Sitting Quietly Under The Damp Blanket

This morning the woods are as still as a stone, wrapped in heavy air filled with damp heat, a weight on all the living.  Movement would be exerting, waving, and rustling about

while pushing against the shroud would just be too much.  Wind and breeze have slept in, leaving light to awaken the woods to sleepily sit on the side of the earth trying to find a reason to get up.  Even the world has the blahs sometimes, just can’t seem to get going, the battle with gravity aided with humidity seems a morning burden too great to overcome.  Well as long as the trees aren’t going anywhere no reason for this blog to do otherwise.  Think I’ll just sit quietly among them.     

         

A Magic Carpet Comes With a Stereo

Yesterday I rode alone through the mountains of East Tennessee in a restored 1975 red VW convertible with the top down the speakers to their max.  I was listening to the old gospel hymns and country tunes and being transported into heavenly realms of joy.  Nothing has prepared me for the meaning of life after living it for 62 years, meaning that only comes from a long distillation of actually living.  I was so blessed to have parents who set my foot early to the tune of service, goodwill toward others, and finding something productive to do every day working to build better.  None of this matters except that all this early building and serving seemed to always be accompanied by old hymns playing silently or loudly as the backdrop music of living.  It is a mystery for sure, and one I was never prepared for or saw coming but it can turn a ride in the hills into a magic carpet ride. 

Even a leaf from an American Basswood tree can
be a magic carpet if you know Who made it.

The Revelations Of A Lifetime or For Cora

“Even in a crisis, God still gives us small pleasantries.”  We were shooting fireworks last night.  All around the river for miles there where firework celebrations as families gathered and howled at the full moon.  It was such a celebration of life, unlike the small-town big works Kingston normally hosts for the 4^th, canceled this year for the Rona, (Benson slang for COVID 19). The mountains surrounding the lake were aglow with life and American’s being free and God joined in, the full moon outdoing us all.  As it all began to die away, our own works finished and we sat quietly on the dock, late-night seeping into all of us my granddaughter turned to me and said, “Hey granddaddy, you can post one of my pictures on your blog and call it, Even in a crisis, God still gives us small pleasantries.”  It was one of those moments when love has cosmic sway and your heart knows its perfection of being, the still small whisper of God confirming ETERNITY.  What actually happened at that moment was not “from the mouth of babes”, or that Cora had thought a beautiful thought.  Here is what happened, THE UTTER JOY OF KNOWING IN ALL TIME ETERNAL GOD PROVED HIS ULTIMATE KINDNESS IN THAT OF ALL THE FAMILIES IN ALL THE WORLD HE GAVE THIS CHILD TO US AND TO NO OTHER.  And again, this morning as I sit alone by the river, I am shaken to my being at God’s acts of kindness so pure as to shrink the cosmos to minor.  There are God Ways that only a grandparent can know and they are the revelations of a lifetime. 

Cora's picture of one of our fireworks last night.

    

