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.