The truth is, they’re difficult for me just now. A restlessness sets in as I try to stop the train of thought-life that’s all about tasks and goals and what needs to be done next. As I settle in to read or pray or perhaps play guitar or make a piece of art, a feeling of anxiety creeps in, and I start to move and quake like a washing machine, agitator being an appropriate noun. Nothing overly concerning really, but I think we have to pay attention to what’s going on in the quiet, even when its restless and noisy.
This new season of life is on my mind, even when I’m not really thinking about it. Wondering a bit about the future, what it holds for my family, for Anjie and I. I’m preaching, she’s enjoying her job, our kids are out making their way in a very big world. I’m also missing the artistic work, and I find myself pulled toward thoughts of writing and acting and even, after all these years, of directing. I told the church the other day I am a man of moments. I told them that in the context of a pretty wonderful time of worship, a holy-ground kind of moment. To create those moments in the world of art and theatre is such a powerful experience, and one that I know so well. I talk about those moments as moments when the curtain to Heaven parts just a little, and somehow in our spirits we catch a shimmering glance at something that is all possibility and hope and joy.
I suppose that’s what is behind my love and search for beauty. Alejandro Garcia-Rivera talks of this as God calling in moments of such beauty, revealing Himself to a world that is so desperate to find Him. Garcia-Rivera also speaks of these moments as full of ache, because as the same time God reveals His presence, the great chasm between us and Him is also revealed. We ache for the country from which we come.
Next week, next Monday, someone remind me to sit quietly and travel inside toward that God in that country, we remember, and long to live in.
Sun’s rising…
JEFF BERRYMAN 
I want to sign you up for a cyclocross race. Let’s say…. men’s masters…
45 minutes of thrashing, rain and a fashionable covering of mud. Grime everywhere. Two white orbs peeking out of cafe & earthen crusted lids.
Big giant gleaming teeth shining from behind mud encrusted lips….
A mind flushed clean with endorphins….
That and an event that brushes up against the heroic greek archetypes of yore… even the ONE we all adore…..
Cyclo-cross, carry your bike, carry your cross.
Much better than a gym or a treadmill, could perhaps surpass the vaults of youth… vaulting oneself into the future with agression, conviction, a spent physique that sets the spirit free– brushing up against Golgotha for some… maybe just barely.
It could be like a Goya, or a Picasso, that memory, that event, that ride. There would not be the tempting of one’s own private separate creation, it would be joint, side by side with fellows stronger, fellows weaker. Humbling
The crowds would seem trite at first, cowbells, cheers, jeers and costumes, but then somewhere after lap one, when one’s realized the limitations of a body that’s not trained or worked out for years, somewhere through that barrier exists a moment shared but all one’s own at the same time. Sublime
It could seem humiliating or vapid at first. What’s the point of old men, with youths side by side carrying and racing bikes? Is it the shared yet singular journey of the mind? Or is it the spirit?
Why gaze upon art? Is it also some painting, this mind? What brushes paint it best, this mind? Mine or another’s? What pulls the canvas taught? Stillness or activity or something in ‘tween?
Is it God or is it me?
You’re probably right, my friend. Cyclocross? Frankly, it sounds like a great time.