The drive to Cologne on an interstate was disquieting. These serpentine ribbons of sameness now seem to crisscross the whole of the world that is not covered by water. Germany was a surprise to me in some ways. It is often a curse to feel a place so easily. It did not feel good. This may have something to do with the immense convulsions Germany has experienced in the past century. The region we were in was and is the industrial epicenter of the country and was often in the range finders of the Norton Bomb sites used by the allies in the second war to reduce the war machinery of the Third Reich into ferrous rubble.
It must produce a lot of anger to see waves of planes come and destroy your cathedrals, museums, gardens, and cities, even in the process of stomping out a genocidal monster. I found it stunning just how much graffiti was on every single overpass, bridge support, noise abatement wall, ad infinitum. It was like visual cancer that had metastasized from another era when the cancer of anti-Semitism was so rampant. I was taken by the absolute absence of any floral plantings anywhere in Cologne. Fields and strips of unattended dandelion stems were instead the norm. An extravagance of billboards and graffiti added the color that no longer was offered by botanical delights. It didn’t work.
The density of life in the shopping districts surrounding the vast Cologne cathedral was overwhelming. The number of people crammed into a square mile must defy the laws of physics. It certainly defies the laws of mental sanity. It was equally stunning to see how hard the people looked. I long ago learned when moving to the American South that the pain and anger that comes with war does not go away when the dust settles after the last cannon shot has been fired. The pain and anger last for decades, if not centuries. The pain and anger is still here in Cologne. It is so very different than what I have sensed in the Netherlands. Somehow, the Dutch people seem to have found a way to progress further in the resolution of their traumas. The Dutch also had the advantage of 150 years without war, prior to the Second World War. Germany did not.
Given my mission for the day was to photograph the great cathedral known locally as the Kolner Dom, I got on with it. With mixed feelings I found significant parts of the exterior to be quite shrouded in vast scaffolding works making exterior filming of it hit and miss at best. Another twenty years of ebony industrial accretions have been added to the exterior since I last saw it, making the overall sense of the exterior muddy and unfocused. I was heartened to see that a large-scale restoration of the exterior is taking place, even if it meant my not taking fine photos of it.
I was rather surprised to find that no turnstile or cash register had been installed at the door. The thousands of people pouring into the place were freely admitted. The only attempt at revenue enhancement was for a forlorn priest, or a look-alike, to walk about the vast sanctuary with a plywood box around his neck and a money slot cut into the top of it. Sadly, the vast, once luminous interior was dark and morose, much of the window glass covered with scaffolding. Written material said that one could not expect to see the cathedral free of scaffolding in our lifetimes. The once numinous space felt more like a relic from another era, now nothing but a museum attraction. I suspect the loudest statement of the cathedral’s secular status was to be found in the gift shop. Inquiry proved that it was not possible to buy a cross, chalice, icon, or religious book of any kind. I did have a choice of designer watches and tourist guides of the city – not much of a consolation prize. I did, however, have the good fortune to find that the shop still had a box of 35 mm transparencies put away in a cabinet behind the counter and I was able to buy thirty magnificent images at a very fair price which salvaged my photographic mission.
After the disquieting experience of visiting this transmogrified cathedral, Hans, Yne, and I did a decidedly secular thing – we had a fine German beer and a bowl of soup in a pleasant outdoor café on the plaza facing the seven-hundred-year old west front of the cathedral. This proved a good antidote, with pleasant side effects, to the sometimes-oppressive introspection I find myself in.
As is often the case, the great finds of life are remnants of Paradise that wash up on our shores. They can’t be sought out. My friendship with Hans and Yne is only a result of their miraculous survival of the Holocaust and the surreal way in which we met in the Canadian Rockies years ago. Even here in Cologne we were to have such an experience – of a remnant washing up on our shores.
From where the cathedral is situated, one can just see the top of a tower over the shopping district we took to be a medieval city hall that had somehow miraculously survived the war. The tower in the distance reminded me of the magnificent Rathaus in Vienna. We walked a distance along the Rhine River and wandered up towards what we still thought to be the city hall, figuring only to get a couple images of its exterior.
What we found instead was a magnificent rose that had been brought back to life from the ashes of a man-made hell. The ‘city hall’ turned out to be an 850-year-old Romanesque church that was reduced to rubble by the Allied bombings of the industrial heart of Germany. Photographs showed the destruction of the St. Martins Church to be complete. Where the crossing tower had risen for eight centuries, there was nothing but open sky.
We went into this church and did not enter a museum relic; rather we entered a place of serenity that suffused love and peace. In fact, Hans fell soundly asleep as I wandered about this monument to the possibilities that love makes imaginable. For one who’s father had to wear a yellow star, it did my heart good to see him at such peace.
Incredibly, during an era when money, food, industrial capacity, and life itself had been nearly extirpated, there were sentient beings with the vision and will to lovingly gather together the piles of rubble that once constituted the magnificent St Martins Church and over a period of twenty years make it live and rise again. As it was, the solid Romanesque arches withstood the bombings and the immense crossing tower was rebuilt above these, and the chancel and nave reconstructed with the very stones cut eight hundred and fifty years earlier. I simply could not assimilate that the ancient structure I was now standing in had, in fact, been a pile of dead rock under an open sky. With love all things are possible.
Love really does outlast all things. Sometimes you can literally touch it.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Night Visions - Seaton, Devon
The four train journeys from London proved rather pleasing – too much so. A passenger next to me woke me up at my town; otherwise I would have ended up in Wales. I gathered my things very quickly, got off at Axminster and immediately found Mary waiting with birthday chocolate chip cookies along with a bottle each of Old Peculiar and Hot Speckled Hen, two premium English dark beers. I did some pretty good damage to the cookies by the time we got to Seaton. It was but a short four mile run along serpentine ribbons in an emerald realm to Seaton, a bucolic seaside village. The ocean is absolutely calm and china blue – not the usual angry dark gray of the North Atlantic. It is utterly glorious with everything in full bloom and I hate to admit it – it does feel like I am home. The climate here is exactly like it was in Atlanta when I left there, absolutely clear and seventy.
I have never seen an absolutely clear starry night in England in all the years I have been coming over here. It was absolute magic. Mix in with this the experience of walking along the coastline at night and wandering through a fabulous little town like something from a Thomas Kincaide painting. It was magnificent beyond words. Virtually every house has a miniature botanical garden. Some yards are a mere 6 x 15 feet. The British reputation for green thumbs is certainly merited in this region of Devon. Seaton has a rather fine terra-cotta brick clock tower with illuminated dials, the whole of which is set in a splendid little park with a small waterfall illuminated in several colors. I did take a few dozen grand photos at night of this magnificent seaside resort village but these will have to await compression when I get home otherwise you will block my e-mail forever if I send huge attachments.
