Trying to Keep Those Many Memories Ago

I have known my mother longer than I have known any other human.  She is the first person I can remember knowing.  Her actions toward me are my earliest memories.  I can remember on cold mornings she would lay me on the clothes dryer to keep me warm while she folded clothes.  The story I am trying to write is how wonderfully beautiful and kind she was, how present and vital to my life, how filled with life and meaning.  This is how I first knew her.  These days, I often think through these thoughts, hoping to keep the memory of her now that they are juxtaposed beside the mom I now have.  The vitality of her life is so important to my knowing her.  I am trying to keep my memory from being deconstructed by my current reality.  It’s like clinging to a vapor, a vague dream upon waking.  But her current condition is startlingly clarifying, bringing the vapor into absolute, solid remembering.  She was so alive, so beautiful, so important to me.  She is the video of my earliest life, the one person who was present in those many memories ago.   

Family Photo, mom holding me at 4 months.

    

 

Growing Up In One World, Growing Old In Another

When I was growing up, there were only two ways to say anything to anyone.  You could say it to them face-to-face or on the phone.  This was my technology.  It was also limited to a very few people, those with whom I wanted to have physical contact.  My talking crowd, my friends, were physically near me every day.  It was a very small world, but filled with meaningful relationships.  Those friends I loved!  As much as a young teenager can love, I loved them.   Such was the small, loving world of my youth. 

It would be hard to function in my world if you did not grow up in it.  Person-to-person, physical contact was the key to all my enduring relationships.  It still is today.  However, it is hard for me to function in a world that is best suited for those who didn’t grow up in mine.   

A Blood Filled Fountain In Laughed Filled “Hollars”

We are at the Benson Family Reunion.  Every three years, we get the entire clan together. We number 50 something of which 39 are here.  All came from two only children, my Dad and Mom.  Dad died many years ago, and Mom is 9/10ths in heaven.  Their four children, of whom I am the third, are all here, as are many of each of ours.  

Yesterday we were all sitting around visiting, and my brother, talking of getting old, said, “We were going like gangbusters, forging ahead, and then all of a sudden you get old and you just fall apart.”  

I added, “And the fall is so much faster than the rise.”

This morning, I am sitting in a quiet corner thinking of our family.  We are clannish, all for one and one for all, mountain people, Tennesseans, and it's passed on by blood.  We don’t take each other serious, but we take the blood serious.   We are followers of Jesus Christ, and it's his blood we take serious.  He is all we have.  Nothing else matters but passing on His blood to our next of kin. 

We are as goofy a family as you will ever find.  Our laughter fills the mountain hollars as we once again tighten the ties that bind, that blessed “Tie that binds our hearts in Christian love…”  

“There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.”  

From Fall Creek Falls State Park, and the Benson Family Reunion, sinners all, plunged beneath the blood-filled fountain.  If you pass and hear the laughter-filled mountain hollars, it’s just us. 

  

 

Why An Artist?

Art is a word we have made up to identify what we do to declare our overwhelming desire to praise whoever made the universe.  It is this one ecstasy we are always trying to express.  We often confuse the object of our desire with the self, and then art is not made but only a self-expression.  Art is reserved for the deepest desire of our soul, to help us be in a personal relationship with Whoever made the universe.  The universe is that good, its beauty that beautiful, its existence that spiritual.  If the universe and art are anything, they are a Spiritual/spiritual expressions.  This is the most sincere reason one chooses to become an artist.   

My daughter, Sissy, gave me these roses for Father's Day.
They have been a constant companion for me during my time with 
The LORD.  They remind me that even in death, their beauty is a part
of the Divine realm of love, that art can never play in but can only
lead the artist to a life of praise and worship for the example.

 

 

Tired of Hearing Myself

“Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness.”  Getting old ain't for the weak of heart. the frail of spirit, the weak of character, or the uncommitted to Christ.  Old takes such wisdom.  Wisdom to find meaningful and practical ways to compensate for the ongoing failings of our bodies and minds.  It takes grit, true grit, to muster on even in pain and hardship, and to do so without complaining or giving voice to it.  At one time, I made a New Year's resolution to not make any sound when standing up or sitting down.  I got tired of hearing myself moan and groan. 

