Looking Evil in the Eye

How hard is it to look evil right in the eye? The news story about the 11 year old girl that was kidnapped and held as a sex slave for 19 years is rattling around in my brain. I am appalled at the enormity of this evil and my heart hurts for this poor girl and her family. Is there any chance that her life will be able to be put back together? Any kind of heinous crime that involves children always seems more horrific to me. Is it the innocence of children that makes it seem so? I can’t help but cry out: God why didn’t you do something; why didn’t you intervene? Why give evil such free reign?

Apparently this perpetrator did not seem normal but his neighbors were still shocked and stunned at the discovery. How would you feel to find that your neighbor was a kidnapper or child abuser or murderer. What kind of neighborhood psychic disturbance is created by this kind of discovery? What kind of bonds of trust are broken? What kind of fear is instilled in all our children who catch drift of this kind of news? The emotional ripples bounce around like a handful of pebbles thrown in a puddle.

I know a lot of people in this country do not view abortion as murder. But I can’t help but think that our failure to look the evil of abortion in the eye has the same kind of psychic resonance. Nearly 50 million abortions since 1973, that is about 100,000,000 people who have committed this act if you count the father and the mother. We all work with, live around people who, for whatever reason have killed their own children. And some more than once… what effect does a serial killer living in your neighbor hood have on you and on your children? How do all of the children feel who were born after Roe v. Wade became law. They are survivors of a holocaust. How come they were allowed to live? Do they wonder about their deceased brothers and sisters, cousins and friends. Can you feel the dissonance? Can you look it in the eye?

Is it any wonder that we have to put Zoloft in the public water supply to keep everybody perky enough to keep going to work so we can keep buying stuff we don’t need? It’s pretty damn depressing if you ask me.

God didn’t stop the kidnapper of that 11 year old girl just like he didn’t stop the 100,000,000 people who aborted their own children. But if I was God I would suggest you not come asking for any favors until you look that evil right in the eye and stop calling what is evil good.

A Novel Idea

While drinking Guiness at the Dog and Duck with my friend Milton I had an idea for a novel. We were discussing the health care proposal and how polarized our country has become. It seems every vote is won by 51%. Half the people for, half against.

So my idea was: what if the polarization continues at a faster pace until it becomes apparent the two sides can no longer live together? No, there isn't a civil war but an orderly parting of ways. The country is divided in two. All the liberals move to the east or west coast and all of the conservative move to fly over country. Borders are established and two completely independent nations are set up. Now there is no internal opposition.

The liberals can proceed with all of their plans to set up a complete nanny state. The federal government is responsible for everything and everybody's well-being and happiness. There is no restriction on abortions in fact you can dispose of your children anytime they become inconvenient until they are 21. You can also get rid of old people when the become bothersome. All drugs are legalized. And you can marry anybody you want, even your pets and as many as you want. Guns are outlawed. Everybody can have free housing, free food and a free education. The borders are wide open and as long as you subscribe to the liberal code of tolerance you are welcome (no red state people are welcome, obviously.) There is just one religion-Universalism but no one takes it very seriously

The red states get to role back the invasive federal government. Everything is dealt with on a local level. No abortion, no divorce, not even any contraception. No welfare for anybody. Everybody has to be responsible for themselves. Everybody gets a gun. No regulation on anything. Strictly guarded borders-no immigration. Everyone is very religious but there are no Muslims- not sure about Jews and Catholics.

Wait 100 years and see what's what. What do you think would happen? Could make for an interesting book. Of course you'd have to have a teenager from one group fall in love with a teenager from the other group ( probably not an animal) and want to get married which would create all kinds of problems.

Why we Homeschool

“The most important thing that science has taught us about our place in the Universe is that we are not special. The process began with the work of Nicolaus Copernicus in the sixteenth century, which suggested that the Earth is not at the centre of the universe, and gained momentum after Galileo, early in the seventeenth century, used a telescope to obtain the crucial evidence that the Earth is indeed a planet orbiting the Sun…
While all of this was going on, biologist tried and failed to find any evidence for a special ‘life force’ that distinguishes living matter from non-living matter, concluding that life is just a rather complicated form of chemistry.”