Mary brought along her dog and we chased it and an assortment of collies, mutts, and other unknown variants through fields containing Roman ruins pre-dating Hadrian. It has always been a major thing in England for villagers to assemble at sunset and sunrise in the parks with their dogs for evening and morning romps. The dogs are in heaven and their keepers have pleasantries between them. I am getting in five miles of walking and then some each day. The pubs are pleasing places filled with conversation, happy dogs, and very pleasant bar men tending the taps - a very different sensibility.
I walked a meandering two or three miles ‘home’ alone at 11 PM under the same Orion constellation I see in Anderson. A fine crescent moon has shown up in some grand night pictures I have made. There are no issues of personal safety here. I could not imagine walking home three miles from somewhere in Anderson during the night. I came back and promptly slept through until 10:30 AM and had breakfast at 11 AM. My ears are quite silent and I am having no visual migraine things whatever. Thus far I have had no travel stress and I am even more removed mentally from the world geo-political circumstances, for which I am most pleased. I certainly am glad I did not let it keep me from the journey.
Last year I met a fellow, Sean, in his gallery shop and he sold me the Drecki painting I have in my chapel. Drecki is the fellow who survived Auschwitz because he believed that his Creator God had a plan for his life despite it including a detour through the dark night of a man-made hell. The nights here are anything but. I found Sean in the afternoon and he remembered me at once from last year and told me that Drecki’s widow had died since I was here last year and he now had seven more of his paintings at home in Exeter. He is going to bring these to me here in Seaton on Friday for viewing. I think he will be willing to sell them for little of nothing. Sean believes that English people will not buy large paintings. He had another in the shop that I rather like but it is on board, large, framed, and would have to be shipped. I might yet get it. It feels a bit like a tranquil John Constable landscape.
In another gallery shop I met a fellow, John, who does restorations and new Victorian plastered frames for London galleries and museums. He had several oil paintings that were really rather pleasing. I may well end up taking one of these home, as it would be manageable on the plane in bubble wrap. He has an old oil painting that feels much like a JMW Turner study of small boats. I spent perhaps an hour with this fellow as he showed me his studio and the process of making these frames. These fellows are both pleasantly chatty.
I found a Belva Plain novel, Homecoming, in a second hand Red Cross charity shop for sixty pence and read the whole of it at one sitting last night. I will give it back to the shop and it can be sold again. It did prove a rather good diversion and was a poignant story of a family quite shattered by dysfunctional relationships and calamities. In the end these failures were all repaired. Alas, in the real world, this does not usually happen.
Thus far I have bought but the single book, knowing that whatever I buy is going to have to be dragged around for six weeks. I am finally beginning to learn to not add ballast to my load while wondering around. There are lots of nice things here but they would be hard to stuff into an aluminum can doing 600 MPH, eight miles up, without special and expensive arrangements made in advance.
Haven’t seen a drop of rain yet or even the hint of one. This is a really good thing over here. I don’t see Internet news, TVs, or papers, or hear conversation about military doings. I can see the fine crescent moon out my west-facing window on the second floor. There is a vase of nice red dianthus on the windowsill.
I have never seen an absolutely clear starry night in England in all the years I have been coming over here. It was absolute magic. Mix in with this the experience of walking along the coastline at night and wandering through a fabulous little town like something from a Thomas Kincaide painting. It was magnificent beyond words. Virtually every house has a miniature botanical garden. Some yards are a mere 6 x 15 feet. The British reputation for green thumbs is certainly merited in this region of Devon. Seaton has a rather fine terra-cotta brick clock tower with illuminated dials, the whole of which is set in a splendid little park with a small waterfall illuminated in several colors. I did take a few dozen grand photos at night of this magnificent seaside resort village but these will have to await compression when I get home otherwise you will block my e-mail forever if I send huge attachments.
Mary brought along her dog and we chased it and an assortment of collies, mutts, and other unknown variants through fields containing Roman ruins pre-dating Hadrian. It has always been a major thing in England for villagers to assemble at sunset and sunrise in the parks with their dogs for evening and morning romps. The dogs are in heaven and their keepers have pleasantries between them. I am getting in five miles of walking and then some each day. The pubs are pleasing places filled with conversation, happy dogs, and very pleasant bar men tending the taps - a very different sensibility.
I walked a meandering two or three miles ‘home’ alone at 11 PM under the same Orion constellation I see in Anderson. A fine crescent moon has shown up in some grand night pictures I have made. There are no issues of personal safety here. I could not imagine walking home three miles from somewhere in Anderson during the night. I came back and promptly slept through until 10:30 AM and had breakfast at 11 AM. My ears are quite silent and I am having no visual migraine things whatever. Thus far I have had no travel stress and I am even more removed mentally from the world geo-political circumstances, for which I am most pleased. I certainly am glad I did not let it keep me from the journey.
Last year I met a fellow, Sean, in his gallery shop and he sold me the Drecki painting I have in my chapel. Drecki is the fellow who survived Auschwitz because he believed that his Creator God had a plan for his life despite it including a detour through the dark night of a man-made hell. The nights here are anything but. I found Sean in the afternoon and he remembered me at once from last year and told me that Drecki’s widow had died since I was here last year and he now had seven more of his paintings at home in Exeter. He is going to bring these to me here in Seaton on Friday for viewing. I think he will be willing to sell them for little of nothing. Sean believes that English people will not buy large paintings. He had another in the shop that I rather like but it is on board, large, framed, and would have to be shipped. I might yet get it. It feels a bit like a tranquil John Constable landscape.
In another gallery shop I met a fellow, John, who does restorations and new Victorian plastered frames for London galleries and museums. He had several oil paintings that were really rather pleasing. I may well end up taking one of these home, as it would be manageable on the plane in bubble wrap. He has an old oil painting that feels much like a JMW Turner study of small boats. I spent perhaps an hour with this fellow as he showed me his studio and the process of making these frames. These fellows are both pleasantly chatty.
I found a Belva Plain novel, Homecoming, in a second hand Red Cross charity shop for sixty pence and read the whole of it at one sitting last night. I will give it back to the shop and it can be sold again. It did prove a rather good diversion and was a poignant story of a family quite shattered by dysfunctional relationships and calamities. In the end these failures were all repaired. Alas, in the real world, this does not usually happen.
Thus far I have bought but the single book, knowing that whatever I buy is going to have to be dragged around for six weeks. I am finally beginning to learn to not add ballast to my load while wondering around. There are lots of nice things here but they would be hard to stuff into an aluminum can doing 600 MPH, eight miles up, without special and expensive arrangements made in advance.
Haven’t seen a drop of rain yet or even the hint of one. This is a really good thing over here. I don’t see Internet news, TVs, or papers, or hear conversation about military doings. I can see the fine crescent moon out my west-facing window on the second floor. There is a vase of nice red dianthus on the windowsill.
Organic Rainbows - Musings from The Nederland
In the past hundred years the European continent has been through wars and devastation that are beyond comprehension. Some years ago an inferno engulfed Yellowstone National Park. Some years earlier yet, Mt. St. Helen lost her saintly beauty and ejected a cubic mile of volcanic wrath into the sky and wiped out a pristine paradise.
