Fair Haven

The startling power of wilderness to fill one's body with healing power through our senses is, perhaps, the most common image of God we see.  To read in Scripture, “For I have seen God face to face…” is no more astounding than to raise one's eyes and behold hundreds of miles of wilderness and feel God’s peaceful presence come flooding healing into your spirit.  

“For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.”  Romans 1:20  

 

Christmas' Laughing Tears

I live in a state of great joy and great sadness.

“A truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.  To him…a touch is a blow, a sound a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover a god, and failure is death.  Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, and create–so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or building or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him.  He must create, must pour out creation.  By some strange, unknown, inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating."  Pearl S. Buck

I put this up in our sculpture studio years ago.   Merry Christmas!

 

Philosophy of a Good Life

I have always been blessed with a simple idea of life.  God in Christ and me in a personal relationship.  Be married to a like-hearted person, have children, and create family.  Live in nature as much as possible, free from the influence of popular culture.  Work hard with the land, be and enjoy quiet, and sow and entangle by family in this.   Philosophy.  

This was and is a singular pursuit.  However when I added beauty by being educated in it and its practise, all the above were significantly enhanced and understood.  The creative act of striving toward making art for God, in and using nature, is as closely divine as a human can become.  It seems the most sincere and true meaning of ‘working out my salvation daily.’

A quiet sculpture in Appalachia.

 

We Where The Wild Things

It took a day to celebrate 42 years.  We tried!  We flung caution to the wind, we cut a rug, and howled at the moon.  We danced, kissed, and indulged.  We saw wild things, ancient things, and sang the night away. Lying my head down at 11:47 pm, I whispered to my lover, “It takes old people a whole day to celebrate 42 years.”

She whispered back.  “Let's stay up till the clock strikes midnight, and we will celebrate it into the first hour of our 43rd year.”  We did…but barely.  

PS Flinging caution to the wind when you’re 67 means eating fudge and drinking coffee by a stream in Cades Cove.   

And as the bear walked off, he couldn't wait to get home and tell his lover what wild things he had seen that day.  
 

"You're The Greatest"

I was very nervous.  I had been sick all night.  I had tossed and turned in my waterbed and, at some point during the night, dropped my bottle of cold medicine, and it still lay shattered on the floor.  I eventually called my brother, P.R., and he rushed me to the emergency room.  There, the doctor laughed at me, said it was just nerves, gave me a vitamin B12 shot, and sent me on my way to get married, 42 years ago this morning.  I got married later that day, and this morning, as I sit by the fire, my lover wife of 42 years sleeps behind me, and I reminisce about wanting to do it all over again.  Happy Anniversary, baby, “You’re the greatest!”

 

Christmas Traditions Left

I can remember when my Grannie stopped buying gifts for Christmas and asked me to place cards filled with money on our Christmas tree for each of us.  I remember my Mamaw eventually did the same thing.  Now my mom doesn’t even understand it is Christmas time.  I write this because I, too, can feel the fading of many Christmas traditions that used to be such a sacred and solemn part of this time of year.  I rub balm on my heart, hoping that in the last days, only Christ will be left of all my Christmas traditions.   

Advent is one tradition I hope will never
end in our home.

 

A Leaf of Violet Hope

We were walking through our woods, my lover and I, and were talking of hope for our hearts, which are always in need.  As I was walking with my head down, an ailment I have acquired with old age, I saw a bright green leaf.  Now, any other time it would be quite unnoticeable, but on this winter's day with all leaves carpeting our woods in earth tones of brown, a green leaf was as noticeable as a warm kiss before bed.  I leaned over with the help of my stick and picked it from its winter residence.  It made me glad, and my lover as well, as she exclaimed, “Oh! Where did that come from?”  We both began to look heavenward at the tracery of dark branches against a lapis sky, but none seemed to miss this most exquisite gift of hope.  I turned it over, and my lover softly whispered, “Oh, how beautiful.”  Its lattice work of violet was as delicate as it was serene.  “See,” she said, “it’s God's gift to you to say he knows you and has a hope-filled plan for you!”

