Who are you, Hyatt, with your brush, attempting to duplicate the things I have made.

Such is what I might hear if I were in the place of Job when, after all else has been heard, God speaks and declares himself, as evidenced in nature. To me the painter he might say:

You paint with white and call it light, but you know it’s only stuff of clay, not translucent, transparent, stuff of life.

Yours attempts to reflect the source; mine is the source.

You duplicate; I originate.

You combine; only I create.

Actually, mine surrounds, casting no shadow. It’s why you can’t see me.

Still, enjoy what you can.

And that’s what I did this morning, walking into the kitchen with the light coming through. I took pictures. Here are a few.

Anne preparing her morning ritual, slices oranges and tea. That island table a Santa Fe (NM) find, traded for a painting. The overhead baskets from everywhere, over time.

Same scene, in her years-ago thrift-store find, originally from Japan Air Lines.

Sink, counter, window and birds of clay, or metal, or wood.

Hard to know what’s outside and what’s inside, with the light bouncing back and forth.

The light so strong behind, all is in its own shadow.

Anne will look at this and say, “I must wash those windows.” But there’s something nice about the effect. Like a painting.

Through the window with reflections back and forth, the glass table outside merging with the wood table inside, rock garden behind, an abundant honeysuckle vine, and lavender plants waiting for their place in the ground.

More light. I told the artist/potter once that we had a plant in the piece we’d bought from him. He was slightly disturbed, I think, but hey, it’s all art, and looks great.

The stove, with an iron teapot found in Japan, and a segment of one of Anne’s framed prints on the wall behind.

Cutting boards and cutting tool.

Birds inside, this one from a long-ago Mexico trip. The house fairly overflows with such items from everywhere we’ve been (usually suitcase size).

A candle-holding rooster with light fore and aft.

Light, light, light. Would be fun to try and paint, but it would never be as good as simply this.

Light on the cruse of oil, the canister of tea, the breadbox, the cups from India, the spoons and such from everywhere.

Nothing staged in any of these, just the way things look in the light. (Though this could be a still life.)

Finally, breakfast, with more light. And more words from Job. (Another kind of light.)

_______

PS At church last Sunday I was asked to give a ten minute perspective on the current happenings, Covid and Race. If you’re interested, copy and paste the this link into your browser (my part is at minute 55): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y_Nzj-UGoQ&feature=youtu.be

11 Comments

There’s something about rain that, when it comes, changes my mood, transports my soul.
It hurries me–if caught out and unprepared . . .
or slows me down–if inside with a book or a love.
Nights are more glistening;
days are toned to lovely grays.
And the sound keeps me company,
muffling out other things.

Yellow Cab, Oil on Canvas, 12″ x 12.”
(Click on picture to enlarge, or on title for availability info.)

Talk in the Rain, Oil on Canvas, 11″ x 14.”

Red Green and Rain, Oil on Panel, 12″ x 16.”

Us and Our Bus, Oil on Canvas, 12″ x 16.”
Sold, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Gary and Lisa Albert, Tualatin, Oregon

6 Comments

A friend of mine is starting a bee business and I said I’d make him a painting. It’s really more of a ministry, thus the painting is a contribution. But that’s besides the point. The point is, I’ve been reminded of the wonder of those pesky little creatures among us.

Considering the general abundance of all things, I checked to see if bees come in multiple species. Sure enough: 20,000! The Honey Bee is just one.

And honey, to state a metaphor almost too close to be one, is just the icing on the cake. Pollination is what makes the cake.

“If bees didn’t exist,” it’s been said, “neither would humans.”

Funny, though not unusual, when my nine-year-old granddaughter sees a bee, she panics. I suppose I should too, having had enough stings that one more will put me over the top. But I’ve learned that if we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.

And, more, they’ll ensure we are fed.

You know the expression, “A land flowing with milk and honey”? It’s in the Bible 20 times, symbolizing a highly healthy land, complete in its ecosystem, strong in agricultural productivity. The presence of milk-producing animals implies grasses and other vegetation. Honey indicates pollinating creatures . . . bees.

It’s another wonder.