Did it really happen? Was civilization wiped out in Europe? Was Yellowstone’s beauty forever lost? Was alpine heaven lost forever beneath acrid volcanic ash? As tragic as these events have been, they may well prove a profoundly important reality – love and beauty really are the most powerful forces in the universe.
Researchers were given opportunity to see two cataclysmic natural disasters take place and then simply watch what happened afterwards. As it turns out, beauty was seeded in that volcanic ash and in the burnt offerings of the great forests of Yellowstone. It has been astonishing to researchers just how fast these regions have come back to life, sprouting with new possibilities. The miraculous re-generation of life at the sites of these two incendiary nightmares again reminds me of Phillip Yancey who said, “ Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time.” There was great pleasure to be derived from finding newly emergent life in the acrid volcanic ash that covered much of the American northwest. There was grand consolation to be found in the new life erupting from the burnt sentinels that once stood in Yellowstone. Carrying it a bit further, GK Chesterton said, “Even mere existence, reduced to its most primary limits, was extraordinary enough to be exciting. Anything was magnificent as compared with nothing.”
There is a power that brings anything out of nothing. The Christian scriptures say that in the beginning there was nothing. They tell us God is love. They also say that love is the only thing that will last forever. Quantum physicists are now finding that in the beginning there must have been something besides the nothing - a creator who could make anything out of nothing – and did. At one level one could say there was nothing at Yellowstone or Mt. St. Helen’s after they were immolated. A visit there today would suggest Someone was indeed able to make anything out of apparent nothing.
For those that lived in Europe during the 20th century, millions saw their worlds reduced to apparent nothingness. I write this from a country that had not seen involvement in a war in six generations when the Third Reich showed up on the doorstep and did not knock before entering with its odious nightmare. The Dutch people had a radical experience with apparent nothingness – losing so much of what was near and dear to them – their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. Yet today the Dutch people have their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. What happened? Love and beauty were able to outlast the Third Reich, which is now nothing.
I just had an all-powerful reminder of the power of beauty and love outlasting the hideous. Several hours from here is one of the most spectacular botanical gardens in the world – the famed Keukenhof tulip garden. It is only open seven weeks in the whole of the year and we happened to be there on the day when every single plant, all seven and a half million of them, were at their prime of life – a wondrous combination of tulip, hyacinth, rhododendron, azalea, orchid, cherry tree, daffodil – this all on a 70 degree day clear day under a soft china blue sky. My friends Hans and Yne, who lived through that horrid era of nothingness, exclaimed all day that they had never seen these gardens looking nearly as fine as they did today – as if they were seeing them for the first time. Perhaps, in a way they were.
The heavenly rainbows we so delight in, as magnificent as they are, are by their nature short-lived, require the presence of a storm and dark cloud to occur, and are just rare enough as to invoke our enchantment instead of our indifference. Rarity seems to be an important dimension of beauty. It is impossible to describe with words an organic rainbow that one can physically touch, smell, embrace, and enjoy for hours, without the requirement of a storm being present. Such is the Keukenhof Garden.
It is simply beyond astounding to wander around eighty acres with 30,000 other stunned observers, marveling at a beech forest containing more than seven million plants in a range of colors beyond counting, seasoned with lakes and fountains containing all manner of water birds. While roaming about this paradise in a spectral fugue state, I could not but realize that a very large chunk of Paradise had washed up on the shores of our lives this day. This was no tiny fragment from a shipwreck.
This garden is a tangible exhibit of the reality that love and beauty do outlast the darkness that comes at night in the human experience. Even as the Dutch people endured the torment of the Nazi darkness that swept across the land, much as fire swept across Yellowstone or volcanic pumice swept across the northwest, the seeds of indescribable beauty were there all along, just waiting for the right time to once again bloom.
I am now far from those gardens, but they are no less real. They are radiating their organic spectrum to yet another thirty thousand pilgrims seeking beauty and meaning. The Christian scriptures also say that God has made Himself known through the handiwork of His creation – not through anything else. As the world struggles in so many places with geo-political crisis, with economic failure, and with upheaval of the highest order, the seeds of His beauty, of His reality are yet to be found in the midst of even the darkest place. It’s just the nature of seeds that they are sometimes very small. On occasion one gets to stand in the sun and see an organic rainbow in full bloom.
He spoke very loudly to us today.
Did it really happen? Was civilization wiped out in Europe? Was Yellowstone’s beauty forever lost? Was alpine heaven lost forever beneath acrid volcanic ash? As tragic as these events have been, they may well prove a profoundly important reality – love and beauty really are the most powerful forces in the universe.
Researchers were given opportunity to see two cataclysmic natural disasters take place and then simply watch what happened afterwards. As it turns out, beauty was seeded in that volcanic ash and in the burnt offerings of the great forests of Yellowstone. It has been astonishing to researchers just how fast these regions have come back to life, sprouting with new possibilities. The miraculous re-generation of life at the sites of these two incendiary nightmares again reminds me of Phillip Yancey who said, “ Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time.” There was great pleasure to be derived from finding newly emergent life in the acrid volcanic ash that covered much of the American northwest. There was grand consolation to be found in the new life erupting from the burnt sentinels that once stood in Yellowstone. Carrying it a bit further, GK Chesterton said, “Even mere existence, reduced to its most primary limits, was extraordinary enough to be exciting. Anything was magnificent as compared with nothing.”
There is a power that brings anything out of nothing. The Christian scriptures say that in the beginning there was nothing. They tell us God is love. They also say that love is the only thing that will last forever. Quantum physicists are now finding that in the beginning there must have been something besides the nothing - a creator who could make anything out of nothing – and did. At one level one could say there was nothing at Yellowstone or Mt. St. Helen’s after they were immolated. A visit there today would suggest Someone was indeed able to make anything out of apparent nothing.
For those that lived in Europe during the 20th century, millions saw their worlds reduced to apparent nothingness. I write this from a country that had not seen involvement in a war in six generations when the Third Reich showed up on the doorstep and did not knock before entering with its odious nightmare. The Dutch people had a radical experience with apparent nothingness – losing so much of what was near and dear to them – their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. Yet today the Dutch people have their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. What happened? Love and beauty were able to outlast the Third Reich, which is now nothing.
I just had an all-powerful reminder of the power of beauty and love outlasting the hideous. Several hours from here is one of the most spectacular botanical gardens in the world – the famed Keukenhof tulip garden. It is only open seven weeks in the whole of the year and we happened to be there on the day when every single plant, all seven and a half million of them, were at their prime of life – a wondrous combination of tulip, hyacinth, rhododendron, azalea, orchid, cherry tree, daffodil – this all on a 70 degree day clear day under a soft china blue sky. My friends Hans and Yne, who lived through that horrid era of nothingness, exclaimed all day that they had never seen these gardens looking nearly as fine as they did today – as if they were seeing them for the first time. Perhaps, in a way they were.
