True Christian Service; Nehemiah Atkinson

Volume XIX, Issue IVIIIa

The Unsung Road Builders

Then I told them of the hand of my G-d which was good upon me; as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work."
-- Nehemiah 2:18

Nehemiah in Bible times returned from exile in Persia to rebuild the defenses of Jerusalem. In 1942 another Nehemiah would find himself building the defenses of North America. Nehemiah Atkinson was a young man in the Army's 97th Engineering Battalion who found himself traveling by train with his unit to an unknown destination. Little did he know he and his colleagues would be building a road to Alaska!

With manpower stretched thin, military leaders decided to send black troops, many from the deep South, North to Dawson Creek and the beginnings of the proposed Alcan Highway. In that era of segregation and Jim Crow laws, many doubted that these men could perform in the hostile climate of Northwestern Canada, but perform they did! Their clothing was only designed for temperatures around forty degrees ABOVE zero. They managed to improvise. Many of the men could not read, they organized themselves so that the literate men would write letters home for their colleagues. They taught their colleagues to read.

They worked twelve to fourteen hours a day. Diversions were few and the black troops were isolated far in the wilderness. Some of the men managed to 'tame' some of the local wildlife... including black bears who would wander into camp attracted by the smell of food. The animals here had no experience with humans in some cases so they had no fear.

The black battalions were the last to get the best equipment, often laboring with hand tools even as the first D8 Caterpillar bulldozers came on the scene. Sometimes the guys from the 97th would perform a 'midnight requisition,' 'borrowing' a bulldozer from a better supplied unit. They would then proceed to build an impressive stretch of the highway on their own and post a sign to that effect.

Because the road was built under conditions of secrecy and the men of the 97th were so isolated, history largely forgot them. Still, their legacy is a mighty one. The Army was desegregated in 1948 and the 4000 black troops who had worked to build the Alcan had proved themselves ready for any task! Today their accomplishments are the subject of the book: The Black Soldiers who Built the Alaska Highway by John Virtue. They are also featured in the Megastructures presentation: Building the Alaskan Highway.

As America enters into a new era where she remembers how to build great works, the men of the 97th offer our generation an amazing example and inspiration!


Men arrive by train to build the highway.


Mess call for highway workers.


Signposts provided an outlet for creative expression.

Redefining Boundaries

Nehemiah Atkinson was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on September 8, 1918, the son of C.C. and Josephine Atkinson. His family moved to New Orleans in his youth when his father was appointed as Bishop of the diocese of the Holiness Church. He attended Thomy Lafon and J. W. Hoffman schools in New Orleans, and at the Louisiana Industrial Training School in Farmerville before beginning his military career. As a youth he had became fascinated by the game of tennis, hitting his first ball at age nine.

At that time, in the Great Depression, tennis was considered a pastime for the elite.White kids from places like Dartmouth were far more likely to play tennis than African-American kids in the Deep South. Still, Atkinson was undeterred in his pursuit of the game.

Atkinson loved the game and became quite good at it. When he came home from the war he had a passion to teach the game to young people of all backgrounds. He learned offset printing, worked as a night supervisor in a Coca-Cola plant and taught private tennis lessons by day to kids from well-to-do white families. He served as a tennis instructor for the New Orleans Recreation Department for 23 years before retiring in 1995. His legacy is an impressive number of young players who have attended college because of his mentoring!

New Orleans Tennis Professional Lloyd Dillon remembers Mr. Atkinson: “I can remember when Mr. Atkinson visited my high school in 1954. He played a classmate of mine who was also a good tennis player. Mr. Atkinson impressed me by the way he moved around on the basketball blacktop court converted into a tennis court for that event. He looked like he was gliding on air.”

Mr. A. ran tennis programs and used old wood racquets for kids each summer. He taught the basic tennis strokes, forehand, backhand, and serve; as well as the rules of the game. He had a way that made you love the game, even if you didn’t have any experience with the game.”

There were not tennis courts available for Blacks at that time in our neighborhood. Mr. A would use volleyball nets in parking lots or any place with space close by.”

He told me he was not going to retire unless he was certain that I got his job. Well, I did, but I knew it was going to be a tall order to do half of what he did with tennis and his life. Sometimes when I would get upset, he would always tell me to read Psalms 37:2,3:

 Trust in the LORD and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.”[1.]

Highway in the Wilderness
Building the Alcan Highway


The amazing story of an amazing road.



True Christian Service
Excerpt from A Dish of Orts (scraps)
By George MacDonald

But Jesus called them unto him and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it should not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."
-- Matthew 20:25-28


Archer slit, Chateau de Saint-Albain. Photo by Bob Kirchman.

Every spring-fountain of gladness about us is his making and his delight. He tends us and cares for us; he is close to us, breathing into our nostrils the breath of life, and breathing into our spirit this thought and that thought to make us look up and recognize the love and the care around us. What a poor thing for the little baby would it be if it were to be constantly tended thus tenderly and preciously by its mother, but if it were never to open its eyes to look up and see her mother's face bending over it. A poor thing all its tending would be without that. It is for that that the other exists; it is by that that the other comes. To recognize and know this loving-kindness, and to stand up in it strong and glad; this is the ministration of God unto us. Do you ever think "I could worship God if he was so-and-so?" Do you imagine that God is not as good, as perfect, as absolutely all-in-all as your thoughts can imagine? Aye, you cannot come up to it; do what you will you never will come up to it. Use all the symbols that we have in nature, in human relations, in the family--all our symbols of grace and tenderness, and loving-kindness between man and man, and between man and woman, and between woman and woman, but you can never come up to the thought of what God's ministration is. When our Lord came he just let us see how his Father was doing this always, he "came to give his life a ransom for many." It was in giving his life a ransom for us that he died; that was the consummation and crown of it all, but it was his life that he gave for us--his whole being, his whole strength, his whole energy--not alone his days of trouble and of toil, but deeper than that, he gave his whole being for us; yea, he even went down to death for us.

But how are we to learn this ministration? I will tell you where it begins. The most of us are forced to work; if you do not see that the commonest things in life belong to the Christian scheme, the plan of God, you have got to learn it. I say this is at the beginning. Most of us have to work, and infinitely better is that for us than if we were not forced to work, but not a very fine thing unless it goes to something farther. We are forced to work; and what is our work? It is doing something for other people always. It is doing; it is ministration in some shape or other. All kind of work is a serving, but it may not be always Christian service. No. Some of us only work for our wages; we must have them. We starve, and deserve to starve, if we do not work to get them. But we must go a little beyond that; yes, a very great way beyond that. There is no honest work that one man does for another which he may not do as unto the Lord and not unto men; in which he cannot do right as he ought to do right. Thus, I say that the man who sees the commonest thing in the world, recognizing it as part of the divine order of things, the law by which the world goes, being the intention of God that one man should be serviceable and useful to another--the man, I say, who does a thing well because of this, and who tries to do it better, is doing God service.

