The Great Abruption

I am in a hotel room far from Fair Haven but in old familiar haunts.  I am getting old, slept fitfully, am up way too early, an ice pack on my back, sitting drinking coffee and stumbling through The Word looking for feeling better.  My body getting old is sorrowful and aggravating, my mind aging is scary.  Your mind thinks about your body getting old and feels sorry for it and you.  Your mind getting old has nothing to think about its plight, it is it, it's thinking it’s old and it knows it.  Unsettling.  I am here for the funeral of a young man.  These two experiences seem to be similarly weighing on me, their death has unsettled me.

Death is an abruption, a sudden breaking away from the mass of us, the living.  There is no preparation for it even when we know it is coming.  It is the most difficult separation because it is so permanent.  But we do not lose hope.  It is only as permanent as the earth, the sky, mountains, and the stars, all of which hold for us a certain sense of the infinite.  But they, like everything on earth, are not permanent.  They too will abruptly end.  And then our hope happens, we, and the dead bodies left here, will be made new again, in bodies too glorious to imagine.  The abruption here will not really be a breaking away from a mass here but a rejoining a mass there, a permanent, infinite, heavenly glorious mass of joy and delight.  And we, being made new, will be joined once more, with You Three, forever and evermore, in completeness, a brand new, without blemish, wholeness…in a twinkling, the greatest abruption of all no time. 

I sit in a hotel room and write this to myself. 

Eight years ago our daughter came home from the 
the hospital still deeply involved in the 
the greatest struggle of our family's fight with the abruption.

 

Adoration Serenade

This is an image of a single cell.  The image is exquisite, an art beyond mortal wit.  I am listening to Penthouse Serenade by Nat King Cole…and wondering why all of humanity is not falling at Christ’s feet in Adoration Serenade.  Oh, the joy of knowing God and seeing and hearing His yearning call.  

Sitting in a hotel room far from Fair Haven.

 

Where Are We Going?

My lover and I rarely start to leave home that we don’t have to go back in the house at least once to get something we forgot.  After going back two times yesterday, I told her there would come a time when we would just keep going back and forth until we were sitting in our truck thinking we had just arrived home and go back in and stay.  I am glad Someone is keeping track of where we will eventually go.  

Years ago, biking in Aspen, when we at least
thought we knew where we were and where we 
were going.  

 

The Exuberant Silly Side of God*

You are so wonderful in how You ordain to come to us, in clouds, fire, a staff, golden boxes, and now a donkey.  It seems You have such a joy of being, an exuberance that bursts forth in power, glory, and sometimes, silliness.  This story reminds me of the coin in the fish’s mouth You had Peter catch to pay the temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27), or the mud You spread on the blind man's eyes to make him see (John 9:1-12) or the heads on fire of Pentecost.  Like Father, like Son!  There is a little bit of the theatrical in You Three, a touch of the comedian.  This adds to Your Glory and my admiration and enjoyment of our relationship.  There is nothing You can’t do.  I should remember this.  Your Word reminds me of it.  You control the wind, water, rocks, the future, sky, fire, fish, and donkeys. And You ask me to believe in You, and You will be this in my life.  This is all part of the deal of being Your child, I get to be a part of Your story, its holiness and glory, and its fun and silliness.  Exuberance is one of Your greatest characteristics, and because of this, it becomes a part of my praise and worship.   When I have a ringside seat to the greatest show on earth put on by the Three Greatest Gods on Earth, I should act, live, and have happy, joyful, joyous, delighted, gleeful, excited, exhilarated, animated, jubilant, exultant, ecstatic, blissful, enraptured, rapturous, rhapsodic, in rhapsodies, intoxicated, transported, on cloud nine, in heaven, in paradise, in seventh heaven; informal on top of the world, over the moon, on a high, buoyancy, cheerfulness, sunniness, breeziness, jauntiness, light-heartedness, high spirits, exhilaration, excitement, elation, exultation, euphoria, joy, joyfulness, cheeriness, gaiety, jubilation, sparkle, effervescence, vivacity, enthusiasm, irrepressibility, energy, animation, life, liveliness, vigor, zest, bubble, bounce, pep, zing, chirpiness, peartness, gladsomeness, blitheness, blithesomeness, good cheer**; responses toward You for allowing me to see them.  

* On reading Balaam's donkey story in Numbers  **All the substitute words for exuberance in the Thesaurus.    

Sissy's dog Odie at our home.  Oh if 
dogs could talk.  Well, they can if Someone wants 
them to.

                                                                                                                         

 

True Grit Truth*

Grit is what makes a male a man.  One doesn’t become a man, he chooses to be one, a constant choice of becoming.  I have known men who were 12 and boys who were 41.  The biggest obstacle to manhood is obedience.  Obedience is very difficult.  It takes real courage, strength, and a character willing to constantly deny himself and be different than his base instinct urges him to be.  All males continually plead with themselves to be lesser than they can be, that voice calling them to the path well trodden.  Men “enslave their bodies” to do what is right, just, and honorable in absolute obedience.  But obedience to Who.  To Him who Himself had to suffer under obedience even unto death.  The most worthy example for males seeking to be men.  He is the True Grit Truth.       