The heavenly rainbows we so delight in, as magnificent as they are, are by their nature short-lived, require the presence of a storm and dark cloud to occur, and are just rare enough as to invoke our enchantment instead of our indifference. Rarity seems to be an important dimension of beauty. It is impossible to describe with words an organic rainbow that one can physically touch, smell, embrace, and enjoy for hours, without the requirement of a storm being present. Such is the Keukenhof Garden.
It is simply beyond astounding to wander around eighty acres with 30,000 other stunned observers, marveling at a beech forest containing more than seven million plants in a range of colors beyond counting, seasoned with lakes and fountains containing all manner of water birds. While roaming about this paradise in a spectral fugue state, I could not but realize that a very large chunk of Paradise had washed up on the shores of our lives this day. This was no tiny fragment from a shipwreck.
This garden is a tangible exhibit of the reality that love and beauty do outlast the darkness that comes at night in the human experience. Even as the Dutch people endured the torment of the Nazi darkness that swept across the land, much as fire swept across Yellowstone or volcanic pumice swept across the northwest, the seeds of indescribable beauty were there all along, just waiting for the right time to once again bloom.
I am now far from those gardens, but they are no less real. They are radiating their organic spectrum to yet another thirty thousand pilgrims seeking beauty and meaning. The Christian scriptures also say that God has made Himself known through the handiwork of His creation – not through anything else. As the world struggles in so many places with geo-political crisis, with economic failure, and with upheaval of the highest order, the seeds of His beauty, of His reality are yet to be found in the midst of even the darkest place. It’s just the nature of seeds that they are sometimes very small. On occasion one gets to stand in the sun and see an organic rainbow in full bloom.
He spoke very loudly to us today.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Musings From Trafalgar Square
My favorite author in the world, Henri Nouwen, begins his compelling book The Return of the Prodigal with an elaborate description of his experience sitting in the Hermitage of St. Petersburg for hours entranced by Rembrandt’s epic painting of the same name. He even went on about getting permission to have a chair brought before the painting so he could sit at length before it. Nouwen, Rembrandt, and many others have plumbed with word and brush the depths of the story Jesus shared about the younger son of a wealthy landholder who committed the ultimate insult and asked for his inheritance early. This younger son then promptly went and squandered the whole of it on riotous living. What makes the story so compelling is the father’s unconditional love and acceptance of the son who was once lost and now found. It doesn’t seem that the motive of the returning son was a major aspect of the story. It was how the father received one who had been wayward and had cost him so dearly in emotional and material terms that makes the story bigger than life.
Today I found myself in a similar situation to that of Nouwen. In late afternoon I was sitting on a bench in the British National Gallery, transfixed in front of Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece “An Autumn Landscape with a view of Het Steen”. This large canvas depicts the country estate that gave Rubens so much joy. I found myself drawn into the profound sense of home, place and beauty that are represented in it. For one that has lived in fifty-eight places and never really had a secure sense of home, I can relate instantly to both paintings. In the case of Rembrandt, I can only slightly imagine what it would be like to have a father embrace me. In the case of Ruben’s pastoral image, I can barely conceive of what it would be like to have a magnificent physical place that I felt connected to as Rubens did.
For so many years I have had this unfulfilled craving for both of these things and more. My life circumstances are such that I doubt I will ever know either, even in a surrogate form. I have chased all about the world hoping to find something to scratch the big itch that is just out of reach. I sit here 6,000 miles from my familiar world, alone in a city of ten million where I cannot name a single person that I am even acquainted with. It makes me wonder why I am here. Co-incidentally, I note as I write these words, that my favorite painters and writers are from the Netherlands. As it happens, I am flying there tomorrow to see a long-time friend I met in the midst of crisis. Perhaps I am not as far from home as I think.
The late great British writer GK Chesterton and I are alike in that both of our lives have gone in circles. I think I am now realizing that the answer is not in a far away land but back at the ranch - just as the younger son did – in a spiritual sense in our cases. The younger son was more pragmatic in his wants – something better to eat than the bean husks being used to feed pigs. Chesterton was after the same thing in his life that I am now after in mine- something beyond sadness, despair, meaninglessness. In his landmark work Orthodoxy, Chesterton came to realize that what he was really after was right back where he had strayed from in the first place. Far from inventing something new and radical Chesterton declared, “I am the man who with utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before … I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered it was orthodoxy.”
T.S. Eliot put it best:
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Phillip Yancey, a highly popular American inspirational writer, clearly describes having followed a similar circuitous pathway. Yancey and I both traversed the university scene during the late 1960s and even read the same oppressive books on the Holocaust and the Soviet gulag and we even read the same dark fiction – Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche. As did Yancey, “I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry … I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable.”
He then discovered Chesterton. Chesterton was a breath of fresh air for Yancey. I know there to be an unread very old copy of Orthodoxy on my shelves. First thing I am doing when I get back to familiar territory is to remove this from its glass-fronted cabinet and take a deep breath from it. I could really use some of the great optimism that Chesterton so richly contributed to those on pilgrimage. As I do, Chesterton struggled greatly with despair, evil, and the meaning of life, and even approached mental breakdown. Chesterton emerged from his melancholy and realized that pleasure in any form could only be explained by the Christian message. Like CS Lewis, he found joy in a renewed faith. As Yancey eloquently puts it regarding Chesterton’s realization of the origins of pleasure, “Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time. We must hold these relics lightly, and use them with gratitude and restraint, never seizing them as entitlements.”
I should be grateful that I landed on a bench in front of Rubens today and saw a major bit of Paradise wash up on the shores of my life. Here late on a Wednesday in April in London when I spent the day in St. Martins and the National gallery, I can fully agree with Chesterton’s succinct poem of gratitude:
Here dies another dayDuring which I have had eyes, ears, handsAnd the great world round me:And with tomorrow begins another.Why am I allowed two?
Yancey says “Chesterton himself said that the modern age is characterized by a sadness that calls for a new kind of prophet, not like prophets of old who reminded people that they were going to die, but someone who would remind them they are not dead yet.” Perhaps they are sitting on our bookshelves already.
Today I found myself in a similar situation to that of Nouwen. In late afternoon I was sitting on a bench in the British National Gallery, transfixed in front of Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece “An Autumn Landscape with a view of Het Steen”. This large canvas depicts the country estate that gave Rubens so much joy. I found myself drawn into the profound sense of home, place and beauty that are represented in it. For one that has lived in fifty-eight places and never really had a secure sense of home, I can relate instantly to both paintings. In the case of Rembrandt, I can only slightly imagine what it would be like to have a father embrace me. In the case of Ruben’s pastoral image, I can barely conceive of what it would be like to have a magnificent physical place that I felt connected to as Rubens did.
For so many years I have had this unfulfilled craving for both of these things and more. My life circumstances are such that I doubt I will ever know either, even in a surrogate form. I have chased all about the world hoping to find something to scratch the big itch that is just out of reach. I sit here 6,000 miles from my familiar world, alone in a city of ten million where I cannot name a single person that I am even acquainted with. It makes me wonder why I am here. Co-incidentally, I note as I write these words, that my favorite painters and writers are from the Netherlands. As it happens, I am flying there tomorrow to see a long-time friend I met in the midst of crisis. Perhaps I am not as far from home as I think.