We turned and, slightly bent, continued our ritual walk through our woods and over our mountain.  I stuck the leaf in my pocket.  I hopefully believed.  

 

A Brutal Thought

Yesterday, I happened to glance at my dog’s bed lying near our Christmas Tree.  It struck me that my dog has a nicer bed than Jesus had when he came to earth.  It was a brutal reminder of the life of wealth I enjoy, and to whom much is given, much is required.  Help me to live out of my abundance with an open hand and heart, sharing, always sharing with my neighbors in need.  

 

Blue Brought You Here

Through difficulties, I have found beauty to be a helpful reminder of the author of beauty is my Father, the maker of beauty is my Savior, and the reminder of this in the Holy Spirit who lives in me.  All Three of Them proclaim, “Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD will personally go ahead of you.  He will be with you, he will never fail you or abandon you.”  Blue brought me here.  

 

Dec 7, 2025

It is cold.  Our fire can just keep up.  It is Sunday, the same day of the week that will forever "live in infamy” but forever more in fame.  It is Sunday, December the Seventh, but praise God, it is also Sunday, the Lord’s good and holy day.  The Gospel marches on like a fire that always keeps up and will eventually extinguish all fires of evil that threaten cold and darkness to the human heart.   

   

 

A Body Decorated

I see my lover softly float across our home, quietly moving here to there.  She is slower now, and her body is aging.  I see her.  I watch her to see her.  Her body is now 72 and fills me with such meaning of being.  I see in her body all the years of our love, our births, our adventures, hikes, travels, and a physical love for God in Christ have all marked her with the times of all these; marks of decoration. It's a great longing of love for her to know how I see her as the years of us born out on her body.  Truth comes in beauty, sincerely told by her as her body can only tell me; our years together scaring her into an ever-increasing elegance I see.     

Thanksgiving evening

 

"Like Working In Santa's Workshop"

I had a great spiritual experience yesterday.  My lover and I worked at Samaritans Purse, Operation Christmas Child processing facility in Boone, N.C., where we helped to send several of the 13 million Christmas boxes to children all over the world.  Yesterday we were processing boxes that will go to Benin, Africa.  As she and I checked each box, one of the workers came by and told us, “Remember, you will be the last person to see inside these boxes until some child opens them on Christmas.  

I spent the first hour looking down into each box, crying tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears from the Holy Spirit deep within me, crying for and with the children of the world.  God tears as He longs to “suffer the little children” as they come to Him.  

I have never had a more profound Christmas experience.  As we quietly rode home in the dark and blowing snow, my lover looked over at me and said, “It was like working in Santa's workshop.”  Yes, the one in heaven.  

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/our-ministry/broadcast-occ-ads/?utm_source=Ggl&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=m_YGOC-B25V&utm_content=OCC-Bcast-Ads&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=155943035&gbraid=0AAAAAD2XO8cONHxSeJTCve6bi-lYky4Kg&gclid=CjwKCAiA3L_JBhAlEiwAlcWO5wxNzXg2H12eIBnjgzhpPTfCotoc3T2eKKDcO5nnluNFkWReXPTNwBoCLVkQAvD_BwE

My Santa's helper is in the purple.

See You In All The Familiar Places

And as I lay by my 67th Thanksgiving, I am gifted with my 67th Christmas. I find myself in all the “old familiar places”: before a fire, His Word, good coffee, a full house of love and loved ones, and a new dawn rises behind me, lighting the world in front of me.  “Oh come all ye faithful.  Joyful and triumphant. O come ye, O come ye to Bethleham.”

I hope for all of you a meaningful and sincere retracing of the Holy Trail to Bethlehem as we seek, once again, to “come and worship our newborn King” and “feel the worth of our souls.”  “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.”  Merry Christmas

All but six of us.  One of Zac's and Britt's babies is sick
and they didn't get to come.

