Music = Joy.

Private party with The Enemy Lovers at The Lab (Great Lexington Ave microbrewery) in Asheville. Asheville has 9 unique microbreweries making it a favorite destination for beer lovers, everywhere.

A beautiful Asheville alley, of course.

Purple star outside of downtown shop.

Brews with Shea & Liz at the Blue Ridge Brewing Co. in Greenville, SC.

Quinn shooting down The Sliding Rock off the Blue Ridge Parkway, outside of Brevard, NC. Hot weather calls for cold waters.

My turn.

Quinn and I with her parents at Sunny Point Cafe (thank you Deb for the product placement) in West Asheville.

There was a time in my own life when questioning the existence of God seemed strange. Now, a questioner of some things thought important and many which are probably not, this statement seems strange, indeed. But there was a time when diving into the existence of God was not a thought I often attempted, and it was probably good that no one presented me the chance to discover whether there actually was a God or whether we were all environmentally manufactured flesh, placed upon earth by something totally ungodly and uncaring. Being young, it’s hard to really question anything. You may question certain random episodes of life, but we don’t do so to debate, rather; we do so to discover necessary truths. Not only are we unafraid, we are totally trusting. The childhood existence is defined by absorption; you’re a sponge dropped into the ocean, attempting to soak up every drop till you reach the sandy floor.  Your entire existence wrapped up in linear alphabet, snack time and getting lost in the grocery store. The youthful brain only has time to absorb and feel the world around it. And by brain I mean heart. And by heart I mean that portion of me which was unafraid and willing to love at all costs. This part of the brain, the heart, the soul, slowly dissipated and dimmed with age, but, never the less, it existed; dormant though it may have been for some time.

As a child you don’t want to believe there’s a God. But you don’t want to believe there isn’t a God, either. We just took in what the world around us was saying. Opinions and beliefs come with experience. Youth notice things such as flowers and how the color of the sky morphs and comes alive just as the sun goes to sleep under the horizon. They notice patterns in the eyes of their friends; the colors on the skins of people; and the texture of the people in their skin. They cheer on spiders as they summit thin blades of grass and spend time in thick weeds hunting down snakes and lightning bugs. When they color, draw or paint, they create masterpieces of rhythm and ordered chaos not confined to a page or outline. Sweat is a natural by-product of fun; dirt its counterpart. It seems as though children see God in the world around them—in people, texture and beauty—and it was good that I had heard of God as a youth because then I could slightly begin to understand what I was looking at. The beauty around me had a foundation, something from which it sprang. The beauty of the woods and the smell of the air after a mid-summer rain had value and purpose. It wasn’t useless or vague; beauty had roots which grew forth vision to allow beholders amazement and enlightenment. Beauty was my childhood path to God, and I was happy God had reason for existing through it.

As an ever aging man, genuine beauty lost its grip upon my heart. Either that or my heart lost its grip upon genuine beauty. Regardless, I grew accustomed to mountains and butterflies and lilies. I saw them on TV more often than in reality. Inundated with beauty, so overwhelmed by its presence, I was no longer capable of absorbing that which I will never understand. And beauty tends to exist between the spaces of that which we cannot comprehend. I deceived myself into thinking that I had figured out beauty. I knew how to reproduce it and make it better; manufacture it and sell it to the masses. I live in a Photoshopped world rampant with Hollywood and pornography; airbrushed magazine stars, cable TV, and the constantly accessible Internet. Beauty became what beauty was never meant to be. Beauty, in our world of waste, was transformed into something which it is not, constructed and rearranged to entangle and entice our fleeting brains. I mean hearts. I mean the parts of us which long for something true.

The difficulty in seeing God through beauty, as in childhood, is that what we consider beautiful is full of man made pixels, lines and shades of gray, and not God. We see colors from high resolution screens instead of rainbows. We witness green in dollar bills not blades of grass. We see blue in the eyes of refurbished actresses instead of the skies upon sunrise. Through it all we lost our view of God; the beauty set before us to help us experience and know of his potential existence; complex and difficult to understand in much the same way as the beauty of the universe itself.

