Author Archives: storehaufovic

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Sheer

20 Monday May 2013

Sheer

sheer
/SHi(ə)r/
Adjective
Nothing other than; unmitigated (used for emphasis): “she giggled with sheer delight”.
Adverb
Perpendicularly: “the ridge fell sheer”.
Noun
A very fine or diaphanous fabric or article.
A sudden deviation from a course, esp. by a boat.
The upward slope of a ship’s lines toward the bow and stern.
Verb
(typically of a boat or ship) Swerve or change course quickly.

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true dialogue

20 Saturday Apr 2013

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The overexposed world. What is His response? Not silence,  or vanish -ability, silent passivity!  Perhaps, such profound dialogue with the true identity- in image, sound, thought, that the enemy is dissipated, displaced, unable to discourse with the intensity of the content of His Conversing.

How to pray?

18 Thursday Apr 2013

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Enter the aspect of Jesus which is interceding. It’s a priestly dimension. And from His space in prayer comes the heart of God to bring about change on earth. Everything follows from this central practice. It was the key to Jesus’ spirituality while on earth; and Paul’s later, who wrote to the Philippians that it actually allowed him to have the affections of Christ. That is the goal of prayer. Not just to get answers, but through communion with Him as He is interceding for people, cities and nations, and the entire planet. to see the whole situation, from within The Heart of God. You are being allowed to overhear a conversation between the Son and The Father–that’s where the power to change things is.

 

His Day

18 Thursday Apr 2013

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This is the day that The Lord made–that is the DAY we want to live in, and it is from within His Day that we rejoice. If we are not in His Day, ask Him to guide us into it. Yes, Lord lead me into “Your” day today. Amen, in Jesus wonderful name. There is another day that the fleshly nature makes; this flesh wars to have you lead and dwell in its day, rather than the day that God wants to give you. Enter into His day each day.

 

H.U.B.

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

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The HUB of our faith:

Forgive my alliteration (baptist background), but sometimes mnemonic devices help me remember what I know.

Here are three basic conditions for God to enter into any situation including the situation of identity or who we are personally and collectively: that we be holy, united and burdened.

(Of course, He makes us ripe for all three of these characteristics of His, by Grace. We do not get holy, united and burdened by works (religion), but by His impartation! And, i think, by request and desire for them!

Holiness speaks of purity, wholeness, and being in the sanctification (sanctify comes from the same root word) process in every area of our lives (being made whole, even as He is whole…). And praying for His wholeness and purity of being, to enter every area of Reality around us-our neighborhoods, cities and nations. Isn’t this what praying for our neighborhoods and cities really is–to “pray-in His Holiness”. A pure expression is holy. God, uninterrupted,  in His creation would be the ultimate holy expression of Himself. This is what it will be like when His Kingdom has fully come. This is what we are partnering with Him in birthing on the earth. And this desire for holiness is one aspect of the mandate to cultivate the earth and cause it to be fruitful, and to multiply after its own kind. To reproduce Him, and in doing so make everything whole and  fruitful.

United, speaks of integration of all the parts of self, as well as between people and parts of the Church and society as a whole.To bring together the parts, to reconcile them into one whole united expression is typified by Nehemiah’s wall around the city of Jerusalem metaphorically. Nations struggle to be unified in purpose, because there is a specific warfare set against all unified expressions.

And yet, it is our destiny to be unified! It is His unification of the city of God within us, as well as in this world, that this area imparts a passion for. This includes our intercessions for the unity of His Church–His mystical Body with her many parts, member or aspects, as well as our cities and our nations. What happens in us by His Spirit, effects the whole-the micro effects and models the macro! If we can allow Him to model unification within us, we are able to minister unity outside of ourselves, and thus, to become agents and models of reconciliation–between man and woman, races, nations, denominations, generations etc…

