My friend was talking to me last night about the difference between the church and Christ. “I like Jesus, but yikes, His church is a mess!”

Love that, as a start to a meaningful conversation. Yes, let’s separate out Jesus, from the cultures formed in His Name. Let’s get the right stumbling block! Let’s trip on and over the right thing!

He grew up in a strict legalistic version of christianity. “We couldn’t even enjoy a milkshake properly! And my sister couldn’t wear cool designed clothes, and she’s a fashion designer!”

“Jesus couldn’t be like the church i grew up in! Jesus wouldn’t attend many of His churches,” was how he put it. “I always feel Him outside the church culture, waiting for the program to be over. I really like Him, but I can’t believe that He would like much of the christian culture.”

We spoke of how He liked Jesus but had a real problem with most of His followers. “Inconsistency of Love is my major problem, outside of the overt racism in Jesus Name historically.” Yet, separating Christ and Christianity isn’t easy, as I’ve learned.

I love Flannery O’Connors take on it where she has a preacher character preaching the church of God without Christ. She was really talking about the church of Jesus, versus christian culture.

Finding the right stumbling block still matters. Most people were hurt more by religious culture than Jesus, as I’ve experienced. I like to go with a person’s experience of Jesus versus christian culture. He tends to break in, past the culture which developed in His Name.

As Ghandi put it, I have no problems with Jesus, it’s His followers that keep me from becoming a Christian.

I’ve thought lots about how the symbol of Christ has been broken, and about how the culture of Christianity after Constantine, started “going south” so to speak. We are responsible to heal that image, and represent it well. Or maybe just to embody and have depth union with Christ if we follow and are named by His Name.

Yet, throughout the ages, there have been symbols of the true chapel in the church as they say. The true church where He is, versus the cultural church. If the church is His actual Body (Presence/tabernacle), you’ll need to find Him to discern where His real garment is, even within the building. I’ve certainly had to.

Anyways, great and now more common conversation i’ve been having with friends about not throwing out The Baby with the bath water! I love the topic myself, and will probably keep thinking about it forever. Unlike lots of folks these days, i like talking about the difference between religious culture and true spirituality. I still find it leads to fruitful conversations! As this one was!

Peeling off culture without harming the fruit isn’t easy, just as peeling an orange without damaging the fruit. And culture itself isn’t intrinsically bad to be sure. Christ redeems cultural expression to be sure! Assuming He Himself is actually at the Center! All fruits need peels to hold them together Yet, culture is the expression, the core identity is real matter.

Again, a great talk with a dear friend who cares enough to seek. I love talking spirituality these days, since the conversation is being forced to the surface anyways. Religion versus spirituality is one way in. But I liked my friend’s—Jesus versus the religion which formed around Him. In many ways He was talking about religious spirit itself versus transformational encounter with Christ. I love that conversation. I love helping people peel things off to get to the essence!

Having studied religions for many years, this is not a unique problem to christianity-where the followers do not always embody the Founder’s spirituality. “Religious spirit, or some form of legalism (which ironically is what Jesus was fighting!) is present in all religions, as is true seeking to live out the way of their founder.”

Yet, Jesus is unique. There is a call to union with His Very Life, and there are historically varying degrees of spiritual success in that. I love talking to people about Jesus versus the religion which was founded from Him. It’s always a risky and worthy conversation, which most often leads to good fruit.

St Paul does an interesting job of wrestling with religious spirit as well as racism. Both of which he was most probably killed by on all sides. But we will talk Paul in our next conversation I’m sure. He’s a wrestling match in all directions.

My uncle used to tell me that marriage was like fellowshipping with God’s suffering! Perhaps intimidating advice as i was thinking of marrying, but still, after years, i got his point!
(Marital advice)

To birth a higher symbol, like marriage, you have to die to self many times daily. This is why my uncle’s marriage advice to me was to “fellowship with His Suffering”. At first it was intimidating, then i got what he meant. I’m going to need to lay down my life daily for this person’s growth and life to progress! Marriage is an opportunity to die often!

Still, love that he risked that advice. His other advice was: it’s easy to love someone, but much harder to like them the rest of your life! He had a humorous wisdom which has stuck with me over the years!

Yet, marriage is fellowship with suffering and many deaths daily, isn’t the kind of advice which would propel many towards life long intimacy. And yet…anything that can form you on that level, must be worth it! Anything which requires that much death, must perforce, lead to life!

Land is made fruitful through argument, as long as it leads into intimacy! Was other advice my wise uncle imparted! All funny, all somehow true.

Of course, the motivation for marriage has to be spiritual formation, otherwise, you would quit before you started! If you are just trying to get your needs met, forget it-go to a car wash. But if you want spiritual formation, hard to beat marriage. We are just learning to love one another down here, and marriage is still one of the most intense containers for that sort of learning! It really is the quickest way to spiritual growth, if you let it do it’s work on and in you!

There are many ways to die, but marriage is a good one.

Symbols are apart of what things are!
Everything is also symbolic. Nothing doesn’t also symbolize. It’s part of reading things well, to listen to its symbolic dimension. It’s also part of healing people and cities.
The brick layer is also always making a pathway. The trash-man, also a poet of how we discard things. They both are tending metaphors. Artists just make that more foregrounded or overt. The old pair of worn out shoes, become a metaphor of a whole life lived.
They bring the always there backstage, onto the stage. I like thinking about how to reattach the symbol with identity.
That integration has always most interested me, whether with people, places or things. I like it when things are being themselves, and symbolizing themselves, and mending that connection. Tending the symbolic is underrated. It’s a huge part of making things whole. “We are, therefore we symbolize!” It’s simply a part of being human. And healing can begin through symbols.

