"He Pulled Outta There" today.

I have known two great witnesses of the faith, my mom and dad.  All my references of how to live in the peace, love, and works of the faith find their foundations with these two great pillars of the temple of Christianity.  My dad has long since passed.  My mom is fading into eternity little by little her mind leading her body.  Throughout it all she has remained most lucid in her faith.  When she could not recall much, she could always recall her faith in the way she would pray.  Even this is fading now.  This week Betty and I visited with her.  We always close our visit by reading one of the familiar Bible stories and singing an old familiar hymn and then I ask mom to close us in prayer.  We talked about Easter and what it meant, and I asked her, “Mom do you know what happened to Jesus after he was buried?”  She looked puzzled for a minute and then exclaimed in certainty, “Well I guess He pulled outta there!”  Yes, halleluiah, He’s pulled outta there today!!!    

Every visit I show her pictures of her life 
long ago and all her loved ones who came from her.

The World in Silent Still Lay...Happy Easter

I live in a box, a studio we call it, 27/32/9 feet with a southwest wall of glass.  Our bed is on wheels and every evening I roll it to the glass, so we don't miss any of the wild things of night.  We are surrounded by wilderness, forested on three sides, the Mighty Tennessee in front, and mountains beyond.  We have a sincere art collection that surrounds us, a small wood stove to heat us, and screens allowing the smells, sounds, and breezes into our home.  Our closest neighbors are animals and birds who are endlessly present throughout our day and night.  We are off-grid, mostly have cell service outside, read, write, make art, talk, and live to be with each other.  We are constantly entertained by the earth, sky, and heavens, and live mostly unaware of human presence.  We hold our family close, our few friends near and our remembered ones dear.  God our God is always present, His reality ever before us, welcoming us to His world, showing us his might, power, and majesty.  We on occasion must cry out to Him, but mostly, quietly, are moved to thank Him.  This morning, I remember Him in the grave but His world, now filling with sunlight, forces my thoughts out of His tomb and into His resurrected light of tomorrow.  “The world in silent stillness lay, to hear the angels sing…”  He is risen.   

          

In Every Way Giving Everything

There is a way of being old where the wildness of your youth is reborn.  It is the passion and zeal of giving oneself completely over.  There seems to be no greater feeling of meaning than those experienced between the ages of 13 and 19.  The innocence of passion withholding nothing, in every way, giving everything.  This can eventually lead to a life where all has been spent and our reserves are as depleted as our lost youth.  But there is a miracle we can be gifted which fills our ancient years with a passion of love, of longing, of the wildness of youth fired with the reality of our brevity.  It is where we know true love, true compassion, true forgiveness, true life because they have been gifted to us.  It is as wild as a human can be, tempestuously primal, readying oneself for the eternal kingdom. 

Inner Harvesting

3-20-2024

There are dear friendships which are deeply held and felt but only last a season.  A short summer of knowing and being known, of laughter and meaning one only experience in their now ancient youth.  Those friends tangled only in care and kindness.  I talked to one of those friends last night, barely passing, me here, they there.  It was on the phone.  I am an image bearer, hearing voices but only able to know images.  They sounded 16 but time, that enemy of images, couldn’t connect me to them.  I am beginning the life of longing for the image, the person, the who these were to me those many years ago; a way to live meaning, knowing those dear old young ones. But regrettably and like the song, “Just for a moment, I was back at school, and felt the old familiar pain.  And as I turned to make my way back home.  The snow turned to rain…”, we never really met.     

 

Time is so quiet we might miss it.

Morning’s quiet seems to linger in time and spirit.  But it will fade and soon come to noon followed quickly by evening tide and night.  All time is as fleeting as a twinkling and should be thought of so as not to lose large swells of it twiddling our navels.  Morning is that thinking time, it is slow because we think of it.  We read well, may I suggest The Holy Scripture, and write honestly having been made honest by The Scripture, and we see well if we have a window and hopefully a garden and a sweet bird and have assured ourselves these all come from God.  Mornings are for us slowing down and noticing time as we are given it freely and it is most treasured because it gives us our only way to exist.     

Green's Joyful Noise

Green is beginning and it brings to life our souls regenerating our bodies to good deeds.  To opening the earth and planting dreams, and hopes for the future of beauty, even those we will not live to see.  The earth provides for us a legacy, a living on after our living is done.  To give to those we leave behind, to declare the joys of the Lord long after our joy here is complete.  Planting apple trees and irises, forsythia and flowering cherries, buttercups and maple trees are all prayers to our Father, a liturgy of hope, faith, and love for sharing His creating nature with us.  He who planted and nurtured Eden has Himself given us the gift of gardens which will grow.  Yes, green is coming as an invitation for us to help, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.”  Amen and Amen. 