*Still reading the grumbling boys of Numbers.

This is not him.

   

The Ever After is the Point

*I am not what you would call a flag-waving patriot, “That ain’t me.”  But I will say this, I love America.  In its God-given state, I have been given the freedom to be what I desire.  The greatest freedom is the freedom to restrain my freedom by a set moral code that lies outside myself.  To demand of myself a moral living that takes into account God, and my fellow man.  America does not give me this freedom as my founding fathers knew, they are endowed by my Creator.  It is by accepting this, this Creator, that I must seek to not only know Him but to ensure I follow Him so that I am the man and American I must be.  This freedom leads to all other freedoms.  This is easily understood by driving on the interstate, all of us acting in the best interest of all the others and, in so doing, acting in my best interest, not to mention the lesser freedom of being able to drive anywhere I want to go.  In America, I am totally free, which must mean I restrain this freedom because of my Creator and for the benefit of all my fellow Americans.  Only in this can we all live happily ever after!  The ever after is the point.  It’s the Creator and me together at last. 

*On reading Number’s account of the children denying this most basic freedom.    

I glanced up and saw this golden line that is an image 
here but a great reality to me.

 

  

 

The Promised Land*

I live in a Magic Kingdom.  Love, gravity, sunlight, hearing, electricity, fixed stars, oxygen, plants, apple trees, cars, kissing, rain, seeing, lift, vibration, wind, yeast, watermelons, conception, roads, grain, touch, movies, Siri, water, fire, consciousness, sugar, life, satellites, dirt, and Krispy Kreme to name a fraction.  Who in all of history would not leap at the chance to live in my world?  I exist in a time and place where my safety, security, abundance, convenience, and access have never been greater.  

*On reading Numbers and the people's grumbling outside the Promised Land.  

  

 

An Assurance of a Command

My daughter lives 45 minutes east of me.  She calls me every morning around 7:15 on her way to work.  This morning she said, “I’m looking at the sunrise.”  It was dark at my home.  I felt a shared ecstasy of holiness, a twinkling, fleeting, sliver of hope, an omniscience.  Someone was assuring me His command to light was still being enforced.  

 

As Plain as the Nose on My Face*

I read today about a God who smells “a sweet aroma” and speaks, “The LORD said…”  This is a wonderful solidarity we share with Him.  His senses are mirrored in us, we share the same traits of smelling, speaking, and hearing. Sharing the same senses offers me a feeling of sameness with Him, a sameness of image and shared ways in which we derive meaning, create relationships, share information, and come to know and be known.  This being known by God is so important to me, and to be known in many of the same ways as I come to know.  It is how we know Him when we smell a newborn baby or a rose and are moved to praise Him.  We are coming to know Him in that He conceives and makes things to have an aroma and us to have a nose to know it (pun not intended).  I apply what I smell to my list of reasons why I should praise Him, acknowledge Him, and delight in Him.  It is this sharing of senses and sense data that we have in common that gives us both ways in which to know and be known by each other.  He is not God somewhere out there but God with me, for me, able to be known and able to know.  Such a wonderful gift, my God can be known by me. He makes a way, which means, above all else, He wants to know me and me to know Him.  It’s as plain as the nose on my face.

*On reading Leviticus 

As plain as three noses on three faces.  On a short hike in the smokies.

 

*LORD or Luny

Lord.  What does this word mean?  It can be the start of a dismaying sentence, an exclamation of despair, a proclamation of surprise.  It can be a king, an overseer, or our title.  I just read about someone who said it was his name.  He was pretty definitive, repeating it several times.  If someone walked up to me on the street and said, “I AM LORD!” I would think them quite luny.  I would consider myself rather lunyer if I felt it myself. However, I never got this feeling from the one I read about this morning.  I rather think HE IS.  This means I am right about the luny part. 

*On reading Leviticus

The big orange full moon confirmed
His title this morning even if my 
camera couldn't capture its definitive declaration. 

 

Reparation*

Reparation means to make amends for the wrong someone has done.  I often hear the word today.  Hearing it is part of this story.  We might make amends, but we can’t do away with the wrong.  That’s what’s needed.  We need to erase the wrong, to make it as if it never was, to so right the wrong that the wronged receive a cleansing so complete as to never feel wronged at all, as turning black to white or dark to light.  A better word might be atonement which even its very sound (hearing) seems to open doors to vistas of glory…as turning crimson stains as white as snow.

*On reading Leviticus  

Betty standing in the Rio Grand, who, herself,
has received Atonement. 

