This item is a lithograph poster, Mr. Mays has this to say about the Long Day:

THE LONG DAY

How and why it was painted, and in this way.?

FIRST OF ALL IT MUST BE ?SEEN? IN THE PAINTERS HEAD.......?

I believe that the Bible, New Testament is a story that we can all understand better if we can make a mental image and ?make it all happen now?. The Old Testament is a real sword and guts history course full of fire works and blood.... but the New Testament is a marvelous series of lessons, which so very easily can fit today and tomorrow!?

So when I picked up the wide brush and ?flatted in? a landscape and realizing that it needed a waters edge I painted the landscape as I know it. The ?old world painters? used the scenes familiar to their eyes!?

I couldn?t put it all in, so I began and let myself travel around, and in the lower left I saw a country inn with a NO VACANCY sign and I realized that behind it would be a suitable cowshed over which I could hang a star........ (I did) (I took it out... too obvious)....... Could that be a clambake at the church? No, the tent is for a wedding reception, the crossroads is called Cana! They had run out of something impotant for a wedding feast, and so I decided that the big milk cans would have been used for the water. So I arranged to have the milk cans blessed.?

Across the road is a small house owned by a couple of maiden ladies, who had helped at the church affair and hurried home to entertain an important guest who was a dear friend of their brother Lazarus (who was out with the fishing fleet)...... The scene says ?Will you please tell my sister to come help me, I can?t do everything myself!? Mary smiles at their guest, she has heard this story before.?

Down the road behind the church something is going on at the bend of the stream. It is an old fashioned baptism conducted by a very good man named John, and there is something very important about this ceremony because a couple of people thought they heard a voice (but weren?t quite sure).?

There is a boy in rags, who is dirty and dusty and very thin.... The house is a mansion and the man who owns it is running down the driveway with tears in his eyes because his prayer has been answered, his boy has come home.?

Up the far hill close to the water where the fishing is usually pretty good is a whopping big crowd. Only somebody with spellbinding magic could hold their attention like this. You could hear a quahog shell drop...... We overhear him saying things like... ?Blessed are the meek? The crowd relaxes but their attention is glued to the speaker... What a voice... He could sell them anything on that sunny afternoon..... And across the way a little closer to the village probably later the same day, after the question and answer period people realized they were hungry and one bright young man who was greatly moved at what he had heard opened his backpack and his heart and said ?I have a lunch my mother packed for me, I?ll share it...? The speaker who had given the talk smiled and swallowed a lump in his throat........ ?Here? he thought ?this afternoon was really worth it..... This young man will never know but he has broken the secret of God?s magical abundance.... There IS enough in the world for everybody...??

Walking back to the village with the crowd following after they had cleaned up the picnic ground, the teacher spotted a little guy up a tree, and smiled knowing here was another kindred spirit... ?Come down? he said ?I want to have supper at your house tonight!? Nicodemus was so excited, He knows my name, that he almost fell out of the tree.?

On the shore road there is a graveyard. In the graveyard is a new tomb not even inscribed with the name Arimathea, ordered by a rich man who was always thinking far ahead........ Yes, the tomb would be used but not by him..... It would be used for three days only sometime in the near future........ He would be buried in a foreign land under a flowering tree.... Could this be the road that three very learned men who claimed to be following a star, came to the village by, about thirty two years ago??

So many things had happened since then... There even had been men put to death by soldiers on the hill by the lighthouse..... People said they were innocent!?

And yet the sun is shining today..... Because to

day is every day.... And all life is a circle and there is no beginning and no end....

NO BEGINNING AND NO END.....?

The time is always now and the only power is the power of LOVE which is the warmth of the sun. And the warmth of people. Who have learned the real reason that a little rabbi taught them.?

THE GREATEST LAW OF ALL IS TO LOVE GOD AND TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER.?

Which to me is exactly the same thing!?

And we know that out of this love comes laughter, security, health and an endless supply of treasure to give!?

GOD GAVE US THE GIFT OF LIFE, LET?S LIVE!