We talk of "divine service." It is a miserable name for a great thing. It is not service, properly speaking, at all. When a boy comes to his father and says, "May I do so and so for you?" or, rather, comes and breaks out in some way, showing his love to his father--says, "May I come and sit beside you? May I have some of your books? May I come and be quiet a little in your room?" what would you think of that boy if he went and said, "I have been doing my father a service." So with praying to and thanking God, do you call that serving God? If it is not serving yourselves it is worth nothing; if it is not the best condition you can find yourselves in, you have to learn what it is yet. Not so; the work you have to do to-morrow in the counting-house, in the shop, or wherever you may be, is that by which you are to serve God. Do it with a high regard, and then there is nothing mean in it; but there is everything mean in it if you are pretending to please people when you only look for your wages. It is mean then; but if you have regard to doing a thing nobly, greatly, and truly, because it is the work that God has given you to do, then you are doing the divine service.

Of course, this goes a great deal farther. We have endless opportunities of showing ourselves neighbours to the man who comes near us. That is the divine service; that is the reality of serving God. The others ought to be your reward, if "reward" is a word that can be used in such a relation at all. Go home and speak to God; nay, hold your tongue, and quietly go to him in the secret recesses of your own heart, and know that God is there. Say, "God has given me this work to do, and I am doing it;" and that is your joy, that is your refuge, that is your going to heaven. It is not service. The words "divine service," as they are used, always move me to something of indignation. It is perfect paganism; it is looking to please God by gathering together your services,--something that is supposed to be service to him. He is serving us for ever, and our Lord says, "If I have washed your feet, so you ought to wash one another's feet." This will be the way in which to minister for some.

But still, when we are beginning to learn this, some of us are looking about us in a blind kind of way, thinking, "I wish I could serve God; I do not know what to do! How is it to be begun? What is it at the root of it? What shall I find out to do? Where is there something to do?"

Now, first of all, service is obedience, or it is nothing. This is what I would gladly impress upon you; upon every young man who has come to the point to be able to receive it. There is a tendency in us to think that there is something degrading in obedience, something degrading in service. According to the social judgment there is; according to the judgment of the earth there is. Not so according to the judgment of heaven, for God would only have us do the very thing he is doing himself. You may see the tendency of this nowadays. There is scarcely a young man who will speak of his "master." He feels as if there is something that hurts his dignity in doing so. He does just what so many theologians have done about God, who, instead of taking what our Lord has given us, talk about God as "the Governor of the Universe." So a young man talks about his master as "the governor;" nay, he even talks of his own father in that way, and then you come in another region altogether, and a worse one. I take these things as symptoms, mind. I know habits may be picked up, when they get common, without any great corresponding feeling; but a wrong habit tends always to a wrong feeling, and if a man cannot learn to honour his father, so as to be able to call him "father," I think one or the other of them is greatly to blame, whether the father or the son I cannot say. I know there are such parents that to tell their children that God is their "Father" is no help to them, but the contrary. I heard of a lady just the other day to whom, in trying to comfort her, some one said, "Remember God is your Father." "Do not mention the name 'father' to me," she said. Ah! that kind of fault does not lie in God, but in those who, not being like him, cannot use the names aright which belong to him.

But now, as to this service, this obedience. Our Lord came to give his life a ransom for the many, and to minister unto all in obedience to his Father's will. We call him equal with God--at least, most of us here, I suppose, do; of course we do not pretend to explain; we know that God is greater than he, because he said so; but somehow, we can worship him with our God, and we need not try to distinguish more than is necessary about it. But do you think that he was less divine than the Father when he was obedient? Observe his obedience to the will of his Father. He was not the ruler there. He did not give the commands; he obeyed them. And yet we say He is God! Ah, that is no difficulty to me. Obedience is as divine in its essence as command; nay, it may be more divine in the human being far; it cannot be more divine in God, but obedience is far more divine in its essence with regard to humanity than command is. It is not the ruling being who is most like God; it is the man who ministers to his fellow, who is like God; and the man who will just sternly and rigidly do what his master tells him--be that master what he may--who is likest Christ in that one particular matter. Obedience is the grandest thing in the world to begin with. Yes, and we shall end with it too. I do not think the time will ever come when we shall not have something to do, because we are told to do it without knowing why. Those parents act most foolishly who wish to explain everything to their children--most foolishly. No; teach your child to obey, and you give him the most precious lesson that can be given to a child. Let him come to that before you have had him long, to do what he is told, and you have given him the plainest, first, and best lesson that you can give him. If he never goes to school at all he had better have that lesson than all the schooling in the world. Hence, when some people are accustomed to glorify this age of ours as being so much better in everything than those which went before, I look back to the times of chivalry, which we regard now, almost, as a thing to laugh at, or a merry thing to make jokes about; but I find that the one essential of chivalry was obedience. It is recognized in our army still, but in those times it was carried much farther. When a boy was seven years old he was sent into another family, and put with another boy there to do what? To wait with him upon the master and the mistress of the house, and to be taught, as well, what few things they knew in those times in the way of intellectual cultivation. But he also learned stern, strict obedience, such as it was impossible for him to forget. Then, when he had been there seven years, hard at work, standing behind the chair, and ministering, he was advanced a step; and what was that step? He was made an esquire. He had his armour given him; he had to watch his armour in the chapel all night, laying it on the altar in silent devotion to God. I do not say that all these things were carried out afterwards, but this was the idea of them. He was an esquire, and what was the duty of an esquire? More service; more important service. He still had to attend to his master, the knight. He had to watch him; he had to groom his horse for him; he had to see that his horse was sound; he had to clean his armour for him; to see that every bolt, every rivet, every strap, every buckle was sound, for the life of his master was in his hands. The master, having to fight, must not be troubled with these things, and therefore the squire had to attend to them. Then seven years after that a more solemn ceremony is gone through, and the squire is made a knight; but is he free of service then? No; he makes a solemn oath to help everybody who needs help, especially women and children, and so he rides out into the world to do the work of a true man. There was a grand and essential idea of Christianity in that--no doubt wonderfully broken and shattered, but not more so than the Christian church has been; wonderfully broken and shattered, but still the essence of obedience; and I say it is recognized in our army still, and in every army; and where it is lost it is a terrible loss, and an army is worth nothing without it. You remember that terrible story from the East, that fearful death-charge, one of the grandest things in our history, although one of the most blundering:--

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die;
Into the valley of death
Rode the Six Hundred."

