UNBROKEN

July 8th, 2023, 5:15 a.m.

I sit in a small closet.  Wherever I am on the road I always prepare a place to meet with The Most Glorious Ancient of Days.  The night before I ready it for the next morning with The Ancient Text, other readings, (currently, Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience), a good coffee cup which I travel with, and my computer for writing.  I am currently there.  We leave at 7:00 this morning, flight to Minneapolis, then on to Nashville getting in at 5 this afternoon.  It is bittersweet.  I sit in here and daydream of us all living here on a spreading ranch. 

All good things must come to an end, the bucket of living water drained.  It is now July 9th, 2023, 7:51 and I sit again with God trying to be as good a son as I can.  I have stepped out of the stream again.  All my children have gone their separate ways, to lovers and children, to dreams and lives that do not include me and my lover, we, their maker.  We all held hands in the breaking circle at the doors of Nashville’s airport and prayed our prayers of thanksgiving, we kissed each other on the cheek, hugged those lingering hugs of goodbye, looked those long looks to see the last looks, and turning… were engulfed back into our old world.  And these three remain faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love…in our UNBROKEN CIRCLE! 

  

   

 

The Hilarious Fun-(ny) Joy of The Same Stream

It is true one can never step in the same stream twice, but our hearts hold the old stream in sacred trust.  So, if by chance we come to the stream again we can cherish both the waters now and those that baptized our hearts before.  Such is this trip.  All humans are scoundrels!  When you know this through the hope and peace of Christ’s salvation you can allow yourself to be yourself.  With this comes two things, talking and laughing.  We don’t take ourselves seriously nor allow the other to take themselves seriously.  We will call you out in laughter.  However, we take the other seriously.  We love to the last breath, we protect, rally, and draw a line in the sand.  The joy of knowing you are loved in this way allows a freedom of comfort that is so peacefully kind.  Christ is our example of which we often fail to adequately imitate.  However, the foundational joy of this is we all know the other is working to imitate Christ in their relationship with us. The freedom to be yourself, the scoundrel that you are, comes with one great reward, you can be your hilariously, human self.  Come hades or high water, we are always standing with you, in the same stream you were baptized in, by birth, marriage, and “adoptions as heirs”, we are always in the same stream together, the family of redeemed scoundrels.  And you know that’s fun(ny) because heaven, alone, awaits us.  

     

 

All Our Trails Lead to Heaven

July 5, 2023, Glacier National Park, Montana

28 years ago on July 10, 1995, our family of six left Rome Georgia headed for Acadia NP in Maine.  We were going to attempt to camp for a month, slowly moving up the east coast to our destination.  My lover and I had decided we were going to try to see the world one month at a time in a tent (the only way we could afford it).  This was our trial run, agreeing to turn back in a week if it didn’t work out.  We had a small Toyota Van, packed with just the essentials, but a will to go.  On July 24th we made it.  After that, for the next 17 years, we spent our summers camping across America and eventually Western Europe.  During that time, we saw all the great landmarks from Plymouth Rock to Stonehenge and almost everything in between, all in a tent. On one of those trips, I made my 50th state, Montana, to Glacier National Park which remains my favorite NP.  In some mysterious way, it seems like home to me.  Jumping forward to today, some 10 years since we made our last month-long trip with only Sarah, the other three having grown and gone and I am awake this morning sitting in a cabin at Glacier National Park in Montana.  My lover and four children sleep soundly while I read the Ancient Text, drink good coffee, and write this.  The same old routine except our LL Bean, waterproof tent, has been replaced with an Airbnb.  Unbeknownst to me, for a year my family has been planning this trip and yesterday morning at 6a.m. I walked into the Nashville airport with Betty, and there they all stood, backpacks and suitcases in tow, smiling from ear to ear,  for one last trip for old times' sake.  I had long told my lover I wish we could go back and do it all over again and they made it happen.  From my daydream world to yours, happy trails from Glacier National Park, Montana.  May our joys never cease, and all our trails lead to Heaven, to be with God forever.  

The Divine Classroom Fair Haven

Fair Haven gives me an unobstructed view of the natural world.  From our studio home, we only see our front yard, The mighty Tennessee River, and receding from there, islands, mountains, and the sky.  Not a jot more.  Absolutely nothing man-made is in our view.  This gives me a text for learning about God.  To the west, our left, some 15 miles, lay the Crab Orchard mountains, the western front range of the Appalachians, and we live at the northern end of what is known as The Tennessee Valley.  This morning the Crab Orchards are shrouded in fog slowly pouring down off the peaks and moving up our great river like some great waterfall of vapor working against the current.  It is a sight few will ever see or understand its Divine nature. 

     

My Final Goodbye Union

 6-20-2023

Leaving on a Jet Dream

We leave Union/Jackson for the last time today.  “All our bags are packed and we’re ready to go.  The dawn is breaking it is early morn” and the truck waits to be packed.  I remember the first day we arrived 27 years ago.  A much bigger truck and family, six of us, and Sarah still a baby.  Today my lover and I leave alone, six came, four left years ago, and we are the last.  It is a beautiful day to leave, clear big sky, mild, and filled with promises.  I long for Fair Haven and it is a sweet leave.  I have had the greatest run here; allowed to live and build dreams I could never have imagined 27 years ago.  Our Wonder Mountain has been summited at long last and now we move to the next peak.  Onward and upward although a little older, a little slower but facing east, wind in our sails, great adventures await...we are leaving, leaving on a jet dream.  Goodbye "Dearest Union."              

Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot

6-18-2023

Retiring and moving have their powerful moments.  Yesterday was one.  We have returned to Union to move (Tuesday).  Home building, studio building, and dorm rental have all converged, so we are at it full tilt.  I had gone to the art department to return some things and I found it the way I always loved it in the summer, totally empty, the sweet quiet I had always cherished, filled with the possibility for my most imaginatively creative endeavors.  However, this time I was a stranger.  The house I had built was taken over by others.  I was out of place in my own palace, built perfectly to suit my creative efforts, my every creative need thought of and solved, everything created for my creativity, a 27-year tailoring to fit only me.  Now I felt oddly awkward, unsettled, I didn’t want to be here, too much loss, given over, taken.  I have no explanation—I have never felt it.  Sitting here now, the following day, I have tried to tell myself the story, to examine it as to know it but nothing is ringing my heart’s bell.  Here is the best I can do.  It was much like this must feel; being gifted a mountain meadow to make your home and 27 years gently pushing back the wild to allow you to live in creative peace, the earth, God, you alone being as creative as you can imagine. Then one day you were called away to another mountain.  After a brief period, you returned to get the last of your belongings only to find they had “paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

The first time I came to Union I entered at the other
end of this hallway and walked to the Art Dept. at this end.
I thought it was the longest hallway I had ever seen.

 

What An Artist Eyes See

I have a small dear child, a waif, as dear as any student I ever had…and as gifted.  I have seen their giftedness, known it was, and moved by it.  Over time they have become wounded.  Self and other inflicted–and their art tells the truth of it; the way only art can, the way only an artist can see; their deep and meaningful well is now being drawn forth in a bucket with a gaping hole.  Thomas Merton would say we are all just animals trying to make sense of the tragicness of life until the day a Savior becomes ours, and makes or remakes us human.  I spent years making work like an animal.  I know that work when my eyes see it.