 

Sunday Morning Coming Gray

Gray is the color of hinting, of just maybe, of what if?  It is wrapping paper over glory, the veil, the cleft, the open sesame.  This morning, my river and sky are gray, divided only by the mountains beyond and this short thought.    

Getting Old

Getting old is giving myself enough time to feel good enough to get up and get going.  This process will continue until there is not enough time to get to feeling good enough to get up and get going.  Then I’ll go to heaven.  

 

You Better Settle Out of Court

Laws.  It is the organizing and administering of every human to be a good human being.  A human is a being, a constant act of loving kindness, honor, responsibility, justice, and fairness.  It is an agreement we make with every other human.  It begins in marriage, spreads through family, and is foundational to culture, communities, and countries.  However, and it is the greatest however, ever, there must be a foundation of law resting outside of every human being.  Law cannot be founded in me.  How do I know this?  Because I know myself and my pertinacity toward lawlessness.  I don’t mean murder or mayhem but just an overwhelming desire for selfness over otherness, to be lord of all.  We are all destined to make this decision, but most of us will put it off until it is too late.  Who will be the lord of law?  Me, are Someone perfectly and ultimately loving, kind, honorable, responsible, just, and fair?  It reminds me of Paul Harvey’s old saying, “You better settle out of court!”

The Oasis of Roiling Water

I feel like I have a great secret of God and Christ, of living and art, of meaning and purpose, of wisdom and understanding, and I have no way and no one to share it with.  It reminds me of those who once said, “Did our hearts not burn within us,” and “Then in my heart, it becomes like a burning fire Shut up in my bones.”  It is like water, so alive, it's roiling to burst forth from me.  Such is the personal relationship with The Ancient of Days, The Almighty, The Daystar, The Rose of Sharon, and The Lily of the Valley.

My piece, The Oasis, made
about this.

Your Cheatin' Heart

*Do I have a hard heart?  It is a state of uncaring concern for anything but my own way, my own absolute freedom; to live out one action, to increase my pleasure and decrease my pain.  It reminds me of a Bible verse that has deeply moved me to another action for many years.  Christ has been asked by his disciples what would be the signs for the end of time and Christ begins to tell them.  In the middle of His answer Jesus declares, “Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.”  Back in the early nineties, we got cable TV and cable news.  I began to watch the news and soon realized I was mad all the time and really disliked many people on the news.  I knew I was losing something I had been given, something more valuable than I had ever acknowledged; I was actually losing love, and my heart was becoming hard.  I stopped watching the news and haven’t watched it since.  It is a sobering reality to realize I can actually lose love.  This reminds me of another truth I heard from Dr. Phil Jett when he spoke on the end times.  He said, “I don’t know if these are the end times but they are certainly my end times.”  This reminds me of one last saying by the smartest person to ever live, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

*Thoughts of reading Moses meets Pharaoh.

   

 

 

How To Build a Home

We are building a home.  It is a difficult task because of the enormity of its meaning and our utter lack of knowledge, having never done it before.  I had the same experience when I started college at 18.  In grades 1-12, I went to school to see my friends and play sports.  I thought college would be the same.  I failed every subject and dropped out before the end of the first semester.   I was eventually taught how to go to college and earned three degrees with honors.  Now, I am building a home, and I want it to be honorable, but no one has ever taught me how to build a home.  It has made me accept or maybe realize that home is where my lover and I are, not the space we are in.  It has taken some of the load off of making up the space we will soon occupy.  I have spent 41 years making a home with her, and in that time, I have learned a lot.    

 

Have You Ever Blessed Someone?

*Blessing.  Have you ever been blessed by someone?  What was it they gave you?  The greater point is how you will be a blessing, what will you give to someone else that they will see as you blessing them?  If I am to be a blessing, I must consider a few things.

I must be conscious of the desire to bless and be determined to do it.

I must have something that is a blessing to give it to someone else.

I must be willing to share.

I must know what a blessing is by receiving it from someone else.

All these should create an overwhelming desire in me to know where or from “Whom all blessings flow.”  *Reading Jacob's blessings over his children.   

Mom blessing me by taking the Lord's Supper.

Wise Enough to Alone Live?

*Life is a puzzle, a great test of us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  We face staggering difficulties, life and death situations, responsibilities, problems of every sort, private and physical challenges, and a body that is often not gifted enough to overcome them.  Our minds may not be sharp enough, our reactions quick enough, our wits too dull, and our education lacking.   For one to think they are ready, fit, and capable of navigating life with confidence and skill so that they achieve and succeed has not long examined themselves.  We are, at our best, simpletons in life living.  We each know very little of the infinite body of wisdom needed to live successfully.  What we need is a great counselor, a great physician, and a great sage who is personally committed to us.  Oh, but where on earth will you find such a being?  “I lift up my eyes to You, the One enthroned in heaven.”                                                            *On reading the story of Joseph.  

Betty and I were hiking and walked up on 
this graveyard buried in the woods.

