Waiting...

from years ago at the Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI.

Writing an Introduction

For most people I sense that writing is a lost art form. Few people I know take the time to write notecards or letters. I suppose it is the sign of our times. Most people in our culture do not write. 

I write everyday. I keep journals. And I will write letters and notecards to people. I feel bad when a week or two goes by and I haven't written to someone. 

Recently I took the first real steps towards something I have been thinking about for some time now. The thing is a book. It is a book for my children and grandchildren. I want to present them with the stories of my life. Getting started has not been easy, just like trying to explain here what I am trying to do is not easy. In a sense the stories of my family have been lost as our collective memories fade. What I wish to do is write the stories of my memories and where I can, share the stories of our family. My hope is that another generation will not pass without having some small account of our family written down. 

I have made some progress in a few areas but have struggled recently with introducing what I am doing to family who will read this. Hopefully. I have written four to five different drafts and came up with another today. I felt I would share it here.

In mid-July of 2018 I read John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. It is a thoughtful telling of an older Steinbeck traveling across the country to reconnect with America. He had written about American but hadn’t really been in America for many years. He kept himself to the east and west coasts. It was a good book to read.

He reflects on the thoughts of another writer, Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe died in 1939. He was just thirty-nine years old (the same age as my father when he died). His first novel, Look Homeward, Angel was published in 1929. The book is a part of my library and I directed a production of a play adapted from the novel in 1984. His book You Can’t Go Home Again was published posthumously in 1940. Steinbeck agrees with Wolfe’s thoughts by writing “You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”

In wrapping up Travels with Charley Steinbeck says, “In the beginning of this record I tried to explore the nature of journeys, how they are things in themselves, each one an individual and not two alike.” I agree.

I seem to be continually wishing to be on a journey and what Steinbeck wrote is something I wish to remember. Just like someone cannot go home again to that place that once was, one could not recreate a journey that has already been taken. The destination may be the same but the people and the experience will be different.

It doesn't really introduce the stories, but it might open a curtain behind which the memories lie. It might set one's mind to wondering what did happen back then. If not, then it gave me the opportunity to think on the thoughts of Wolfe and Steinbeck and that is not entirely a bad thing. 

Postings from The Lake District - I

Some time has passed since I shared a photograph from the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Life goes on and as many people are, I too have been busy. A few months ago I decided to take my desire to strike out on an adventure seriously and packed my cameras and my bag for England. I joined an old friend and together we spent a week in Cumbria; in the Lake District to be more precise.

Time has been such that I have been prevented to settling down to review the photos I took. But today I felt that more time had gone by than I wanted and decided to sit down and begin work on my next 20 photos... book.. Here is the beginning.

This photograph looks as though it could have been taken anywhere. Not the case. This particular tableau is found in the garden at Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey. Hill Top was the home of Beatrix Potter and this setting pays homage to her precocious creation, Peter Rabbit. 

The evening following my visit to Hill Top, I wrote to my wife telling her that I could see us settling into a quiet life of retirement in Near Sawrey. In that small hamlet, I imagine a life of reading, writing, puttering in the garden, walks in the countryside and sharing an evening of conversation with friends at the Tower Bank Arms.

A man can dream. 

An Afternoon at the Frist

a rainy weekend

perfect day for kandinsky

tea and cakes and talk

New Years Day 2015

The first cup has been poured from the French press and I have made my way upstairs to begin to write.

The new year has dawned and with it all the hopes and dreams that have piled up, waiting for this day. What the year holds will only be discovered in the the course of time. The hope is that it begins well, then perhaps it will end well. At the very least, having looked ahead, we have increased the odds for happy endings. The glorious reality though is that it is all in God’s hands. It is as it says in Proverbs 16:9, “The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”

And so it is with me this new year. 

In this morning’s local paper appeared an article written by Professor Edward Fischer, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University. In the article titled “Resolve to have experiences, not Rolexes,” he encourages the reader to:

• Place a higher value on a sense of purpose in life;
• Put aside the dream of things in setting priorities, and focus on improving relationships and experiences; and
• Do not be defined by things.

These are not new ideals. Like myself, many people now look at life as more than a collection of things. We look at life asking, what can we do to live as full a life as possible, not how full we can make the home in which we live. We search for ways to spend our money so that it leaves us with a sense of accomplishment and a wonderful memory, and not with something else to gather dust on a shelf. We wish to discover that thing, or things in our life that defines who we are and answers the question, “this is why I lived.”

As a spiritual person, as a Christian, I know that the greatest task I can undertake is to live my life for God! Submitting myself to His will, to have it revealed to me day-by-day as I walk in relationship with Him, is the greatest purpose for my life. Through this, all other aspects of my life are defined, refined, and given meaning.

Will I continue to make my plans? Certainly. I have goals: books to read, words to write, places to travel to, parts to play and songs to sing. More importantly, I have people to love! These things are the color of life. The purpose of life, “my determined purpose is to be my utmost for His highest - my best for His glory.*”

In the new year, amid all the plans, all the hopes, dreams and desires is this - live my life for and closer to my Lord!

May the Lord bless you in this New Year and through all of your days!

~ Greg

* My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, 1 January 

Sunflower

"Looking into the Center of the Sun"

copyright Greg Grimsley Creative

In Leiper's Fork

Southwest of Nashville lies the small town of Leiper's Fork. The Fork, as it is called by the locals, is a great place for music, for food, for art and for photos.