So with the Christian man; whatever meets him, obedience is the thing. If he is told by his conscience, which is the candle of God within him, that he must do a thing, why he must do it. He may tremble from head to foot at having to do it, but he will tremble more if he turns his back. You recollect how our old poet Spenser shows us the Knight of the Red Cross, who is the knight of holiness, ill in body, diseased in mind, without any of his armour on, attacked by a fearful giant. What does he do? Run away? No, he has but time to catch up his sword, and, trembling in every limb, he goes on to meet the giant; and that is the thing that every Christian man must do. I cannot put it too strongly; it is impossible. There is no escape from it. If death itself lies before us, and we know it, there is nothing to be said; it is all to be done, and then there is no loss; everything else is all lost unto God. Look at our Lord. He gave his life to do the will of his Father, and on he went and did it. Do you think it was easy for him--easier for him than it would have been for us? Ah! the greater the man the more delicate and tender his nature, and the more he shrinks from the opposition even of his fellowmen, because he loves them. It was a terrible thing for Christ. Even now and then, even in the little touches that come to us in the scanty story (though enough) this breaks out. "We are told by John that at the Last Supper He was troubled in spirit, and testified." And then how he tries to comfort himself as soon as Judas has gone out to do the thing which was to finish his great work: "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself." Then he adds,--just gathering up his strength,--"I shall straightway glorify him." This was said to his disciples, but I seem to see in it that some of it was said for himself. This is the grand obedience! Oh, friends, this is a hard lesson to learn. We find every day that it is a hard thing to teach. We are continually grumbling because we cannot get the people about us, our servants, our tradespeople, or whoever they may be, to do just what we tell them. It makes half the misery in the world because they will have something of their own in it against what they are told. But are we not always doing the same thing? and ought we not to learn something of forgiveness for them, and very much from the fact that we are just in the same position? We only recognize in part that we are put here in this world precisely to learn to be obedient. He who is our Lord and our God went on being obedient all the time, and was obedient always; and I say it is as divine for us to obey as it is for God to rule. As I have said already, God is ministering the whole time. Now, do you want to know how to minister? Begin by obeying. Obey every one who has a right to command you; but above all, look to what our Lord has said, and find out what he wants you to do out of what he left behind, and try whether obedience to that will not give a consciousness of use, of ministering, of being a part of the grand scheme and way of God in this world. In fact, take your place in it as a vital portion of the divine kingdom, or--to use a better figure than that--a vital portion of the Godhead. Try it, and see whether obedience is not salvation; whether service is not dignity; whether you will not feel in yourselves that you have begun to be cleansed from your plague when you begin to say, "I will seek no more to be above my fellows, but I will seek to minister to them, doing my work in God's name for them."[2.]


Chateau de Saint-Albain. Photo by Bob Kirchman.


Chateau de Saint-Albain. Photo by Bob Kirchman.

Five Timeless Inauguration Prayers
[click to read]

From Billy Graham and Franklin Graham

Throughout the years, Billy Graham and Franklin Graham have prayed for incoming presidents, offering petitions for the head of state and our nation that still ring true today. Billy Graham, considered pastor to the presidents, continually pointed America back to G-d through his inaugural prayers. Here are five excerpts from previous prayers you can use while lifting up the outgoing and incoming presidents. (read more)

When Young People Imagine the Future...

Volume XVII, Issue IV

Young People Imagine the Future

It was a week of wild creativity as students unleashed their imaginations to build the “World of Tomorrow.” We assembled Leonardo da Vinci’s Bridge, rolled paper into struts to build tetrahedrons, got mentioned by Michelle L. Mitchell [1.] in the News Virginian and most of all stretched our collective ability to imagine things we have not seen yet. We drew our ideas and then found ways to build what we imagined.


Some 'example pavilions' that I created to help the creative juices flow...


...included a Pavilion of Tyrol, complete with stained glass windows that have glass organ pipes embedded in them as designed by Xaver Wilhelmy...


...and the Pavilion of the Bering Strait Bridge Corporation with a reproduction of a mural painted by myself and Kristina Elaine Greer of children of the world entitled Journey to Jesus.




Our campers worked at architectural drawing and imagined buildings they would like to create. Then they built them!




















We photographed our finished pavilions against the sky to get a sense of the scale and presence they would have as actual buildings. Photos by Bob Kirchman.



The 'City of Tomorrow' in 1939



Envisioning the future can be dangerous. In a world mired in the drabness of the Depression, city planners created Greenbelt, Maryland. The open spaces and cleanliness are a wonderful contrast to the often polluted and overcrowded world of the present, but it is worth noting that some of the ‘industrial’ solutions presented in the movie have created problems of their own.


Bicycles in the 1939 movie 'The City' speed through Greenbelt, Maryland.


Fiona and Jonas with bicycles in the screen adaptation of 'The Giver.'

Democracity, Greenbelt, ‘The Community.’ All citizens needed to do, according to the planners, was “assent democratically to the centralization of planning.” It sounds real good in the midst of prolonged depression or the stagnation of the Wiemar Republic. But what is the true result of such centralization. Greenbelt kids are shown riding bicycles, painting pictures and playing at life situations such as a miniature post office. In actuality education itself was being ‘centralized.’ The Baby Boom had resulted in overcrowded classrooms (my first grade class was over fifty). Creative Wonder had to be sacrificed as we sat in orderly rows and learning itself became ‘industrialized.’

So what is the answer? I suspect it has less to do with urban design and more to do with humanity than planners would imagine. Decades later, the planners are now decrying the automobile suburbs and celebrating the grid cities they once liberated us from. Would that they would look at the wonderful ‘streetcar suburbs’ and urban open spaces that we actually enjoy – giving us a certain amount of messy freedom while organizing infrastructure and preserving openness – actually preserving ‘color!’ We like cul-de-sacs. We love our gardens. We like to choose the color of our dwelling. We like driving in open spaces.

We need to embrace the richness in our human expression of design. My children had a book in which two urban settings were presented as illustrations. One was ‘sameness,’ a very Soviet modernist city of tall bland buildings. The other – ‘uniqueness’ was – Paris! It was a very compelling argument!

C. S. Lewis on Free Will

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

The 2014 movie adaptation of Lois Lowery’s The Giver[2.] is a very instructive portrayal of what Lewis is saying. If you are not familiar with this novel, it is the story of a future world where security and freedom from want is secured by an enforced sameness. Gone are the joys of color and music. People see in black and white. Art is decorative but uninspired. Climate is regulated and people live in a community reminiscent of the ideal New Deal City, Greenbelt, Maryland.[3.] Greenbelt was Eleanor Roosevelt’s experiment in creating a ‘garden city’ to replace the hodgepodge of sometimes chaotic architecture of the time. Americans living in the Depression and Dust Bowl days were quick to embrace such a vision. Down the road from Greenbelt was the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. Modern chemical-dependent farming and methods were being developed there.[4.]

In The Giver, emotion is carefully suppressed with drugs and ‘precision of language’ is used to eliminate Love, Anger and any sort of emotion.

But as the film unfolds, the elimination of pain and struggle has come at a cost. Elimination of Love also comes with the elimination of Faith and Hope. Mankind is deprived of those three qualities that Scripture says are the three things that last! Though the book and the film adaptation are classified as ‘young adult’ dystopian fiction the film adaptation is worth note on a higher level. I do not think Lowery set out to write a book about deep truth (she herself says that it is simply an idea that came to her visiting her father in a nursing home – that memories are important) but that makes it all the more intriguing as it explores the value of life and the question of what gives life value. The movie ending is less confusing than that of the original novel in that it suggests that Lewis’s thoughts on what is really important are worth the risk and suggests a remedy. It is a thoughtful message for all.