Burdened, speaks of communion and co-labor with Jesus, earnestly expecting, and holding on, or carrying with Him, the concerns of His Heart. “Burden” touches on spiritual intimacy and empathy with Jesus as He carries the weight of the world daily in His actions of prayer. Through His prayer life, His Kingdom presses into every area of ourselves, and all of Reality. We join Him in the efficacy of His prayer life–even for us! We, as His partners, channel this spiritual highway or pathway of His prayers into this world! We get to co-priest with Him! Again, firstly we experience this within ourselves, and then out into our society, our nation, the planet etc. His/our burden for the Kingdom to come–that yearning in faith into the full incarnation of His Kingdom is our birthright as believers in what He is, and is doing. We are, by spiritual birth, burdened with what He is carrying and concerned about!

We are given His burden for His full formation/incarnation (that we and  they would be baptized fully into His Name!) into His Creation. We begin to be burdened for our own wholeness, then burdened with His concern for the church, our cities and nations; burdened that His Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven-in us, and in the world!

These three are the normal state–or modus operandi (operational principle) of every believer. We are to be entering into deeper experiential depths in each of these areas daily. That is living near the Cross. That is the ongoing becoming, of life in Christ. That is our orientation towards life, as brothers and sisters, lovers, and brides to be of Jesus, and as sons and daughters of God, The Father. Blessings as we all press further into these three areas of His Being! Let’s manifest this on earth as it is in heaven! Why not? He is able.

A new batch of active meditations

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

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I live freely, choosing where my love goes seasonally.
This is my inner garden, i steward as i see fit, and am made well.
i give freely as my uncle Johnny Appleseed planted
without restraint. That’s how I’ll live, yes
blatantly giving my best fruit to whom i choose.
Unabashedly particular in my giving.
Jemez hot springs then
We waited purposefully until dawn that night
backpacks laid along red stone cave rim just at the edge of our hot springs-
once within  the springs, with stars rising over our skin
 the older native voices nearby, arose, again
chanting blessings–some outback pow-wow, and there were elk hooves
quietly thundering in the coda, somewhere up north
shaking the earth in that peaceful rhythm that only animals alone in fields unseen can mimic.
 We were kids i think then-twenty one, maybe two, with sky blue hair, i remember you…
stones, sky, skin and everything was about to begin for us
back then, and somehow, again, still is.
Seeing Galway Kinnel read
He had those soft enormous hands in vermont sun
turning his own pages, in nothing short of glee
that’s how i remember that hulking poet man back then.
we met once, when I was still a kid-
(26 years old at bread and puppet farm)
eating bread and stars and starting
to dream what was ours. At that moment, it was nice to see
another, standing upright into the full stature of their being.
An oak of hope, still there like as a photo in my soul
of a man standing reading his own poetry
on the soft sturdy floor of this forest.
When I met the poet Robert Bly
we talked of death and Jesus
he was interested and with that twinkle eye
and his colorful vest
said, you might be onto something there. later,
at his Harvard reading,
he dedicated one of his poems to me:
“my friend is thinking of death and Jesus”, he said, “so here is what
i think so far”. It blessed me that he listened. Thanks Robert Bly
It was my birthday that night, and i was still dreaming alone.
what i heard you say, is don’t stop-your question will guide
you home. That was a nice thing to imply, friend.
When i saw Allen Ginsberg at university, he was
drunk on life with accordion chants in hand
the whole crowd rolling on each line, like a drunken band
until he said, something about this is what life
was meant to be like. I was happy to have encountered that fool!
And lastly…
The birds outside today hawk at their own intervals.
i wish i could have that uninterrupted rhythm of being each day
that they so unabashedly proclaim exists.
You and I are interrupted creatures instead.
We even interrupt the instances when we could just be-
to represent them. Still, i am less envious than recognizing
that these specific bird’s-a group of blue jays, as i check through the window- sonic assurance and confidence is something like
His Kingdom come. Once, in that space, we will not be constantly tracing everything into
what it might mean. We will know and be ok with that.
we will peer at what we want to and be happy, and then move on
in exactly our own rhythms.