 

The Beginning

Thanksgiving 2025.  In many ways, it is hard to believe another one has come so quickly.  All the brevity of time.  The days are flying by…but so far my wings are holding out.  I am sustained by His “everlasting arms”, this view, my lover's daily love note, and Doris Day singing Christmas Carols that begins my giving thanks on this, my 67th Thanksgiving Day.    

 

Thanksgiving Monday

Who are we to thank for yesterday? The sky, a blue vaulted ceiling of heaven.  A quietness where you could hear a falling leaf settle to the ground.  The river, a smell of burning incense on the altar, an aroma awakening our sense of smell to the pinnacle it deserves.  It was a holy day, a Monday, a day that can gift us with imaginations of the Divine.  Oh, who casts off Divine for happenstance?  How dull would a heart and mind be if chance were the one to bow before in Thanksgiving for Monday?

  

 

Winter Pool Blessing

The Great Tennessee River is being laid by for the spring to come. She lies quiet and still, much of her girth stored for winter.  I wandered her banks yesterday, wondering where she is being put up?  Twenty feet of her shores are already laid bare and will daily decrease to winter pool.  What is left of her will nourish my heart through the coming cold winter until spring, when she will once again fill herself and lazily spread to her summer banks.  Happy Thanksgiving, Ole Girl, Mighty Tennessee, wonderful she river; hurry back.   

Our first Christmas barge.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

That’s a good way to think about how the Sabbath comes to me.  I am drained out and long for the renewal of worship and concentrated humanity, all seeking to worship.  Worship is my greatest need.  To openly lift my body, heart, and mind to acknowledge You are worthy of all my worship and praise.

It is a great cleansing of all that has weekly stained me and led me astray, of my pride and self-righteousness, and of my lack of love for my fellowman.  Of greed, sloth, and apathy.  Of a week of slowly making myself king.

But it is also a great renewing, refilling, recommitting my heart, mind, soul, and strength to You Three as King over all of me.  To clean myself inside, so I can live rightly on the outside.  To refocus my senses, sharpen them, tune them toward You Three and all that is of You.  It softens me, allows me to see and hear aright again, make me kind, and fills me with longing to love and help.  It allows me to throw my tightly fitting crown at Your feet and give life another determined attempt.  The great do-over, a new week, and oh, the glory of what a new week might hold for me!!!  Amen and Amen.  Why Me Lord?

 

An Ongoing and Ever-Changing State of Beauty

I am a student of beauty.  Beauty is everywhere, which is rewarding if you are a student of it.  My best teacher is nature.  Beauty in nature is different from how humans create beauty.  Beauty in nature is the entirety of the natural object.  It's never in a non-beautiful state.  The more it is reduced, the more beauty it reveals.  I was trying to teach this to my lover yesterday as she was admiring a shard of a seashell on my sacred table. The shard is just as beautiful as the original whole shell.  In fact, it might be more so since its very nature as a shard could imply it was lesser than.  But this is not the case.  It remains beautiful even though it has mostly been eroded away.  In this truth lies an even greater truth.  It is nature, the natural occurrence of it, which alone can reveal the beauty of that to which it is applied.  I could take the shell and, using all my tools, try to reform it into something beautiful, but even on my best day, I would never be able to reform it into something equally as beautiful as the original shell.* But nature can.  Lay the shell out in nature, allow the sea, waves, wind, and sand to apply themselves naturally to it, and they will reveal what only they can, an ongoing and ever-changing state of beauty.  This leads us to an even greater truth.  Who is designing all these occurrences of artistic genius?      

*I could perhaps carve it into something else; maybe a relief of a seascape or a pleasing form, but it would not then be a shell but something else I had made from the shell.  What nature does to it is reveal its beauty, its beauty being held in all states of its entirety as a seashell. 

The teaching shell.