Ravi Zacharias [click to read] explores the subject further.
Zach Dawes  Explores Love, Human Choice and C. S. Lewis [click to read]

The references to free will in Lewis’s books are one of the most prominent features the reader encounters. Indeed, even a cursory reading of a number of his works would reveal his belief in God’s gift to humanity of a free will to choose between two equally available choices. That is, to choose between good and evil, right and wrong.” – Zach Dawes


'Seeing color' in The Giver.


Future 'sameness.'


Greenbelt, Maryland.

Everyday Life in Modern Coruscant
Asian Megacities as Political Theater


What Le Corbusier would have wrought in Paris has become the new reality of Bejing and Shanghai.

Le Corbusier once wrote of his Plan Voisin for Paris: “Since 1922 [for the past 42 years] I have continued to work, in general and in detail, on the problem of Paris. Everything has been made public. The City Council has never contacted me. It calls me ‘Barbarian’!” -- Le Corbusier’s writings, p. 207.

Fast forward to the Twenty-first Century and Shanghai [Le Corbusier on steroids]. It all seems like the realization of the fictional Coruscant from Star Wars... a completely urban environment that stretches as far as the eye can see. The entire planet of Coruscant is one continual city.

Guy Sorman discusses the rise of Asian 'Super Megagopolises' [click to read] in City Journal. Looking at the Mega-model of Shanghai, one could begin to wonder: "can Coruscant be that far off." Sorman points out, however, that Shanghai is largely a political creation...designed to create the impression that China is ready for business with the world. [5.]

Every day the city teems with life and every night the workers necessary to make it function vacate the pristine city. It is like Disney World, where the 'cast members' descend into 'Utilidor,' remove their costumes, and disappear to homes elsewhere.

For Shanghai workers, 'homes elsewhere' often means crowded and substandard. Just as China's factories are seldom seen by Westerners, those who maintain the stage for world commerce live in a vastly different world than the one they 'portray' in their 'day jobs.'

Or perhaps, the Death Star in Star Wars is a better analogy. Its scale is way beyond human. It is intended to convey a sense of awe. Might we be looking at the work of some latter day Nimrod, seeking to elevate himself to the heavens?

Sorman points out how the mad rush into the 21st Century has obliterated the traditional spaces of Shanghai and Beijing, which were much more human in size and scate. Again Star Wars comes to mind. Green beautiful planets like Naboo and Alderon risk elimination as the Empire expands its grasp.


This scale model of Shanghai dwarfs the people in the room...


...and calls to mind the fictional city of Coruscant.

In the 'Sixties America sought to 'remake' her major cities. Le Corbusier style housing blocks were constructed to elevate the urban poor. Many of these 'projects' have since been torn down. While we were building them Moscow was building similar blocks of apartments. Today in Moscow, urban youths flock to the rooftops. [6.] Called 'Roofers,' these young people seek the rooftops simply for the openness and the view.

How to Return to the Village
Returning Government to the People in the 'Audience'

Nineteenth Century America was a nation of villages. Great centers of commerce existed, but they were fed by a vibrant countryside. When Thomas Jefferson created his ideal 'Academic Village' to house the University of Virginia he purposefully left one side open to the surrounding agricultural land. From the steps of the Rotunda one could look upon the rolling hills of Albemarle County.

Architect Stanford White convinced the University to fill the void with Old Cabell Hall a long time ago. The recently completed South Lawn attempts to recreate a space leading off into the trees of Charlottesville. The challenge of getting back to the garden is ever before us. Rooftop Gardens [click to read] offer one method of getting people and open spaces together. Reclaiming existing environments is another. Aging strip malls could be recycled into village centers for the surrounding suburban homes, offering a place residents could walk or bicycle to. Vacant lots and neglected riverfronts can become parks and gardens.


Proposed Renewal of the Crozet Shopping Center. 
Drawing created by the Kirchman Studio.

Suburb bashing has always been a fashionable intellectual pastime.That is one reason I like Robert A. M. Stern. He sees the reasons people seek out single family dwellings of a traditional form. I have a friend who lives on the upper West side and his penthouse with a view of the Hudson is very nice but give me my gardens.People put up with the wretched infrastructure overload and strip centers because the village is still appealing. The residential areas become landscaped oasis for their residents. Kids play outside the house in view of the kitchen window. People visit at the back fence. Moreover the suburbs are seen by their dwellers as affirming opportunity and safety. If people had no emotion for their homes they would be fine with Le Courbusier type high rises but that is simply not the case.The problem is really one of infrastructure and public space [or lack therof]. Strip malls and box stores create a sterile wasteland but they may become the village centers of the future.

Time magazine once featured a piece called 'Repurposing Suburbs' which shows some fine examples of recreating this type of public space. This Crozet project turns a tired strip mall into a village center. One cannot wait for Crozet's redesigner to get his creative hands on some of the new "Town Center" projects which are now just collections of big box stores. Some time ago I drew a concept where the CSX tracks between Staunton and Charlottesville became a light rail line connecting Staunton, Fishersville, Waynesboro, Crozet, Ivy, The University of Virginia Medical Center and Downtown Charlottesville. The result would be a series of village centers and a better utilization of existing infrastructure.

City Journal's writers draw conflicting conclusions. Houston is touted as encouraging its middle class while Gotham offers limited options. Dense urban areas do tend to create energy efficiency. The trick is to see opportunities to improve the communities we have already created.That would certainly involve offering condominiums and a pedestrian friendly center to suburban communities and reclaiming all those wonderful old low density neighborhoods of our cities.


Front Yard garden, Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Bob Kirchman.


Front Porch, Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Bob Kirchman.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11

Blind to the Prosperity Around Us
[click to read]

By Alyssa Ahlgren

My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. (read more)

Laney’s Palette Art Show
Saturday September 14th, 2019 in Crozet, VA

Works by Kristina Elaine Greer will be on display at the gallery space of Tabor Presbyterian Church, 5804 Tabor Street, Crozet, Virginia 22932. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, September 14th, 2019 from 1:00 to 4:00pm at the church. All are invited. The show will feature Laney’s Acrylic Paintings and Pencil Drawings from 2004 – 2019.

Phantasies by George MacDonald, Creativity

Volume XV, Issue XVII

Phantasies
By George MacDonald, Chapter 4

When bale is att hyest, boote is nyest."
~ Ballad of Sir Aldingar.