The beauty of God is that he must be impossible to fully comprehend, grasp or settle upon. The moon became less beautiful once we climbed aboard and punched a flag through her dusty crust; its mere existence now thought of through the lens of scientific exploration and not bewildered wonderment. God wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful if we could climb atop, punch our mark into him and claim him conquered in the name of our own brains. Much like true beauty, God cannot be explained in a textbook or documentary. God, like beauty, must be experienced. We can view all existing pictures of the Grand Canyon, but until we have seen it with our own eyes, hiked through it with our own two lungs, and gazed into it with our own hearts, we cannot fully experience its beauty or begin to grasp its bewildering expanse. God must be experienced in some way. We can read books about God, listen to professors, pastors, and gurus try to explain him, but if we never personally experience him, how can we ever begin the process of standing in awe of his innate beauty and love?

Our lives—I mean our brains. I mean our hearts— I mean that part of us that used to wonder in awe at the movement of a hand, the curvature of lips, the ability to run and jump higher and higher, is dying to experience beauty. And somewhere inside of us, just maybe it’s dying to experience God, as well.

Grandfather Mountain in background, shot from Eseeola Lodge while attending a High Country Conservancy fundraiser; people working to save and protect beautiful landscapes such as the one above.

My beautiful bride, Quinn. We went to the Highland Games & Gathering of Scottish Clans to watch Scots from all over the world compete in their traditional games.

Cultural merger. One of the largest gatherings of Scots, for one weekend, every year, to celebrate Scottish heritage and clans. An annual reunion, to say the least.

Man taking a seat. Not much else to say, really.

Warehouse turned art gallery. One of many workshops for local artists located in Asheville’s River Art District.

The River Arts District is a fantastic place for artists. Huge spaces for working, displaying and selling art; a most intriguing portion of Asheville that most tourists probably don’t think to visit. Restroom sink in green.

I couldn’t resist the colors presented by this bike and fire hydrant. That is all.

I can sit and stare out a window for hours on end. Windows to gaze out of, paned sheets of glass to contemplate through, to survey the rest of the world moving to and fro, mere phantoms heaping up wealth, attempting happiness, usually falling short, clamoring for something more. I find it hard to hide behind a window. Its transparency makes it a difficult medium to hide my shortcomings and procrastinating mind behind. I suggest a computer screen, thick book or closed door, instead.

The world is, or may very well be, much more transparent than I would have imagined. Someone’s always watching. My Sunday school teachers used to tell me, “Someone is always watching.” They’d give me the you-know-what-I’m-talking-about look and a quick nod of the head and eyebrow lift upward as if to remind me that that someone was God, and I should do my best to keep in line with where his gaze was apparently guiding. I’ll never forget their God-gaze-reminders. I wondered how God could possibly keep watch over all of us at the same time. There must have been at least 30 other kids in my class every Sunday morning. All the guys were clad in tan Dockers and white, collared dress shirts while the girls wore flowery dresses, the hem of them bordered with fluffy, embroidered lace. Some of us were lucky enough to sport the occasional bow tie or blue sport jacket. The girls wore white socks under their shiny white shoes that strapped over the top of their feet and clapped like tap-dancing shoes even as they ran across the carpet. I was glad to have been born a boy. Even at that age the frilly dresses and curly, hair spray infatuated hairdos were too much for me.

