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!!!     

Star Light Star Bright

I saw the stars this morning.  My habit is to complete and start each day by walking outside and looking toward the heavens for the stars.  They are often His voice to me, reminding me that each has a name He gave them, and each is in its place.  Since last Thursday, I haven’t seen any, and since then great tragedy has befallen my beloved East Tennessee.  However, this morning many were sparkling across my heavens, some still hidden by clouds, but there were a great host of witnesses.  Stars are mysteries, ours is the only one we know and its kindness is so overwhelming we naturally think they all are like that, a great life-giving miracle of Divine love.  That is why I look.  I am unrelentingly in need of reminding of His Divineness and this week more than most.  I saw the stars this morning and they said, “He is Lord, Lord indeed.”      

His sun lighting His fruit.

 

Floating Through Our Friday’s Tombs

Monday, Sept 30, 2024

I live beside the Mighty Tennessee, which lays swollen before me, gorged on all the flood waters and sediment flowing here from Appalachia.  All that sorrow fills her now like a great tragedy languishing, spent out, as she spreads prostrate in our Tennessee Valley.  She will roll on to West Tennessee, a mighty preserve of open spaces to contain her.  She will then push north into The Ohio, west to The Mississippi, and south to The Gulf, which birthed all her drunken wretchedness.  I have prayed all summer for rain and finally got all our summer rain in three days, 12+” here at Fair Haven.  It is hard to hold in my heart the joyous nature of rain and the utter tragedy of its destruction.  My mind can’t make sense of it; desiring always to say, “I understand that!”.  So little of life is understandable, such as war, poverty, death, unkindness, wickedness, evil, and sorrow.  But one thing I cling to.  Last night, as is our habit, my lover and I turned off all the lights and sat quietly and listened to great choirs singing great hymns.  We then held hands and cried out to God for His help.  This morning I sit beside the Mighty Tennessee as it rolls along, as it has since “Let there be water!” knowing again, “Fridays here but Sunday's coming.”