t read. 

Even in this cold weather, these are His lillies on the pond where we
ride bikes every morning.

The full moonset yesterday morning at Fair Haven

 

The Divine Deaf's Eternity

I attended a funeral last night.  It was immersive in that half of it was performed for the deaf.  I say I performed because the deaf communicate bodily, a visual pantomime transferring information, emotion, spiritual truths, music, and wisdom, all without sound.  When it is done well, it is like a symphonic opera to watch.  When the audience is of the deaf and hearing the event is a celestial pageant befitting the sacredness of one passing from here to eternity.  This funeral was done well.  It was like the deep awareness we all feel inside as divine events transpire being given physicality; a bodily recital of grief, sorrow, joy, and hope in the deceased now living forevermore.  There is nothing in the hearing world to equal it, a physical liturgy of holiness worthy of God’s affairs.  

       

A Greater Love by Darin Ashby

 

Old and Fairly Simple

I am an old man, fairly simple. Last evening, as I pulled back my curtain, I found myself late to sunset. I also found myself locked in with a lock that bedeviled my old fingers to open, putting me in a state of urgency. Finally, successfully opening it and walking out in the yard for the full view, I was amused at myself for finding the sunset so important. Thus, I reminded myself that there are limited sunsets in an old man’s life.  I was then startled because I began to weep with joy and was momentarily lost as to why I was responding so.  However, almost immediately, I began to praise God for it was His Almightyness I was being a part of.  Earth spinning away from Sunstar is a Divine rollercoaster, The Suncoaster, and I should hurry to get on.  Later, my lover and I sat on the swing down by the river watching night become and I began to tell her things I like, beginning with sunsets.  I like knowing all the knowing I have of 66 years.  I like a good kiss.  I like being in quiet, like nature, the softness of it.  I like sitting close to her.  I like a good dog and a good book.  I like hearing our grandfather clock chime.  I like thinking simply good thoughts… like God making Himself knowable to the old and fairly simple.

I told my lover she was primping for the Suncoaster ride!

   

TENNESSEE 23-flordia 17

I am a wasted man, my emotion spent, sitting numb and with little life at my morning altar.  I seek to revive a spark of life, a revival leading into this Sunday morning coming down.  I have strong coffee, which my lover made earlier this morning before bed.  I have read The Word and prayed.  I opened the door and looked at the stars, knowing it was foggy and cold this morning.  I am spent out.  It was ugly, crippling stages of greatness bookended with bewildering ineptness.  It seemed to go on forever.  We got home after one.   It’s tough to be a Tennessee Vol.  Big Orange 23-that other team 17.  

 

Death and American Medicine

This week, I stood the closest to death as I ever have been.  I witnessed how American medicine functioned at the end of life. It was loving and caring.  My lover was a dear friend of the dying; I, a friend through her.  When the time came, the doctor asked if the family was on the way and was assured they were.  She administered a drug that wouldn’t prolong life but would allow the heart to continue to work for a little longer, hoping all the loved ones could arrive.  I was deeply moved.  The monitor immediately reflected the dying heart's change from an occasional weak beat to a steady rhythm.  We said our goodbyes to a renewing beloved.  The family began to arrive.  We left.  They died an hour later and, in a twinkling, arrived in paradise, where they were welcomed home. 

   

 

Blue Does Not Talk Back To God

I spend every morning with God and His earth, just Him, it, and me.  I am reminded I am a performer, a man on a stage pouring forth myself in honor of Him.  This is why I always try and place myself within the earth.  It knows how to perform.  All its glory and beauty open the day declaring His glorious kindness and creativity.  Every actor knows its lines, hits its spot, and delivers a stunning performance.  I like that about the earth, it knows its place and purpose. 

I find it deeply moving that the Bible gives us a clear picture of the sincere obedience of the created world.  “Hush be still.” and the wind and waves say, “Yes, Sir!”, the fig tree dies, the whirlwind is made host for God, water changes to wine, sticks sprout almonds, birds bring bread, donkeys talk, and my favorite, stones are reserved for singing praises. I have often picked up a stone and asked what praises it would say.  Humans are the only ones who get to talk back to God, but only for a season.  Eventually, He is going to say, “Get on your knees and bow down to Me!” and every one of us will say, “Yes, Sir!” Yesterday while bike riding I pointed toward the blue sky for Betty to look but as I did I began to wave at the blue.  I laughed at myself because I knew, it was blue because He said, “Be blue!” and the sky said, “OK!”  Ok is the best response when God is talking to you whether man, beast, or blue.