Old age is the time when you gain so much wisdom because life requires so much more. I now have grown children, with spouses, and grandchildren, and all of them need me to live a life of righteousness and reason, and to often share it with them.  However, I must be wise enough to do so in a way they can kindly accept and apply.  Frequently, it takes greater wisdom to know how to share wisdom than the wisdom you are sharing.  

 

Meanwhile, At Fair Haven

 

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

As one grows old, one receives many opportunities to be reborn as old things wear out, new things are given.  As we see less, we begin to look over more.  As we hear less, we are more forgiving.  “Oh well” comes to mind more and more as we accept the things we can do nothing about.  As we slow down, we give up more of the horizon and see more of the earth beneath our feet.  We sit more, so we see more.  We are cold more so we hold each other more.  We have more time, so we begin to love more, pray more, and allow empathy, sympathy, and caring to take up a greater amount of our feelings.  Getting old is a tough role to play; it's like when all your children were small and needed constant attention and care.  Being old requires constant attention because so much of our body is vying for our attention. Remember when your small child used to stand beside you and say, “Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! That’s how your old body does, Hey! Hey! Hey! it says. 

I once read a book about a hiker who, because of a hiking accident, had to live with constant pain.  He eventually realized pain was the only way he knew most of his body existed.  His example was when your fingertips get cold, you are suddenly aware you have fingertips.  Being old is the only way we will ever know much of who we are, and of many of life's goodnesses.  

The cicadas were out in 
force this year at Fair Haven

                  

Meeting Again A Mighty Man

I am going to the great parting today, one of my mighty men has passed on to his Father.  There are very few great men in one’s life, those men who you meet and who change the direction of your life.  In fact, he changed the direction of all of my family's lives.  He is the artist who modeled what it meant to be an artist.  42 years ago, he was my art professor, but over my nine years in Art School, he became a man I wanted to be just like.  It wasn’t that I wanted to model my life after him.  I wanted to be just like him.  He was the type of man, artist, Christian, man of God, I wanted to be just like.  I have seven mighty men in my life of 68 years.  He is number three.  A mighty man has parted from earth, and all of earth is poorer, but I am richer.  We were to meet a few months ago, and he had to cancel the day we were to meet.  He texted me and closed with this, “I love you too, Aaron and Betty, and all the kids.  Have a wonderful life. We will meet again.”  Yes, Dr. Darrow.  We will meet again. A mighty man has parted this earth. 

The last time I saw him.

   

These are how I came to know him.

Bearing Your Name and Your Blood

5-18-2025

Number 13 has arrived, making us the luckiest family on earth.  Elijah John Benson is ours, our 13th grandchild.  He is tiny, beautiful, and laid back, squawks only when hungry.  He is a peace-filled balm to this aging old soul.  He is so new, so fresh, a life just begun.  Only the aged can see the depth of joy and satisfaction in the exquisite presence of a newborn human being bearing your name and your blood.  

Pushing Our Limits

It is a rainy Sunday morning coming down.  We are in a distant state, caring for a family in need.  We are pushing our limits, using up physical resources, bending our backs to the plow, setting our feet to the needs, hands to the task.  We have become old, not in essence but in the present.  Our hearts and souls don’t feel we are, but our bodies do.  We are young and filled with great hopes and desires, encased in bodies worn and weathered.  Our hearts are so free, so silly in our joinings to each other, memories of adventures, all day and nighters, on the edge, racing for the brass ring.  We have beheld Him, lived in His presence, seen His glories, and now, aged and bent, our meaning is a great aching in our hearts of knowing who we were is still who we are.  My lover and I.  We are again...pushing our limits.    

 

The Wonders of Your Love

What are the wonders of your love?  If you asked your spouse, children, or friends, what would they say?  This morning I read in the Psalms, David asking God to show him, “the wonders of your (God) great love.  We are all recipients of God’s great love wonders.  Love, light, warmth, beauty, and hopefully, salvation.  After I read this, I spent some time thanking God, and now, as I meditate on it, I wonder how I am doing sharing the wonders of His great love?  I am a great recipient.  I hope I am a great giver.     

