Thursday, March 12, 2009







Whenever I forget that creation is a continuous process, rather than a linear event that happened in some obscure garden between some naked man and woman ions ago, I remember fish. Fish have always been an important part of my life. I remember leaning over ponds as a child; over the olive green waters of the Guadalupe river and seeing shimmering little minnows moving in syncronized groups and catching lights as they moved. Later it was peach-bellied perch guarding immaculate nests in the Blanco River and finally the rainbow of colors of ocean fish that I saw when I began to scuba dive in the 1980's. They amazed me. Vast expanses of creation, moving and shining in the water, or a solitary wrasse backed up into a hole in a reef, all alone and spectacular. They are all process. No definate beginning and end but all movement and form and color and wonder.

Sunday, March 1, 2009





I'm not sure what Andy Goldsworthy is trying to say with his "Land Art" pieces, but I know how he does it. He goes to a location that inspires him: Scotland, New England, Vermont; he stands before a natural space and wonders. He wonders what it would look like to place colored leaves along a wall or log, he wonders about the shadows and light effects of sunset shining through ice spikes glued to rocks with his own spit. He constructs a natural sculpture, then waits for the weather to change, for God to transform and collaborate. Andy Goldsworthy is a visual poet, a spokesman for the effect of human curiosity on God's landscape.