  

 

Why God Made Us

Amid unimaginable sorrow, the sky was as blue as clear sapphire.  How can this be, tragic, hope?  One defying the other? Mountains of debris and an old man slowly sweeping it up one speck at a time.  Bitterness all around while Hersey Bars were passed out.  Blue skies, sweepers, chocolate.  Acres of destruction surrounding an acre of supplies.  A beautiful young woman, covered in mud,  weeping as she told of all the “Christians just showing up!”  In all the disasters of life let this be known, Christ is the first to show up.  

This is why He made blue, servants, chocolate, givers, thankers…and you.  “To whom much is given, much is required...You are my ambassadors…In as much as you have done it to the least of these my brothers, you have done it to Me.”  

   

 

Those Four Years That Made Much of Me

In my lifetime the blanket was a treasure in our home.   Blankets came only when there were enough cloth squares to make one.  I still remember my granny's old trunk filled with these 4” squares saved from worn-out cloth.  For me, the blanket symbolizes goodness, and kindness, an artefactum, crafted from a much earlier time.  I have made three sculptures that are quilts.  Last night there was a gathering in our home of old friends, those who crafted me in a much earlier time, those who were sown into the life of my youth.  They are the early squares of my life, the treasures covering my teenage years, the holders of kind memories that tendered my often misspent youth.  They are those, the ones who only knew me and me they, the beginning blanket sown with golden threads of immortality, wild-hearted exuberance, first loves, warm fall days, hard-fought Friday nights, and patched-up Saturdays.  Their part of my blanket often warms the coldness of my aging days, those bygone sweet days of a certain innocence that comes only when one is new, when life is new, when all is new but not much is known.  These are the loves of my youth, the pleasant squares that make the beginning of the blanket that I now cling to, easing my way into my ancient days.  Those four years that made much of me.  

   

 

If You Disagree With Me

For those who disagree with me.  That’s fine.  I don’t feel much need to prove or defend myself or correct you.  Everyone believes many things.  The internet has given us many more things to believe or not believe.  My lover and I live off the grid and get little information from technology.  Most of my thoughts come from my heart.  I find the left-leaning and the right-leaning to be untruthful.  Truth sources are rarely true sources.  I naturally distrust popular culture, news media, and government.  My parents taught me this.  I feel those in the media and popular culture mostly believe what I do not.  The Democratic party believes that it is ok to kill a child in the womb which I find abhorrent.  My personal thoughts on this are there are lots of people who actually have an abortion out of desperation, shame, and guilt which I truly understand and sympathize with.  However, a political party that celebrates it is craven.  I believe an open border is treasonous and those who allow it should be tried, convicted, and jailed.  It is like mandating that we all leave our homes, schools, cars, and business doors unlocked and unguarded.  I believe one of the purposes of the Christian church is to protect us from the government.  I believe it is my personal responsibility to help the poor, the needy, the foreigner, and those less fortunate than myself.  I believe I must give 10% of all my wealth to the church to do these things.  I believe I should give much more than that to do the same thing.  I believe it is my personal responsibility to take care of the earth.  I believe it is my job to take care of my neighbor.   I own guns and carry them.  I have Democratic friends, Republican friends, and most of my friends I don’t know and don’t care.  If you disagree with my thoughts I am ok with you.  However, I would much rather read your beliefs than read your comments on mine.    

 

Earth to earth, Ashes to ashes...

Our Mighty Tennessee River is the color of creamed coffee.  Has been for four days.  All that earth from the mountains of Appalachia divided between Tennnessee and North Carolina, is now stirred into her depths.  It will soon be deposited across all of Tennnessee, parts of several other states, and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will spread across the world.  Like a weeping lament heard round the earth sharing the grief of so much loss.  “We therefore commit this body to the ground.  Earth to earth.  Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust; in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”

 

Speaking of Stars

Oh the glories of the sun, our own little star.  What praise could come from my pen to equal your magnificent kindness?  But I know it's not you littles, but He Who commands you.  Oh to have been there when He said, “Let you be light!” and you were set ablaze and 8 minutes later our earth was glowing in glory only your little light could reveal.  My world sings color this morning in anthems reserved only for the Divine, with a little help from my star.  Thank you star!!!