Stiff-Necked and Hard-Hearted

*Two nights ago, a terrible storm swept through our area. As usual, I found myself worrying and praying, specifically for the trees in our front yard at Fair Haven. I asked God to protect them. While the storm raged, I watched the news, and the newscasters were dramatic in their descriptions of its intensity. It sounded like devastation was inevitable.

The next morning, as we left downtown Knoxville and drove toward Fair Haven, I braced myself. I fully expected to see trees down all along the way. But as I drove down the interstate—lined with trees as far as the eye could see—I noticed something strange. Not one was down. I thought to myself, “That’s odd. I was sure I’d see storm damage by now.”

And in that quiet moment, God spoke to my heart:

 "Lee, your glass isn’t just half full—it’s running over and spilling into your lap. Look at all the trees I protected. But you’re focused on the one you expected to fall."

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud and share it with Betty.

By the end of the day, I realized—I hadn’t seen a single tree down. Not one.

This morning, while reading the Bible, I was reminded how often God called His people “stiff-necked” and “hard-hearted.” And I had to admit… I can often be a stiff-necked, hard-hearted Christian.

I’m sorry, Lord.

*Checked with Grammarly and ChatGPT 

Mother's Day Code: Faulty Sensor

I have a camshaft sensor fault in my truck.  It makes all the other things run in order.  Now it runs really rough when it idles.  My mom is in a state of idle.  She can sit in a wheelchair.  But her life sensor has become faulty.  She doesn’t run right. There is very little of my mom left, nothing really that I knew all my life as her.  I think she knows me, sometimes, and sometimes knows my name.  I can see it in her eyes when all things are clicking correctly, twinkling clarity I call it, a momentary glimpse that all is there.  But it's gone as quick as it comes.  She is 100% my mom, but only a little percentage of herself.  How do I have her in my life?  The way she is!!!  I don’t know if she experiences happiness.  She had very little of it growing up, and so she struggled to be able to experience it when she was my mom.  It wasn’t that she wasn’t content or fulfilled in her day-to-day, but her years to 16 were surely scarred by unhappiness and regret.  Her greatest trait was that she worked all the time, kept us spotless, her home the same, and her life as well.  She was a good Baptist but a greater Christian.  I like to think I was her favorite; she would tell me, “You were the one I prayed for, and God gave me you.”  Years later, telling me her memory of my teenage years, she would say, “Lee, often was the nights I would walk the back yard praying for the Lord to take you home or me one.”  Eventually, He will take us both home to be with him.   My mom has a life sensor fault.  She is my mom.      

 

Last Thoughts on Spain

At the airport in Madrid, the day we were leaving, I noticed a young man lying on the floor squeezed in behind a pillar facing the wall. He was dirty, disheveled, and asleep, with a small, tattered bag for a pillow.  It dawned on me I had seen the same boy in the same state but in a different part of the airport when we had arrived two weeks earlier.  He must live at the airport.  At that moment, it struck me that in all my reality of validation of my worth in Christ’s love, it was no more or less than the validation of worth this young man had in Christ’s love for him.  We were equal in the sight of our Lord.  I had an overwhelming sense of knowing, of wonder, of the reality of life as I quickly passed him in my other reality of trying to navigate all the systems of a foreign airport to allow me to go from there to my plane and ultimately to America.  It was the moment of juxtaposing my two realities, one harried and rushed, one stark, clear, and the truer of the two.  I write this because our trip, my lover and I, was a grand reality of our relationship with God, with beauty, in an overwhelming variety of experiences.  But at that moment in the airport, I realized the reality of this young man and me over the preceding two weeks was the same, two children being kept by God who would someday stand before Him to give an account.   It was a spark of meaning like the flash of lightning.  I said a brief prayer for him and rushed on in my other reality. 

Landed in Knoxville, hard rode, and put up wet but
good to be home.

