Many Dimensions

Arthur Freeman Barber as a young man

one of Dad's carvings

I may think and respond in 360 degrees, but my father was able to think and create in 3D. I envy that ability. Too often I feel like the proverbial rider in Stephen Leacock's essay about the man who got on his horse and rode off in all directions. The mind boggles.

I seek to discern how to spend - how to really live my life - with all of the potential, attraction and need of which one is daily aware. Where to start, what to do - how best to serve, observe, participate - to live?

If you asked me to create an airplane out of lego, I'd basically build a two-dimensioned,horizontal cross . . . My father (just as can my eldest son) was able to 'see' things in three-dimensions and then create them. Without whittling life down to very little or nothing, he learned to carve birds and other intricate creatures and objects. It was something to which he put mind, heart and hand, in retirement years.

He always had it (them) in him. I covet that; I miss him.

To Emerge

O never star
Was lost; here
We all aspire to heaven and there is heaven
Above us.
If I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendour soon or late
Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge some day.

- Faith, by Robert Browning

Hiding Out

I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find (God), but, instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding.

- From The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henry J. M. Nouwen

Take a Break

"What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. "

-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies"

Danger and Adventure

Danger high-lites the paradoxical nature of good and evil.

I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet,

if there were no danger in the lakes.

- C. S. Lewis