Author Archives: Chip Cain

Coming Alive – Spiritual Healing

By Chip Cain | Published January 15, 2009

Howard Thurman has said “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs – ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” This is often quoted in leadership books and ads for nursing schools or similar degree programs but is that all [...]

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The Gift of The Unknown

By Chip Cain | Published January 12, 2009

As our culture changes, Walter Brueggemann has observed, we must restate eternal truths in order for them to remain truthful. For the faithful, the artistic imagination can safeguard the strangeness and newness of the gospel, preserving it from domestication by our ideologies and culture. This year, the Trinity Arts Conference theme urges us to curiosity [...]

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To become aware

By Chip Cain | Published January 11, 2009

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life…. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. –Walker Percy

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Te Deum

By Chip Cain | Published December 31, 2008

Not because of victories I sing, having none, but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largess of the spring. Not for victory but for the day’s work done as well as I was able; not for a seat upon the dais but at the common table. by Charles Reznikof

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Silent World

By Chip Cain | Published December 29, 2008

Hi folks, I know it’s been a while since posting here; the site is not forgotten but I find myself focused on more than I have time for.  I wish I could resolve to post here daily, or weekly at least, but that would be to set myself up for failure. As I said this [...]

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WineKing Galleries

By Chip Cain | Published November 3, 2008

Not long ago I had the pleasure of meeting two artists, Jess Lopez-King and An Wine. The pleasure was unexpected since we met at a cemetery just before the service to bury my brother-in-law John.  Unexpected to be sure but very appropriate since John & I shared an interest in art and time together at [...]

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In A Word "Wordle"

By Chip Cain | Published September 1, 2008

Something random and something fun from Wordle. Provide Wordle a URL and it will do the rest. Or simply cut and paste some text and it will create a Wordle picture. Art? probably not, but it’s cool! And a lot of fun. Give Wordle your favorite blog or even your own blog address just as [...]

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Everything is borrowed

By Chip Cain | Published August 31, 2008

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8BHL5SWX0Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1] Just something I came across, while surfing, from The Streets.

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Paperclay

By Chip Cain | Published August 29, 2008

Part paper, part clay and very cool! It’s fired just as you would any clay but let Angela Mellor show you what skill & inspiration can do with this medium. Her work is airy, colorful and inspired by an organic interest in this earth we live on. After visiting her works come back and let [...]

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A line of peace . . .

By Chip Cain | Published August 17, 2008

A line of peace might appear if we restructure the sentence our lives are making, revoked it’s reaffermation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses . . . Denise Levertov

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Typolution

By Chip Cain | Published August 17, 2008

Minimalist art from a typewriter or so it would seem. All the images are built using the type found on a typewriter. Simple, graceful, and full of Story! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVPfTlpCKaw&hl=en&fs=1] Worth the 3:11 minutes of your time

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Vladimir Tatlin

By Chip Cain | Published August 10, 2008

Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed the huge Monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin’s Tower. Planned in 1920, the monument, was to be a tall tower in iron, glass and steel which would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris (the Monument to the Third International was a third taller [...]

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Olga's Gallery

By Chip Cain | Published August 2, 2008

The above is a sampling of the quality of paintings to be viewed online at Olga’s Gallery. From the painter Fra Angelico (c1395-1455) to Edvard Munch (c1863-1944) the works are all stunning and many in number. There are over 10,000 works of art to view; assuming you had the time. They don’t pay me to [...]

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The Color Keeper

By Chip Cain | Published July 17, 2008

Here is something I stumbled across (isn’t that how we find everything?). I knew I had to share it here even though it is a small work as art goes, but with a big heart. The background music is by J Tillman from his “Minor Works” The Color Keeper from Grandchildren on Vimeo.

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Something more than art; The Mathew's House Project

By Chip Cain | Published July 14, 2008

The Mathew’s House Project (MHP) mission statement is simple and short laying down a challenge to listen differently: I include the entire mission statement below. “Since 1999, The Matthew’s House Project has sought to develop places in which faith and culture can be explored. We seek to promote a different sort of listening. This sort [...]

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Natural Sculpture

By Chip Cain | Published July 10, 2008

Bonnie Ferrill Roman has developed a style of sculpting that is organic, often fluid in appearence and always a surprise to see. She begins her Artist’s Statement with “I believe that the transcendent experience of beauty is vital to the life of the soul, and this precept has always been at the core of why [...]

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It’s been a while . . .