By this time, my hostess was quite anxious that I should be gone. So, with warm thanks for their hospitality, I took my leave, and went my way through the little garden towards the forest. Some of the garden flowers had wandered into the wood, and were growing here and there along the path, but the trees soon became too thick and shadowy for them. I particularly noticed some tall lilies, which grew on both sides of the way, with large dazzlingly white flowers, set off by the universal green. It was now dark enough for me to see that every flower was shining with a light of its own. Indeed it was by this light that I saw them, an internal, peculiar light, proceeding from each, and not reflected from a common source of light as in the daytime. This light sufficed only for the plant itself, and was not strong enough to cast any but the faintest shadows around it, or to illuminate any of the neighbouring objects with other than the faintest tinge of its own individual hue. From the lilies above mentioned, from the campanulas, from the foxgloves, and every bell-shaped flower, curious little figures shot up their heads, peeped at me, and drew back. They seemed to inhabit them, as snails their shells but I was sure some of them were intruders, and belonged to the gnomes or goblin-fairies, who inhabit the ground and earthy creeping plants. From the cups of Arum lilies, creatures with great heads and grotesque faces shot up like Jack- in-the-box, and made grimaces at me; or rose slowly and slily over the edge of the cup, and spouted water at me, slipping suddenly back, like those little soldier-crabs that inhabit the shells of sea-snails. Passing a row of tall thistles, I saw them crowded with little faces, which peeped every one from behind its flower, and drew back as quickly; and I heard them saying to each other, evidently intending me to hear, but the speaker always hiding behind his tuft, when I looked in his direction, "Look at him! Look at him! He has begun a story without a beginning, and it will never have any end. He! he! he! Look at him!"

But as I went further into the wood, these sights and sounds became fewer, giving way to others of a different character. A little forest of wild hyacinths was alive with exquisite creatures, who stood nearly motionless, with drooping necks, holding each by the stem of her flower, and swaying gently with it, whenever a low breath of wind swung the crowded floral belfry. In like manner, though differing of course in form and meaning, stood a group of harebells, like little angels waiting, ready, till they were wanted to go on some yet unknown message. In darker nooks, by the mossy roots of the trees, or in little tufts of grass, each dwelling in a globe of its own green light, weaving a network of grass and its shadows, glowed the glowworms.

They were just like the glowworms of our own land, for they are fairies everywhere; worms in the day, and glowworms at night, when their own can appear, and they can be themselves to others as well as themselves. But they had their enemies here. For I saw great strong-armed beetles, hurrying about with most unwieldy haste, awkward as elephant-calves, looking apparently for glowworms; for the moment a beetle espied one, through what to it was a forest of grass, or an underwood of moss, it pounced upon it, and bore it away, in spite of its feeble resistance. Wondering what their object could be, I watched one of the beetles, and then I discovered a thing I could not account for. But it is no use trying to account for things in Fairy Land; and one who travels there soon learns to forget the very idea of doing so, and takes everything as it comes; like a child, who, being in a chronic condition of wonder, is surprised at nothing. What I saw was this. Everywhere, here and there over the ground, lay little, dark-looking lumps of something more like earth than anything else, and about the size of a chestnut. The beetles hunted in couples for these; and having found one, one of them stayed to watch it, while the other hurried to find a glowworm. By signals, I presume, between them, the latter soon found his companion again: they then took the glowworm and held its luminous tail to the dark earthly pellet; when lo, it shot up into the air like a sky-rocket, seldom, however, reaching the height of the highest tree. Just like a rocket too, it burst in the air, and fell in a shower of the most gorgeously coloured sparks of every variety of hue; golden and red, and purple and green, and blue and rosy fires crossed and inter-crossed each other, beneath the shadowy heads, and between the columnar stems of the forest trees. They never used the same glowworm twice, I observed; but let him go, apparently uninjured by the use they had made of him.

In other parts, the whole of the immediately surrounding foliage was illuminated by the interwoven dances in the air of splendidly coloured fire-flies, which sped hither and thither, turned, twisted, crossed, and recrossed, entwining every complexity of intervolved motion. Here and there, whole mighty trees glowed with an emitted phosphorescent light. You could trace the very course of the great roots in the earth by the faint light that came through; and every twig, and every vein on every leaf was a streak of pale fire.

All this time, as I went through the wood, I was haunted with the feeling that other shapes, more like my own size and mien, were moving about at a little distance on all sides of me. But as yet I could discern none of them, although the moon was high enough to send a great many of her rays down between the trees, and these rays were unusually bright, and sight-giving, notwithstanding she was only a half-moon. I constantly imagined, however, that forms were visible in all directions except that to which my gaze was turned; and that they only became invisible, or resolved themselves into other woodland shapes, the moment my looks were directed towards them. However this may have been, except for this feeling of presence, the woods seemed utterly bare of anything like human companionship, although my glance often fell on some object which I fancied to be a human form; for I soon found that I was quite deceived; as, the moment I fixed my regard on it, it showed plainly that it was a bush, or a tree, or a rock.

Soon a vague sense of discomfort possessed me. With variations of relief, this gradually increased; as if some evil thing were wandering about in my neighbourhood, sometimes nearer and sometimes further off, but still approaching. The feeling continued and deepened, until all my pleasure in the shows of various kinds that everywhere betokened the presence of the merry fairies vanished by degrees, and left me full of anxiety and fear, which I was unable to associate with any definite object whatever. At length the thought crossed my mind with horror: "Can it be possible that the Ash is looking for me? or that, in his nightly wanderings, his path is gradually verging towards mine?" I comforted myself, however, by remembering that he had started quite in another direction; one that would lead him, if he kept it, far apart from me; especially as, for the last two or three hours, I had been diligently journeying eastward. I kept on my way, therefore, striving by direct effort of the will against the encroaching fear; and to this end occupying my mind, as much as I could, with other thoughts. I was so far successful that, although I was conscious, if I yielded for a moment, I should be almost overwhelmed with horror, I was yet able to walk right on for an hour or more. What I feared I could not tell. Indeed, I was left in a state of the vaguest uncertainty as regarded the nature of my enemy, and knew not the mode or object of his attacks; for, somehow or other, none of my questions had succeeded in drawing a definite answer from the dame in the cottage. How then to defend myself I knew not; nor even by what sign I might with certainty recognise the presence of my foe; for as yet this vague though powerful fear was all the indication of danger I had. To add to my distress, the clouds in the west had risen nearly to the top of the skies, and they and the moon were travelling slowly towards each other. Indeed, some of their advanced guard had already met her, and she had begun to wade through a filmy vapour that gradually deepened.

