Anne and me in Mexico somewhere, before children. Not sure if this was the same trip in the story, but might have been.

We’re back from Tucson. Great trip, and as much for the time in the car. We’ll share the art produced in the next e-gallery.

It was on the last such trip, driving down from Oregon, I asked Anne which of our many trips has been the best.

We reviewed some of them, and there have been many . . . both adventures and misadventures. (The latter are always more enjoyable in the later retelling.)

One that comes to mind was long ago, before we had children. We were traveling in central Mexico. Passing through Guadalajara, I was on the lookout for a street vendor for something to eat but didn’t find one. We kept driving, down through Ajijic on Lake Chapala. It was late, the town closed up, but we had snacks in the car. The bigger problem by then was gas. We had no choice but to travel on.

Though I cut my speed and began coasting down every hill, in time the tank spurted and gave up its last. Fortunately that ’58 Porsche had a reserve tank. I switched the handle and on we went for another 25 miles or so, hoping for “something,” only our headlights breaking up the emptiness.

Finally we passed through one lighted junction, a rural bus stop and a gas station, closed. I cruised through, but no further than the next hill when the reserve tank too gave its last. I pulled a “U” mid-highway and coasted back down to the darkened station, wondering what to do next.

As it happened, there was a man at that midnight bus stop who saw our situation and meandered over. My Spanish was poor but I came to understand him saying I could knock on the gas station door. What? Yes, he even took the initiative to tap on the glass, and what did we see but a whole group of bodies asleep on the floor with one beginning to stir. This was apparently the father/proprietor and he sent a boy out to deal with us.

I thought, Great, he’ll unlock a pump and sell us some gas. But no, instead he wordlessly led us to another building around the back with two rooms, each with a high bed piled with blankets. He let it be known that we could use one, only one, and that gas would be available in the morning.

It was more provision than we’d been looking for but, really, exactly what we needed. Where else were we going to sleep, miles from anywhere? The only thing that worried Anne a little was that we weren’t to lock the door. They were keeping options open should another party need a bed for the night.

No one did, and we arose to the sound of children all around, also calling the gas station home. We got our gas, a little to eat, paid minimal for the room, and were on our way. In the end, we felt well provided for.

That was before we were giving any thought toward God and his care . . . but not, apparently, before he was giving such thought toward us.

It’s just one travel adventure among many. But here’s the conclusion we came to in our conversation lately, about “best trips:”

The common denominator, we came to see, of all great trips, was and is a POSITIVE DEMEANOR . . . and that particularly between Anne and me.

And, of course, its lack, when there’s been a lack, sullied the others that could have been just as great.

It’s not the miles, but the mood.

It’s true with every trip.

True with every day.

Smile, and have a good one today.

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Desert-Scape 1, 24×36, acrylic on canvas. Started with a rendition of a cactus, beautiful in nature, a failure on canvas, morphed into an abstract, with nothing of the former left but some of the colors. Either way, the “visible” is made by the formerly “invisible,” even by me.

Painting in the outskirts of Tucson, experiencing some “successes,” some not so much. Taking breaks in the work, we take walks. Inspiring: There’s no non-success in nature.

Observations, applied with Scripture,* provide the following sketchbook insights:

That which was made
was made by things that were not made.

That which is seen
By that which is not seen.

It’s everywhere apparent
And inapparent, both.

I make a painting, and it is seen,
But just before that, it wasn’t.

Okay, there were materials . . .
Tubes of paint, a blank canvas.

But even they had their origins
In realms unseen.

Nor could they . . . these tubes, that canvas,
make a painting by themselves . . .
In any infinince of time and chance.

So what makes the painting?
Me, of course;
And I, you’ll say, am visible.

So, you make one too, I say.
“I can’t,” you’ll say . . .

“I don’t have what you do . . .
That something unseen.”

Ah, and there’s the mystery . . .
For I don’t see it either . . .
whatever it is.

All that is visible. . . by any of us, and God,
Is made from that which isn’t.

__________________
* . . . what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Hebrews 11:2

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Classic Saddle, a 7th piece I painted now gracing the John and Pam Ritter home in the desert.

Here’s a question that comes up more than you might think: Since I can paint, what should I paint? It’s an odd dilemma, the challenge that comes of living a life that’s free.

I realize the same question comes in the two other art forms I like to pursue: Since I can write, what should I write? When I’m asked to speak, on what should I speak? I will say I’ve learned something about how to approach this latter quandary.