I lived in Paris for a while many moons ago, bought an old 83 Abarth from an old painter; and hung with older artist for a couple of years, helping run an art community.

I still have friends there. I got a 1983 Abarth car for 300 euros from a street artist, and it was able to carry me in style to Sheffield, England later. Was just thinking about that car today. Cars are stories, as we each are.

I’ve had lots of favorite horses or carriages along the way—68 Saab, 69 Kharman Ghia, 64 Volvo, and a few other favorites. I made the mistake of praying for an Elvis car anointing, so that the chapters of my life have been marked and symbolized by cars. I’ve not been able to avoid it. They symbolize each season.

I do miss that Abarth, the old man who sold it to me, was a grandfather and great artist, and it was very fun to drive. We are still friends. Anyways, peppy, and funky this car, like that season of my life. My cars are strewn among the nations now, most donated to friends or charities. But i remember each.

Glad that i can remember the seasons of my life through odd, or peculiar unique one of a kind, vehicles from all over the world.

My first car was a 69 Camaro, white with blue leather interior. Maybe i started to sense the symbol of vehicles at that early stage. Either way have always liked the symbol of vehicles and how they relate to seasons and our unusual identities.

And some times, recently, often, I also miss living in Paris. I still love that city once you get beneath her veils, or surface, there is a unique en-toned and nuanced heart there, if you are willing to read between the lines.

When renovating, every single element is symbolic, at least for us. I told my guys today, we are using that particular wood because it references the people who grew up here, and the house itself, but also our story of running an art community down the street for seven years.
We are using copper on that part because it represents solidity but and already not yet state to the things we’ve personally birthed.
Each design element teaches!
If we are not driven just by money and profit, we can help mend the symbols on our lands or this earth! That’s my prayer anyways, in the projects I get blessed to participate in! Let’s help mend the earth by healing the symbols as we go. And doing our two chapters to bring the story out which is already being told!
Let’s help mend the world, by mending the symbols!
I was talking to a homeless friend last night, and he said to me: you don’t have to have lots of money to make an authentic expression. Smart fellow. His cart and the tree he sleeps beneath mean something specific in his story.
It doesn’t take money or resources to make an honest and connected symbolic authentic expression of identity!
Everything tells a story. Books are known by their covers as well as their content.
Mending and tending the earth and whatever domains we are given also includes tending the symbolic! Symbols echo and flow from true identity, and also teach and reminds us of who we are! That’s why design still matters.

Favorite quote this week:

“You need Jesus in jail, not just your breath and counting it! Your breath won’t save you. But a Loving relational, tuned in, Presence with you who gives a damn, might!”
A friend who recently got out of jail said to me yesterday. Good word. About the difference between religion and spirituality, i thought.
Some things are needed existentially when in crisis. A God “with” us is more interesting than our best ideas and practices! Incarnation has always interested me. A relational spirituality seems like a basic need daily. Just a thought for ya today!
We all need a Jesus when in jail! As my friend put it!

(from Point Reyes-whale watching)

These whales are
Lumbering oaks turning slowly, in Sun’s summer waters;
and then, those joyful dolphin’s chime in always up front from joy! Always inside and outside seasons like prayer itself…for,
Joy always crests and creates a way! Even inside us.
What wonder we are all surrounded by. Enough to know, at least!
And Father plays by Himself at sea, barely needing us to see! Just, Enjoying His Own beauty!
And we worry til death, and eventually lean, on our endless shores towards
The Sea.

Poem from my younger me to my old age me, just found in an old journal today…(I wrote this when i was in my 20’s or 30’s; still feels true at 50) Good reminder…

I was supposed to be more just like a blue bird, or painted hawk, or
an uninterrupted tight rope walker between worlds wearing colorful coat….absurd, i know…holding my balancing pole out in darkness
towards the stars, shining like that, us….noting each one of them as specific musical notes or tones in God’s ears. Yet,
They put tar on my wings when young-fears; but i kept flying nonetheless, only occasionally interrupted, or tumbling, by the weight on my wings, of things, and the false roar of voices below.
Mostly, i just wanted to fly well up there-to know-so others could see. To be a readied flashlight for others
to be by, a way or ray
in mid-air-an in-spiration to the nations-like Philippe Petite walking in mid-air between the two towers,
which i later saw fall in real time,
from another bridge.
Gracefully nimble, vulnerable
us all, walking the wire
between Worlds
together, forever, already anyways, we
might as well be
flying, or walking a wire between worlds, stars
as we go….

A quote I came across about the art of reading, as I was reading this week. Applies in the internet social media days as well, I think.
“To read with the heart as well your head is still an art to getting a writer’s inner intention, or meaning-the tone is part of their song or message. And the heart is always required to know tone.
To understand something we must read it with both the heart and head, if we want to encounter it in Love, or actually interpret.”
When we look at art or one another more devotionally in that sense, meaning enters!

Today, I saw and talked with….
two hawks, three hummingbirds, one shrub jay and a cardinal. So many friends to talk to!
Wrens are friends also, as are the little birds with no names who arrived this morning near my pen, maybe to be named. I almost got carried away, there were so many visitors today. The tiny wren is my repeated friend, as are the gawking hawks above-we talk, interact and share regular resources and space and even time.
Who am i to not call them welcomed friends too. All of us guest here, in this enormous room.