The late great British writer GK Chesterton and I are alike in that both of our lives have gone in circles. I think I am now realizing that the answer is not in a far away land but back at the ranch - just as the younger son did – in a spiritual sense in our cases. The younger son was more pragmatic in his wants – something better to eat than the bean husks being used to feed pigs. Chesterton was after the same thing in his life that I am now after in mine- something beyond sadness, despair, meaninglessness. In his landmark work Orthodoxy, Chesterton came to realize that what he was really after was right back where he had strayed from in the first place. Far from inventing something new and radical Chesterton declared, “I am the man who with utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before … I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered it was orthodoxy.”
T.S. Eliot put it best:
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Phillip Yancey, a highly popular American inspirational writer, clearly describes having followed a similar circuitous pathway. Yancey and I both traversed the university scene during the late 1960s and even read the same oppressive books on the Holocaust and the Soviet gulag and we even read the same dark fiction – Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche. As did Yancey, “I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry … I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable.”
He then discovered Chesterton. Chesterton was a breath of fresh air for Yancey. I know there to be an unread very old copy of Orthodoxy on my shelves. First thing I am doing when I get back to familiar territory is to remove this from its glass-fronted cabinet and take a deep breath from it. I could really use some of the great optimism that Chesterton so richly contributed to those on pilgrimage. As I do, Chesterton struggled greatly with despair, evil, and the meaning of life, and even approached mental breakdown. Chesterton emerged from his melancholy and realized that pleasure in any form could only be explained by the Christian message. Like CS Lewis, he found joy in a renewed faith. As Yancey eloquently puts it regarding Chesterton’s realization of the origins of pleasure, “Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time. We must hold these relics lightly, and use them with gratitude and restraint, never seizing them as entitlements.”
I should be grateful that I landed on a bench in front of Rubens today and saw a major bit of Paradise wash up on the shores of my life. Here late on a Wednesday in April in London when I spent the day in St. Martins and the National gallery, I can fully agree with Chesterton’s succinct poem of gratitude:
Here dies another dayDuring which I have had eyes, ears, handsAnd the great world round me:And with tomorrow begins another.Why am I allowed two?
Yancey says “Chesterton himself said that the modern age is characterized by a sadness that calls for a new kind of prophet, not like prophets of old who reminded people that they were going to die, but someone who would remind them they are not dead yet.” Perhaps they are sitting on our bookshelves already.
Musings From a Pilgrimage – Mierlo, Netherlands
It is easy to be insane as a tourist far from home – financially, with our eating, with our time. We figure it is now or never and try to do it all regardless of the emotional or financial cost involved. It occurred to me Tuesday that I had a choice – I could be an insane tourist or a quiet grounded pilgrim seeking a centered life. I have the exact same choice in my usual daily life when I am not a tourist – now or never regardless of the cost or the harder way of seeking the better way. By chance I noticed on a London city map a cathedral I had never heard of that was rather easy to get to just beyond London Bridge. Fortunately, I made the right choice and chose sanity. I was to later find I would need the grounding.
I spent the whole of the day quietly sitting and walking in the 900 year old Southwark Cathedral just south of the Thames River. This beautiful old church was nearly torn down but a few visionary people were able to see it saved rather than being razed to put up office towers. The choices of a few people who knew what was important allowed me to sit in the beautiful Harvard chapel, built into a portion of the surviving 12th century transept. The important of the consequences of choice are embedded in this cathedral. The entire nave is but a century old. The original had been allowed by a series of small choices to go into ruin and it had to be demolished. A little paint here, a roof tile now and then could have saved it but by choice they were withheld at the critical times over the centuries. It was also by choice in the late 19th century that the nave was rebuilt to exactly match that 12th century north transept. Decisions made in the moment can have consequences that last for centuries. Holy writings in all traditions say that choices made in the moment have consequences that last for all eternity. Alas, significant parts of the cathedral complex are now nothing but a few descriptions and drawings in dusty cases. Choice worked against them and office buildings and gift shops won the day.
I participated in a Eucharist in which all present were participants and not observers, as had been the case in St. Georges gothic wonder. The sermon proved compelling and I asked for a copy of it. A very hospitable steward was pleased to ask the rector about it and I ended up with an important essay on determining just who we really are and want to be. The words demand that I make choices, big ones and little ones. They demand I choose who I want to be. They also tell where to find the Power to do this. Another volunteer steward, Irene, was happy to provide pleasing bits of conversation. I had a fine late lunch in the refectory, participated in the daily offices, and sat quietly reading in the Harvard Chapel, so named after the visionary man who made the choice to found an institution of higher learning on a new continent in 1607 that bears his name to this day.
I managed to thoroughly film this place of learning and reflection very discreetly. Camera clicks and flashes can be among the most irritating reminders of insanity in the world. Happily, my camera is absolutely silent and rarely requires a flash.
I anted up and bought a book at hideous UK prices, a Yancey paperback that will be well worth the cost and I can freely mark it up, which I find myself wanting to do. I found myself back in the Harvard Chapel reading it with great attentiveness – an appropriate place to read an important book about men who have made the right choices with their lives.
A cloistered life without finance markets and all that mess seems exquisitely appealing, except for the minor detail of my vast need for socialization. I had happy ignorance of any foul deeds in my world until I signed on to the Internet later in the day. I was a wreck by the end of the day. My bank still knows nothing about my missing 105K and tells me another account is down 20K since yesterday. On top, there was little interest shown in getting it resolved after making several phone calls. This is supposed to be a holiday, knowing that my safety net has developed a huge hole? Perhaps the point of a pilgrimage is to learn that safety does not come from brokerage accounts but from a Higher Source. It certainly proved the right choice to have spent the day in Southwark Cathedral instead of chasing after tourist sites.
Holy Week is certainly turning into an epic experience. Palm Sunday mass in Westminster Abbey, an organ recital that evening, the whole of Tuesday in Southwark, and time in St. Martin’s church on Wednesday. Thursday proved even more significant. By Thursday I was several hundred miles further on my journey and a time zone further from the familiar – in a small visually stunning village of Nederland close to the Belgian border.
I found my good friends Hans and Yne intent on fully celebrating Holy week, which was more than fine with me. It is something that I have wanted to do over here for twenty years. We stopped by their house before going to the church, and had just time enough for a glass of wine after our three hour drive cross country. We then went to a Maundy Thursday service that was really more of a Seder meal. Tables were arranged in a ‘u’ shape with the celebrants and new communicants arranged at the front. We were arranged around these essentially barren tables. Children who were to have their first communion served the elements – bread in large baskets and wine in several chalices. The liturgy was long and complex by American standards and it abruptly stopped with the arrest of Jesus after the meal. The abruptness of the ending was very impressive, making the actual event of twenty centuries ago very real. A large beautiful Easter candle was burning towards the center of the space defined by the tables, representing the life of Jesus. The service was not a quick 40-minute microwave version; the order of service was fifteen pages.