From the introduction to The Scientists: A history of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors by John Gribbin

Do you want to know why we decided to homeschool our daughter?

I checked the above book out of the library the other day. I am looking for a good history of science. One of the things I hope to teach my daughter is the arbitrariness of dividing up the world into subjects of study. While on the one hand this is a useful way to gain detailed information about subjects, on the other hand it belies the ideas that all of life is one big stream with many currents. At any given time what is happening in various fields is being determined by the overall direction of the current.

The idea that man has a unique place in the universe is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. It is not geography that makes man unique but the combination of body and soul. Walker Percy referred to man as Homo Symbolicus, the being that discovers symbols and uses language and art to communicate.

It is precisely the ability to communicate symbolically that disproves the idea that John Gribbin asserts: “life is just a rather complicated form of chemistry” Can someone explain the chemical chain of cause and effect that enables Mr. Gribben to assert that life is nothing but chemical reactions and my ability to understand his assertion and then disagree with it. Where does this chemical reaction take place?

As Mortimer Adler says in How to Read a Book- For the communication to be successfully completed, therefore, it is necessary for the two parties to use the same words with the same meanings-in short, to come to terms. When that happens, communication happens, the miracle of two minds with but a ...single thought. “

Where does this single thought reside. How can one thing be in two places at once? Is not this thought actually immaterial and if it is not material how can it be the result of chemical processes? This what Walker Percy called “The Delta Factor”. He wrote about it in his two great books, The Message in the Bottle and Lost in the Cosmos. The ability to communicate symbolically is an immaterial process not a chemical process. There is more to the world than chemistry.

Tom Wolfe in his book Who is Charlotte Simmons, attempts to show the effects of reducing the entire world to nothing but chemical processes. The main character, Charlotte, is studying neuroscience as a freshman in college. Although she comes from a bible believing Christian background she is soon convinced that the gospel of neuroscience is true: life is nothing more than chemical processes. If we are nothing but the sum of all our chemical reactions what is the role of choice in our lives? And if there is no such thing as choice or free will, then what makes choosing one thing better than another. The end result on college campuses is human beings acting like animals and engaging in drunken orgies, screwing everything in site. Charlotte proceeds to make some very bad decisions. Why are we surprised and why should we expect anything different is what Mr. Wolfe is asking. It is not just about sexuality as recreation but the inability to have meaning and purpose in a world of randomness. Ideas have consequences.

I have nothing against science in its rightful place. It is of great benefit to understand the physical universe, its causes and effects. But scientist and writers about science often overstep their bounds and engage in statements that are philosophical and religious as does Mr. Gribben. Who in the public school or in our public universities is going to challenge these egregious statements when philosophy and religion are not allowed in these settings- no one. The stakes are too high, the consequences to grave to allow a child to think that he or she is an animal, is not free to make choices and nothing more than the sum of their chemical reactions; that is why we homeschool.

Reflections on Woodstock and Being Counter Cultural

The 40th anniversary of Woodstock got me thinking . I agreed with the hippie’s diagnosis of our society at the time, too much conspicuous consumption, too much war, too much phoniness, to much concern about superficial stuff like short hair, tucked in shirts and having to wear socks and belts. I wanted peace but mostly I wanted love.

But oddly enough I didn’t get sucked into the hippie’s solution: tune in, turn on and drop out.

For some reason, and I can only attribute the reason to divine intervention, I never took drugs, no, not even once. And it is not because I wasn’t given opportunities. My cousin, who is about a year older than I, was the first person to offer me drugs. We went to hang out at Pease Park and he tried to convince me to smoke marijuana. I don’t know why but I refused. I had always looked up to my cousin but after this episode we drifted apart. He continued to use drugs and at one pointed ended up being institutionalized because of it.

