To My Dad

I miss you.  The great void in my sky that your falling like a mighty oak left is still just as void and just as blue. Your presence with me was so great, like breath that I often breathed deeply…but without notice.  You molded and made me, always the example of right, and how to live right, that was both a blessing and a goad.  Now my old self even looks just like you, walks with your gait, thinks on life like you lived, Your God has become my God, and your home with him will eventually be mine.  Those soft and real memories made when my mind, heart, and soul were so sincerely absorbent are still so real to me, you living in front of me, like a best seller of the one thing I still have, the Christ in you you sowed into me.  Thanks, Dad. I miss you.  Until we meet again!!!

Dad on top of Big Rock Mountain, where he taught 
me to see God in everything.

Who We All See If We Have Eyes To See

My wife exclaimed, “Oh, I don’t look good in that picture!”  

I said, “There is never a time you don’t look good!  A picture is a fraction of a nanosecond, and we all see in high definition, 5-G, Technicolor, three-dimensional, blockbuster movie of life every waking moment of our lives.  In that you are always the star and Academy Award-winning best actress because that is who we all see!"

That is true, but the Star is really God, who made me write this blog to Him about how glorious our eyes and minds give us a constant movie of wonder.  That’s quite a parlor trick.   

 

Where The Wild Things Grow...WILDER

FAMILY REUNION 2026

We are a wild bunch!  We hike and bike, push and shove, hold, kiss, and love.  We bury our dead among us, we Doxology at every turn, we catch frogs to marvel at God, slalom at 73, pray fervently, dance with abandon, challenge each other, testify, cry bottles of tears, eat heartily, swim constantly, conquer our fears, cruise under Saturn and Venus, hold and kiss, wrestle and argue.  Where do the wild things grow…wilder?  Under the exuberant and physical joy of family reunions, all under the  Lordship of Christ! 

 

The Gift of Utter Failure

I became an artist out of sheer desire for meaning in life.  I had no clue how it and I were going to survive, but I knew it was my best bet to self being and I just gambled on it.  Looking back, it was evangelizing me.  It is that simple.  It was God in Christ in art and beauty that was bringing me to my senses to lead me out of the sty I had made my home.  They did all the rest and gave me a life I did not even have the vocabulary to give imagination to my mind and heart to what was happening to my life.  The life they gave me was abundant, easy, and hard-free, it was as if I was born with the animation to be an artist and all I had to do was continue to step into me.  It is a great mystery to be gifted yourself after such utter failure of trying your hardest to be yourself.    

Found this in the woods yesterday.  One of the gifts is 
getting my blind eyes to see. 

 

 

A Grey Hallelujah

Sometimes in the greyness of days, one after another, life becomes as clear as it can be.  It seems to be still enough to think about seeing, to say, “Did you see what you see?”.  As if the grey of the world gives me time to see the color of my own life.  I am gifted with stillness and quietness, the last home at a long, dead-end, nicked out in the forest, a small plot, bound by a mountain behind and the river in front.  Life is a grand experience, truly, “a stage.”  Oh, but what a stage.  I guess this is what I see, the most profound seeing I am constantly seeing, the natural world “stage.” And what does the stage cause me to perform, what does it prompt me to be, to say, to believe? 

“Oh what a Savior.”  

 “Once I was straying in sin’s dark valley

No hope within could I see

They searched through heaven 

And they found a Saviour

To save a poor lost soul like me

Oh, what a Saviour! Oh, hallelujah.  

 

The Exquisite Palace of Suffering

I place myself in quiet solitude in the morning and several times throughout the day,  mostly seeking the Ancient of Days. In the quiet times of life, I experience sincere thoughts on life, my life, and the lives of loved ones.  Experience is the right word; these times are often powerful, meaningful, and deeply experienced.  This morning, in the quiet of dawn, I was given this title about my body’s suffering from becoming old.  I have known and experienced all my body's exquisite feats of living, and now I am experiencing its suffering of living.  The biggest surprise of my life, the painfulness of my exquisite palace as it gets old.  

My daughter is in Italy and sends up pictures of Palaces 
around the lake where they are staying.