At length she was for a moment almost entirely obscured. When she shone out again, with a brilliancy increased by the contrast, I saw plainly on the path before me--from around which at this spot the trees receded, leaving a small space of green sward--the shadow of a large hand, with knotty joints and protuberances here and there. Especially I remarked, even in the midst of my fear, the bulbous points of the fingers. I looked hurriedly all around, but could see nothing from which such a shadow should fall. Now, however, that I had a direction, however undetermined, in which to project my apprehension, the very sense of danger and need of action overcame that stifling which is the worst property of fear. I reflected in a moment, that if this were indeed a shadow, it was useless to look for the object that cast it in any other direction than between the shadow and the moon. I looked, and peered, and intensified my vision, all to no purpose. I could see nothing of that kind, not even an ash-tree in the neighbourhood. Still the shadow remained; not steady, but moving to and fro, and once I saw the fingers close, and grind themselves close, like the claws of a wild animal, as if in uncontrollable longing for some anticipated prey. There seemed but one mode left of discovering the substance of this shadow. I went forward boldly, though with an inward shudder which I would not heed, to the spot where the shadow lay, threw myself on the ground, laid my head within the form of the hand, and turned my eyes towards the moon Good heavens! what did I see? I wonder that ever I arose, and that the very shadow of the hand did not hold me where I lay until fear had frozen my brain. I saw the strangest figure; vague, shadowy, almost transparent, in the central parts, and gradually deepening in substance towards the outside, until it ended in extremities capable of casting such a shadow as fell from the hand, through the awful fingers of which I now saw the moon. The hand was uplifted in the attitude of a paw about to strike its prey. But the face, which throbbed with fluctuating and pulsatory visibility--not from changes in the light it reflected, but from changes in its own conditions of reflecting power, the alterations being from within, not from without--it was horrible. I do not know how to describe it. It caused a new sensation. Just as one cannot translate a horrible odour, or a ghastly pain, or a fearful sound, into words, so I cannot describe this new form of awful hideousness. I can only try to describe something that is not it, but seems somewhat parallel to it; or at least is suggested by it. It reminded me of what I had heard of vampires; for the face resembled that of a corpse more than anything else I can think of; especially when I can conceive such a face in motion, but not suggesting any life as the source of the motion. The features were rather handsome than otherwise, except the mouth, which had scarcely a curve in it. The lips were of equal thickness; but the thickness was not at all remarkable, even although they looked slightly swollen. They seemed fixedly open, but were not wide apart. Of course I did not REMARK these lineaments at the time: I was too horrified for that. I noted them afterwards, when the form returned on my inward sight with a vividness too intense to admit of my doubting the accuracy of the reflex. But the most awful of the features were the eyes. These were alive, yet not with life.

They seemed lighted up with an infinite greed. A gnawing voracity, which devoured the devourer, seemed to be the indwelling and propelling power of the whole ghostly apparition. I lay for a few moments simply imbruted with terror; when another cloud, obscuring the moon, delivered me from the immediately paralysing effects of the presence to the vision of the object of horror, while it added the force of imagination to the power of fear within me; inasmuch as, knowing far worse cause for apprehension than before, I remained equally ignorant from what I had to defend myself, or how to take any precautions: he might be upon me in the darkness any moment. I sprang to my feet, and sped I knew not whither, only away from the spectre. I thought no longer of the path, and often narrowly escaped dashing myself against a tree, in my headlong flight of fear.

Great drops of rain began to patter on the leaves. Thunder began to mutter, then growl in the distance. I ran on. The rain fell heavier. At length the thick leaves could hold it up no longer; and, like a second firmament, they poured their torrents on the earth. I was soon drenched, but that was nothing. I came to a small swollen stream that rushed through the woods. I had a vague hope that if I crossed this stream, I should be in safety from my pursuer; but I soon found that my hope was as false as it was vague. I dashed across the stream, ascended a rising ground, and reached a more open space, where stood only great trees. Through them I directed my way, holding eastward as nearly as I could guess, but not at all certain that I was not moving in an opposite direction. My mind was just reviving a little from its extreme terror, when, suddenly, a flash of lightning, or rather a cataract of successive flashes, behind me, seemed to throw on the ground in front of me, but far more faintly than before, from the extent of the source of the light, the shadow of the same horrible hand. I sprang forward, stung to yet wilder speed; but had not run many steps before my foot slipped, and, vainly attempting to recover myself, I fell at the foot of one of the large trees. Half-stunned, I yet raised myself, and almost involuntarily looked back. All I saw was the hand within three feet of my face. But, at the same moment, I felt two large soft arms thrown round me from behind; and a voice like a woman's said: "Do not fear the goblin; he dares not hurt you now." With that, the hand was suddenly withdrawn as from a fire, and disappeared in the darkness and the rain. Overcome with the mingling of terror and joy, I lay for some time almost insensible. The first thing I remember is the sound of a voice above me, full and low, and strangely reminding me of the sound of a gentle wind amidst the leaves of a great tree. It murmured over and over again: "I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree." I found I was seated on the ground, leaning against a human form, and supported still by the arms around me, which I knew to be those of a woman who must be rather above the human size, and largely proportioned. I turned my head, but without moving otherwise, for I feared lest the arms should untwine themselves; and clear, somewhat mournful eyes met mine. At least that is how they impressed me; but I could see very little of colour or outline as we sat in the dark and rainy shadow of the tree. The face seemed very lovely, and solemn from its stillness; with the aspect of one who is quite content, but waiting for something. I saw my conjecture from her arms was correct: she was above the human scale throughout, but not greatly.

Why do you call yourself a beech-tree?" I said.

Because I am one," she replied, in the same low, musical, murmuring voice.

You are a woman," I returned.

Do you think so? Am I very like a woman then?"

You are a very beautiful woman. Is it possible you should not know it?"

I am very glad you think so. I fancy I feel like a woman sometimes. I do so to-night--and always when the rain drips from my hair. For there is an old prophecy in our woods that one day we shall all be men and women like you. Do you know anything about it in your region? Shall I be very happy when I am a woman? I fear not, for it is always in nights like these that I feel like one. But I long to be a woman for all that."

I had let her talk on, for her voice was like a solution of all musical sounds. I now told her that I could hardly say whether women were happy or not. I knew one who had not been happy; and for my part, I had often longed for Fairy Land, as she now longed for the world of men. But then neither of us had lived long, and perhaps people grew happier as they grew older. Only I doubted it.

I could not help sighing. She felt the sigh, for her arms were still round me. She asked me how old I was.

Twenty-one," said I.

Why, you baby!" said she, and kissed me with the sweetest kiss of winds and odours. There was a cool faithfulness in the kiss that revived my heart wonderfully. I felt that I feared the dreadful Ash no more.

What did the horrible Ash want with me?" I said.

I am not quite sure, but I think he wants to bury you at the foot of his tree. But he shall not touch you, my child."

Are all the ash-trees as dreadful as he?"

Oh, no. They are all disagreeable selfish creatures--(what horrid men they will make, if it be true!)--but this one has a hole in his heart that nobody knows of but one or two; and he is always trying to fill it up, but he cannot. That must be what he wanted you for. I wonder if he will ever be a man. If he is, I hope they will kill him."

How kind of you to save me from him!"

I will take care that he shall not come near you again. But there are some in the wood more like me, from whom, alas! I cannot protect you. Only if you see any of them very beautiful, try to walk round them."

What then?"

I cannot tell you more. But now I must tie some of my hair about you, and then the Ash will not touch you. Here, cut some off. You men have strange cutting things about you."

She shook her long hair loose over me, never moving her arms.

I cannot cut your beautiful hair. It would be a shame."

Not cut my hair! It will have grown long enough before any is wanted again in this wild forest. Perhaps it may never be of any use again--not till I am a woman." And she sighed.

As gently as I could, I cut with a knife a long tress of flowing, dark hair, she hanging her beautiful head over me. When I had finished, she shuddered and breathed deep, as one does when an acute pain, steadfastly endured without sign of suffering, is at length relaxed. She then took the hair and tied it round me, singing a strange, sweet song, which I could not understand, but which left in me a feeling like this--

I saw thee ne'er before;
I see thee never more;
But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,
Have made thee mine, till all my years are done."