The Good Gone By In Reflections

There is no difference between the sky and water, fog making it all one great backdrop of grey. I looked up and could see a dark object outlined, the thing, and its reflection, one image.  I eventually saw that it was a small boat with a standing person, but in the grey, it was one single, dark reality, one image.  I thought of reflections, the kindness of them.  The other morning, I looked out and saw a flock of geese in V-formation when it suddenly dawned on me that I was seeing their reflection, as their dark flying bodies were hidden in the dark island across the way.  It was a divine thing, knowing reality only by its reflection.  I am 67 now, and so much of my life is now a reflection, a kind remembrance of the reality of goodness.  Oh, the gift of reflection cannot be overpraised as I sit and often reflect on the good gone by.   

It Is Well

My world is trying to wake up and join me.  I can barely make out the trees in our yard, and tiny boat lights across the river tell me someone is readying for a duck hunt.  I sit in front of the fire, the smell of incense fills our small home as I finish praying, and now set about the more difficult task of writing.  I am listening to soft clarinet music while my dog and lover sleep soundly behind me.  “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well.  It is well with my soul.”  My world is slightly more awake, and I have found I have written.     

Altar building in the mountains yesterday.

Trees of God

My lover and I were on a search.   We were hiking up what could best be described as a ravine, a cavernous cut in the side of a mountain deep in the Appalachians. It was a cold morning made colder because the sun couldn't find a way into this deep hollow.  We were searching for an old altar we had built to thank God for our retirement.  This fall, the colors have been brilliant, and it felt like we were hiking in a cathedral surrounded by stained glass of divine color.  At one point, we sat on a large boulder, weary from making a trail only we had trod.  I looked at the glowing canopy above and told my lover, “These trees are holy Christ worshipers, doing exactly what he made them to do and doing it to the best of their abilities.  They are putting on fall colors to the glory of their maker, God.”  They were such an encouragement to us to live as God has ordained us to live.  We rose carefully, a new habit born of age, and continued our slow hike up the ravine.  We found the altar, repaired it, and set our renewed eyes toward home and Fair Haven.  

The Altar as we found it and our repair below.

Re-blazing Vulnerable Trails Together

We sometimes meet friends and new friends, times when renewing is mostly like continuing, the bond is strong enough to never lose the comfort of being in the other's presence.  It is a fine reminder of the fellowship humans can enjoy, a fellowship built atop faith, hiking, art, nature, beauty, and travel.  An old friend and a new one spent a long weekend with us at Fair Haven.  We sat up late, hiked, ate, walked, enjoyed full moons, lightening storms, waterfalls, worshiping, and good coffee together; a fellowship of believers.  We believe in Christ, God’s only Son, Savior, in traveling the world makes us more sincere, in love and friendships, in kindness, and in staying together.  The last day, the friend reminded me that it is important to open oneself up, to be “vulnerable,” she called it.  I never heard it called that, but it made my lover and me feel good as they made themselves comfortable in our home, making for a pleasant (vulnerable) visit as we re-blazed happy trails together.  

Our dear friend April, on the right, and new friend Emily, on the left.

 

A Holy of Holies

The joy of a loving lover, a home in the woods by a lake, a good fire, and a slow day can only fully be known in a heart where Jesus lives.  To be awakened by a full moon glowing like a candle by an altar is assurance that you are in a holy of holies.  

 

Rocketing East This Morning

New wine is mine every morning I meet with God.  My body can not contain the new wine He gives, I must be renewed again, over and over, to hold the new wine, “for His mercies never fail.  They are new every morning” like “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  Now I sit in a hallowed corner, the darkness outside is blank to me, but I know my sacred corner is slowly rocketing east, bringing me closer and closer to where “the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings.”

 

Sunday Morning Coming Down

For lo! the days are hastening on

By prophet bards foretold,

When with the ever circling years

Comes round the age of gold;

When Peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing. 

