Oh The Paradise to Come

I cannot sit at Fair Haven and do anything but look.  Its power to turn my thoughts into dreams is ever-present and needs me only to raise my eyes and see.  Just now a deer is wadding along the shore of the island across the way, eating the leaves off the overhanging trees unaware that she is a part of my morning quiet time.  Earlier as I sat in the dark, the ripe moon reflecting a silver so bright I couldn’t even collect my thoughts.  And now a bee buzzes quietly in the jungle of Vincas that celebrates morning with me.  I have long had a patch of land, a bit of sky to always claim during my morning time with The Ancient of Days but He has now given me an enormous view of earth readying me for the paradise to come.  

    

 

I Was Raised A Yellow Dog Democrat-No more

I was raised a Yellow Dog Democrat.  I will not vote Democratic now.  The first reason is the democratic establishment has decided that abortion rights are the premier cause in their platform.  Abortion is unkind.  It is the willing killing of another human.  It is often not the mother’s fault because the Democratic-led public culture dehumanizes the child and gives sainthood to the woman's right over her child. This is one of the most destructive and heinous realities of American life.   Great public culture should be where we accept the fact that many pregnancies are unplanned and often unwanted and provide loving care for both the mother and child and then inexpensive and quick methods by which the child at birth is placed in a loving home.  Instead, because of power, greed, and wanton unkindness we have allowed for a culture of killing our most valuable members, thriving children, to become a right so sacred the democratic party sees it as paramount to all other rights.  The second reason is too many of the leaders of the democratic party see my God as having no place in public life and increasing in private as well. They are actually ashamed of God.  Embarrassed by Him.  So embarrassed and ashamed they believe He is not.  This has led a vast number of young Americans to give up God for cultural relevancy.  They see a culture and the democratic party as increasingly intolerant of personal faith in a living God.  Their only alternative to living and thriving in America is to walk in lockstep with this belief.  Any other belief is unacceptable.  Lastly, I was raised in a youth culture that held government as highly suspect, often untrustworthy, unkind, and out of touch with the common man.  Today many of those who were raised in the same way see the democratic party government as the only winning team, the affirmed leader in culture, the supreme voice of truth.  This is the great falsehood I was taught early in life.  The government is never the final bar of truth but is actually never to be trusted to be truthful.  We are to guard the government, not for its survival, but to keep it from destroying ours.  I see the democratic party determined to place us all under government control and willing to cancel anyone who thinks, expresses, or acts outside their prescribed way of thinking, doing, and being.  

   

Nature

Nature, a plot of earth you place under your care and daily purview, is a sure source of your evangelism to the love, care, and salvation of Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  

I found this Divine work of sculpture lying
on a forest floor.  It so demanded my attention, and 
more quickly, my adoration for God in Christ.

 

A Bone Awakens A Gnarled Mind

My lover and I took my mom, our ancient of days now suffering dementia, for a walk yesterday, me walking while pushing her wheelchair.  We came to a stone bench in a quiet park and set for an hour and visited.  At one time I glanced down and lying on the ground was a small bone, maybe an inch long.  I picked it up and was immediately taken by its exquisite beauty.  I wondered to what tiny creature it once belonged, how it had come to be only a tiny bone left, and sure its bones being beautiful it must have been as well.  Exquisite beauty found lying randomly on the ground, its perfection speaking of unfathomable creative genius, is like seeing a fairy darting above one's head.  Who can explain this?  I picked it up, held it out to Mom, and said, “Look, Mom, I found a bone.  Isn’t it beautiful?”  She said, “It is son!”  Some things are not lost to her mind, gnarled by dementia.   She knows God’s doing when she sees it.  Beauty is here to awaken even the olding mind to the reality of God is still with us.       

The awakening bone

The two awakened.

To Taste a Peach

My lover and I ate a peach yesterday, under a blue sky in the wilds of Appalachia.  Its juice ran down my arm.  It gave me this thought.  Imagine all the time imaginable and all the chances that could chance.  Could all that time and all those chances, alone, come up with the taste of a peach?  Not the peach or the peach tree but the taste?  That is why I worship, adore, and follow as Lord, my God, and His Son, my Savior, Christ Jesus, and rely on His Spirit Holy.  There are no others.  It is Them or nothing and I have to ready myself to meet These Three or ready myself for nothing.  And by nothing, I mean no light, love, touch, smell, flowers, water, food, peace, time…or taste.  Nothing.  The taste of a peach is a sure prelude to meeting, and always being with These Three.    

On Guns

When I turned ten I got a 22 rifle for Christmas, at twelve a 16 gauge shotgun.  These were the most meaningful gifts I received as a young man.  They meant the world to me.  My father, a pastor by vocation, was also a hunter to put food on the table for a large and hungry family.  A part of growing up was owning and knowing how to use and hunt with a gun, target practice, and the expectation that this was an integral part of developing into manhood.  It was also an unspoken rule that deadly force was one of the responsibilities of manhood, hopefully, to never be called for, but understood one’s need to accept the readiness of it.  I still remember the first time I killed a small bird out of wanton ignorance of youthful bravado.  It immediately shamed me, I’ve never done it since, and I’ve never gotten over it.  Gun ownership and killing are a great loss for young men in America.  It is one of the greatest introductions to responsible citizenship and cultural stability that we have laid aside to the detriment of our young men and our culture.    

Our sons teaching our grandsons how to shoot.

 

 

The Beloved Truth

Who is the most beloved person in your life?  Is it your spouse, or a wonderful father, mother, friend, or mentor?  This someone means the world to you.  Now imagine that some townfolk bought a billboard on the main street in your town, placed a picture of this person on it, and then wrote the most shameful and hurtful comments about them for all the town to see.  The whole town rose up with opinions about the sign.  Some said it was ok because they knew of your beloved’s kindness and they would love the ones who put up the sign.  Others said it was wrong because it was mean and false.  Eventually, as with all things, the whole mess was forgotten.  The billboard eventually faded and peeled away.  But the pain of having your most beloved shamed for all the town to see remained.  You told your beloved you were sorry for the hurtful way the town had treated them.  They remained your beloved for you knew something the town folk didn’t; your beloved had saved your life years before showing you how to live in the new life they had given you.  They were not the person on the billboard nor were the statements on the billboard true. They were the person who had saved you from being one of the town folk who used to put up billboards just like that.  You and your Beloved went on with life. You knowing your Beloved keeps a record of everything everyone has ever done and will require an accounting of each of us…one day.