   

From the Taj Mahal

When I was a little boy, my mom always read to me.  One of the books she read  was titled “The Man Without a Country.”  It was about an army officer who was tried for treason during the Revolutionary War.  During the trial, he said he wished he would never hear of America again.  He was convicted, and the judge sentenced him to serve out his life sentence onboard ships and never again be allowed in America or to hear or read a word about America.  I never got over that story.  This morning, I woke up in the Taj Mahal, the penthouse suite in a high-rise in Knoxville, the whole top floor.  It is owned by a dear friend of our whole family.  They have loaned it to us while our home is being built.  Our contractor still needs a few days to get the basement finished, so we can at least move back into my studio while the remainder of our home is finished.  So we are a couple without a home.  We long to be a Fair Haven, but–the Taj Mahal is a grand substitute.  

My view this morning in America.

 

Elton's song "Daniel" in reverse, Leaving Spain

Going home morning.  I am awake early, make cowboy coffee, read the Ancient Text,  and write my prayers.  My lover sleeps.  I love sitting with her this way, she always sleeps the rest of the innocent.  It is who she is.  We fly home today at 1:45p.m., eight hours to Philadelphia, a three-hour layover, and get to Knoxville at 8:55 this evening.  Coming home from abroad is an ordeal; it will be a 16-hour day.  But it is a part of a grace-filled life.  One cannot expect to travel halfway around the world and arrive feeling like you had just strolled through the tulips.  Travel is one of the deepest desires in humans, to explore, to search out, and reach beyond our vision to other worlds.  It is Godly and from God.  Why else would the earth be so beautiful if He didn’t intend us to go see it and, in the seeing, give Him praise?  My lover awakens and kisses the top of my head.  From far away.  lee

Leaving Spain.

 

Marked by Faith, Hope, and Love

Fifteen days since we left, and now I sit in a hotel room at Madrid’s airport, weary after a day of travel, waiting to fly home tomorrow.  It has been a crusade; we have dwelt in many houses of our Lord.  We have traveled some 5000 plus kilometers and seen the width and depth of Spain and Portugal.  It is a garden of earthly delights; the whole is a bloom of wheat, crops, and orchards of every kind, rolling across every square inch of her.  Only her many mountains interrupt the abundance.  And there is one constant, thousands of homestead relics, dilapidated sentinels of a past filled with people of the land, stone Ebenezers declaring a rich history of farming peoples who took God at his Word and took dominative care of this land.  I often see abandoned homes and think about how ambitious the old souls were who had built them, now gone the way of all things, dust to dust.  We all leave some mark on the earth, and these have left a mark of hopeful planting, tilling, and bringing forth from the land.  Faith, hope, and love, this is way we leave Spain.  It has marked us!  From the Axor Hotel, Madrid Airport.  lee

 

The Adventure of Returning

We turn for home today, a ritual we have done over and over again from points all over the earth.  We turn north for Madrid, a two-day journey, and then fly away home on the third day.  It is a great blessing to go home, to have a home, a loved family, to know this is our bit of land, our piece of the earth the Lord has loaned us to grow old on.  My dad was a rolling stone, my mom always saying, “He can’t stay put for long”, and I am a lot like him, always wondering what's around that bend in the trail, over the next rise, at the top of the mountain.  But even so, going home is a great joy; to turn one’s face homeward is to know another adventure, the adventure of returning.  From southern Portugal.  lee

Our beloved Fair Haven from our new porch.  Taken the day
before we left.

 

Don't Hurt God

We do nothing well.  Lounge around, read, piddle, it's called.  Everyone needs piddle time.  Time with nothing on the schedule, no engagements, no deadlines, checkout times, checkin times, nothing but deciding if we’ll get up, continue to write, have another cup of coffee, or just sit and stare out the window.  One of our great piddle pastimes is looking, seeing, and acknowledging.  There is so much beauty in the world, a cornucopia of sensory delights, and most are naturally occurring.  Well, naturally, meaning God made them.  I mean “who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it wth dew…”  The Lord God can.  But it is the “acknowledging” that we can often skip over.  If you could take a sunrise and sprinkle it with dew and no one acknowledged you for it, that would hurt.  Don’t hurt God.  That’s not nice.  The Candy Man can!!!    