We will return in an hour for a Saturday observation of that middle of the three sacred days that range from Good Friday until Easter Sunday- that day when the world had lost Hope of knowing a better way – on that day there was little more than a few crimson stains in the ground and talk of how the sky had grown strangely dark the afternoon before.
This has certainly been the most intense experience of my Christian journey to date, even more so than when I actually walked in Jerusalem from Caiphas’ house to the place of the skull. This week has seemed so real time to me. Tomorrow we will see the wonder of the re-ignition of the hope that is so desperately needed in a very dark world. It has been a compelling experience to experience the Lenten season and Holy week in three different cultures and in about five religious traditions. It seems the whole point of the Hope of the Resurrection is that it is for everyone who chooses to embrace it.
I spent the whole of the day quietly sitting and walking in the 900 year old Southwark Cathedral just south of the Thames River. This beautiful old church was nearly torn down but a few visionary people were able to see it saved rather than being razed to put up office towers. The choices of a few people who knew what was important allowed me to sit in the beautiful Harvard chapel, built into a portion of the surviving 12th century transept. The important of the consequences of choice are embedded in this cathedral. The entire nave is but a century old. The original had been allowed by a series of small choices to go into ruin and it had to be demolished. A little paint here, a roof tile now and then could have saved it but by choice they were withheld at the critical times over the centuries. It was also by choice in the late 19th century that the nave was rebuilt to exactly match that 12th century north transept. Decisions made in the moment can have consequences that last for centuries. Holy writings in all traditions say that choices made in the moment have consequences that last for all eternity. Alas, significant parts of the cathedral complex are now nothing but a few descriptions and drawings in dusty cases. Choice worked against them and office buildings and gift shops won the day.
I participated in a Eucharist in which all present were participants and not observers, as had been the case in St. Georges gothic wonder. The sermon proved compelling and I asked for a copy of it. A very hospitable steward was pleased to ask the rector about it and I ended up with an important essay on determining just who we really are and want to be. The words demand that I make choices, big ones and little ones. They demand I choose who I want to be. They also tell where to find the Power to do this. Another volunteer steward, Irene, was happy to provide pleasing bits of conversation. I had a fine late lunch in the refectory, participated in the daily offices, and sat quietly reading in the Harvard Chapel, so named after the visionary man who made the choice to found an institution of higher learning on a new continent in 1607 that bears his name to this day.
I managed to thoroughly film this place of learning and reflection very discreetly. Camera clicks and flashes can be among the most irritating reminders of insanity in the world. Happily, my camera is absolutely silent and rarely requires a flash.
I anted up and bought a book at hideous UK prices, a Yancey paperback that will be well worth the cost and I can freely mark it up, which I find myself wanting to do. I found myself back in the Harvard Chapel reading it with great attentiveness – an appropriate place to read an important book about men who have made the right choices with their lives.
A cloistered life without finance markets and all that mess seems exquisitely appealing, except for the minor detail of my vast need for socialization. I had happy ignorance of any foul deeds in my world until I signed on to the Internet later in the day. I was a wreck by the end of the day. My bank still knows nothing about my missing 105K and tells me another account is down 20K since yesterday. On top, there was little interest shown in getting it resolved after making several phone calls. This is supposed to be a holiday, knowing that my safety net has developed a huge hole? Perhaps the point of a pilgrimage is to learn that safety does not come from brokerage accounts but from a Higher Source. It certainly proved the right choice to have spent the day in Southwark Cathedral instead of chasing after tourist sites.
Holy Week is certainly turning into an epic experience. Palm Sunday mass in Westminster Abbey, an organ recital that evening, the whole of Tuesday in Southwark, and time in St. Martin’s church on Wednesday. Thursday proved even more significant. By Thursday I was several hundred miles further on my journey and a time zone further from the familiar – in a small visually stunning village of Nederland close to the Belgian border.
I found my good friends Hans and Yne intent on fully celebrating Holy week, which was more than fine with me. It is something that I have wanted to do over here for twenty years. We stopped by their house before going to the church, and had just time enough for a glass of wine after our three hour drive cross country. We then went to a Maundy Thursday service that was really more of a Seder meal. Tables were arranged in a ‘u’ shape with the celebrants and new communicants arranged at the front. We were arranged around these essentially barren tables. Children who were to have their first communion served the elements – bread in large baskets and wine in several chalices. The liturgy was long and complex by American standards and it abruptly stopped with the arrest of Jesus after the meal. The abruptness of the ending was very impressive, making the actual event of twenty centuries ago very real. A large beautiful Easter candle was burning towards the center of the space defined by the tables, representing the life of Jesus. The service was not a quick 40-minute microwave version; the order of service was fifteen pages.
We will return in an hour for a Saturday observation of that middle of the three sacred days that range from Good Friday until Easter Sunday- that day when the world had lost Hope of knowing a better way – on that day there was little more than a few crimson stains in the ground and talk of how the sky had grown strangely dark the afternoon before.
This has certainly been the most intense experience of my Christian journey to date, even more so than when I actually walked in Jerusalem from Caiphas’ house to the place of the skull. This week has seemed so real time to me. Tomorrow we will see the wonder of the re-ignition of the hope that is so desperately needed in a very dark world. It has been a compelling experience to experience the Lenten season and Holy week in three different cultures and in about five religious traditions. It seems the whole point of the Hope of the Resurrection is that it is for everyone who chooses to embrace it.
Musings - Charing Cross Road - London
I wandered over to Charing Cross Road, once famous for its collection of fine specialty and antiquarian booksellers. It is now just like any other street, selling DVDs and fast food. There are only about four bookshops and the prices are hideous. Used books that I would find at home for 25 cents are ten dollars or more here. I never found a single book to read with a cost benefit ratio that suited me. The road is certainly far removed from the one described in the endearing play “84 Charing Cross Road”, the attendants now being brusque and pre-occupied. It is a major commentary on how secular England has become, in that a couple of shops told me they had no religious books out and had them boxed up. Two other shops had very minimal offerings. I never saw a single book by any of the fine Christian writers of the past hundred years. I would like to have found a single volume of any sort by Chesterton, Merton, Nouwen, Lewis, MacDonald – even one by some of the popular American Christian writers, such as Lucado or Swindoll.
I did make the happy discovery while poking around of a newly opening Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that is in its last day of preview, which means I got a seat in the center for $15. The practice here is to offer a few weeks of preview on a new show at big discounts so that people will act as free advertising for the show. I had not planned to go see any plays this time in London as I have a season series in Atlanta for six musicals but with movies here costing $13.50, I figure it sure is worth $15 to see a fine live play.
I went to the British Museum, figuring to see all of the grand paintings of JMW Turner and Rembrandt, only to find out that the British Museum and the British National Museum are quite different institutions and in all of these years I had, in fact, never been in the British Museum. What I found was a vast archeology collection on four floors. Unbelievably, there is no restriction on photography (even flash) inside the museum. I have never heard of such a thing. I got a major bonus in that a very fine Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, and Toltec exhibition from Middle America was up. I spent fully an hour photographing everything in it (without flash) and also making pictures of all the descriptive texts and maps. This will increase the quality of my Mayan lecture by orders of magnitude.