Sunday school was how I image college Greek life must be; each kid dressed in their finest suits and dresses, gathering once a week to collaborate and have fun with all the other good looking kids from around town. We didn’t have to pay to hang out with each other, but then again I had seen the offering plate, and I knew everyone was paying for something. A few years later I realized the money was for a bigger, cleaner building and repaved parking lot. God surely didn’t have time to watch over all of us. Compared to little Mikey painting his self-portrait on one of the white walls of our classroom, I was the least of God’s concerns. God paid attention to the trouble makers just like my Sunday school teachers did. It wasn’t the little girl sitting by herself, behaving and enjoying her “in-between-the-lines” coloring that received the most attention. It was the kid who threw his 95%-high-fructose-corn-syrup-orangeade at one of the white dresses, coating her with a chemical smear even BP would be ashamed of that did. The kid proceeded to kick the orange and infuriated white dress in the gut, take his shirt off and run around the room like a mad man, turning over tables and knocking over the future-engineers-of-America’s cardboard blocks. The good kids never got the attention. The criers and instigators did. As I watched the wild boy—shirtless and smeared in crayon war paint—run around the room, evading his authorities, I convinced myself that God only had time for the troublemakers.

Gazing out windows, as transparent as it may be, never really beckons much of a response. People on the outside expect you to watch, but even if you don’t they really couldn’t care less. They’ve been where you are. They’ve been the gawker. They’ve been the one behind the glass gazing outward. They understand you’re just mesmerized by the outside.

I easily lose track of the beauty of life. I think there’s a reason why King David wanted God to show him his “life’s end and the number of his days.” I think he wanted to know how fleeting his life was for many of the same reasons I want to. When you think you’ll live forever, you lose sight of just how beautiful today is. Displace the number of your days, and you forget to count them. Instead, you rely on the assuredness of another one happening tomorrow just as it did today. If my days are not numbered, it’s easy to think of each one as the same, as valuable but nothing to treasure too highly for fear that tomorrow won’t hold as much. But the truth is that we can’t actually value our days without putting a limit on them. It’s supply and demand, of course. If we have an unlimited amount of days to live, then each individual day is nothing special. The higher the supply, the lower the demand; the lower each day’s intrinsic value becomes. David longed to see his life as but a breathe. He wanted to experience that “phantom of a life” so he wouldn’t lose sight of just how precious each moment is; so he wouldn’t base the value of his life on mere things, wealth heaped up in vain, or bustling about for nothing.

What if someone were to stare back through the window you’re currently looking through? What if there was someone on the other side that was fully aware of your gaze, who longed to catch your attention for longer than a moment? In reality, maybe we’re all the kids standing in front of a white wall, painting our self-portraits on canvases never meant to contain them. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay if we sling a little orangeade. Maybe someone is on their way to pay us some attention; standing behind us as we smear finger paint, crayons, sweat, blood, and tears onto the walls of life, waiting for us to turn around and embrace the love of a Teacher who only wants us to stop trying to paint our own stories all by ourselves.

{Thoughts on David based on Psalm 39:4-7}

I haven’t been able to spend nearly as much time behind the lens as I would have liked as of late, but here are a few offerings from this past weekend. Quinn and I spent Friday night in Asheville with our friends Lee and Amy who drove all the way from Indianapolis to spend the 4th with us!

We hiked to the top of Craggy Gardens (pictured below), located just north of Asheville off The Blue Ridge Parkway; put some time in round the downtown, community drum circle later that night, went to eat at beautiful Tupelo Honey’s afterward, and enjoyed late night espresso at World Coffee Cafe. We took in the Asheville flow; a great time enjoyed with great friends. On Saturday we piled into the Jorgenson’s baby mobile (they’re pregnant for the first time) and left for Boone, North Carolina, to spend time with our family from Quinn’s side (sounds strange only referring to them as Quinn’s family), including Shea and Liz who came up from Walhalla, South Carolina, and Brett who made his way down the mountain to hang out. Lee and Amy and Quinn and I went tubing down the Watauga River Saturday afternoon. The river was a bit low, but nothing beats the heat like an afternoon spent floating. Sunday night we set off more than enough fireworks, yet I only sustained one burnt finger. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

The first photo is of a very old cash register. I like the painted-on hand picture instructing where to look for “dollars.” The second photo is of Lee and Amy Jorgenson.

There’s something about this shot that makes me want to be a kid again, running up and down stairs as if ascending and descending back and forth between heaven and earth. Watch your step, indeed.