Merry Christmas

Fire Gathering

The cold arrives on ghosts of fog drifting across our yard, riding on the back of the river.  It's calling for a fire, but our winter wood still lies stacked on the side of Mount Brown.  It will take an effort to bring it all down.  Bringing fire into our home is inviting an angelic visitation, a sacred time, a miracle.  Its warmth, light, and presence turn our home into a holy space, a gift of God’s great goodness and creative sharing.  Life, in its simplest is often its most sincere.  I must move the wood down. 

Aaron, Scout, Pri Pri, Bray, and Knox helping to split 
fire for our Holy Places.

Homeness

There are two places on earth where I feel a sense of “homeness”.  One is Glacier National Park, and the other is the Crab Orchard Mountains, the last westward strands of the Appalachians before the long plains to the Rockies.  Yesterday, my lover was driving us through the old familiar trails of the Crab Orchard range.  They are just transforming into their fall colors, and green still held sway.  It was such overwhelming beauty, a serenity of soft color, heart-warming visuals, like old photos of my youngest years.  Eternity must be something like this: time is lived in totality, all memories become present at all time, a never-ending reel of joy, peace, and gladness in a body fully realized.  I sensed I was nearly home. 

Yesterday, my lover found this picture of me and my siblings in an old box of mine.
I am the third from the left, age 6, standing in 
front of Big Rock Mountain, ready for church.  That mountain, and 
church, have been two of the biggest influences of my life.

   

 

The Best We Can Imagine

Where did the idea of God come from?  Even in our digital/metamodernism age, our imaginations can only conjure up Superman or Captain America.  So, where did the idea of God come from?  

 

On A Cold Tennessee Night

A hoot owl woke me up in the dark this morning.  It made me think of this song.  Later, in the same dark, I listened to another song, I wept, raised my tired arms just awake, and praised my Father.  Just now, I wandered back to a pool in the mountains of Appalachia, where I guarded lives in the warm summer of a Glade during thoughts of a cold Tennessee night.    

 

Who's the Red Neck Here?

We live in the wilderness.  We chose to move in.  We found 12 acres of native forest beside the river.  We cut a road in, cleared an acre off the riverfront, put in water and electricity, tilled a yard, built a studio, and moved in.  What surprised us is all the wild things that are our neighbors.  It’s like moving in next to a bunch of red neck drunks, who raise fighting roosters in blue barrels, and keep their worn-out washers and dryers as yard decoration.  EXCEPT, these wild things eat the trees we plant and gnaw down the shade trees we keep.  They eat all our flowers and bulbs, and dig up our yard.  They look at us at night like “WHO ARE YOU???!!!” and run away and disappear into the woods where they live.  It’s then that it always dawns on me: “They live in the woods.”  Literally, they live in the wild, and we have dumped our big drywall, asphalt-shingled, glass-painted, plastic-floor, and concrete home right in the middle of their pristine home.  I have to ask myself, “Who’s the redneck here?”

 

Long Live the Queen

On January 14, 2024, the 52nd anniversary of her accession, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicated her throne, and for the first time in over 200 years, the world was left with no Queen serving as Monarch.  However, in just over one year that ended, on September 19th, 2025, Reese Jane Benson was crowned Queen of her Monarchy (high school), when she was crowned Homecoming Queen.  Now, once again, the world has a Queen on her throne.  Long live Queen Reese and God bless her reign.  

Reporting from Kingston, TN. This is Aaron Lee Benson, her proud granddaddy.  

 

 

Living on LP

I am decaying.  I know that is harsh, but getting old is a harsh reality to live through.  However, aging has its rewards, and one of the most sincere is the serenity of the knowledge of being.  It might be my experience alone, but I have found that I only discovered the miraculous joy of a sweet bird singing when I became slow enough to listen to it.  You can only hear the music of water raining on your window pane when your spirit is silent and unbothered enough to hear it.      

I am not communicating well.  

That’s a downfall of decaying, trying to find the right words explaining my life experiences in a mind full of all the words it's ever heard.  The point I am trying to sharpen is this: hearing is a gift of listening, and listening is done better by those of us living on LP and not on 45, a reference also shared only by the aged among you.*

*My granddaughter Cora has discovered and is buying old LPs, a hope-filled event that gives an old soul new encouragement for new souls.