I-thou-ing…

19 Wednesday Sep 2012

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Martin Buber’s basic thesis–God is the context of everything; to the degree that we engage, show up, this is the degree to which we will know (encounter) God. All of life is an opportunity to know God. But God does not demand us to engage with the universe, rather He invites us! And we choose the degree to which we open to it. God is here, not just there, as i would augment Francis Shaeffer’s thinking. He is there, and here (immanent), and He has invited and even kindly asked us to know and love Him through all that we encounter in this life. To the degree that we engage, we find and perforce, fall in love with Him. If we want an “I-Thou” life, we have to engage our thou-our deeper inner self-in a spiritual dialogue with all that is around us. We have to fall in love with God, through His universe, that He created as a medium through which we could meet Him, including other people. To the degree that i engage, I will know God through other. That in short, is Buber’s great idea.
In many ways,  Abraham Joshua Heschel taught the same thing. These two men-Buber and Heschel, i think are the most globally relevant Jewish teachers in the last 100 or so years. They taught a true spirituality. And offered a true picture of who God is, and what our role in the narrative is. Each intimated, that all of us have a choice as to what degree we truly learn to live. But the stage is set. God has made His offer, and the level of engagement is up to each person. Heschel, really turned the world on to a God who was extremely empathetic and present with human concerns. One who understood the humanness of our daily experience. In his book on the prophets, he focuses lots on Jeremiah and Amos, and really hammers home the immanence of God–even emotionally towards His creation, towards His children. This is not a deist God–way up there-with little daily concern for our struggles. Heschel’s image of God is very incarnational, and encounterable. Both of these great thinkers, and livers of life had a precious sense of who God is in their writings, and, in their own way carried His actual Presence in and through their writings, and lives.
These two thinkers basic ideas, speak also to the artist. Buber, overtly wrote much about aesthetics and theories of art. But I think both of their basic suppositions apply to all areas of life–whatever your medium of knowing God is seasonally–parenting, marriage, relationships, community building, art making, business and so on…
But specifically in the area of making art, we are basically attempting to encounter the essential nature of our subject or the “other” (the “thouness” of someone or something). Some of the art historians have called this the “absolute”, or the absoluteness of the other. Many think, that most self portraits are about trying to capture this absolute self or “essential nature”. I think that the ultimate essence of the other, must be found in God Himself. Spirit knows spirit. We ultimately know the essence of other by our spirit, through His Spirit. The very act of creativity is a dialogue with God through whatever we are meditating on. We are always, in the same situation as humans (whether artists or not)–we are desperately seeking our Creator in all our actions. And to the degree we find and encounter and know Him, we are satisfied. This is our motivation in our hunt for essence. This is true in art as well as every other activity. Perhaps it is most symbolically pronounced or amplified in art making. We are all seeking God, and as we create, we meet Him–our art becomes a tabernacle-and as it does, becomes, this “place of meeting”,  where we are able to reveal the nature of others in a way which becomes universally recognizable. We reveal the inner nature of a landscape, a city, a person’s face, or whatever happens to be our area of conversation. We reveal it, because we are meeting God there, and, in this way, honoring His poetic creativity in making and expressing Himself through this particular person place or thing. We are encountering God through creative dialogue with our subject. That is the higher calling of creativity. This is when our art making becomes a part of our true spirituality.

The great dark saying

17 Monday Sep 2012

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In many ways, the whole of the bible is a “dark saying” (something spoken at night), in the sense, that we must search it out and wrestle with it, to know it; and in so doing to know God! There is a sense in which it is the great riddle, God has given us, that we might know Him through! If God teaches people in this way–where He offers enough that we enter the transformative journey into His Nature, then we see that the Word itself is this useful question which draws us into greater intimacy with Him. If His method of teaching is indeed like the old Jewish teachers–to set up the right questions which trigger us into becoming; to draw us into true transformation–then the Bible is indeed the greatest Jewish teaching, asking us to encounter God in order to know Him.