I tell myself to determine quickly what my topic should be, like immediately. If I entertain more than one idea I’m forever flip flopping, almost right up to the delivery. Too many choices undermine everything.

I’ve also learned that the occasion itself often helps me focus. For example, when asked to speak on New Year’s Day, I knew exactly what my topic had to be: “Looking back and looking forward.”*

So I take the lesson from one art form and apply it to another and the answer begins to come.** It’s basically a reforming of the question: Not what to paint “ever and always,” but what to paint “right now.”

And right now we’re on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, taking a week for another of our art-making forays. Some call these vacations, and in some ways they are; we “vacate” our normal premises and schedules. But they’re for work, a focused time to do what we do, both as vocation and avocation. Our work is such that we would rather bring it with us “on vacation” than not.

We’re in a lovely desert hide-away lent to us by friends who seem as pleasured to share it us as we are to receive it. The vistas are God breathed, the hills majestic and dry, the sky cobalt clear, the foliage abundant and varied . . . gnarled and delicate both. What’s not to paint?

Then, inside the house I find half a dozen pieces of my own artwork, both ethnic and cowboy, that these friends purchased several years ago and I’d not seen since. I must say they look great in this setting and give yet more ideas of what to paint.

So, the field begins to narrow. The occasion helps determine it, and the setting.

The question is rarely what to do “ever and always.” That one intimidates; it’s too grand, too important. The question is only what to do “here and now.” That’s easier . . . and really all we can handle.

Now to get to it.

You too.

____________________

*      This one is still online if anyone would like to revisit it here.
**    It’s the same with writing, and how this piece came this morning.
*** Thanks for all the great comments on last week’s 10-Person Portrait.

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A random sampling from the sketchbook, which always includes both words and pictures.

There’s a telling in Luke’s book* where Jesus is talking with the cursed, two-faced tax collectors and other such sinners. The over-righteous Pharisees are looking on, judging him. They think he’s naive at best. I myself wonder at his choice of teaching . . . three parables about lost “objects” and the joy in their finding. Instead of the “expected” he emphasizes the positive (a party!), the searching, the waiting, and the overall goodness of God. Contemplating it influences my own approach to life and how I relate to people around me. Here are notes from the sketchbook:

How is it Jesus, that you didn’t take opportunity
When audienced by the obvious sinners
To tell them who they were
And what they needed to do?

Or, would you say, they already know,
Have heard it enough from others,
Continually telling themselves?

And You, pure spirit, make it clear by contrast.
So you skipped all that
And instead just said
How much rejoicing happens in heaven
When one of these lost is found.

Like the coin . . .
A coin! Inanimate,
Lost, but by no fault of its own.

Like the sheep . . .
Also lost, this of its own doing
Though by its own nature, bereft of adequate brains.

Like the rebel son . . .
Lost as consequence of deliberate action . . .
Plenty smart . . . too smart,
A willful decision to leave.

On this one the father waits,
Not like the others where he/she seeks.

In all cases, there’s a party in heaven.

And that’s what you thought your listeners most needed to hear.

________________
*Luke 15

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Here’s the mantle, as it’s been for years. That plaque in the background reads, “An old fisherman lives here, with the catch of his life.” Below, the unusually debonaire Hyatt E. Moore the 2nd. (I’m the 3rd, our son, the 4th, his, the 5th.)

My dad is 96. This is the year that we share the same numbers; I’m 69. If I’m cruising toward the penultimate stage of life, he’s in the ultimate. That’s in terms of quantity, not quality.

Happily he reads a lot, generally the same favorite books (Zane Grey). We play a couple of games of Rummikub on our weekly visits. Half the time he beats me. But he’s slowing down, way down. Watching it was at first disappointing, then instructive to me. The tower of strength and character I’d always looked up to, and sought counsel of at significant turning points, was no longer there.

Among other things, it’s made me see aging as something of a grace. Since we’re all here with a death sentence on our heads, at least the latter years bring with them a certain dullness, and a readiness for it. That’s how I see it with Dad.

Mom, at 94, and still living with Dad in their same house (with full-time care) may see it different; but she’s another story.

Lately on our visits I’ve taken to asking him things about his growing up years. A lot of it I’ve heard before, but not with that much attention. Realizing the source of these stories is almost gone, I probe. I get brief answers, maybe just one word, weakly stated, but, like I said, I already know some of them.

Though Dad’s degree was in electronic engineering, he had abilities in about ten other areas. One was painting. I never thought the paintings were that great, and maybe he didn’t either, but he enjoyed making them.