Fair Haven All The Time

Back home in all the old familiar places.  I discovered something several years ago; no matter where we are on earth the thought of returning to Fair Haven is a great comfort.  Along with this is the assurance that nowhere is as beautiful as here.  Can you imagine the joy of that?  To live out one’s days in unrivaled beauty awaiting the journey to an unimaginable rival that will surpass all our hopes and dreams.  God is good.  All the time.  God is good.  

The sun's assurance arrived on the mountain beyond. 

You See HIs We Don't

I know a Little Blessing who every day walks into the least of these bringing love's warmth to our unkept.  Oh, to be about His Kingdom’s work, to daily build His castle in the sky, to set the gems, to polish the littles' hearts.  You raise the shadowed valley, fill the great chasm, lower the mountains they could never climb…your heart spilling out His, you touch our untouched.  Most shout, “Unclean, Unclean” and hide away in the cleansed numbness; you touch, stroke, hold, care, and grace-filled; see them.  I see you.  I AM sees you.  You, broken-hearted, broken spirit, broken intentions, broken, broken will.  You live to go back the next day on a call and a prayer, and they live to see you, see them, every tomorrow.  

   

The Bride's Room Treasure

I love an old church and have spent my life tramping around the world looking at them.  From St. Peters to unnamed ones hidden in olive groves in central Greece, we find ourselves in them.  Yesterday while piddling in the middle of Alabama, we came upon the First Baptist Church in Sylacauga.  It was a stunning example of what humans create when they set out to build a House for the worship of God.  But this southern cathedral had something I had never seen or heard of.  Just off the back of the sanctuary was a beautiful room named The Brides Room built for brides to ready themselves for their wedding.  It is now being used as a meeting room and a stack of Tupperware sits admiring itself in the bridal mirror.  But the charm of creating a room for the bride to ready herself for Holy Matrimony is a treasure I have now experienced. 

  

Warm Varnish On My Ancient Body=Spring

Yesterday we found ourselves in the most ancient of Appalachia, a preserve named Catoosa, which lies atop and on the western and eastern slopes of the Crab Orchard Mountains, the foothills of the Appalachians.  I am beginning to feel an oldness creeping into me made aware by these old lands.  I sense a tie to them as if the trees, boulders, and streams are ancestors, my most ancient kin.  They are just beginning to show signs of springs rebirth, a varnish laid on a deep primal.  This varnish of spring on me is not lost but is so thin on my oldness as to not be easily noticed.  I reached over and held my lover’s hand.  It was warm.  Her varnish applied to me.  

     

True Self Expression Expresses I AM

“Every life needs the possibility of expression.”  Anam Cara, John O’Donohue         

This is the great role of the preacher, teacher, artist, and never has there been a greater need for their services.  We need to express ourselves with our bodies, our hands, our voices, our imaginations.  Self is best expressed in the creative act and in service to others.  The expression that best serves to build positive expression toward others is done outdoors in the wild.  If you want to build positive, creative self-expression in yourself find yourself regularly immersed in the wild. 

PS: Media, cell phones, TV, and the internet destroy creative self-expression.  One cannot find adequate expression of self digitally, in a video game, or on the internet.    

 

If You Have A Window You Can Be Saved

Living with an unobstructed view of the natural world is evangelizing.  We live in a rectangle, our home is a studio, 32’w/27’d/9’h.  The SW wall is all glass.  When it storms, we are separated from it only by a ¼” clear pane.  Lightening, rain, sunshine, dawn, gales, and all manner of wildlife are intimately one with us.  The overwhelming power, clarity, and aliveness of nature are part of our living space.  In all of this, we are constantly and consciously aware of God and His Creative Power.  I have had a coyote stand in front of our window looking in, 22 wild turkeys in our front yard, and hands raised toward heaven and pleading with God to rebuke the gale that was forcing the mighty Tennessee to come washing four feet over our seawall (atheists are not in foxholes or tornados).  In all of this we have been brought to life in a manner we had never experienced before.  There is a “blessed assurance” of night rain filling our trees for their work of spring accompanied by lightning that illumines our home like a flash of ten thousand bulbs, instant blinding light followed by instant blinding darkness.  It is then you can fully say, “Oh Lord, my God, when I, in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made…” and cry out in your soul, “How Great Thou Art!!!”

Please come to God, through Christ, His only Son.  