Fair Haven with my lover is a Triple Platinum LP.

 

An Obedient Tree

Yesterday, as my lover and I were biking through a mountain valley of East Tennessee, aptly named Swan Pond. We passed a dogwood tree in full fall colors of scarlet juxtaposed against a sky of lazuli blue.  I said to her, “Isn’t that beautiful.  That tree’s being just what it is supposed to be, it's being a tree and bringing glory to God.”  In every way, it was doing and being what it was supposed to be doing and being.  What a wonderful witness of encouragement to me and my lover.  We biked on changed; thanks to an obedient tree.   

Concieved

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Sometimes a line is why you see the light. 

I Am The Light of the World

It is black outside, my windows just reflect the inside of my home, and me sitting in my easy chair.  It is never a good thing for a window to be a mirror.  No one needs to be reminded of what they can see with their own eyes.  A window is an opening to a wonderful world made just for me.  Many of us have replaced our widows with mirrors, a reflection of what we can already see, a reminder that all we see is all there is until all we see becomes all we see.  

I always see my windows as mirrors first.  I long for the dark indigo of morning, the first glimpse that a wonderful world is there just waiting for light to reveal it, to turn my mirrors to windows again.  Oh, if I only knew who made light, I would owe them my absolute devotion.  

“I am the light of the world.”  

One of my windows waiting for light.

 

Soft Soul Sunday Morning

Sunday morning coming down.  We lost.  Beat ourselves.  Duck season has opened across the river.  Can hear the muffled boom of shotguns fired by men.  My lover is busy in the kitchen making her fountain of youth breakfast, which is unnecessary; she is stately and gorgeous.   I listen to a piano play softly while the burning incense carries the last of my prayers to Father.  It is a soft Sunday morning made for an old soul needing a bit of rest and worship.  Sunday morning coming down.    

No Human Needed

I am almost always sitting by a window, the first thing in the morning.  I stare out upon the world, the earth, the sky, the water in all their glory, with no human help.  No one has to lift a finger for them to be and keep being.  It takes so much of my energy to mow my yard, but no human energy is expended to make it grow.  There is a profoundness here that I cannot even think the thoughts to write about it.   “The heavens are also remote from human influence and unchanged by time.”  A single sentence in a Bible commentary can change everything outside my window.  The glories of the God of our minds.  

 

Thank God

I am sorrowful.  I am broken.  No need to say.  Many who oppose will oppose to death and in death.  Hearts are deceptively wicked.  Who can understand?  Who can save us?  “Thank God!  The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

 

Baubles of God

Oh, the deep; the very, very deep things of our hearts.  The ecstasy of pain that knows no name, the joys of meaning that can fill our being.  Our hearts’ raptures can be as full as the moon and as there as a handful of air.  Meaning is everything.  As the sky is blue, so is meaning, the color of our being.  We name its house, heart, but who can place the blue of the sky in our heart?  Our heart is the treasure box of our meaning, filled with trinkets of stars, baubles of God, lost jewels from heaven.  Oh, the tender, aching, deep, deep things of our hearts.   

A deer swimming from our yard to Long Island.

 

A Stake Pounded in the Jungle

The earth is a jungle, a force always demanding a reckoning.  It is relentless, defeating every tool we have to tame it, including man.  My lover and I bought twelve acres of jungle 15 years ago.  We carved out about an acre to cultivate and live on.  It continues to grow and push into us.  Our lawn is the small plot we war over, us against the jungle.  The jungle sends out underground roots to reclaim it, seeds of wild plants blow over it, and wild animals see it as their feeding ground, literally eating everything we bring in and plant.  We keep marching over it, cutting back its grasses, planting more flowers and fruit trees. adding nutrients to the soil, tilling, and killing wicked insects.  At best, we can claim a stalemate, but as I have grown older, I am realizing nature will have the final say.  If I were to walk away today, the jungle would have it all back in a year.  