The one hanging above the mantel since I was a boy (I grew up in that same house) is of the homestead territory in Wyoming. He spent his boyhood years there. By the time he took the picture, years later on a return visit, there was nothing left of the house and buildings his dad had built.

But I look at it now and I marvel. Actually my grandfather (Hyatt E. Moore the 1st) was a railroad man out of Rollins. He had a wife and seven kids to feed and, times being what they were, applied for and got this mile-square plot of neighborless, over-cold or over-hot, windblown wild-land, a two-day buckboard ride from Rollins, the nearest town.

He dug a well, built a log cabin (with what logs, Dad? I see no trees in the painting), raised potatoes and whatnot, got fish from the tiny stream, and generally had a great time.

Right!

All the fun was had between chores by those five boys and later two girls, romping around in that wilderness of arrowheads and rattlesnakes. The hard truth is that to make a living Hyatt the 1st had to keep working the railroad, or be on standby in town, which meant the hearty Madge Comer Moore, my grandmother, did most of the non-stop work.

There’s more, like a small book’s worth of stories that will never be written. My dad, for all his gifts, wasn’t a writer; besides he never saw it as anything extraordinary.

It all may be why, as I think about it now, he likes those Zane Gray westerns so much.

I know one thing: I’ve grown to appreciate that painting over the mantle like never before.

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A teachable spirit is the beginning of knowledge.

A friend of mine who has shown in tangible ways what prospering can look like, with a development company and property holdings in many places, once told me how he started. In fact, it’s always how he starts. When he goes to a new area for possible development, he begins by asking questions. He doesn’t start by subtly letting others know how much he’s already acquired or succeeded. No, he takes the quiet approach, listening, learning, taking in what others are happy to share.

In any given session he comes out with far more useful information than if he’d done most of the talking. And a much better chance of prospering.

He’s learned the value of the proverb, Whoever heeds instruction prospers.*

It sounds easy but, in fact, it requires a certain humility, which isn’t always easy.

It’s a starting again from the bottom, a willingness to concede that, as amazing as it sounds, we may not know all there is to know.

I remember as a teenager developing the habit of responding to every statement I heard with, “I know.” I finally realized it was working against me. I was only defending my lack of knowledge and preventing any new knowledge coming in.

Happily, we can grow beyond our sophomore years. The Greeks saw all this clearly: sophos wise, moros foolish.

In a sense, we need to be as a child once again, always absorbing, always curious, always ready to be taught.

Here are some synonyms for a teachable spirit:
capable of being instructed,
apt to learn,
docile,
tractable,
amenable,
bright,
ready,
quick,
diligent,
perceptive,
discerning.

Personally I find all of these terms quite positive and attractive, terms I’d like to be known by. Indeed, I find them instructive.

In all things, in order to succeed, take the humble approach. Don’t be defending what you already know; be ready to learn what you don’t.

There’s much more out there of the latter kind.

_________________
* Proverbs 16:20

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Came across the self-portrait in a 2007 sketchbook. The prayer/psalm is more recent.

Here’s another from the sketchbook.

Lord, I am so infinitesimally small
in terms of all things . . .
Yet, I confess, all else seems small
in terms of me.

How could the latter not be so?
You have created me . . . each of us
As separate worlds within ourselves
and perceivers of the larger worlds without.

From this limited yet ever-moving vantage
I see the else
and it is just that: ELSE!
I’m the central one!

Yet, the thought to being alone,
truly alone,
that’s despair.
I’m glad you are here.

You’re looking out on your world from within me,
interacting with your vastness also from here . . .
Your spirit inside of me,
outside of me . . .

I teeter at the wonder of it all.
I get it . . .
I don’t get it . . .
both.

But I do get that.

_________________

My Sister, Sue Moore Donaldson, also has a blog. Today’s, on “Gratitude,” I thought particularly good. It’s at Welcome Heart.

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Sometimes I wonder about sharing these. Private thoughts. Private prayers. I don’t write them for the blog. That wouldn’t work. Rather they come when they come, jotted in notebooks or sketchbooks. But sometimes I think they might encourage another, if only to reveal that we are not alone in our wanderings, on this path toward God, or with God, or away from God. (It’s always one of these.)

The following is one from my personal prayer book, where I write him and he writes me back. (Well, it’s through my mind and hand, of course.) I never see what’s coming, not even my “question,” certainly not his “answer.” But without exception, the latter is always helpful, generally refreshing, accepting, useful, sometimes convicting, and to the deeper point.

Here’s a recent . . .