I continued to be a hold out even though I don’t really remember my parents or Sunday school teachers or anybody else encouraging me not to. There was just some part of me that knew to refuse to take drugs was the right thing to do.

During this time the pain of my family life was growing more intense. After many years of suffering through my dad’s bi-polar illness my Mom divorced my dad. Their divorce had a huge effect on my self-esteem and I, who had once had no trouble making friends, became depressed and a loner.

One Friday, a guy I knew in my Presbyterian youth group and I, were driving together to a youth retreat in Wimberly. On the way he told me he had some dope and wondered if I would like to sneak out into the woods that night and partake with him. Uncharacteristically, I said sure, let’s do it. So we had a plan. I was going to smoke dope for the first time.

We were the first one to arrive at the retreat so we decided to go down to the creek. The creek was feed by a spring called blue hole. The blue hole was surrounded by cliffs that rose straight up from the water twenty feet or so. There were flat-bottomed boats that you could paddle up and down the creek. We decided to paddle one of the boats up to the blue hole. We leisurely paddled up the creek but once we arrived at the end we were surprised to be met with a barrage of boulders thrown at us from the cliffs. Another friend, a real prankster, had climbed the cliffs and thought it would be funny to launch huge rocks at us. We were moving and dodging the rocks until we finally dodged a bit too vigorously and tumped the boat over into the water. Soaking wet, we managed to get back in the boat and back to shore.

Soggy dope meant no sneaking off into the woods and by the next night when the dope had dried out I had regained my senses and “just said no”. That was the last time I ever seriously thought of taking drugs. I had many other opportunities but no longer was slightly tempted.

I am only conjecturing but I think with the high level of psychic pain I was dealing with as a teenager, if I had taken one step down that road of self medication it would have been a trip of no return. Mental breakdown or overdose seemed inevitable.

Instead I chose to get high in another way. I became a Jesus Freak. The Jesus freaks looked like hippies and had the same diagnosis of the culture but instead of turning to drugs they were able to see Jesus as the original counter cultural leader. Poor, taking on the authorities, giving up everything to get the kingdom of God even to the point of surrendering his own life: that was the Jesus we got to know.

My best friend's girl friend had invited him to got to a place called the Well. It was a coffeehouse just west of the University of Texas. Most of the folks hanging out there looked like hippies and there was free coffee and do-nuts but the folksy music they sang was not about the Age of Aquarius. It was all about Jesus and how much he loved everybody. After my friend had gone a couple of times he invited me to go. Sure enough I was convinced that these people loved each other. The all claimed it was because of Jesus and after I had been a few times and with some intense internal wrestling I took the plunge and in a dramatic experience of God’s love became a Jesus Freak.

Looking back from a vantage point of almost 40 years I think if I hadn’t been rescued from my sadness, despair and disappointment I would have either gotten into drugs or killed myself. I have had my ups and downs but I have never regretted the decision I made to become really counter cultural and follow Jesus.

That's me in the middle playing guitar at the Well Christian coffeehouse.

Easter Morning

Click on the painting for a larger image.

I had a request to use an image of my painting "Easter Morning" in a print publication so I had a hi-res scan made of it. Which also means it is now available as a print to be purchased at my web site: BCArtFarm.com

I painted this painting back in 1992. The zinnias seem to be exploding out of the vase and are reminiscent of fireworks, like Jesus exploding out of the tomb on Easter morning. The vase depicts Jonah being spit out by the large fish, an old testament type of the resurrection. The three houses with three moons are for the three days Jesus was in the tomb and the strange topiary with the man holding a basket of eggs is reflecting the natural images of fertility and life that are also associated with Easter. The symbols of the Eucharist are also images of life, the basic food we need to survive. I have no idea why I put an airplane up in the corner.

This painting is in a private collection. I borrowed it back to include in an exhibit that was at the Dadian Gallery in Washington D.C. Of all the paintings that I shipped to D.C. this one that was borrowed got damaged. It tipped over and fell against a corner while they were hanging the show. Thankfully this painting is on a panel other wise there would have been a big rip in the canvas. Upon its return I managed to patch the indention and repainted the area. I don't think you could tell where it was damaged.