Birthdays, Blood and Bob, Let's Truly Celebrate

It seems appropriate that I should consider July the 4^th, Independence Day.  First of all, my firstborn, Aaron Tennessee, was born on this day which makes it special no matter what.  I am not a flag-waver but I am a flag flyer, just put mine out which is my daily habit.  I don’t love America, I love my wife, family, and neighbor, but I am loyal and committed to my country.  America has afforded me a kept peace that has freed me to work for and enjoy a certain level of success.  I am very aware that this peace has come at a price, a deadly, brutal, and bloody price.  The kept peace that we all sunbathe, riot, hike, march, ski, eat hotdogs, and make art and love under is actually that, KEPT.  It is kept by men and women who guard it all over the world, right now, yesterday and hopefully tomorrow.  My wife’s father, now dead some few years fought in the Pacific Theater in WW II, up those bloody islands ending at Hiroshima.  He never talked to his children about it but toward the end of his life, he unloaded a lot of broken horror to me.  Years before, my wife and I had bought our first brand new car, a Toyota Van.  He never looked at it or even acknowledged we had it.  Two of my wife’s uncle were pilots in the European Theater, both shot down, one became a prisoner of war under brutal conditions and the other died, Uncle Joe, over Belgium, his parents never saw him or even his grave, again.  I stood holding Betty as a few years ago she wept over his grave.  The last full measure.  The world is covered in American’s blood, evil exists, exists in abundance, and evil, when confronted, will draw blood.  Today, somewhere on our earth, it is likely that another American will die in this KEPT process, in our brutal times it might be right on our own soil, America, this country that I actually do love.  Many Americans will not consider July 4^th, Independence Day, today, it’s just another day, another holiday and the KEPTNESS we all enjoy will be lost on them even while they are enjoying all its rewards.  Once again, Bob, Uncle Ken Wisner, and Uncle Joseph Zitnik, thank you, I am grateful I knew two of you and look forward to one day meeting the other.  Most Sincerely, Lee

I keep this picture beside my chair.  Two men I dearly loved one of which,
the one in the corner, I wrote on today, Robert (Bob) Claggett Brown Jr. 

Bravely You Must Go

Thoughts on others and praise for Megan.

To lose a gifted one is akin to losing a portion of God’s shared splendor.  I have seen many young art students who certainly had the gift walk away to lesser lives.  Over the years one becomes alive to this aliveness in others, the ability to see behind the veil and the courage to look.  To open themselves up to the cleft in the rock that is God’s place for them to see Him thereby seeing all else as He sees it.  But it is ecstasy with a cost, the awareness of your own frittering away the Devine which makes it doubly difficult when you see it in the young.  There are times of great, quiet, clarity when you know the perfect joy of knowing God, Betty as my bride, love, and the gifts of that knowledge, the children that are ours, the created world—what the Ancient Text would call, “eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts that understand.”  Being given the gift to be an artist is in that category, a calling that comes with a sincere need for great courage, to avail oneself to Him who lifts the veil—and a bonus of those young ones who bravely gaze along with you. 

My Oxblood Red glaze and an apple.  Both reside
behind the veil.  

I'd Like to teach the world about, Honey Bees and Apples Trees and Dragonflies

I try to stay uninformed; my soul, heart, and mind cannot take the abuse.  Instead, I try to listen to God, make cookies for my widow neighbor, grow tomatoes, plant trees, make art, and do something good.  Yesterday while climbing out of the river there was a baby dragonfly just out of his exoskeleton hanging on to our dock piling allowing the sun to bring his new body to life.  I had inadvertently splashed him and he was a struggling toddler trying to hang on to his perch.  He slipped in fell into the water and I scooped him up and placed him on the dock.  However, in the process, his back-left wing was damaged.  It was as delicate as a moonbeam.  The sun continued to enlarge his body, doubling in size in the few minutes our paths crossed but nothing could repair his wing.  I found myself praying for God to intervene.  Betty came down and she too became involved in this young dragonfly.  

When I was young, 6^th grade, there was a song that was a hit, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”  It as an anthem for a young heart still soft from my parents daily sowing God into it.  In the middle of the night last night I awoke with that song on my heart.  Oh God please help our country.  Oh, how young and passionate we used to be to sing of “apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves” and terminal dragonflies. 

The New Seekers sang the song but Coke made it famous. 

Betty holding our friend with a damaged wing.

21535 Years Old

The world is as quiet as it gets at Fair Haven.  An artist needs quiet otherwise the golden reality of life becomes so overwhelming that we collapse under the knowledge of it.  Quiet allows us to know our littleness in it all, the “day is a thousand year and a thousand years are a day” thing.  But our littleness is redeemed by the magnitude of our God, in Him we find our grandeur, our size, and Him who can encompass all the glory that will crush us if left alone. 

The title comes from that day, a thousand years verse. 
At some point, I had calculated it as to how old I would be an written
it in the Puritan Prayer book I read every morning.