I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me again, and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light wind that had arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a trance of still delight. It told me the secret of the woods, and the flowers, and the birds. At one time I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests, over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things--I had almost said creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers at every turn. At another, I lay half dreaming in the hot summer noon, with a book of old tales beside me, beneath a great beech; or, in autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered me, and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of decay; or, in a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I went home to a warm fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs to the cold, snowy moon, with her opal zone around her. At last I had fallen asleep; for I know nothing more that passed till I found myself lying under a superb beech-tree, in the clear light of the morning, just before sunrise. Around me was a girdle of fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought nothing with me out of Fairy Land, but memories--memories. The great boughs of the beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth stem, with its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like undeveloped limbs. The leaves and branches above kept on the song which had sung me asleep; only now, to my mind, it sounded like a farewell and a speedwell. I sat a long time, unwilling to go; but my unfinished story urged me on. I must act and wander. With the sun well risen, I rose, and put my arms as far as they would reach around the beech-tree, and kissed it, and said good- bye. A trembling went through the leaves; a few of the last drops of the night's rain fell from off them at my feet; and as I walked slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the words: "I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree."
(to be continued)


Photo by Bob Kirchman.


Photo by Bob Kirchman.

Looking for Artist
Who Can Walk on Water

The most creative job in the world involves fashion, decorating, recreation, education, transportation, psychology, romance, cuisine, literature, art, economics, government, pediatrics, geriatrics, entertainment, maintenance, purchasing, law, religion, energy and management. Anyone who can handle all of these has to be somebody special. She is. She’s a homemaker.” – Richard Kerr

If the work comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am, serve me,' then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, 'Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake'.” ― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Somewhere in my past, I owned a book of Nineteenth Century industrial illustrations. They were beautiful. Of note were the obvious details of pure ornamentation that the designers sought to put into their work. There was a sense that there was wonder to be unfolded in the inventions so delineated. Design seems to have moved sharply away from the hand-rendered transcendence of that period to a more machine-based process. There is a beautiful quality to much of that as well, but there is less direct touch to paper and process. I miss that. Still, there is a place for Divine Design. Richard Kerr’s homemaker embodies the practice of creativity. Many building designers are quite adept at assembling elements and organizing spaces on their screens, but where once they would have had creative interaction with the renderer, the press of a few buttons and the arc of the mouse take them to the visualization of their work.

This week I started to re-read Madeline L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. [1.] Not far into this fine little book one encounters the topic of obedience. L’engle puts it this way: A work of art, be it a painting, a book, or any other work, comes to the artist and says: “Here I am, Enflesh me. Give Birth to me.” The artist is faced with a choice. She may respond as Mary: “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” or she may refuse. The decision is not necessarily a conscious one. And so, as I continue to provide old-fashioned visualization for a few clients, I see the work there dwindling. Yet I am not yet ready to give up serving. There is still work to be done. For the past months, I have taught drawing and painting to a young high school student who is home schooled. There is Divine purpose there. Now the invitation has been extended to teach a unit in the home school coop. It seems the Divine mission is thus: to inspire a new generation to infuse their life in this world with the stuff that Kerr talks about. Divine mission, a Sacred trust, an invitation to join the Master in His finest work. I find myself enthused.

In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own.” -- Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art


Looking for artist... Photo by Kristina Elaine Greer.


...who can walk on water! Photo by Kristina Elaine Greer.



All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older. But they start off without self-consciousness as they paint their purple flowers, their anatomically impossible people, their thunderous, sulphurous skies. They don’t worry that they may not be as good as Di Chirico or Bracque; they know intuitively that it is folly to make comparisons, and they go ahead and say what they want to say. What looks like a hat to a grownup may, to the child artist, be an elephant inside a boa constrictor.

So what happens? Why do we lose our wonderful, rackety creativity? What corrupts us?

Corrupt: another unpopular word; another important one. It’s importance first struck me when I was reading Thomas Traherne, one of my favorite seventeenth century poets and mystics. “Certainly Adam and Eve in Paradise had not more sweete and curious apprehensions of the world than when I was a child,” he wrote. Everything was new and delightful for him. The rosy glow of sunrise had in it the flaming glory of creation. The stars at night were a living, heavenly dance. He listened to the grass growing, smelled the west wind, tasted the rain, touched the grains of sand on the shore. All hi senses, his mind, his heart, were alive and in touch with being. “So that,” Trahane adds sadly, “without much ado I as corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world, which now I unlearn, and become as a little child again, that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.”

A lot of my adult life has been spent in trying to overcome this corruption, in unlearning the dirty devices of this world, which would dull our imaginations, cut away our creativity. So it is only with the conscious-unselfconsciousness of a child that I can think about theories of asthetics, of art, particularly as these touch upon my questions about life and love and God.” -- Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."
-- Antoin de St Exupery

Higher Calling
Thought from George MacDonald


Pink Ladyslipper at White Rock Falls. Photo by Bob Kirchman

If, instead of a gem or even a flower, we could cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give."
- George Macdonald

A Gift of Beauty
Warnie's Box



This absence of beauty, now that I come to think of it, is characteristic of our childhood. No picture on the walls of my father's house ever attracted — and indeed none deserved — our attention. We never saw a beautiful building nor imagined that a building could be beautiful. My earliest aesthetic experiences, if indeed they were aesthetic, were not of that kind; they were already incurably romantic, not formal. Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest.

That was the first beauty I ever knew.

What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature — not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colours but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant. I do not think the impression was very important at the moment, but it soon became important in memory. As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden."
-- C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy [ 2.]

Fixing the Escalator
[click to read]

by Nicholas N. Eberstadt


Metro Escalator, Washington, DC. Photo by Bob Kirchman

The abstraction of “inequality” doesn’t matter a lot to ordinary Americans. The reality of economic insecurity does. [3.] The Great American Escalator is broken—and it badly needs to be fixed. With the election of 2016, Americans within the bubble finally learned that the 21st century has gotten off to a very bad start in America. Welcome to the reality. We have a lot of work to do together to turn this around. (read more)

Looking for Creative Solutionists
By Bob Kirchman

Awareness of a problem is only the beginning. What if Divine Inspiration is available to lead us to new and innovative answers to human problems? It has happened in centuries past and I firmly believe it is within our grasp now.

Poll any group of young people today and you will find a degree of pessimism about the future. As the economy faltered, ‘experts’ essentially told them: “Welcome to the new normal.” But history tells us that economies are not a zero-sum game… one where someone must lose for another to win. New invention has lifted entire societies in the past and I believe it can do so again. Consider the case of Nineteenth Century England. We all know that William Wilberforce [4.] performed a great and noble work when he won the abolition of slavery, but did you know that that devastated the economy of Bristol, England’s chief slave port. Fortunes were lost. Men committed suicide. Children were cast out onto the street. Bristol’s children faced a dismal ‘new normal’ indeed.

