Roger Vincent Jasaitis

I shall…state only one more effort to prove the objective reality of the spiritual world. For, honestly, all these arguments leave me cold. Even if they were sound- and none of them is watertight- they would only quiet my intellectual questionings. They would never motivate me to absolute dedication to Him for whom I yearn. But religious men are dedicated men, joyously enslaved men, bondservants of God and of His Christ, given in will to God. Arguments are devised subsequent to our deep conviction, not preceding our conviction. They bolster faith; they do not create it.

The… argument is this: Here is a world, amazingly complex, astonishingly interknit. Here are flowers, depending upon bees for pollination, and bees dependent upon flowers for food. Yonder are the starry heavens, adjusted, maintained, wheeling their way through staggering spaces in perfect rhythm and order.

Whence comes it all, if not from God? And here am I, a complex being, of amazing detail of body and astounding reaches of mind. Yet my parents didn’t make me; they are as incapable of being my true cause as I am incapable of being the true cause of my children. This whole spectacle is too vast, too well articulated to be caused by any single thing in the world. There must be a cause outside and beneath the whole, which I call God, Who creates, maintains, and preserves the whole world order. -Thomas Kelly, 1939, Quaker

Here we have another take on nature and Spirit from a work by Thomas Kelly entitled Reality of the Spiritual World. I find that this follows my line of thought in Suchness and Spirit and Meet Jane Katherine, my two previous posts. I made this image of a jack in the pulpit while I was out painting this week. An appropriate name considering…

With spring having arrived here in Vermont and the woodland wildflowers in bloom, I will be showing 3 early spring paintings, celebrating the rebirth of the landscape, at the Southern Vermont Art Center in a new show; Printemps, Visions of Spring. The show runs from May 18- June 30, 2013.  I hope that you can visit for a look.