And so it was that summer, that I picked up my brushes and paints, and having been born again in my spirit, I simply asked . the Lord to lead me, and began again.

The change in my work since that summer of 1970 has been due to the shifting of my inner eye away from myself and onto the Lord as the source of my creativity. That made the whole difference. When I stopped looking for inspiration inside myself and began looking to the Lord for it, I discovered the copious fountain of His revelation, pouring out from paradise.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new" (II Cor,, 5:17) This is precisely what I began to experience from the time I was baptized, and have continued to experience ever since. In some profoundly mystical fashion, Light years beyond my small powers to relate or understand, I began to see things through the eyes of the Lord. The physical world, everything - leaves, shells, hills, plants, birds, grass, desert, water, bugs, trees, sea, stems - began to appear extraordinarily beautiful, living in a dimension which I had never known. It was as if a veil had been drawn back and I was invited to investigate the intricate glories of nature, to open myself toward the wonders which began to explain themselves to my eyes. I was astonished, and then became accustomed to being astonished by the marvelous variety and inter-relationship of all things. I observed that galaxies can occur in the same form as a hurricane, that respiratory systems can resemble the branches of trees or the mouth of a river or the skeleton of a leaf, that wind may move in the same motion as water does, that the solar system is in the same configuration as the atoms, and that all but the smallest parts of these inter-relationships and perfect beauty is too large or small or subtle or faraway to see.

Once, I was sitting alone, watching the mild movement of a resting sea. Overhead, pillowy clouds were sailing by. It came to me that man is made in the image of God. I began to conceive of a vast, infinite power in the physical form of a man, and to accept in my spirit that the clouds and the ocean before me were infinitesimal particles of God's form, that I was actually beholding a tiny part -the smallest part of an atom, perhaps - of the physical body of God. But I sensed that I must be somehow perceiving: a segment of His spirit also, because spirit is what God is, according to my faith.

Once, as I was drawing, I suddenly noticed that I did not understand the part that I was rendering, and that I was covering up that part with a fraudulent little trick of draftsmanship! Then I was further startled to realize that I had been doing this unconsciously for many years. Whenever I came to a portion of a drawing which I did not know how to render- the foreshortening of an arm, for example - I would fake it, or obscure that part in some way. I had, in fact, unwittingly developed a large repertoire of these subtle graphic deceptions to hide my deficiencies. I was aghast. Who do I think I've been kidding? I wondered. Soon I made a decision. I resolved to quit drawing when I came to a segment which I did not understand, to observe that segment until I did understand it, and then to draw that part until I could render it with complete authority. Furthermore, I determined to transform these weakest portions of my drawing into the strongest ones. This has been a positive process, of course, helping my draftsmanship to "pull itself up by its own bootstraps" so to speak. These efforts have also led me into a thorough investigation of form, and the effects of light upon it. This is a fascinating study, one which still informs my art and continues, however slowly, to chip away at my perceptual shortcomings.

These art-related experiences were proving fruitful and plentiful. They were merely indicative, however, of even better things going on in my life.