 

 

Do Nothing Days

We have come off the road.  After 10 days and a few thousand kilometers, we have nooked in on the southern coast of Portugal, Carvoeiro, just a few meters from the rocky shore.  They say these are the most beautiful beaches in Europe, and we have three days of rest, do nothing days, to see, enjoy, eat simply, live slowly, and stroll the trails connecting all the beaches.  We are lovers needing loving, and God often uses beauty and nature to love us.  He is good at it, loving, beauty, and making nature are some of His specialties.  Love us, God.  We are here.  From Porches, Portugal.  lee    

Doing nothing in front of our small cottage in Portugal.

 

Traveling Tramps

My lover and I are traveling tramps.  By this, I mean we are able to just roll along, come what may.  We are continually lost, most every day, sometimes multiple times a day, in various cities.  We run low on gas in the aloneness of mountain passes.  We run out of food and survive feasting on a few raisins, a roll from the plane my lover had saved in her purse, a bit of trail mix, and an apple.  We make do, living on my lover's smile and happy hearts.  But we are with God, and He with us.  We ask Him for help and we acknowledge all His goodness.  

The reality of our travels is we live a charmed life, find ourselves in the most amazing places, seeing the most amazing things, being alone, together with God and all His creatures.  “All creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all.”*  From the ocean side in Portugal.  lee  

*"All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Cecil Frances Alexander

 

From The Corn Maze

“You shall be my witness…My ambassador,”  What a grand offer from a grand God.  If you were to meet God today, how might the meeting go?  I imagine it would be warm, kind, and helpful. I would be grateful we met.  This is my job, my witness, my ambassadorship.  I am to be God to all I meet today.  We are tramping around Spain, mostly driving around the countryside but every day we end up in a city, a madhouse of tiny streets, thousands of signs all in a foreign language, and the whole thing laid out in what can best be described as a corn maze, complete with thousands of scooters, cars and buses.  It can be overwhelming that you just want to stop the car, get out, and throw up your hands in surrender.  However, invariably we meet all kinds of witnesses that help us to fit in, get where we’re going, and many who keep us out of where we shouldn’t be going, the wrong way.  The Spanish are not overly friendly, don’t naturally look you in the eye, but we have found, like all people the world over, that people are helpful.  This is God in them, the same God in me, the one He wants us to meet, the one who makes that offer to me every day.  Go meet my people.  From Santiago, Spain. lee  

Betty in the Plaza of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

 

 

412 Steps

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage trail I have longed to walk, but I had become too ancient before I ever learned of it.  We will drive along its route today ending at the Cathedral de Santiago Compostela, the traditional burial site of St. James and the terminus of the trail.  A pilgrimage is not an act of one's body as much as one of one’s soul.  Today, Lord, Christ Jesus, we pilgrimage with You as we seek to on every day.  But let this be a meaningful day, one reserved for the three of us, together, alone, going with our Father, God.  Going with God.  Amen.  From early morning, leaving Bilboa, our soul set to the trail.  Lee 

PS: Yesterday we walked 412 steps on the Camino ending in the plaza.  It was a grand day.  We also saw the swinging of the censor in the Cathedral.  I had seen a video of it years ago, but didn’t know it was here until we walked in and saw the censor hanging from the dome.  God is good.  All the time.  God is good.  

 

Sunday Morning Coming Down

We left Loarre at sunrise, and the trip through the Pyrenees mountains was stunning and all alone ours.  Through great rock mountains and then opening into vast valleys of fertile wealth.  Wheat in abundance and deep yellowed fields of flowering rapeseed.  Rothko would have laid down his brushes.  The dry and arid spaces of east, central Spain were replaced with green mountain landscapes reminiscent of Switzerland and Austria.  By midday we eased into Bilbao to spend our whole Sunday afternoon at the Gunngihiem.  Two seminal works, Serra’s piece “The Matter of Time”, and a massive wall piece, “Rising Sea” by Ei Anatsui were worth the ticket.  Also, “Infinity, Mirrored Room, A Wish for Human Happiness Calling from Beyond the Universe” by Yayoi Kusama, an emersive experience of infinte space was meaningful.  

We ended our sabbath with prayers At St Jose of Montana church in downtown Bilbao, and an online message from my brother at his church in the foothills of Appalachia.  Sunday morning coming down from Bilbao Spain. lee  

I am the guy way in the back with his hand on the wall.