I’ll support the bees by giving them space, and they’ll support me in ways I hardly know.

PS  By amazing coincidence, in sitting down to write these words today, Wikipedia informed me that today is World Bee Day!

Here’s the statement: The UN Member States approved Slovenia’s proposal to proclaim 20 May as World Bee Day in December 2017. It was on this day Anton Jansa, the pioneer of beekeeping, was born in 1734. The purpose is to acknowledge the role of bees and other pollinators for the ecosystem.

Pretty amazing to have come across that the very day I’m thinking about it!

Will wonders never cease?

Couldn’t resist including this one, partly to show the painting’s size. The gas mask is not a bee helmet, rather something I wear when using a certain fast-drying additive to my oil paints. (Helps preserve the lungs.)

10 Comments

Have you ever seen one of those videos zooming in from the cosmos, right past us and into inner space?

It’s like a picture from beyond the universe (if that’s even a concept) coming right down into our earth and on into the atomic structure within. Have you noticed how those orbits look the same, paralleling one another? Another wonder.

It’s outer space to inner space with no end on either side, and somehow us in between, the most mysterious part.

Who doesn’t wonder what’s behind it all?

I believe science. But I can’t believe IN science? That takes too much faith.

It’s obvious that everything is in control.

Except us?

Seems we’re the wild card in the universe, often erratic, like a child at the steering wheel. It was a big risk, giving us a license to drive. The results of that are all around.

Yet, “As for God, his ways are perfect.”* That takes little faith.

It’s apparent in outer space; it’s, apparent in inner space. It’s got to be so in between.

_____

Here a quick clip, macro to micro in the universe:

*Psalm 18:30

PS To unsubscribe to these blogs, click here.

5 Comments

One of the reasons we tend to be a little dull to the wonder all around us is that it’s all around us.

It’s what C.S. Lewis said about the fish: It doesn’t know it’s wet.  Our problem is our wonderful abundance. We get used to it.

I like Robert Lewis Stevenson’s little ditty:
The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

To that I could add:
But kings are concerned with so much of the fuss
They could wish to be happy as us!

But that’s not my point, rather that we are wading around in abundance. There’s so much, we miss it, if we don’t take a longer look . . . a look through the a lens of wonder.

A wonder-lens.

Speaking of lenses, the camera helps. Among the plethora of normal life in wonderland, with a camera we isolate one thing, one view. Regardless of a plan for the picture, just taking it gives us a moment’s appreciation of beauty, of uniqueness, of wonder.

It’s stopping and cropping.

Seeing more by seeing less.

Another thing: Every view we take in we own. Not that we can take it only for ourselves, or hide it, or hoard it. It might be everybody else’s as well; but it’s ours for the seeing, for the moment.

And there’s pleasure in that, too, if we’ll see it.

Take a look around. You’ll find your riches abound.

Golden Hills, 44″x44,” acrylic on canvas . . . one of a zillion things I could have used to illustrate this subject. Painted from memory of California drives through hills of golden grasses and Live Oak in sap greens. Always wonderful. Just a look, and I know I’m rich.

9 Comments

Big me, little universe. Isn’t that how we usually see things?

When we think of wonder, it’s pretty easy to think about the stars. That is, unless you live where I do and don’t see them very much at all. But do you remember when you were in the desert, or high on some mountain? It’s almost like there’s more light than dark. One can wonder, “How did they get there?” Or more, “How did I get here?”

God said to Abraham, “Count the stars . . . if you can.”*

I love that, “if you can.”

Who can? The more you look, the more you see. Astronomers get closest to it. They deal with such massive numbers, I wonder that they don’t walk around all day in a daze. Or all night.

Some time ago I heard there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy . . . and there are 100 billion galaxies . . . that we know of.

That we know of?!!!!

That’s a big disclaimer. Makes me wonder whether we know very much at all.

A physics and astronomy professor friend of mine tells me there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. That’s 400,000,000,000 in our own homey galaxy. And, while ours is not small, it’s not as large as your average galaxy out there in the night sky (or day sky, if we could see it) .

A google search shows the latest count for galaxies is now around two trillion.

