Another Day in the Country
A spiritual experience
© Another Day in the Country
This past weekend, I celebrated my birthday with a very unexpected, wildly extravagant, lovely gift from my sister.
She knows there is nothing I enjoy more than going somewhere, and so on this auspicious occasion, she gave me the gift of going to Bentonville, Arkansas, to experience (among other things) the Crystal Bridges Art Gallery.
She knew that I had wanted to go see this amazing place ever since the gallery opened Nov, 11, 2011.
You can imagine that anyone who planned a gallery to open on an auspicious date like 11/11/11 also would attend to other ways to make guests comfortable, excited, blessed, enlivened, and satiated just by being on the grounds.
To add to the playful fun, a restaurant where you can find yummy things to eat is called Eleven. The staff is delightful, the view spectacular, and the food good.
While I was enjoying every inch of this place, I kept thinking of the lady who facilitated it and the architect who got the fun of dreaming all this up and making it a reality.
You can Google that information while I tell you what a wonderful weekend I had celebrating another year of life.
How many places have you been where there was beauty of every kind, comfort at every turn, creativity around every corner, and constant delight in discovery?
Where would you go to experience so much pleasure for free! Yes, you read right — no admission. All you are required to do is get there!
I texted my friend Norma, “Guess where I’m celebrating my birthday!”
When I told her, she answered, “Do you know that it’s listed No. 5 in the 10 best places to go in the United States?”
No matter your feelings toward big conglomerates like Walmart, I promise you’ll come away grateful for how they’ve taken a little nowhere town and made it like everyone’s dream of the perfect small town in rural America.
They’ve helped preserve the town square and all the old original buildings around it. They continue to inspire with small town wonders like music in the park in the evening, farmers markets on the weekend, and a dash of history reminding us of how things used to be.
In all my years of experiencing art in museums, I’ve never imagined a place like Crystal Bridges.
Usually, big art museums, from the ones in Wichita to the Smithsonian in Washington, are enclosed, carefully climate-controlled edifices for preserving and protecting the best of what humans have created.
The art is behind glass, light limited, and we are asked to walk through carefully and not to touch.
This wildly imagined repository of beauty called Crystal Bridges not only preserves paintings and artifacts but also unexpectedly invites you to touch and even create art on your own while visiting..
You’ll see a painting of a lady from antiquity dressed in velvets and lace. If you are paying attention, you’ll find a black box in the corner that you can reach inside with your hand and feel the textures the artist was trying to paint.
In the middle of the room are cozy chairs to sit in as you drink in the beauty around you.
You can turn a corner and see an expanse that celebrates nature’s creation. It’s Arkansas’s landscape, covered with blue skies, sheltered with trees and flowers, and fed by sparkling water.
The building defies gravity, perching over natural springs, and bypasses tradition with transparent walls of glass.
You really need to experience it for yourself.
Jess planned the whole trip, researching where to stay and what restaurants we might eat at since we so enjoy good food and unique settings.
When we arrived Thursday she had dinner reservations at a place called The Preacher’s Son in downtown Bentonville.
Yes, the restaurant is in an old church, built in the 1800s. The congregation kept its fellowship going for a hundred years.
When there were too few to keep it going, the building was sold to — wait for it — a preacher’s son who was also a chef.
He operated this establishment for years, and then there were a variety of owners until now — all keeping the name as well as a menu continuing to be a perfect example of higher inspiration.
They don’t serve Southern cuisine, but it’s definitely soul food in its most lofty sense.
“Does this mean you are a houseguest of God?” my grandson quipped when he found out where we were eating.
“Yes,” I answered, “I believe that’s what we all are on this Earth — houseguests.”
It was three days of intense celebration, starting out by eating at The Preacher’s Son and then coming home as two preacher’s daughters.
We stopped at Jirak’s for roasting ears, made mashed potatoes and gravy for supper — thankful for the spiritual experience, grateful to be home safely, and glad to be spending another day in the country.