My Home Town

“This is my town!  I can’t believe it!” our youngest exclaimed as we drove through Knoxville on our way to her new job, new school, new classroom.  I couldn’t help but think back to the day, nine years ago, we brought her to Knoxville, to U.T. to begin college.  This baby of mine, this tall drink of water, seemingly so young and I was about to drive away and leave her and forevermore my life would be different, changed, never again the same.  Now, this was her town, her home, she had, through bravery, hardships, challenges and even brushing death, carved out a life for herself, made a homestead, settled her part of East Tennessee.  Now she was a professional, she had earned the right to join the ranks of the hard-working, to ply her trade, to cast her bread upon the water.   When we had dropped her off at UT, set up her room, did the small talk that always precedes the inevitable, held hands and laid her gently into the arms of God, kissed goodbye, and left her standing in her room on the 9^th floor of her dorm.  Betty and I were walking away and I told Betty to go on and I would meet her at the van.  I turned to go back and say one last goodbye, one last hug, one last look.  As I opened her door and walked in, I caught her leaning over her refrigerator straining to the side of her widow hoping to get one last glimpse of us.  That image has never left me, the tie that binds, being loosed.  It is one of the fundamental pictures of my mind, it defines love for me, a love that a father has that can never quite let go, can never quite live in peace, is always vigilant, always on guard, always; duty first.  There are five brave women in my life, of which she is one.  This is now her town, and she can believe it.  She, a child of God is now a woman of God.   

Mowing The Yard Worship Service

When I have placed Fair Haven in order there is a certain level of eternity I experience, it is a twinkling, a vapor, a brief touch of His full attention toward me.  The yard is mowed and trimmed, it has rained lately and the grass is fully green, the porch is blown off, the trees we’ve planted are all in summer bloom, the aroma of our earth ripe with care and the river is in a soft rhythm.  It is like this is the coming kingdom when we will continually keep the universes, when we will make green and every blade is fescue, when all smells new and we orchard cedars.  It will be a studio of unimaginable possibilities, when we have no time and forever is not a thought and we make for Him, for His glories and we will be so filled with honor and success.  Our gardens will go on into mountains and dales and will be filled with sculptures we have made and everyone will fly or ride horses.  Mowing the yard can be such worship. 

  

What Art Gives Me

I never dreamed of being an artist because I never dreamed it was someone you could be.  Art was just what I did when I had free time to do anything.  What I have come to know is that making Art is my most sincere realization of His image, of me being “in His image.”  It is a very frightening thing being in his image because you can never see how you will be successful in being someone only for the pure love of being him.  It is like being successful at playing; no one thinks while playing, “I am going to be a player!”  To me, being an artist is as real a fairy tale as Robin Hood except there is a Lee Benson

Tampered Temper Tantrums To Be Me

It is very difficult to live, by that I mean to live in co-existence with others, creatures, and the earth.  Much of our lives are spent attempting to isolate ourselves from everyone and everything so that our physical self can know complete serenity.  The greatest tragedy of this is that God is at the top of our bodies list of whom we need to be isolated.  He might know us as we are and He has a list of rules we will find oppressive.  However, one of the foundational truths of individual human existence is the reality that we are only truly alive as we walk in faith-filled relation with Him and in that relationship we are truly gifted with the grace of being our self, free from all fear of constraint and able to realize our being in living.  The difficulty is not in living it is in our rebellion toward an illusion of who God is and what His purpose is for us.  Oh, we can be such broken little children trapped in our tantrums brought on by our illusions—but the truth is, we can be free and free indeed—to be—me.   

     

The Mild Wild

Living next to wilderness offers a seat in some of the most intriguing experiences.  Yesterday an osprey hit at a fish in the river and then being unable to lift it out it used its wings to swim to the base of our seawall where it set for 30 minutes flapping its wings trying to dry them enough to fly.  Betty and I eventually found a log in the woods and placed it in the river next to him and he released the fish and climbed aboard.  The log eventually floated to our newly placed rip rap and he jumped off onto the big rocks where he spent the next two hours with us drying off and preening himself.  With exclamations and prayers, we celebrated as he soared off.  And in the middle of the night our motion light went off and I got up to find three deer in our front yard, two grazing, one bedded down for the night their eyes, silver orbs as they looked at me.  I opened the door and told them to go find somewhere else to be.  They lopped off like teenagers.     

Exercising Our Souls

I sit with the river and land every morning, me waking, them helping.  It is quiet and beautiful, wholesome nourishment.  I read The Ancient Text, The Puritan Prayer Book, a devotional, a word of wisdom, and have good coffee.  I write.  I notice every sound, every jet, most birds and bugs, and lots of mystery sounds that carry me away.  I am preparing myself to live the day ahead.  I will have breakfast, always the same, pray, dress, and joined by my lover, walk.  This normally takes about three hours.  Soul developing takes time, but only by it can life be lived. 

Love Is Hard Won

The reunion is over.  All the stuff, stuffed back in our cars, the merry go round of hugs, kisses and I love yous complete, the quick linger to try and hold it, record it, imprint it.  The youngest leaves first, then the second youngest, the oldest, the first daughter, and then it is just Betty and me, and Cora, who will soon be asleep, sitting in the driveway below the Smokys—quiet.  We are drenched in love and pain, sorrow and ecstasy, filled and loss.  Family is hard-won and hard kept.  Personalities that amaze us are the same that dismay, loves that ache are also aches of love.  It is the longing for perfection, for Eden, for sorrow free life, for life when a splinter was the greatest hurt you had to remove.  But as families grow and love increases so does the difficulty of allowing love as your only theme, to bite the tongue, to carry your sorrows close to the vest.  I laid awake in the middle of last night nursing the aching pain of love that longs for only joy in each of their lives while knowing I no longer can provide it.  One of the greatest joys of fatherhood is being the one that can get the splinter out.  But there was no eternal sorrow in Fair Haven last night.  Reunions are bitter Sweet, you are hurt by all the hurts you can’t fix but you are joyed by all those that are a part of your life and no one else’s.  Family and love are hard-won and hard kept.