Vacation at the Beach

We took our annual trip to the beach. I grew up going to the Texas gulf coast and we have continued the family tradition. We don't do much but swim in the ocean, build a sandcastle and eat lots of good sea food but we find it really relaxing. Oh, we also watch cable TV, which we don't have at home. Usually the food channel but this weekend they had a Monk marathon, and it was shark week on the Discovery channel. Yes , there are sharks in the gulf. When I used to fish I would occasionally catch a small one but they don't seem to bother people.


On our way down we stopped in Shulenburg at one of the painted churches. It is very beautiful but currently undergoing some restoration. One of the entriguing symbols used in the church is the Pelican. the pelican was thought to feed it's young by piercing it's breast and feeding them her own blood. Thus the pelican became a symbol of Jesus feeding the church on his own blood.






St. Mary's has many beautiful stained glass windows and a carved wooden high altar. It is worth your while to stop off if you are in the neighborhood.

We stopped at the Schoenstatt Shrine in Lamar for a bit then crossed over the ferry from Aransas Pass to Port Aransas. Emma and I always get out and look for dolphin. Sometimes we see several but this time we didn't see any.

Sea food always buts a big smile on our face. We ate lunch at Moby Dick's. Lot's of fried shrimp.

We found quite of few shells out in the water (none on the shore) but they had all been found before us by hermit crabs. We practice the "catch and release" policy unless we find an empty one. We found one empty olive shell. The water was very clear and clean. No seaweed or tar and no jelly fish or man of war. Great for jumping the waves or just floating. Emma has inherited her Grandma Betty's ability to effortlessly float.

We made the short drive over to Corpus Christi to meet Lissa's brother and family for more good sea food at Snoopy's.

They have a nice deck, perfect for watching the sun set over the Corpus Christi bay.



After another day of swimming in the ocean and building a sand castle we all went to Seafood and Spaghetti Works to celebrate Lissa's birthday. Julia and JC and Julissa came to the beach with us this year. They brought their WII which I had only played a little bit before. We played all sorts of resort games and I ended up being really sore. I am out of shape and it is pretty good exercise apparently.

The Fire is in the House

I finished the commission I have been working on. The Fire is in the House-acrylic on canvas-24"x36". A friend of mine is having me paint one painting a year for a total of fourteen paintings, the subject matter is his spiritual biography. This is the 5th one in the series. The angel Gabriel is giving him a vision of heaven where St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist are holding a book that he is to write: the title of the book is "Take Courage St. John the Fire is in the House". Surrounding the two Saints holding the book are the hosts of heaven including The Blessed Mother, St. Patrick, St. Francis, St. Joan, Adam and Eve, St. Joseph, Joseph the Patriarch, St. Peter and Moses. In the vision the title of the book was flashing and the words "St. John" kept changing to other titles- these are being transmitted in rainbows- a symbol for light.

Hey, I just paint what I see!

Vacation

Port A last year

I am on vacation for a week. Hooray!

On Thursday we are heading to Port Aransas for our annual trip to the beach. It is always so relaxing. Sleep, read, walk on the beach, swim in the ocean, be reminded how small we are and how big the ocean and the universe is, make a sandcastle and eat lots of sea food. Great.

Holman Hunt's Light of the World

Before we go to the beach I hope to spend some time in the studio finishing up a commission and hopefully starting a new painting. I got an idea from Paul Nielson's blog, The Aesthetic Elevator. He was using Warner Sallman's painting Christ at the Heart's Door as an example of a painting with a bad concept. I disagreed. I think it is a bad painting because it was poorly executed not because it was a bad idea. Sallman actually ripped off the idea from Holman Hunt. His painting The Light of the World is a better painting, IMO, but still not a great painting. Will my painting be any better? I guess you'll have to wait and see but it would be interesting to get some feed back when I'm done to compare all three paintings.

Warner Sallman's Christ at the Heart's Door