 

Truth?

Truth?  No matter what is said, someone will say the opposite, or with today's technology, a million someones will say a million opposites.  It is no wonder we have become so skeptical many of us,  or maybe all of us, live in a semi-state of misinformation.  My dad once preached a sermon on truth and untruth.  In the sermon, he said that those trained to spot counterfeit money never studied the counterfeits because there could be an infinite variety. Still, instead, they studied the true bills so well that they would never mistake one for a counterfeit.  His point was we should study the Truth alone.  The Truth will always set us free, and today, knowing HisStory is sorely needed by, need I say, all of us.    

        

 

Krispy Kreme in Cheek

What if you could believe in a Fairy Tale?  Not any fairy tale but the best Fairy Tale.  One where there was no more fear, sickness, sadness, no more death?  A fairy tale where you got to be the best you could ever imagine.  Maybe riding horses over all the national parks on all the planets and every evening meeting up with all your loved ones, all of them, family and friends, for a good meal, beside a good fire, and know how much they loved you.  A fairy tale where all the beaches in the universe had an umbrella for your lover, and you and you spent a trillion years telling of your dreams, and it felt like a few minutes sipping a cool drink and listening to the surf sing.  A fairy tale where you skied perfectly and ran faster than your horse, and your hair was silky long with curls, and Krispy Kreme's was always available, always tasted heavenly, and never, never, never lost their appeal nor added an inch to your bronzed, herculean, physique.  Oh, but fairy tales would never be Fairy Tales unless...they eventually came true.  

A bit like this.

 

A Chosen People

*My father was not a wealthy man except in education.  He came from the worst childhood I can imagine, for he, on a rare occasion, would share a horror tale with me, many as we sat in his sauna during his last dying years.  My mom was the same but had little education.  She quit her schooling at 16 to marry him. She was raised wealthy by a drinking and gambling father who gambled it all away, charged once with murder, convicted of manslaughter, and timed his due at Brushy Mountain.  She will still and only say of him, “he was a good man, but he was a drunk.”  Both my grandfathers were dead at 41 with nothing to show for their life on earth save one daughter to one and one son to the other.  I would say my parents were beloved people, beloved by those that count, the poor, the needy, the widow, the down and outers, and those of color.  When I was a baby, my dad rode a train to Death Valley, California, to bring Jesus to the Native Americans.  When I was 12, he began to bring “coloreds” into his church, for which he was promptly voted out of the pulpit and onto the street.  People loved me because of my parents, and my love for them grows greater by the day now that I am old. and he dead some 20 years, and she now has lost all her memory save for a bit here and a name there.   But these two lost souls found each other as young teenagers, married, and began to remake their history.  We number 52 now, and one great-grandson on the way.  Neither lived or stayed conscious long enough to know how great their legacy, pastors, teachers, artists, warriors, and a few shared their grandfathers' propensity to addictions.  However, the grace found in my parents found us all cured.  I have never known true hardship, not the hardship of having nothing except what you might make yourself.  There was no dowery left for either of my parents, not even a good name, but they were saved, and in their salvation, they found a reason for being and doing, for meaning and purpose, to build a firm foundation upon which the other 52 of us now stand and build upon.  They had four, and we bred, birthed, or brought 48 more.  But the two of them did most of the hard work, the living without, the scrapping to get by, the time on their knees and with their Bibles ensuring that what they read, prayed, and lived for would bring forth a harvest  "For I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just."          *on reading Genesis 15-18

Do You Have Glory?

Do you ever give glory?  Do you have it to give away?  I don’t know the answer to the first, but I do the second, a resounding “Yes!!!” Oxygen, light, and love can begin your list.  But what is glory?  Glory is the feeling I get when I realize how great everything is that keeps me alive: healing, cell division, seeing, resonance, sun, touching, empathy, gravity, stars, rhyme, consciousness, DNA, lift, heat, and wind. An infinite list of overwhelming provisions for my existence which I do nothing to receive, and I end up with a lot of glory I need to give to something or someone.  It is an overwhelming feeling of needing to be and do something. It is a fact that without graces abundant, intricate, beautiful design of everything including me, there would be nothing, including me.  It gives grace a real meaning, and grace produces glory.  I have an abundance of glory, but it's not for me but for me to give away.  But to what?  To who?  This is the main reason we build Tabernacles, Temples, Cathedrals, steeples, St. Fillian’s hall, and make sculpture.  Those are the best hints to what or Who, I can give my glory to.  Having so much glory and never giving it away would be despairing.    

Betty and I stopped to pray in this small church in Mexico.  It reminded me of the same glory given in Giotto's chapel ceiling in Scrovegni Chapel in Italy

      

Spred'in Out, Chaa Ching

We are adding on, yesterday began our big spreading out, making more room, giving space for all those of us.  At last count, we are 20 and one on the way.  Twenty-one takes up a lot of room.     