But a young minister from Prussia came to Bristol as a missionary. George Müller [5.] saw Bristol’s street urchins as jewels to be polished. He built five large houses at Ashley Downs to care for orphans, trusting the Divine for provision. He cared for 10,024 orphan children in the course of his life, instructing the boys in trades and the ladies for work as teachers, nurses and housekeepers. He was excoriated by the ‘experts’ for training these young people ‘above their station.’ He ignored the experts. He established 117 schools which offered Christian education to over 120,000 children. But what future would there be for them?

Pastor Tim Keller calls economic development a Deaconate Ministry. To be sure the church does this work when it sends treadle sewing machines to Zambia, so that widowed ladies may become tailors. But it is also needed in the developed world. Sometimes the instrument of Divine blessing may not even know that they are. Consider the case of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Britain’s Nineteenth Century Bridge Builder. [6.] He came to Bristol to build a suspension bridge and ended up building the Great Western Railroad, which revitalized Bristol’s economy! Brunel also designed great ships to connect Britain with the Americas, making cotton cheap and plentiful. The offshoot of this and modern textile manufacturing was that poor as well as rich could afford quality garments.

It was suggested in the Nineteenth Century that the United States Patent Office could be shut down because “everything that is going to be invented has already been invented!” Well, the truth was that much of the visionary technology depicted in Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaire would not be perfected until the Twentieth Century. Only time will tell what wonders the Divine might inspire in the decades to come, but if history is any indicator, there is much to be hopeful for!


Metro Escalator, Washington, DC. Photo by Bob Kirchman

Apollo Navigation Computer



The Ministry of Teaching Art
By Bob Kirchman


Bear by Rachel Perkins, 8th Grade.

Bezalel and Oholiab, along with everyone whom God has given the skill and know-how for making everything involved in the worship of the Sanctuary as commanded by God, are to start to work.” – Exodus 36:1

This marks the second season I have taught art with Amanda Riley at the ACE Coop in Augusta County. When I got pneumonia as a result of a reaction to a mural clear-coat I was applying, I was forced to prioritize life anew. Even in recovery my energy has been somewhat limited so I find that in addition to the obvious drive to spend time with my granddaughters, the things on top of my priorities are getting back to full speed teaching our high school and middle school studio courses. You see, I find a lot of purpose in teaching art these days. The reasons surprise me as well. These days I am not so impressed with what I can teach in the way of technique and background – though that is important. Knowledge is not the end, but rather a means toward the true end. That is allowing each student to discover that part of IMAGO DEI that drives THEM to create.

I find myself being taught by my students more than they are being taught by me. I spend less time lecturing and more time observing – ‘catching’ our students in the act of expressing that part of the Divine nature. And the class has never been so much fun! What’s more, I take great joy in the fact that my apprentices Kristina and Savhanna both are actively teaching young people now! This is a far greater joy than comes from simply being copied. The world is richer because another generation has entered the game!

The True Reason to Teach Art

This is not so much a criticism, but an observation. I do not think many of us who teach art understand the true importance of it. I think art instruction can miss the mark aiming high or low. The first type of program I will discuss certainly aims high. That is one whose goal is to produce professionals. This particular program, of necessity, is concerned with technique mastery and measurable goals. That is not a bad thing in itself, especially for those who are so motivated. In such a program it may be sometimes observed that art loses its ‘joy’ as a student becomes more proficient in technique. Furthermore, if the program stresses non-representational art, the professional opportunities may not be as widespread as the course description suggests. You might have best in show in your student exhibition only to find that you cannot sell your work in the greater community. For me, architectural rendering was a way to do art and get paid for it. Some do not consider it ‘real’ art. That is beside the point.

The other tendency is to aim low. Art is seen as part of a ‘well rounded’ curriculum, but is not pursued for its own sake at all. At university, our art faculty was constantly dogged with the expectation that they ‘contribute to a well-rounded education,’ but were always subservient to ‘academics.’ Some of us DID need to pursue professional opportunities, and so Ray Prohaska, my mentor, exhorted me to ‘get out there, work and learn stuff!’ That was probably the best advice anyone ever gave me. He had been a successful New York illustrator before his ‘retirement’ where he taught in a succession of Southern colleges. Indeed he knew that you had to take your portfolio and go knocking. Ray knew the mixture included inspiration AND perspiration, His strength as a teacher came precisely because he had been in the New York art scene, not academia, for the bulk of his career.

Ray saw something in me – not unlike the something I would see in my own mentees. That is now most instructive as I have struggled to become a teacher in my own right. Our job is not to make students in our own image. They are already made in the image of One better according to Genesis 1. Our job is to help each one of them discover the genius within them. We do that best when we watch and encourage. Yes, technique is important, but it is a tool to be given to the aspiring artist. They are like young plants that need to be nurtured – and care must be taken not to trample them. Since I have been encouraged in this direction, teaching is a lot more fun! The discoveries have been amazing! I am thankful for the opportunity to teach this way.

Most people, I have found, can do a pretty good drawing of items that they are passionate about. This is due to their self-motivated observation in these areas. That should be a springboard for introducing technique. We just looked at the life of Leonardo da Vinci and it is clear that his art fueled his inventiveness in a range of fields. The skills of observation evident in his notebooks shows us that art can be so much more than a nice ‘rounding out’ of our education – it can help us develop fundamental skills in observation and interpretation in just about any walk of life. Thus art instruction should embrace the unique individual and seek to train the hand and eye – as preparation for Divine inspiration and service. That is consistent with the belief that our service on this earth in any field can be elevated to worship.

Profession, Hobby, or Foundation for Critical Thinking

One of our graduates last year planned an important mural project during the Summer. She was somewhat apologetic about her plans to study nursing in the fall – like “if you are strong in the arts, you should pursue them as a profession.” I am actually thrilled that she sees opportunity in what should be called the HEALING ARTS. You see, if Da Vinci’s drawing skills helped him gain new insights into anatomy, why shouldn’t the modern day personification of the Renaissance person find similar insight in her own studies. So often I have seen doctors struggle to “see it” when it comes to a diagnosis. The trained eye and hand of observation could just be the edge necessary in a critical point of diagnosis! And guess what? Later in life there may be opportunity to see where the path of art leads. England’s great wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill became a very productive painter later in his life.

When Alan Bean went to the moon, he was also an artist. The mission of an astronaut is all consuming but Bean would add a critical element to our observation of the moon through his art after the Apollo Program ended. Georg Wilhelm Steller, the German botanist, zoologist, physician and explorer, who worked in Russia and is considered a pioneer of Alaskan natural history, sailed with Vitus Bering on his voyages of discovery. His drawings added much to the understanding of natural history in the newly explored region.

My point is that art can (and should) become very much a part of a person’s methodology in observation. Our training should lead us to become better observers and better imaginers to the end that we might all be better at analyzing and solving the challenges we face in our lives. Although it may indeed find fulfillment in profession or avocation, art should be seen rightfully as another tool of critical thinking.

And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the Lord hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; And he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship; And to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, And in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work. And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.” – Exodus 35:30-35


Steller’s Arch on Bering Island. Photo by Арка Стеллера.