Aspire to Live...

I awake and go to sleep looking at the earth.  Our bed is on wheels and every night we roll it to our windows so we can go to sleep and wake to the beauty of God’s earth.  He’s loaned us the woods to the right and left of us, the mountain behind us, and the hard-won acre we cleared to live on.  It is a great encouragement to wake up here, the beauty of the earth laid out before you slowly becoming visible as the earth turns itself to our star.  It awakens a great feeling of potential for good in me.  Its beauty spurs me to contemplate what beauty can I accomplish today, what good can I do, it incites in me a desire for kind adventure, “to aspire to live quietly…and work with my hands.”  

Being Given a Life Loving Heart

I was at one time a very valiant young man.  I thought myself capable of lethality.  Over my 65 years, I have been violent toward the living and have experienced shocking and bloody violence against my body.  I have grown deeply troubled by the death of any living thing.  My lover and I daily bike in a wilderness preserve in the foothills of the Crab Orchard mountains, Swan Pond it’s named.  It is bordered by one country road.  The other day we witnessed the violent, breaking asunder death of a small fawn stuck by a car.  I am always armed.  I could not kill it.  I cried.  I cried mostly for God, “How can you stand it, all this death?”  A few days later, once again driving to our secluded bike path we came upon another fawn, in the same but more peaceful condition.  I took a picture.  I felt it should be recorded.  A life is a life and should be acknowledged when it is no longer a life.  God felt this way, recording the passing of every sparrow and allowing us to be born again.  Death can only sting our human heart but cannot render us dead any longer.  I am not as valiant as I used to think I was. 

       

Aptly Named Fair Haven

Retirement is a working life at Fair Haven.  Our little patch of earth was 10 years ago as wild as Borneo, hanging unkept over the peaceful Tennessee.  We have pushed back an acre and nature pushes back twice as hard.  You cannot defeat nature, it has been thriving since “Let There Be Light and Land” and now thrives against me since, “Here take a bite.”  I have found it to be a jaw-setting endeavor.  We will have a lawn, a few flowers, and some new trees if I set my jaw on it.    My orchard has died off but remains a dream yet set to my jaw.  Grass and weeds thrive on our driveway and our lawn has many a bare spot.  But this is the joy of it all, nature will abide and often welcome a quiet interlude with itself as itself.  Nature is basically peaceful, it lies around looking beautifully natural and if I will, I can sit with it.  Nature never looks at me admiring my beauty, it is above all things, nature for God’s sake.  The trees, river, and sun cannot talk back to God, they keep at his command to be until he altars that command with a few words like, “Peace!  Be still!!”  One day He will push back on nature and say, “Be made new” and it will then have peace with me and stop pushing back…and Fair Haven will finally be aptly named.    

Writer, Producer, Director of the Greatest Show in the Milky Way?

When I came out this morning there was one bright star alone in the sky.  It was still fairly dark and it shone so bright.  I got out my phone and planet app and it told me it was Jupiter.  I was overwhelmed with praise for You.  Even our phones give us ample opportunity to praise and if we need anything these days it is to praise more.  Praise is happy work, good work, it is life being lived well.  Retirement has given me so much more time outdoors.  I get out before daybreak and all the woods are filled with unknown lyrical voices from living things causing me all kinds of wandering thoughts.  Light comes on, the river is smooth, the water birds begin to stir, and slowly our star gives my eyes things to see.  I read The Only Ancient Text, silently sip good coffee, and watch the Best Picture; Academy Lifetime Achievement award, Our Earth, replay again for the umpteenth time, The greatest show in the Milky Way.  Writer, Producer, Director: GOD 

She Didn't Know I Have Always Been Looking

I looked at my lover the other day.  She didn’t know I was looking.  She has become timeworn; wrinkles and age are clear now.  I was overwhelmed with loving devotion to and for her.  There are times when life comes to me so deeply filled with meaning that my heart aches within me, a deep seeded treasure of Eden.  I have lived all that age she’s now adorned with.  Oh, we have lived a charmed life, she charming me.  Her age has made her more beautiful than ever before, an ancient knowing of life unimaginable when you frolic in the daisies of youth.  She leads me by the still waters of our greying roses, our later years.  She didn’t know I've always been looking, and seeing the most alluring creature. 

He Gives Us 345. What a Deal!!!

There are perhaps 20 days in any given year when the masses descend on our river and stir it up to a rolling, boiling agitation.  Then Sunday evening begins to spread and slowly they fade away back to their garages, slips, and homes and the river begins a long stretch back to ease.  Such is its repose this morning, languid, quiet, sleepy.  And we get the other 345 days, she, and us alone with all the wild things.  God is good.  God is great.  Let us thank Him.    

Free Inside The Unbroken Circle

To know and to be known is the greatest gift a family can allow.  To be a family means we allow each other in and we, being let in, know the fragile treasure of the gift, and act accordingly.  This is a gift parents give their children and in turn their children give it to their spouse and their children.  The reason for this is the freedom to be oneself.  You must be yourself to be known.  But our hearts always condemn us, “You will not be cared for if they know who you are.”  This is the parents’ great job, to relieve each other and their children of this burden.  This was not the reason we took our children camping but it was a result we noticed quickly.  Culture and school place a tremendous burden on children to conform to an image that is acceptable.  Children become somewhat hardened by this.  However, after a few days of camping and hiking as a family, they quickly soften and return to their true nature, goofy!  The joy of this is we are all goofy, every human is basically goofy.  We stumble, falter, trip, make mistakes, and blunder in ways only humans can.  When an infant falls they get up and smile like they did something silly.  If they are scolded, overly attended to, or ignored they become trapped in their miss-step.  However, if they are smiled at or even loving laughed at they quickly learn everyone falls now and again, mom and dad do, siblings do and they do.  It is kindness.   

In my 65 years, I have known only one way this can happen; it is modeled to us by God.  One of my favorite truths which so comforts me, “And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.”  Great advice, for humans, parents, children and future humans who will be allowed into our great “circle unbroken”.