A trillion looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000. Now double that.

Then consider the massive sized stars, the incredible distances between them, that new stars and galaxies are being discovered all the time, that the whole universe is continuing to expand outward, and accelerating . . .

“Count the stars, Abraham, if you can.”

It’s all too much for me. I think I’ll go make a sandwich.
______________

*Genesis 15:5

I just remembered I had this painting, an attempt of the edge of the Milky Way. Seems I should paint in a tiny little sign down near the corner, “YOU ARE HERE.”
That would put things in perspective.
Sort of.

10 Comments

Speaking of great minds (last time it was Einstein), it was Socrates who said, “I am the wisest of men; I am the only man who knows he knows nothing.”

Was it false humility?

Sounds more like true humility, one that sits at the feet of everything, realizing he’s a guest in the garden, in the world, the universe.

He apparently never stopped wondering. And the deeper he looked, the more he saw there’s no end to the depth to any of it.

And how about Job. Remember him? Full of wisdom and wealth, he was the greatest among his peers at the time. He thought he knew some things about life and God, but in the end he put his hand over his mouth and confessed, “I have known nothing at all.”

We can hardly relate to either of these. We think we know some things . . . and we’d feel pretty inadequate if we didn’t. But maybe we haven’t looked deep enough. When we do, we realize we’re just scratching the surface.

Happily, even the surface, most days are wondrous enough.

Have one like that.

Job, from an earlier sketchbook. I thought I had one of him with his hand over his mouth, but can’t place it just now. Perhaps this one reveals well enough the end of his wisdom and the beginning of wonder.

6 Comments

When I was a little boy I once asked my father if he knew everything.

“No,” he answered, “Nobody knows everything.”

“Not even the smartest person in the world?”

“No, not even the smartest person in the world?”

“Who,” I wanted to know, “is the smartest person in the world?”

His answer was quick and brief, “Einstein!”

Above, a sketchbook entry. I also did a couple of versions in paint which I put on Facebook for today’s “A Painting a Day Challenge.” Check them out here.

That was Einstein’s wide reputation then, when he was alive, and it persists to this day. I don’t think it was necessarily a concept Einstein had about himself. It seems he was a possessor of appropriate humility. A humility that was sourced in his larger-than-most appreciation of the grandeur of all things and its exquisite order. And for his ability to apprehend it he gave less credit to his intellect than to his imagination. That was the attribute he credited most.

He once said of his quest he wanted to know how God created the universe. Just the question reveals a good deal of imagination.

And he kept wondering.

Describing himself to a friend he said that he merely kept thinking about the things children wonder at but eventually move beyond.

Does that sound familiar? We ask big questions when we’re young, then we grow up; we get busy, consumed with the more limited things we (think we) can understand, and our wonder diminishes.

In other words, we act like grown-ups.

But something’s lost in the process. And needlessly. We may not have the brains of Einstein, nor the call on our lives to pursue a unified theory of everything, but we need not lose our curiosity, our sense of awe of all things near and far.

In his book, Living Philosophies, he said:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.”

I’ll take that as good counsel, and that from whom my father told me was the smartest man in the world.

______

PS Thanks to all who commented to the last blog; you added to it all. Always appreciated.

6 Comments

I’m thinking it’s a good subject to recall in the midst of our current blanket of gloom. “Wonder,” if we’ll see it, is still with us. I’m thinking I’ll do a couple of blogs on it, just to get our heads out of the depths and back into the clouds.

Actually, I did blog on it back in February. Not long after that (just before the lock-down) I was a plenary speaker at Simpson University in Redding, California and my assigned topic: Wonder. (I also did a public painting and left it with them.)

Wonder, it’s a topic as large as the universe. How to bring it down to 40 minutes was the first challenge. But just to give an idea of where we might go on these blogs to come, here was the outline of my talk:

1) Wonder and Einstein
2) Wonder and the macro/micro
3) Wonder in Biblical wisdom literature
4) Wonder and the 24 Elders
5) Wonder and who you are
6) Wonder and daily perception

As Simpson is a Liberal Arts University that’s Christian, so were my words, and will be here. At least sometimes. Just know that.