Lord,
Here I am again, back with you and my thoughts.
I see you and what you did in your brief years.
Me, I’m so full of sin (at worst) or distraction (at best).
Having begun with a zeal,
got bumped around,
bumped myself around,
taking advantage of your grace,
dissipating . . .
like a tire going out of air.
Still moving, but barely . . . and not looking too good either.
Fill me again, and let’s get rolling.
Sincerely,
Hyatt

Hyatt,
My breath is always here. Always breathing out. Full of Holy Spirit.
I breathe out . . . you breathe in. Fill your lungs with me.
Not your brain. That too, but will follow,
now just breathe in.
That’s first and always.
Remember, Adam got that first.
Breathe in.
Without that you’re nothing, and can never be.
“Be,” that’s first; then “do.”
For both of these you need to breathe.
I’m here, and will always be.
Sincerely too,
Your God, Your Life.

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Kiss of Death, Oil on Canvas, 40×30

This year I was asked by two friends to paint something for separate “Stations of the Cross” Easter commemorations. One I’ve already shared, Hands of Proof. In both cases I was assigned my “station,” while other artists would handle theirs.

Ironically, it was Valentine’s Day that I started work on the first one, the betrayal of Jesus. That day, NBC Internet News featured a photo story, Most Memorable Kisses of all Time. There were the likes of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, two dogs in Lady and the Tramp, Britney Spears and Madonna proving what they could get away with on television, the sculpture by Auguste Rodin, a painting by Gustav Klimt, and the famous sailor and a young nurse in Times Square at the end of World War II.

There were more. One they missed was Marc Chagall’s rendition of a man kissing a maid and floating off to the ceiling. And another, similar, of me and Anne moments after she said, “I guess so.”

But all this is getting away from my original point, or actually closer to it. That point being that the most famous kiss of all time was not a romantic one at all, but the one by which Judas betrayed his friend Jesus Christ.

Certainly the NBC people can be forgiven for not including this on Valentine’s Day. It’s in a category all its own.

You know the story. The Last Supper had just happened, during which Judas excused himself early. Jesus went to the garden to pray and sweat blood, all the while knowing what was next. Judas, now 30 dollars richer, returned with the government and the army. He’d told them, “The one I kiss is him.”

It’s not as strange as it may sound, such kissing, particularly mouth to cheek . . . it being a common form of familiar greeting in those days, and still, in those parts. “Nobody will notice anything unusual,” Judas must have thought. But Jesus remarked on it, and its incredible irony, “You betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”*

An evil deed indeed, one for which Judas surely could never get the taste of out of his mouth.

In any case, it’s the most famous kiss in history, or most infamous.

Note in my painting, the evil visages lurking behind. I never painted them in, believe me, at least not intentionally. They just showed up, making the piece seem all the more historical.

You know how it ends. Judas and the lynch mob meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. For that we take heart. It all became a new beginning.

Happy Easter.

________________
*Luke 22:48

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Water to Wine, oil on canvas, 48×48

I find it amazing, verging on amusing, that the first miracle Jesus performed was at a wedding banquet experiencing a catering crisis.* With all the problems in the world . . . world hunger, world peace, world anything . . . he was approached by his mother who merely said, “They’re out of wine.”

You know the story. He sent her away without a word, instructed the servants to fill all the huge hand-washing jugs with water and then take the emcee a sample. The emcee took one taste and exclaimed, “Wow, they’ve saved the best till last!”

We might be surprised that Jesus was in the wine making business at all. But we can be confident of one thing: if he’s going to make wine, it’s going to be the best that was ever made, before or since.

I’m reminded of the old fraternity joke that goes, “I don’t care what his religion, if he can turn water to wine, pledge him!”

Of course, he only did it once; he really did have world peace to deal with . . . one person at a time. In another way of thinking about it, however, he’s been doing the miracle ever since.

Here are some lines from my sketch book, personalizing it all.

Lord, You have done your
Wine-making miracle
over and over . . .
and done it again in me.
Taking the plain water of my life
and turning it into wine.
AND
Inasmuch as the wine you create is always best,
and with me now somewhat aged
(flavored with anise and plum and a balance of tannins and acids with a hint of vanilla and dark chocolate)
Wouldn’t it be best to pull out the cork,
pour it around
and let it be savored and drunk
by all who have a taste
and a thirst
for such?

I’ll drink to that. The transforming miracle has begun in each of our lives, or if it hasn’t, it can. It’s only the mix of flavors that differ. Why not share it around?

_______________
*John 2:1-11

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