“Enlarge the site of your tent, stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, do not hold back.  Lengthen your ropes and drive your stakes in deep.  For you will spread out to the right and left…”  Isaiah 54:2,3a

Tents cost a lot more today, a whole lot more!!!

 

Titles We Give Light

Black to ebony, and walaa, INDIGO.  This is the magical moment made by the slightest sliver of light.  It is the first promise of light, of dawn, a promise more hope than seen.  It is mostly in our hearts to see light where we know it will be.  The assurance light is coming, to hope upon hope that a new day is given, and in the thought, the reality of the grand gifted miracle of it all.  I keep raising my head to please myself that the ebony is there, it separating the land and mountains from the river and sky.  Oh yes, there it is now.  A distinct evaporation of ebony to indigo.  The words giving the light a title barely worthy of it.  Colors to name light; for there is no known thing as color, only titles we give varying amounts of light.       

A Known Wanderer of Wanderers

*I am a wanderer like my parents.  We wandered over the earth, over Tennessee, I went to sea, and now I am in the middle of the three places I was raised, born in Athens, moved to Jefferson City and then to Crab Orchard, and this is who I am.  I am a part of these people, my people.  I am like them, and they like me.  We are God fearing, country folk, opinionated, stubborn, hard-working, strong-willed, and passionate.  We have lots of preachers, teachers, and drunks.  Storytellers, clannish, people of the earth.  We are mountain folk, tied to the hollows, creeks, rocks and rivers, trees and mountains.  We’re common sensers, writers, dreamers, neighborly, givers, raise and bury, hunt, fish, gather, hoard, live sparsely and grandly on the land.  God, Christ Lord, the Holy Spirit are ours. They’re sewn in our ancestors, woven in our families, invited to our tables, funerals, gatherings.  They are the most honored guests in all our comings and goings.  We are what you call God’s people,  He, They are our guides, our tear gatherers, our hellfire and heaven bounders, we give our dead to Them, pledge our babies to Them, and eventually our souls go to Them to await our new bodies.  We think this is normal, see no odds in this, and call it faith.  We are wanderers, and by faith, we know we will eventually wander with Them around Glory.  They’re with us all our lives, like our ancient ones, who we know not now, but know we will know then, as we will be known; wanders.                                                                                                                                               *On reading Genesis 12-14

  

 

Moon Promises

The days have been grey of late, the river and the sky broken only by the thin line of mountains beyond.  Last evening, I sat and gazed out at eventide, cold, and slate rain.  There was no sun to give a hint of time passing, earth rotating, day ending.  This morning, I awoke and stood outside in the dark, and I could still feel it, the damp grey above.  I turned and came back in, filled my coffee cup, and sat with Him.  After a while, I was nudged to look up, and there the moon had nipped a hole in the grey to gently and faithfully remind me of what He had just told me;

“As long as the earth endures

seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter, 

day and night,

will never cease.”

Amen

 

First Time Ever I Saw...The Earth

After reading Genesis 1 & 2, I thought, how could I ever be thankful enough?  So I wrote down all the songs I felt were grateful songs that I would write after creation. 

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

How Great Thou Art

Let It Be

Amazing Grace

Poems, Prayers and Promises

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Hallelujah

Abraham, Martin, and John

Hallelujah Chorus

The Old Rugged Cross

Free Bird

I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing

Thou, Oh Lord (by Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir)

The Doxsology

God, what would I give you besides these songs?  My heart, and after You accepted it, I would have put these songs in it.  You are so good.  Thank You.   

"Morning Has Broken" could easily have made 
my list.

Thing: Anything or How Do You Do Eternity

A long time ago, in a place far away, You Three conceived of all things: the animals, the ears, the hair, tails, fins, colors, shapes, and sizes.  The heavens and spheres abounded in glory, and colors, and lights, and spaces, and distances incomprehensible, and lights and light that never stops expanding since You Three said, “Let there be light!”  And plants, flowers, trees, grasses, fruits, nuts, cocoa bean, sugar cane, and on and on and food and fuel cover the earth.  Birds fly, the sky is made blue, we get a star, oceans have waves, Mount Everest and Brown (our mountain) are made, Betty, Aaron, Sissy, Zac, Sarah, and our new grandson are conceived, the Big Dipper, Ozone Falls, baby elephants, Fair Haven, The Tennessee River, the Mississippi, oranges…It becomes mind-expanding, heartwarming, soul-praising, knees bowing, good.  It never ends for us.  Once it begins, it is eternal.  We are eternal.  Of all thoughts, this is the one that must be reconciled.  How do we do eternity?  We can’t.  Only You Three can and coming into us by faith make us eternally alive, me, glorious as I was intended to be, eternal, one with You All, forever.