Always Seeking Shelter

We have moved north to Loarre, a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees.  Loarre is famous for its castle, sitting higher on the hill above us.  There is a windstorm on.  Our small home wheezes and shudders but is warm, solid, and quiet.  Today we will travel further north. Over the Pyrenees, to Pamplona, famous for the running of the bulls,  and then on to Bilbao, famous for Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, which we will visit today.  It has a world-class contemporary sculpture collection.  

We tramp around, poking here and there, one lane roads and narrower tiny village streets old as Rome itself.  If Spain is anything, it is ancient.  Western Europe was built in stone, and those relics still lie as ruins across the landscape.  I imagine meeting those who stood looking at what they had built, often a tiny hamlet, but a fortress against nature, which even now blows against me.  Humans build shelter.  We are in the same process ourselves, our home being built away in Beulah Land, a small hamlet at the end of a narrow lane.  We live in common efforts, shelter, safety, warmth.  From Loarre.  Lee 

Our place is down this narrow street to the left.

 

Coming out of the Pyrenees.

 

Soli Deo Gloria

Betty cried.  I cried. 

I texted our children.   “The most exuberant expressions of humanity worldwide are for our LORD.  Hot tears and prayers from us both.  To God be the glory. It just breaks you down. Undoes you.  What must heaven be like?”

The Sagrada Familia.  Our daughter Sarah has been here twice and haltingly tried to express it to us.  

My expression; humans longing to express our deepest gratitude, the essence of who we are in relationship with God through Christ, are exquisite works of our hands.  Soli Deo Gloria.   

   

 

University of Tennessee to Sagrada Familia

Barcelona.  We arrived mid-afternoon yesterday.  Here to see and visit the Sagrada Familia.  I first saw Gaudí’s Cathedral in Art History 40 years ago and knew one day I would come to see it.  University of Tennessee’s Art History did two things for me: renewed my faith in Christ Jesus with stunning visuals, and set my path to see it all.  So here we are, 40 years and 4488 miles later.  I sit in a single room in an Airbnb, with a bed, a desk, a light, and a stool, 10 meters from the cathedral, thinking how far He has brought me.  God is good. God is great.  Let us thank Him.   

Go Vols.

The star was lit last night.

  

 

Starbeings

We are all star people, racing around a planet, around a star, around a galaxy, racing away toward The Great Light. 

Yesterday I was baptized in humans in airports and airplanes.  My lover and I, star people, with other star people jetting around the heavens like cosmic travelers on epic journeys.  We travel horde-like, hysteria, slowly grouping, lining up, ordered, placed, instructed, buckled in, now an army in a starship.  It is as close to divine as we have been able to come, beaming around the earth in silver tubes at warp speed; eating nuts.  

I am now sitting quietly in Spain, my lover sleeps.  I just now hear the morning birds, the original star beings, and I smile.  We are all made to fly, starbeings, divine, eternal, living a magic so wonderful as to be holy.  Oh, the eternal holiness that is ours for the asking.  Lord, give us eyes to see we can fly!!!   

Strapped into our starship.

My quiet room with the starbirds.

 

 

The Great Let Down

The great letdown!  It’s Monday after Easter Sunday.  My lover is lying in bed reading her Bible.  I sit writing.  Morning is let down.  The sun is let down.  Warmth is let down.  My lover, drop-dead gorgeous, is let down.  My dog is let down.  Fair Haven is let down before me.  Joy is quietly filling me let down.  “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” He is letting down all these good and perfect gifts for me.  The great let down continues.    

After Easter Picnic in the mountains.

 

It's Time To Leave

Easter morning.  I'm sitting in the dark, wondering if Jesus might have sat in the dark on his tomb slab Easter morning.  Was he just thinking of being alive during those first arisen moments of life and the beginning of his last days on earth? His physical body was now different; he was physical but also resurrected, holier physically, unable to die any longer, he had faced death and defeated it.  It must have felt good to be alive, physically again, a new body which would never again suffer, ache, pull a muscle, stub a toe, or scratch an eye.  He was alive forevermore.  I wondered if he smiled at himself for a job well done, imagining the look on his disciples' faces when they first see him, for the joy of a morning sunrise, of about to be stepping out onto the stage of the universe, victorious, risen, mission accomplished.  Did he stand and stretch?   No reason really. His muscles will forever be loose.  “Boy, push back that stone!” he might have said to the angel, “It’s time to leave.”    

