everything is a firework

I did something terrible two days ago.

I have a 150+ year old giant hackberry in front of my house. Its trunk at the bottom is 6 feet in diameter. It is, without question, one of the biggest and oldest trees in the zip code.

The branches that spread off its mammoth trunk are like trees themselves, easily over 2-3 feet in diameter.

The arborist described it as three trees in one.

There are a lot of hackberries in our neighborhood, but usually they don't make it this long. When hackberries are young, they grow wide and thick like a shrub and were used as wind barriers on the edges of farm plots. That's likely what ours started as in the mid-1800s.

It provided excellent filtered shade to my front yard as well as my neighbors.

Both of the kids learned to swing on the rope swing hanging from its branches.

And two days ago, we cut it down.

What remains of it now is a stump 6 inches tall and a blizzard of sawdust all over my house and the sidewalk.

What kind of monster am I?

Well, actually, I am just protecting my family, my home, and my neighbor's home.

5 out of 5 arborists said it needed to be removed immediately. A crack coming down from a cavity at the top of the trunk had grown to about 5 feet long and widened significantly just in the seven weeks we were gone during the summer.

And we get tornadoes and crazy storms around here.

Unfortunately, it was time. Really sad.

It's ironic, but I feel like this is just how life is. You can plan, but it just happens to you. Things change, and the ground shifts.

Last week I was thinking about landscaping the backyard. Today, the front yard is clearly in need of the most love.

I feel terrible for our next-door neighbor. She has an incredible shade garden in her front yard that she works on for hours a day. The garden is her life. She has built this up since 2007 and planted hundreds, maybe thousands of tulip bulbs.

Two days ago, she had lots of shade for her ferns, dogwoods, and everything else I don't know the name of.

Today, there is none, just stark sun.

Watching her water what used to be her shaded sanctuary made me think of something I've been reading every morning - this commentary on the Four Gospels (highly highly reccomend if you are interested). Particularly, this reflection by Bishop Robert Barron where he says,

"Everything, finally, is haunted by nonbeing. Everything in life is ultimately a firework."

Even this mammoth tree.

The reason playing with my kids in the morning is so special is that it's temporary and fleeting. They can mess up our beautiful home as much as they want. I know what I'll care about in 10 or 40 years.

All of this has made me think more about what life I am building and the foundation I am building on. Hopefully, a firm one and something that endures. That's ultimately the point of religious faith or values - an anchor that stands outside of time in the constantly shifting human experience.

When you start thinking like this, it's easy to say that design and beauty are just vanity and don't matter.

But what are the things that give us a transcendent experience in life, a taste of the divine and of something eternal? What are the things that humans seek to preserve even after civilization is gone?

Beautiful things.

Walking through an 800-year-old cathedral built by workers and architects and patrons who knew they'd never see it completed, or standing before art that has moved people for centuries - these give us a taste of something that feels very much outside of time.

My mentor from afar, though he knows it not, Rick Rubin, said that the best art is ultimately "an offering to God. To make the best possible creation rather than being driven by opinion, budget, or outcome."

We should all do it more. We won't be able to do it forever.

some things i saw this week

Mammoth Cave. Got to take my family and meet more family and friends there. It is HUGE and they keep discovering more and more of it.

The temperature change when you walk in front of the opening in the woods is wild. An immediate 25-degree difference that you can feel from 100 feet away.

Being in a space like that makes you realize that the world used to be a lot darker—no electricity, fewer windows, candelight.

It's a nice way to live and stands in stark contrast to 6+ LED cans in every modern room, new construction of today. I think we could all stand to be a little more comfortable in the dark.

Contemporary arrangements by Hart Floral. Come on, how great is this stuff! The use of sunflowers really gets me. I always stereotype them as such a normie Americana sunshine and pickup trucks flower, but not here.

​Mira Wall Mirror by Virginia Sin. This is really simple and very cool. She is a talented and prolific ceramic artist, great at minimalist, striking forms.

If you pick really good things, you need less things.