This Story, the Greatest Story ever told, must be applied to me every day.  I must apply “In the beginning God” to my story every day.  You Three are the only story I have to be me.  This Story is the only thing that makes all other people, places, and things make sense.  I just looked up “thing” in the dictionary,  “Anything.”  That is what I am trying to explain.  Genesis 1 and 2 are the You Three, telling me how I began, how all “things” began.  And it is the only “thing” that makes all things make sense (including sense).  That thing (including sense) made me happy.  Happy, another thing that makes me happy.  I could keep repeating here, but I will stop.  (stop: thing)  Happy again.  

On reading Genesis 1 & 2.

Yesterday, splitting fire for next winter.

Best Seen In Black and White

I am not prepared for how my mom is passing from earth to heaven.  I haven’t had a lot of practice, peripheral at best.  Most deaths of those close to me were sudden, unexpected, and, therefore, mostly missed.  My dad was different.  He died of cancer.  I never knew him not to have it, so when he finally succumbed to it, it was mostly like a normal part of his life and, therefore mine.  But my mom is slowly passing.  She is passing in stages, over years, unbecoming what she had become, a great, prolonged, unraveling.  Each stage takes time and toil, and each stage she and I live through.  First her body, next her mind, still in process, and heartbreakingly, now I am beginning to see her living faith fading away.  She is not losing the Christ of her faith but just the knowledge of it and Him.  We sing hymns with her; she still knows some of the words.  Jesus Love Me is her favorite, I’m sure, because it was imprinted in the youngest, deepest recess of her mind and heart.  She still knows a few words of her faith, pray, the strongest, but most others are lost to her too.  This is all bittersweet.  Bitter to watch, sweet to know it has no bearing on her coming eternity.  I have learned a lot of lessons through this, but the most important thing is that no one knows how they are going to die.  We must all prepare for doing something, having no idea how we will do it.    

Mom and me when she and I were becoming together.

   

158 Words to Try an Explain 10,000 Words

I have had lethal force applied to me twice, and nearly, twice more.  The first two were boiling water and a 150hp Evinrude boat motor.  These were violent and painful.   The second two were tornadoes, striking some 500 yards from me.   They were violent but not physically.  I am thinking about these because I am reading Revelation and the powerful and deadly forces that will be released on the earth and humans.  It is scary to me, but I am not fearful.  I am spared from these forces by Christ’s blood through faith, He has saved me.  So, the events in these passages are scary, but I am not fearful.  Nothing can separate me from Christ’s love, not even the end times.  As an artist, I can find no greater inspiration than the forces allied against me and those for me.  This is the story all art seeks to declare, a sculpture is worth ten thousand words.   

"Hurrican't Come Here No More," my sculpture 
that many years ago won Sculpture Key West.  It was 
inspired by the hurricane that had hit Flordia.

   

Meaning, Sadness, Sculpture

Sometimes, I am so filled with meaning I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness that I cannot express.  If I could sing, play the piano, throw a ball a million miles, or “fly like an eagle,” I would do it.  Making art is the only way I know how, but it is such a slow and achingly hard process that the instantaneousness of these moments of meaning is long gone by the time I consider going to my studio.  

 

Meaning prompt.  Sunrise in front of me.

Looking Forward to the Next 63 Years

I turned 67 yesterday.  I told my lover, “It sure doesn’t seem like it took me 67 years to get to be 67!”. 

She laughed and said, “How long does it seem, 10 years?”

“No,” I said, “more like…”  And I stopped to think.  How long did it seem like it took me to get 67 years old?  My first thought was maybe 20 years or so, but then, as I thought about it, I surprisingly realized it seemed more like a year or two.  It really felt that quick.   So I asked my lover the same question, and she said, “Well, since we had children, it just flew by, but growing up, it feels like it took a long time, so I’d say maybe 60 years!”  

I said, “ You really feel like it took you 60 years to get to be 72. I feel like it just took me a couple years, like one or two to get 67!”.

“Well maybe you have to wait till you get to be 70,” she said.  

I guess it took me 2 years to get to 67 and 63 years to get to be 70.  I look forward to these next 63 years. 

 

 

His Thoughts On Grey to me

If the world were just a thought in my head and I could make it as I thought it, I would be God.  No thought in the formless void of nothingness could be formulated by me…but if I could, I would.  The earth, ours, and all above and around it are not thoughts in my head but just the grey morning before me that I can see becoming in my head.  Oh, but the thoughts of what I see are dreams I cannot tell, say, or think.  This is a sincere connection between God and me and was in His thoughts when He said, “Let there be…” and His thoughts became.  His thoughts are not my thoughts nor His ways mine, but I am so grateful He doesn’t mind sharing His if I have a heart to see and hear–Him.  My thoughts, on His grey morning, He gave me.   