This post office is still active, and I love the manner in which you have to retrieve you mail. Peer through the transparent door already in recognition of your awaiting mail, open the tiny, metal gateway and pull your letters through. There’s surely something magical about the user experience  customers must go through every time they get their mail here.

I loved the rugged colors incorporated into this sign. There’s a significant retro feel to it.

Craggy Gardens. The bird perched, only slightly visible, in front of this majestic back drop must think the world is his playground. If you had to be a bird, this wouldn’t be a bad place to spend your days gliding.

Mannequin with pins was shot in the same art shop as the welcome sign, above. Again, very retro feel to the work with the colors and organization accentuating the shape of the medium. As a side note, both of our picks for the World Cup Final actually made it to the final. That’s right, I picked the Netherlands and Quinn picked Spain. You can check for accuracy here. Go Dutch!

We’re two weeks into reading season (aka summer), and it seems as though the amount of literature I’d like to consume is growing by the day. What else is new? It seems as though writing is making a serious comeback, like well known authors are scavenging to be on the front lines of word warfare when everyone else, especially the general public, rediscovers the power of the pen and its counterpart, paper. The day is quickly approaching when people not generally considered authors, not only ingest large amounts of books, but produce large amounts, as well. Tweeters are becoming bloggers, bloggers are becoming authors, authors are also becoming bloggers, and somewhere in the middle of it all the cost of producing and selling a book is becoming nearly nill. And I say excellent! Here are four reads I recommend for early summer:

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This book is a procrastinator’s worst nightmare. Don’t read this book if you’re prone to laziness. It will hurt your feelings and make you think that you should really get up and do something fascinating for a change. Thinking about staying in a field, job or position that you hate because it seems secure and safe? Than don’t read this book. You will not want to hear what Pressfield has to say. No doubt, this book is a wake up call for the lazy and those not living up to their full potential; who are giving into “The Resistance” which tempts us to maintain the status quo and live average lives. Pressfield also believes, I think, that this is everyone at some point in their life. So beware, he may be trying to persuade you. (Read with caution, not for the faint of heart.)

A Million Miles In A Thousand Years by Donald Miller. Some books are actually worth reading. This is one of those books. However, A Million Miles is not what I would describe as a “fun” read. If you’re looking to be entertained, don’t read this book. If you’re asking for a challenge, than you should sit down for a few hours with this read and knock it out in one day. In my opinion, this is Miller’s most focused work to date. The flow and characters convey real depth, and he uses his story to transform and impact the reader. This work is about creating a fascinating, personal story; challenging words to say the least.

Linchpin by Seth Godin. Are you indispensable? That is the question Godin is seemingly pleading with us to answer. Godin gives a short yet invigorating history of “work” and goes on to explain how the system is changing, rapidly. There are certain people within every group and organization that make things go, that are worth more than you could ever afford to pay them. Those people are your linchpins. Godin says that they are more valuable than many average workers, combined. Hold onto linchpins at all costs. He also states that anyone is capable of becoming a linchpin. Most people are just too comfortable and lost in their pseudo-security to ever take the risk, work hard, and start doing their work as art. Godin centers his writing on art, that which we create or long to do or work at. He encourages the reader to work as an artist, creating and giving in ways that most people would not usually take the time or effort to do.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. The guys of 37Signals have done it again. Rework is a book that addresses many of the lessons they’ve learned and lived through over the past 10 years, their entire existence as one of the leading software producing companies in the world. They discuss business, starting, mistakes that most business and organizations make, and attitude. They discuss how things are changing and how things are staying the same. Do what you love and do it now. The power of not growing is one of the most profound lessons I took from this read. Always invest your efforts into getting better, not bigger. These guys live to “make a dent in the universe,” and their philosophy is evident all throughout this book and their company. This is a personal perspective from two guys who know how to make an organization go, and they don’t hold anything back. They teach what they know. They believe in sharing what they’ve learned, and that’s why this book is so useful. It’s not fluffy or cluttered. It’s straight to the point and could potentially be a painful read for anyone who doesn’t like to be told that they could be doing more and doing it better.