Boy You're Flying

No matter what, the world keeps moving underneath us, we are going forward regardless of our wishes, and forward at a fairly rapid pace (rotating at 1040 mph, revolving at 66,000 mph, spinning at 450,000 mph, expanding at ∞ mph???).  Boy are we flying!

(For more on this and other subjects attend my slide lecture and show opening, Tuesday, February 17, 4:30 p.m. in A72 at Union University)

Hubble Deep Field Shot (you should read about it)

They Are Not My Parent or Grandparent

There comes a time in ones life when you began to care for your aging parents and grand parents that a troubling fact is revealed.  As you once again find yourself living intimately involved in their lives you realize you do not know them nearly as well as you once thought.  The greater part of their lives, that beyond the 18 years you spent with them (probably conscious of several fewer than that) is as great a mystery to you as a common stranger on the street.  Their fears and phobias, their great loves and great awareness’s, the real person who is not your parent or your grand parent but a person wholly removed from those roles.  You begin to realize that being your parent or grandparent was a role they played but was never who they were.  They are a person with a life lived.  It is the continued discovery of that life over the last few years that breaks my heart at how unique they are and how I was always selfishly unaware of them outside of their relation to me. 

Sitting with the Divine's divine

Artists take ordinary material and try to change them into something exquisite.  We are acting in an Image that has been shown us.  Let me give you an example.

A new year has come with a brutal cold, bitter and laying the land still as lead.  Cold is a threat to humans; it has to be confronted, combatted, overcome.  Fire is what we have been given; I sat beside one as I am writing.  What God of Creative Love can conceive and make such art?  Wood becomes fire!  What in wood says, “Change yourself to fire, make of yourself heat and light”?  Fire is God making wood exquisitely divine.

A Quiet Home

Another year has come and gone, laid by like some worn silk scarf barely visible from a year’s wear.  Betty and I fold the thread bear year and tuck it away for good.  A dog buried beside the still waters of our farm, our third born prayed for at the terminal gate, a young daughter driving off to the school in the mountains, fresh sheets pulled tight over empty beds, heat vents screwed shut, doors gently closed, refrigerator and cabinets mostly empty and quiet has once again come to our home.  Betty and I will pick up where we left off, snuggling down together in soft chairs by warm fires and rock away our days in love and art making with half hearted anticipation of the next time our home will be filled to overflowing with the families our love has made...and quiet has once again come to our home.

A New Happy Year

A new year has begun, days old already.  When I was young I never noticed new years because I was living them up.  As I aged into my middle years new years became more noticeable as I realized I had another chance to get things right.  As I now race into my later years new years become very noticeable.  I found this quite odd until this morning when it dawned on me it was because the last one went by so fast.  Time is becoming more and more a product of age.  Life begins to measure time and becomes much more treasured in this new context.  It bring new meaning to the term…

Happy New Year.