          

 

The Great but Only Partial Unveiling

The unveiling of life, the world, love and kissing, colors, humans, animals, trails, feelings, the whole of it as I can contain it, and know it but only vaguely, but furiously, is a gift from God in Christ.  I know the difference.  I have lived against Them and for Them.  It is this unveiling that most assures me of Them, and Them in me being the only rightful place for Them and me.  It was certainly art or better her master, beauty, that first assured me of a possible unveiling.  Now The Word, my parents, and Betty all gave flesh, a living out of it in front of me, but art defined what they had in them that attracted me.  I read this morning, “All art comes from God”* and it was this way in which God began to unveil Christ’s love for me and create an overwhelming need to surrender all of me to Him. He had help, a violent breaking of me, but even there it was the beauty of blood being washed off living bone, that caught my attention.  What is my point?  All of you come to Christ.  In every way He is the only way in which you, art, beauty, and all other things become unveiled, but mainly you, an unveiling of a masterpiece, you, who He made.  

*From the book The Discipline of Inspiration by Carey Wallace 

The church in Knoxville where Betty was first baptized 
as a child. 

    

 

Knowing! knowing art.

The Christ of the don’ts and can’ts is not the Christ at all.  It is the delusional lie that I shunned for years; I cannot do what I want if He is He to me.  But after 39 years I can say with all truthfulness, I would never have known me until He allowed me to be me.  I am made only to be freely me.  He made me to be free.  He is always and only The Christ of the dos and cans.  The freedom He has given me is the freedom to be freely me.  Its foundation?  The freedom to acknowledge and delight in Him.  The freedom from the world to be in the world.  The spiritual, emotional, psychological, physical, mental, and creative exhilaration that comes to me through Him in me.  The exuberance of all the dos and cans now mine in Him.  

P.S. A minor/major byproduct of all Him in me.  Knowing Art. 

The setting sun on,
The Halo Icon.  49"/49"/7",  birch plywood, 24k gold.

  

 

Maclin

All art is redemptive. I first knew this young man as an artist who came into my beginning art class only for me to show him what he already was, an artist.  He understood the immersive abiding of God in himself and all things and the desire this awakens in him to give back to Him who provides.  He moved on, married well, an artist herself, had children, one son named after me, and they and God live together on the earth, gleaning, harvesting, hunting, and putting by stores to live in relationship.  He is becoming a timber framer, a skill lineaged to him by his father and forefathers.   A great red oak fell on Fair Haven*, and he asked if he might take it and make two tables, one for my lover and me and one for him and his.  It is an homage.  So Friday, he drove across Tennessee, and arriving late in the afternoon, we found ourselves on the side of our mountain, in the waning sun over the river, me watching, him with mighty tools.  The youngster first knew the tree, walking up and down it, admiring it, studying it, seeing in it all its divine possibilities.  It was Him and him, and his father, and forefathers all there, and I, alone watching.  And then he harvested it, releasing its powerful tensions one knowing cut at a time.  From its stump to its crown, he began its process to two tables, and the crown he cut into firewood for us.  And, as it should be, finished just as sun set.  It was a work of art, a forefather’s apprenticed artisan, showing me again, the young man I first knew, being what he always was, an Artist.  Art is redemptive.      

    

 *https://aaronleebenson.blogspot.com/2024/09/well-done-thy-good-and-faithful-tree.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwY2xjawIEbaFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZPStgdMqCxyTVLCpyvEwVP3WUw4KuP9d8tbICDx3XQ1_7PHBxrUUwVtkw_aem_j8X37Wl-g4u7GNI96Hb2lQ

Staying Warm in 9°

There is a great joy in this bitter cold.  It plays outside our windows here at Fair Haven.  At first light, I can see the Herons grouped just offshore.  Next, the tiny birds puffed to the size of an egg, feeding on the seed we spread on our porch.  The light brightens, and the Seagulls begin to fill the skies beyond, hurriedly flapping back and forth, searching for breakfast.  Then comes the Geese, they glide just offshore, some dousing themselves up and down in the frigid Tennessee.  Last are the Pelicans, not yet showing themselves but will soon float atop the river and through our lives.  And the great joy?  

“All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.”  to stay warm when it is 9°.

For a better explanation see Psalms 104

The dousing Geese

 

A White Line of Praise

That white line is our pelicans.  How Great Thou Art!!!

 

Horace Kephart and The Three

My lover and I spent most of yesterday gathering firewood, cutting, splitting, and stacking readying for the coming “arctic blast” the weather app keeps predicting.  I am reading Horace Kephart’s, Camping and Woodcraft.  Mr. Kephart was a failed father and librarian who came to the Appalachian Mountains in 1904 to start a new life and eventually helped to win part of them as our beloved Smoky Mountain NP.  His writing describes how mountains can provide all one needs to sustain one’s life.  I am encouraged by the many times Christ went up into the mountains for the same reason.  He, like Mr. Kephart, my lover and I know they can also sustain one's faith and spirit.  We turned to our own mountain to keep us warm for the next several days and are now serving me warmth as I read another text, a Living and Active telling of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirt, The Three who conceived of and made mountains, wood, and fire.  