It is a full-time job dominion-ing one acre.  That “sweat of the brow” declaration is a stake pounded deep into the jungle that no human can ever remove.  

Part of the taming is cutting up the jungle 
Sentinels that fall, which also provide us heat in the winter.

 

A Practice Prayer

Once upon a time, in a cosmos, very, very near, there was a God; a real God, not like Superman, but God.  He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present, all the time.  Forget “faster than a speeding bullet,” he thought up light and made it that fast.  He wrote this Book to tell of all the marvelous things he made to make our lives wonderful, like light, love, taste, mountains, blue skies, and baby elephants.  However, the main thing this God wanted us to know was that He is for us, He made us, He loves us, and wants us to acknowledge Him for His kindness, grace, mercy, generosity, creativity, and abundant blessings, which shower us with blessings every day.  It should be easy to be grateful.

A practice prayer;  “I am so grateful for your Word and you leaving me with this great story of you and your love for me, the earth, the cosmos, everything you have created you love and want me to acknowledge you for your kindness, grace, mercy, generosity, creativity and abundant blessings, showers of blessings, rain down on me every day.  Thank you.”

God's sun setting and lighting up our home like a cathedral.

 

Parenthood

Parenthood never ends but becomes an increasingly complex traverse, and ascension of effort and beauty reserved for only those determined to summit.  Patriarchy and matriarchy are laid by at death, left to the effects of the effectual prayers prayed while we were on earth, and continue long after we have left here; those hallowed grounds we have sown. 

Too Good to be Untrue

Is life to good to be true?  I often think this.  “In solemn stillness,” I sit alone and often see “the world in solemn stillness lay”  My window reveals “it came upon a midnight clear.”  Day comes, night is softly laid away, and there it is.  Life, conscious life of living here on earth, the bright blue Shangri-La of life, chosen of all the specks in the cosmos, “Let there be life,” and it has never been anything but too good to be untrue.  God is good.  God is great.  Let us thank Him. 

  

 

Venerated Relics of the Covenant

We are wrapping up our home build, all the main things in place, beds, refrigerator, easy furniture, silverware, cups, bowls, and plates.  Now, the hardest part of all: the boxes of memories.  Where to put 139 years (our combined ages) of boxed up memories.  Some are momentos, some souvenirs, and some, those that mostly fill our boxes, are relics.  These hold such vivid reminders of our life, when life reminded us how grand living could be.  Consecrated events now held in objects of sacredness stored in cardboard boxes of the covenant, the covenant of, let there be life. Life is the most sacred of all, the time of being alive on this earth.  It is easy to say the hereafter is the reality, and obviously, this is true.  But living itself, as we only know it, is as sanctified an experience as we have, and in that having and being come sacred objects, that now confront my lover and me.  Cardboard boxes…so many cardboard boxes, filled with venerated relics of the covenant of let there be our lives.   

 

 

Even After 10,000 Years

I have great longings in my life, longing for the new body I had years ago, for more time to see the earth and His glory in it, and a longing to personally renew the great friendships of my past.  

One of my greatest longings is to sing.  The miracle of pushing air from one's lungs between two pieces of vibrating meat, out through your shaped mouth, and it sounds like Elvis is a gift I long to have.  

I see my longings as gifts because God has great longings as well.  He longs for us to praise him.  He has given us the means mentioned above, and then we write songs using symbols, and we sing.  We all can sing, just some better than others.  One of my other longings is that when I get to heaven, God will give me the ability to sing like Emmylou Harris or Johnny Cash, and as I often tell my lover, “I am gonna go around singing all the time!!”...even after I’ve been there 10,000 years.

Altar building in the Smoky Mountains.

An Edited Blog for an Unedited Play

A mourning dove moans off in the woods, sorrowfully singing its plight.  Nat King Cole plays softly on the piano.  A few birds accompany him and begin to sing in notes divine.  Morning has broken, like the first morning.