 

Two Lovers Living in the Forest

My lover and I have made our home in the forest.  When we came here, 13 years ago,  the forest was thick and grew several feet over the river.  There was only an old logging road in, taken back by the forest. We would sit in the forest, and I would tell her, “This is where our home will be.”  She could only see it in my words.  We eventually carved out a little section, cleared it, built a seawall, a dock, and a small studio with a wood stove.  We would come on weekends and holidays, working diligently planting new trees, flowers, making a home with the forest, and all the wild things that live here.  We have grown old here, and now someone else is building for us.  I now sit in our little studio, drinking coffee, listening to Nat King Cole, yoked in the shell of the new home.  There is something dear here, our first home buried deep inside our new home, like a favorite memory, of life long ago, of two lovers sitting in the woods dreaming of what would become our life, our life in our home in the forest.  

   

The Great Discrepancy

I am in constant need of knowing myself.  I am aware of this because I do it every morning, and every morning I am confronted with the me I am and the me I want to be.  It mainly focuses on all the free blessings that are mine, seeing, feeling, love, oxygen, earth, warmth, consciousness, and so on.   It is primarily aided by reading my Bible.  This focuses my attention on two things: God and me.  When I am with God, me and Him alone, there is an obvious discrepancy in generosity, He being the ultimate gift giver and I being the receiver.  It is uncomfortable, but quickly turns to gratitude, praise, and thanksgiving.  It’s just Him and me, so there’s really no other adequate response.  Now, you might think of all this foolishness, but every morning, the one thing that is obvious to me is that I do nothing to make or get all these enormous blessings.  They’re free… and His kindness is always underscored by his generosity.  

    

Half Built, Full Longing

Our home sits in a half-built state, like some great empty studio filled with tools.  I can see her.  I can feel myself in her and imagine the wonderful meaning of her framing nature for me to see.  I dream of the warm fires and Christmas Trees she will hold and the parties and reunions and grandchildren that will snuggle into her.  She is all around me, beside me, above me.  She is a half-made gift, a coat without a lining, a birthday cake still in the box, a canvas gessoed.  Our home sits in a half-built state, and I, in a whole-built longing.  

 

God Bless Americans, Butterflies and Buttercups

My lover and I hiked along a trail crisscrossing a stream.  Tiny white butterflies fluttered along with us as we all traveled beneath a forest, just pushing out its spring lineup.  A straight line caught my attention. Nature doesn’t make straight lines, humans do.  There, buried deep in the foothills of Appalachia, lay the outline of a home.  Buttercups still grew around it like a holy shroud of remembrance.  

Early this morning, I lay awake praying for America, which is once again screaming itself hoarse, maddeningly drowning in a sea of unimaginable wealth, unable to see the butterflies or buttercups.  It is an unholy shroud of useless eyes and ears.  

I pulled some buttercups to take home with me, a thank you to those long-ago people who had eyes to see me and ears to hear me say, "God Bless Americans."

 

The Interruptor

My dad in me, his in him, his in him, and on and on, it fades.  I know only my dad, his dad died several years before my birth.  My dad never spoke of him.  He was a dreadful father.  Now, as I am aging, I find myself wondering about him, him in mine and now in me.  What of him is part of me?  I believe in great interruptions, God breaking into our ancestry like an iron wedge in old oak.  This is how He broke into my father, separating him from his, becoming his new Father, a Wonderful One.  He then was sown into me and into mine, a glorious interruption, by The Interruptor.  

My dad with his dad.

   

Nano Glories

Glory days often fill my memories, those days of youth when all things worked and all was sunshine, incredible feats, and faithful friends.  However those days pass faster than I can write this sentence and now are filled with the days of glory of my coming of age, my God, my lover, my family, and my aging toward the goal.  Past glories are beginning to fade from recall as those present are like stakes of gold holding me sincerely to the present.  The past is not and the future is not; the glory is the twinkling of the present, this infinitesimally glorious sliver of now.  Glory twinklings.   

 

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.