I was also amazed to find the Rosetta stone housed here and I was able to make macro images of all three writing forms on it. My camera is not at all irritated by glass display cases. I wandered on further and found that virtually the entire original frieze of the Parthenon is installed to full scale in here. It seems one of Britain’s big boys helped himself to it back in 1819 and brought it back. Actually, when he found it, it was strewn about on the ground. The Turks had used the Parthenon as a gun powder magazine in 1679 and blew the place up accidentally. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that this frieze work could be the impetus for a complete restoration of one of the most significant buildings standing on earth. Alas, the heavily polluted air of Athens would destroy it in a few decades and at least it is now in a climate controlled environment and well preserved. I find it really strange how stuff ends up in museums in other countries where it really does not belong.
There is a grand collection of materials from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and nearby regions, dating back 6,000 years. Sadly, with the destruction of the Great Iraq Museum, this collection I saw today will become even more important. The museum in Iraq could have been protected from total destruction by a mere ten coalition soldiers. They had been warned in advance the museum was at risk of being ransacked. It was a bittersweet experience being in museums today, knowing the incredible museums that have been lost in the past couple of years. The Taliban destroyed the contents of the great archeology museum in Kabul several years ago (some 6,000 items). Six years ago the insurgency in Cambodia cut up parts of Angor Wat with chain saws, the grandest archeological site on the planet, and sold it off for weapons.
I was heartened to see that the magnificent reading room of about two hundred years has been completely rebuilt and is now open freely to anyone who wishes to take a reader’s card. It reminds me of the vast space in the Bodelian Library at Oxford – breathtaking.
I walked a few blocks further down and went into the National Portrait Gallery for the first time. This proved a haunting experience for me. The four floors of the place are paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs of people who have made their lives count in a major way for the betterment of the world. I found myself getting rather introspective, especially when viewing the portraits and descriptions of men and women who had made great contributions in the fields of science and medicine. I wondered greatly again about what might have been in my own life, if a few things had turned out even slightly differently for me. It was almost like having a bit of a mid-life crisis while walking through those grand halls. There is a major driver in my psyche that really wants to make a major contribution to the world condition, but I have never gotten the focus to make this happen. I don’t know that I am driven by fame as much as the idea that those of us who have been gifted with fine educations and opportunities have a major responsibility to give them back to the world in an enhanced form. I don’t often have the sense that I am giving anything of consequence back to anyone, certainly not in a way that is commensurate with my education and experience.
Think I need a good ale or strong lager.
I did make the happy discovery while poking around of a newly opening Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that is in its last day of preview, which means I got a seat in the center for $15. The practice here is to offer a few weeks of preview on a new show at big discounts so that people will act as free advertising for the show. I had not planned to go see any plays this time in London as I have a season series in Atlanta for six musicals but with movies here costing $13.50, I figure it sure is worth $15 to see a fine live play.
I went to the British Museum, figuring to see all of the grand paintings of JMW Turner and Rembrandt, only to find out that the British Museum and the British National Museum are quite different institutions and in all of these years I had, in fact, never been in the British Museum. What I found was a vast archeology collection on four floors. Unbelievably, there is no restriction on photography (even flash) inside the museum. I have never heard of such a thing. I got a major bonus in that a very fine Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, and Toltec exhibition from Middle America was up. I spent fully an hour photographing everything in it (without flash) and also making pictures of all the descriptive texts and maps. This will increase the quality of my Mayan lecture by orders of magnitude.
I was also amazed to find the Rosetta stone housed here and I was able to make macro images of all three writing forms on it. My camera is not at all irritated by glass display cases. I wandered on further and found that virtually the entire original frieze of the Parthenon is installed to full scale in here. It seems one of Britain’s big boys helped himself to it back in 1819 and brought it back. Actually, when he found it, it was strewn about on the ground. The Turks had used the Parthenon as a gun powder magazine in 1679 and blew the place up accidentally. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that this frieze work could be the impetus for a complete restoration of one of the most significant buildings standing on earth. Alas, the heavily polluted air of Athens would destroy it in a few decades and at least it is now in a climate controlled environment and well preserved. I find it really strange how stuff ends up in museums in other countries where it really does not belong.
There is a grand collection of materials from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and nearby regions, dating back 6,000 years. Sadly, with the destruction of the Great Iraq Museum, this collection I saw today will become even more important. The museum in Iraq could have been protected from total destruction by a mere ten coalition soldiers. They had been warned in advance the museum was at risk of being ransacked. It was a bittersweet experience being in museums today, knowing the incredible museums that have been lost in the past couple of years. The Taliban destroyed the contents of the great archeology museum in Kabul several years ago (some 6,000 items). Six years ago the insurgency in Cambodia cut up parts of Angor Wat with chain saws, the grandest archeological site on the planet, and sold it off for weapons.
I was heartened to see that the magnificent reading room of about two hundred years has been completely rebuilt and is now open freely to anyone who wishes to take a reader’s card. It reminds me of the vast space in the Bodelian Library at Oxford – breathtaking.
I walked a few blocks further down and went into the National Portrait Gallery for the first time. This proved a haunting experience for me. The four floors of the place are paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs of people who have made their lives count in a major way for the betterment of the world. I found myself getting rather introspective, especially when viewing the portraits and descriptions of men and women who had made great contributions in the fields of science and medicine. I wondered greatly again about what might have been in my own life, if a few things had turned out even slightly differently for me. It was almost like having a bit of a mid-life crisis while walking through those grand halls. There is a major driver in my psyche that really wants to make a major contribution to the world condition, but I have never gotten the focus to make this happen. I don’t know that I am driven by fame as much as the idea that those of us who have been gifted with fine educations and opportunities have a major responsibility to give them back to the world in an enhanced form. I don’t often have the sense that I am giving anything of consequence back to anyone, certainly not in a way that is commensurate with my education and experience.
Think I need a good ale or strong lager.
Beauty is Right Under Your Nose - Waterloo Station - London
It has taken several days to get wired so I am just now getting started on my travel imaginings. I tried embedding photos into nice two-column magazine text format. They looked beautiful but I would have drawn curses from all over the planet if I sent large attachments, thus I am sending plain text only for now. I am writing this from a small café latte in the Waterloo Station in London.
One does not have to go a great distance to find grand beauty. In a world that is struggling with growing unrest and discord, beauty is often lost to those who stay glued to the visceral images of CNN. So many have told me they are exhausted watching these images. Mold-green tinted night vision images of war zones don’t constitute beauty. I am compelled to ask people why they do optional things that only bring inner turmoil and exhaustion. I have not yet gotten a reasonable answer. I suggest the power off button and get a quizzical look.