That day I began by asking each person to turn to his neighbor and, without pondering, quickly describe the word, wonder. I have no idea what they all came up with. The list would likely give enough for a book.

So let’s do that here. Think right now how would you describe wonder in a word or a phrase?  If you’d like, put it in a comment below.

Who knows, maybe just doing that will help bring us out from this quarantine quagmire, at least a little.

And it’ll be good to hear from you.

At home, in front of one of my abstracts, modeling the tee-shirt produced for the day at Simpson U.
Wonder on my back; I’ll take that.
(I also wonder when I can get a haircut again.)

30 Comments

Our group champa, hand built. That’s Anne with a friend, making breakfast. Skirts were worn for cultural sensitivity. That’s me with machete off to the right. (Click photos for larger view.)

Times are tough. But in many ways, they’re easy. I think of that some mornings, like today, rainy and gray, with hopes for any change somewhere beyond the clouds. But first, I go stoke the fire, which for me, means pushing the preset button on the thermostat in the hall. The house begins to warm. And I make the coffee, which means pushing another button. Oh, somewhere in there’s the bathroom. Easy. Flush.

Some mornings like this I remember our days in Jungle Camp. That was a months-long training course we did in Chiapas (southern Mexico) back in the 70s not long after joining Wycliffe Bible Translators.

There were several levels to it, each phase becoming more primitive. One was called “Advanced Base” (pictured above) where, teaming up with a number of others, we built our own camp, pretty much from scratch. Even the poles were cut from the ever-lush rain forest surrounding. We built our own mud oven in which we cooked all our meals. We built the tables, the benches, the shelves, our beds . . . all from poles lashed with twine . . . the only tool, a machete. The plastic for the roof and a few other items were carried in, not much else. Oh, and for a bathroom? Just a camp shovel.

We lived this way for about a month, rain and shine. And sometimes the rain came in buckets, testing that roof.

There was more, including another phase where we were individually abandoned in the wilderness for some days and nights with nothing but a canteen, a few matches, a bit of plastic, and the ever-handy machete (to make a bed of sticks). It was great!

But that’s not what I was going to talk about here. Rather it was the experience when we as a family spent the night as guests of an Indian family living in the area. Our family then was Anne and me with little Allison, age 3, and baby Cambria, just 3 months. It was to sensitize us to how people in these parts live.

That’s little Allison, with me and a couple of village kids, shucking corn. The chickens and the turkey, plus any underfed dogs, were part of the environment everywhere. (Plus roosters, which don’t call at dawn, rather all night long!)

They gave us their best. Though this was an extended family of a dozen or two (I could never tell how many) there seemed to be just one bed, that in one of the huts. They gave it to us, apparently sleeping elsewhere. It was of wood planks, no mattress. At least it was off the ground. The fleas apparently didn’t like the dirt floor either and spent the night with us. It was one room, no light, no chair, a plank door that wouldn’t altogether close, and animal sounds just outside all hours. Suffice to say, that turned out to be one of our most memorable nights, and without sleep, we remember it all.

When dawn came there was the fire to build out in the pit. Then, coffee to make . . . very strong (though coffee trees abound here, these people don’t get the good stuff). Breakfast was refried beans, some rice, a few tortillas. There was little conversation, actually none, Spanish not being the first language for either us or them.

For us, it was a brief experience; for them, every day life. But it was good for us. For a long time after, back in “civilization,” I’d come into a room, flick on a switch at the wall and say, “Wow, lights!”

And that’s how it is for us. Whatever may be difficult in these days, there’s a whole lot that’s easy.

It’s a good reminder for me.

Allison with her new sister, just two months old when we entered Jungle Camp training. She’d been born in Guatemala City.

Here’s our personal camp, with Allison dressed for the heat, and baby Cambria napping. We all slept on that wide bed, constructed of poles, twine and machete, by me. Note the mosquito net and the plastic roof (which gave out one night in a downpour and drenched us and all our bedding). It’s all more to be thankful for, walls, floors, and a roof that doesn’t leak in the rain. 

10 Comments