By Chip Cain | Published July 9, 2008

Yes, the end of April was the last time I posted to this blog. I think the poem a day exhuasted me and I had to take a break from being sure a new post (poem) was available. Then came too many other cares and issues for me to get started. I guess now is [...]

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I give myself to it

By Chip Cain | Published May 1, 2008

Although April 30th signals the end of National Poetry Month I sincerely hope you have enjoyed the poems and are inspired to pursue some on your own. I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. -Rilke

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Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes

By Chip Cain | Published April 30, 2008

The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty [...]

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Why, then, do I reject the bliss

By Chip Cain | Published April 29, 2008

On Preparing to Open the Bible Why must I measure my accomplishments against sick and dying, the saint, the confessor, Mary mourning the passage of a son so superior to ordinary man the He, according to our Lord, could die for one and all. I live, and do the best I can. And yet I [...]

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How wrong we both were

By Chip Cain | Published April 28, 2008

I Married You I married you for all the wrong reasons, charmed by your dangerous family history, by the innocent muscles, bulging like hidden weapons under your shirt, by your naive ties, the colors of painted scraps of sunset. I was charmed too by your assumptions about me: my serenity — that mirror waiting to [...]

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Paper Ballet or Mechanics of Evaporation? I say "Art!"

By Chip Cain | Published April 28, 2008

Thomas Kovachevich has [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI6MgOHS5lg&rel=0]

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'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse

By Chip Cain | Published April 25, 2008

Being Boring ‘May you live in interesting times.’ Chinese curse   If you ask me ‘What’s new?’, I have nothing to say Except that the garden is growing. I had a slight cold but it’s better today. I’m content with the way things are going. Yes, he is the same as he usually is, Still [...]

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An apology to William Doreski and Nancy Henry

By Chip Cain | Published April 24, 2008

If you read today’s poem ‘Death of An Old Dog’ earlier today and cameback to it again and thought the author’s name is different, you would be correct. I errantly assiged the poem to William Doreski when it was written by Nancy Henry. Both poets are personal favorites of mine which is in part why [...]

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Wanna meet a poet? How about 50 Poets?

By Chip Cain | Published April 24, 2008

 Here are two short films from REMproductions, one showing you 50 poets (more or less) that you should take the time to write down their names and spend your evening getting to know them through the magic of Google.  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4jpJSCGsWk&hl=en]   So you’re a poet.  What happens when people ask poets what they do for [...]

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She lies down there to be sipped up by the dewy grasses

By Chip Cain | Published April 24, 2008

Death of the Old Dog It is time for the old dog to slip down beneath the grass, to taste the sharp iron of earth on her broad lolling tongue, to yield the sap of her eyes to the blind worm and her thick brown pelt to the cold roots of the twisted Northern Spy [...]

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There is time to read

By Chip Cain | Published April 23, 2008

The Perfect Day You wake with no aches in the arms of your beloved to the smell of fresh coffee you eat a giant breakfast with no thought of carbs there is time to read with a purring cat on your lap later you walk by the ocean with your dog on this cut crystal [...]

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Some interesting links for Earth Day

By Chip Cain | Published April 22, 2008

An Iranian Environmental Arts Festival . . . . imagine that. As we already knew, a closer look reveals more similarities than diferences. I do not deny that there are problems with the iranian government and that the government is made up of people but not all people in Iran are government. Here are Tree [...]

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Earth Day is just a reminder for everyday

By Chip Cain | Published April 22, 2008

Earth Day Dirt

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Yet still the unresting castles thresh

By Chip Cain | Published April 22, 2008

The Trees The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet [...]

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To coax an inquisitive soul

By Chip Cain | Published April 21, 2008

Happiness Because yesterday morning from the steamy window we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek eating the last windfall apples in the rain – they looked up at us with their green eyes long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things and then went back to eating – and because this [...]

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I am burned out of it like the melody underneath

By Chip Cain | Published April 18, 2008

Diary Spring is not so very promising as it is the thing that looking back was fire, promising: ignition, aspiration; it was not under my thumb. Now when I pretend a future it is the moment he holds the thing I say new-born, delicate, sure to begin moving but I am burned out of it [...]

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I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

By Chip Cain | Published April 17, 2008

The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking [...]

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. . . caught in the eye. It stays

By Chip Cain | Published April 16, 2008

The Sycamore Gathers The sycamore gathers out of the sky, white in the glance that looks up to it through the black crisscross of the window. But it is not a glance that it offers itself to. It is no lightning stroke caught in the eye. It stays, an old holding in place. And its [...]

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Quotation

By Chip Cain | Published April 16, 2008

“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” -Carl Sandburg

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