Day has come.  Seeing night become day is as hopeful an act as the earth gives us.  A new day is filled with a set of time, blank, waiting to be filled in.  It is like an unedited one-man play.  What will the play be: a comedy, a tragedy, a narrative love story, a drama, satirical, longing, documentary, or historical?  All the above…in doses I hope I can handle or live up to.

 

Me and my dog.

Old Long Since

Last night, I sat in a circle of old people as the sun had moved on and turned the eternal west into shades of scarlet, orange, and purple.  Old clouds, old star, old sky, old west, and much younger people.  Truth is relative.  Much of my youth I had cannoned into this circle, the unbroken circle of memories so deeply lived as to make them nearly sacred.  The unbroken circle of youth.  They are now my ancient of days, those days when we first realized we were alive, and lived in gusto and meaning, when our bodies were exquisite vessels of life and beauty, now scarred and worn, holding all those memories I had poured into them.  Compassion and love are the drinks of God, mixed in vessels lived together, and I was draining mine to the dregs as I sat among these dear people, my ancient of days, those souls that now held so much of me in my memory form…and I held theirs, their memories of our ancient days Old Long Since.         

 

Lee Boy Benson

In order for me to write, a practice I began when I was 14*, I must be living in a harmony of gratefulness and a quaking of the intensity of meaning of living.  This can come in quite peace, overwhelming ecstasy, bitter sorrow, or grief, a fellowship of being in relationship with the Ancient of Days, the earth and cosmos, my lover, my memories, and other people.  

It can also stop coming when I am in conflict, under stress based on circumstances, or suffering some great illness or pain.  

I write every day.  If I can’t, I try to discover why I can’t and try to write about that.  This is why I am writing this.  

* I began writing at 14 when I started watching the television show, The Waltons.  The main character was John Boy Walton, and he wrote every evening sitting at his window.  He wrote about his family and where he lived because he found great meaning in these.  I thought I felt the same, and so I began to write.  I have never stopped writing every day.    

 

Made New Moon Again

We spent the evening on the Great Tennessee, quietly talking and laughing.  Peace like a river flowed through us as we rode with her slowly along.  And then like a cosmic creation, our moon rose in a peach glow that trailed out to us like the old narrow way, and like the river she whispered, “Come to me, all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  And I was drawn to Him, and as we all sat quietly, I began to praise the Ancient of Days in my heart that he had made us new; again.        

 

Elegy For A Dying Butterfly

My experience of life is lived in constant awareness of my body aging and dying in pain.  It is deeply troubling, like a dying butterfly or shooting star.  I had never marveled at the intricate beauty of a fully realized, living body until mine began its current decline.  Its dying is painfully rejected by all its dying parts, and its mind and spirit rage at the injustice.  I remember it so well, showroom condition. There is no smell like the smell of a new body.  My new memories are often of the many times I recklessly abused this beautiful thing, using it carelessly, flinging it at life as if it would last forever.  Living now is an exquisite dance of compromise, an adjusted newness of being, and rejoicing as it overcomes.  Nothing is so satisfying as creating new uses for an old antique; new ways of being, who I used to be.

 

Getting Prepared by Thanking

In a foreign city far from home, sitting in a hotel lobby with The Ancient of Days, preparing myself, my body, and soul for building a sculpture.  This has been my life.  On the road all over the world, building sculpture and being with Him.  My lover, my two sons, and one of my grandsons lie sleeping four floors up.  It is going to be hot, 96°.  We are building “Come Let Us Reason Together,” the third piece in The Trail of Truth, a sculpture park we are building to tell the story of the African Americans’ contribution to the success of West Tennessee.  It is good work we can do with our hands.  It is a simple life, hard work, quiet, peaceful, beautiful, in and on the earth.  God is good.  God is great.  I am thanking Him.

The central first work, Seven Pillars.

Building the third of 5 smaller works surrounding
the central piece.