Horace Kephart

     

Our She Neighbor

Cold Winter has settled in, made herself at home here at Fair Haven.  She is most welcomed by a warm fire and attentive heart.  We watch her, and she performs for us.  She brings us winter birds, pelicans, and seagulls, an occasional snow that falls with something of the grace of infinitesimal butterflies lighting on our acres.  Soft and quiet, her snow is and is always welcome for a short stay.  Winter pushes our bar quite a bit higher, forcing us to brace up with will and wool to face her, hike with her, walk in her stillness and the cold of her mornings.  Winter is like an old, bony, she neighbor whose translucent hands and milky eyes comfort you as she hands you a cup of hot chocolate.  

   

Fully Full Glass

The glass window is clearly a gift. It opens to us the world while holding it at bay.  It allows us to see winter, its glory, and beauty, without having to experience its special effects.  Seeing is its own experience without troubling ourselves with experiencing what we are seeing.  It is the ultimate video game, playing in nature without actually being in nature.  How differently, difficult our life would be if to see nature we had to go outside.  What a gloriously clear gift is glass, allowing us to see why we should be thankful.  I would say our glass is full, fully full.   

        

Pelican Praise

We have a love affair with the Pelicans.  My wife told me what she was reading about the Pelicans and why ours are the prettiest.  Ours would be the American Pelican; 100 or so come every winter to spend it with us.  We are overjoyed when they arrive and often talk to them as they glide beautifully by day and night like His Parade of Glory.  They have become our Thanksgiving Parade, moving us in ways only big white pelicans can move you.  Right!  We’d never heard of the parade or dreamed we would be “moved” by it until they showed up in our front windows.  Now, we are some of their biggest fans.  In our old, ancient hearts, we’re BFFs.  Pelicans doing God’s work in our hearts, delighting us in the Lord.    

   

 

Standing With Lesser King George II

Oh, the precious winter months and the fires that warm us through them.  Being warmed by fire can be a part of a great awakening, of the cosmic kindness of all things working together for good.  The earth, and sun, and all stars and humans are on a great stage, and God is our audience.  What act shall we perform as our time on stage grows short?  An act of worship-filled thanksgiving seems too small as we sit by a warming fire.  Who, oh yes, Who could in Their wildest imagination, dream up fire and put it in wood? Our great King could and did, and like the much lesser king George II, we rise before Him and call him Blessed, for fire’s Hallelujah Chorus warms our old bones to stand on stage and perform for Him.  

 

Sabbath's 25 Herons

The world in solemn stillness lay.  It is just light, grey, and cold, the earth, the river, and the sky are all the same cold color.  When I awoke, the moon shone bright upon the earth, giving light to the cold.  We had near 25 herons overnight by our shore and now I can see them very slowly, one and then another, fly away to mornings somewhere else.  It is Sabbath morning and we will join the pilgrims around the globe moving to worship together.  I can feel the swelling faith, as millions uncounted rise to join all nature (and herons) in manifold witness and declare, “This is the day the Lord hath made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  But for now, the world in solemn stillness lay.  

What's left of our Sabbath Herons waiting to fly away.

 

His Cold Child's Thoughts

Well the snow has laid hold of the earth and will not relinquish it like the mighty struggle we wage for faith.  Our heart, that dull, sedimentary, stone heart, we labor to fan to flame that which lies cold beneath the skin like the earth beneath the snow.  We beat our body to enslave it to faith as violently we take His kingdom of salvation.  Who has faith and has not found it often frozen like the pure white snow, its beauty there lies until we seek to cloak ourselves in it and find there is no warmth from its blanket.  The faith that soared while sitting by the fire and watching Him snow the earth in purest white now lays cold as the ashes that fill my hearth.  But Christ in God does not take on my feelings as to mount His defense.  He is true and His salvation assured even when I lay spent at the very gate.  He stands inside the gate knowing full well that I also, inside the gate, I, His cold child, lay wrapped in His loving, warm arms.

  Thoughts on Matthew 11:12 

A barge pulls itself up river as the snow begins to fall.

 

Ok God, You're On!!!

Sitting quietly by the fire, drinking coffee, eagerly waiting on the promised snow.  Snow brings out the kid in every Southerner.  We rarely get it, so when we do, it is a special event.  We prep for it, buy all the milk, bread, and bananas, rent several good movies, plan homemade soups, fill our wood boxes, and turn off our alarm clocks.  We then sit and wait for the big event.  Last evening, I sat down, looked out at the setting sun, and said aloud, “Ok, God, I’m ready for the big event.  You’re on!!!”  I always watch the sunrise and sunset.  This is how Southerners feel about snow.  We know He has a storehouse full of the stuff (Job 38), and occasionally, He shares several inches with us.  It brings such a peaceful and sincere quiet to our world.  “Ok, God, we’re ready for the big event!  You’re on!!!”