As I was packing to make this journey across the sea on Thursday, I found time in the morning to photograph the pure white irises that had erupted into full bloom in the front yard during the night a mere six feet from the house. I found myself lamenting that these vast delicate blooms would be long gone in six weeks. Curiously, these have never previously bloomed. They obviously liked being dug up and moved last year. I also found the pansies growing up around the statue of St. Francis in the early morning light to be worthy of putting onto a disk and preserved.
I left Anderson about 9:30 AM and arrived in Atlanta via 17-year old Toyota without a problem and even saw gas for little of nothing by current standards. The car barely used 3 gallons to make the 140-mile journey. Any bids for it? I left my car at a pleasing little Episcopal Church south of Atlanta, close by the airport and even got a spot in the shade for it. A member there took me to the airport and left me to find my way to the other side of the planet.
Atlanta being what it is, it proved easy to have a magnificent Thai meal before going to the airport. A cashew shrimp dish with rice made for a fine cosmopolitan culinary farewell, although I have to confess to being well fed by a card carrying 100% Italian for some months now, so it was not quite the radical departure from my normal eating habits one would expect. I am not found at McDonalds or Burger King drive throughs. Anyway, I arrived at the airport early and fatted.
In the Atlanta airport the High Museum of Art has set up a satellite series of top rate art exhibits. There is a magnificent collection of stone sculpture from Zimbabwe that is fabulous. The cold stone seems almost warm and organic. It is mostly of mothers with infants, larger than life size. Some of the blown studio glasswork is spectacular. Again, beauty was to be found close at hand. There is also a green thumb lurking in the place as the international terminal has a fine collection of full size tropical trees and plants under glass atriums. One does not normally think of airports as museums and art galleries. As one would expect in this precarious day and age, security was impressive but the people were polite and efficient and the process did not detract from my three hour experience in the airport of wandering around viewing fine art, getting in a five mile walk, and wandering onto the plane very unhurried.
The 777 launched into the sunset and then circled around to do a semi-great circle route that took us across vermillion Eastern seaboard skies then into the indigo skies over the Canadian maritime provinces. About the time the sky went from vermillion to indigo a fine meal was presented along with two bottles of wine. I was in good shape. Even with the now necessary plastic utensils, the presentation was fine and the two Scottish women next to me were happy to feed me their extra things. Beauty of an auditory nature is certainly to be found in the entrancing accents of northern Scotland. Tell me to do anything with one of those accents and I am on it. These two women were grand and pleased I had been in their town of Inverness, even knowing my castle haunts there. The music system allowed me to listen to Samuel Barbers “Adagio for Strings” and Ralph Vaughn Williams “Lark Ascending” all night as I drifted in and out of cat naps. I had the best seat with a front row aisle position, which meant no bulkhead or seat in front of me. On a plane, space is a very beautiful thing. The china blue edge of morning light transformed into platinum and then orange as we had breakfast and made the nearly eight mile drop onto the runways of London’s Gatwick.
In this day and age, it takes a bit of extra effort to find beauty, but it is to be readily found all about us. It can be found as close as the smile of a nearby child. It doesn’t take the technology of jet turbines to gain access to it. Turn off CNN and go out singing that old classic “What a Beautiful World.” There is a lot to live for wherever you are. I just have the good fortune to be ‘wherever’ a long ways off at present. Perhaps one day everyone in this world can seek beauty. It might be just six feet outside your door.
One does not have to go a great distance to find grand beauty. In a world that is struggling with growing unrest and discord, beauty is often lost to those who stay glued to the visceral images of CNN. So many have told me they are exhausted watching these images. Mold-green tinted night vision images of war zones don’t constitute beauty. I am compelled to ask people why they do optional things that only bring inner turmoil and exhaustion. I have not yet gotten a reasonable answer. I suggest the power off button and get a quizzical look.
As I was packing to make this journey across the sea on Thursday, I found time in the morning to photograph the pure white irises that had erupted into full bloom in the front yard during the night a mere six feet from the house. I found myself lamenting that these vast delicate blooms would be long gone in six weeks. Curiously, these have never previously bloomed. They obviously liked being dug up and moved last year. I also found the pansies growing up around the statue of St. Francis in the early morning light to be worthy of putting onto a disk and preserved.
I left Anderson about 9:30 AM and arrived in Atlanta via 17-year old Toyota without a problem and even saw gas for little of nothing by current standards. The car barely used 3 gallons to make the 140-mile journey. Any bids for it? I left my car at a pleasing little Episcopal Church south of Atlanta, close by the airport and even got a spot in the shade for it. A member there took me to the airport and left me to find my way to the other side of the planet.
Atlanta being what it is, it proved easy to have a magnificent Thai meal before going to the airport. A cashew shrimp dish with rice made for a fine cosmopolitan culinary farewell, although I have to confess to being well fed by a card carrying 100% Italian for some months now, so it was not quite the radical departure from my normal eating habits one would expect. I am not found at McDonalds or Burger King drive throughs. Anyway, I arrived at the airport early and fatted.
In the Atlanta airport the High Museum of Art has set up a satellite series of top rate art exhibits. There is a magnificent collection of stone sculpture from Zimbabwe that is fabulous. The cold stone seems almost warm and organic. It is mostly of mothers with infants, larger than life size. Some of the blown studio glasswork is spectacular. Again, beauty was to be found close at hand. There is also a green thumb lurking in the place as the international terminal has a fine collection of full size tropical trees and plants under glass atriums. One does not normally think of airports as museums and art galleries. As one would expect in this precarious day and age, security was impressive but the people were polite and efficient and the process did not detract from my three hour experience in the airport of wandering around viewing fine art, getting in a five mile walk, and wandering onto the plane very unhurried.
The 777 launched into the sunset and then circled around to do a semi-great circle route that took us across vermillion Eastern seaboard skies then into the indigo skies over the Canadian maritime provinces. About the time the sky went from vermillion to indigo a fine meal was presented along with two bottles of wine. I was in good shape. Even with the now necessary plastic utensils, the presentation was fine and the two Scottish women next to me were happy to feed me their extra things. Beauty of an auditory nature is certainly to be found in the entrancing accents of northern Scotland. Tell me to do anything with one of those accents and I am on it. These two women were grand and pleased I had been in their town of Inverness, even knowing my castle haunts there. The music system allowed me to listen to Samuel Barbers “Adagio for Strings” and Ralph Vaughn Williams “Lark Ascending” all night as I drifted in and out of cat naps. I had the best seat with a front row aisle position, which meant no bulkhead or seat in front of me. On a plane, space is a very beautiful thing. The china blue edge of morning light transformed into platinum and then orange as we had breakfast and made the nearly eight mile drop onto the runways of London’s Gatwick.
In this day and age, it takes a bit of extra effort to find beauty, but it is to be readily found all about us. It can be found as close as the smile of a nearby child. It doesn’t take the technology of jet turbines to gain access to it. Turn off CNN and go out singing that old classic “What a Beautiful World.” There is a lot to live for wherever you are. I just have the good fortune to be ‘wherever’ a long ways off at present. Perhaps one day everyone in this world can seek beauty. It might be just six feet outside your door.
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