        

 

The Pioneer of Your Life

I spend most mornings alone, meandering through my soul and heart as a pioneer pushing deeper into the unknown wilderness before him.  There is no end to the worlds buried deep within us.  My mind, dulling now, can still grasp images of long ago that hold meaning for me as great as the Big Bang and just as far away.  All the giants I have known, the mighty men and women, the peaks I’ve summited, the valleys filled with the shadow of death.  God met in solitude is always whispering, “Come away with Me and we will walk in the coming light of the morning.”  The mountains that spread out in front of Fair Haven always invite me to the microcosm of my heart searching the macrocosm of His.  If heaven is for anyone it is for the redeemed explorer.         

How an Old Artist Knows When to Retire

“We live in an intense and visually aggressive age: everything is drawn outward toward the sensation of the image.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara    

When I was a teacher one of the best lessons I taught was that sculpture was the object not a representation of the object.  It is the one thing that has always captivated me.  I am a learned draftsman which means I am not naturally gifted to render but was taught to satisfactorily reproduce.  40 years later one of the signs I observed to acknowledge my need to retire was the overwhelming force the image had become.  It wasn’t the artistic image creating the canon of thousands of years of Art History, but the image of capitalism married to self.  It is a heinous coupling of capitalism of design with the rise of self as the primary focus of creativity.  No image is so alluring as self, and nothing can’t be enticed to meaning by the self being idolized awash in consumer kitsch. 

 

 

Being Creative Being

Oh, the love of the creative urge, to do something imaginative.  I have come to see this as the eternity God has placed in each of us (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  What could be more imaginative than eternity?   I have been gifted to spend my life fancying art needing to be made.  Art is only always meant to be an imagining of the Imago Dei, the search for God to underscore the meaning of all things.  It is second only to the longing for Christus Salvator, for Him to find and save us.  Once saved we spend a lifetime trying in our unique way, as remade in His Image, to live a gratitude of thankfulness.     

My last artwork for retirement is an Illuminated Bible.  It was begun as a 5 year
project which I soon realized was a 10 year which I have
now realized will be passed to my grandchildren to complete.  Began in the 
Minor Prophets.  This is the drawing for Haggai.

Blessed Assurance

That moment when you are assured the light has come again is itself a great awakening to the joyous assurance, that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for you today.   

I looked up and saw the red assurance atop the mountain beyond. 

Live this day with IAM

The daily life is a kindness we can give ourselves.  We often waste or live our life one day at a time.  A new day is a great beginning, a chance to explore, build, create, invent, rest, write, marvel, and wander.  “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it.”  This is an invitation to know Him intimately.  His unfathomable glories can be explored, can be a daily living. Coming to our senses is a pathway to living each day, looking begins the journey, looking to see.  Our son and daughter-in-law gave us these flowers.  This morning while reading I paused a moment to look at them.  In that moment I realized their absolute declaration of God IAM.  In a world of time and chance, the kindness of flowers would never be.  A moment's ponder of a daisy brings with it a testimony of kindness unknown from the hands of man.  Oh, Who is this God who loves us so, a flower, a delving into the depths of unfathomable; an utter kindness, bringing us closer to knowing some twinkling of the unimaginable.    

I often feel as if I am trudging through life, waist-deep in sludge forcing myself to live.  Tasks laid down to accomplish, do this, do that.  Will spring ever come?  Will green finally bring color to what is now all grey.  Will I ever be pain-free; feel the warmth of a body I do not feel?  Oh, the hikes I would take, the mountains I would climb, the paths less taken I would take.      

 

Truth and Beauty

TRUTH: you have a greater experience of living as you get older.  In all respects the longer you have lived, the more tuned your life is to knowing how to live.  Living is a learned skill.  I was one of the lucky ones.  I was raised by a preacher and a preacher’s wife, and they lived in the country and hiked mountains.  God, gardens, and mountains are the greatest teachers we can have.  Here is an example.  My lover’s body is 71 years old.  It is the essence of the beauty of what 71 years can create of a human body.  What most will see as aged, I can see as exquisite loveliness.  My eyes are 66-year-old eyes and allow me a greater experience of seeing than say the weaker eyes of a 24-year-old.  It is painfully meaningful the unadulterated life of becoming ancient.  It is an adequate preparatory for eternal life.   

PS: I often think of the ruins of antiquity as more beautiful than the actual architectural structures.  Like a dead branch that has spent 50 years in a river washed up on shore a beauty worthy of the living branch.  So, my lover's 71-year-old body is the only true visual worthy of the truth of the beauty of the human body.