so long,

Unbelievable.  The natural world is pure art.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/kids/animals-pets-kids/fish-kids/seahorse-pygmy-kids.html

I have to share just one of my favorite insights that Johnny wrote in his autobiography.  It reveals such a sweet simplicity in an otherwise complex human existence.  I love this.

“…I don’t believe there are any people on earth who, properly sheltered, don’t feel the peace inside a summer rain and the cleansing it brings, the renewal of the earth in its aftermath.

 For me such moments are open invitations to closeness with God.  Nature at work isn’t itself God, but it is evidence of Him, and by letting myself be drawn into its depths and intrigues, I can come near to Him: see the glory of His creation, feel the salve of His grace.”

I actually finished a book this evening.  A painstaking monthlong journey through the autobiography of Johnny Cash.

I’m not a country music fan, but the richness of the culture behind it, the struggles of the sharecropper in rural Arkansas during and immediately after the depression, have brought me a new appreciation of it. 

More than that, I have a whole new understanding of the man behind the movement.  I not only feel like I know him, but I feel like we’ve been sitting on the porch evening after evening, deep in conversation.  It really was an amazing experience. 

As I continue to reflect on what I have read, what I have “experienced” in Johnny’s own words, it strikes me that Mr. Cash was the quintessential human being.  The embodiment of that daily struggle between good and evil that is the definition of being human.   I have never identified so closely with a person whose life was so fundamentally different from mine.  He was a man at war with himself, as we all are on a daily basis.  And he came out the other end with a grace we should all hope to achieve.  He could have been another Peter, or King David.  Heck, we all could.

I won’t call him my hero, because he would refuse to accept it.  But there is little I wouldn’t give just for one of those porch conversations.  It may sound strange, but I really miss him.

retitled again.  who am I?  why am I here?