A single conversation can become a whole garden when God is Present.

Entering Psalm 139 again today….
God wants to celebrate us through our identities! He likes to highlight identity, as part of His autobiography! It’s a statement about His story making, art making ability, when we start to wear our true names. It’s less about us than we think, but we get to play ourselves, while wearing Him!
Might as well yield to the Author, editor, and reader of the stories our lives actually are. Makes the pronunciation easier, and clearer. Reading Psalm 139 again today, the real version of the song of ourselves, where David celebrates Himself as a poem of God—wonderfully made. On one hand its a declaration of knowing ourselves, by knowing that we are fully known, even when we don’t know ourselves. On the other, it is a psalm of trust that the one who “digs” into us, knows us even as we sleep, and so is capable of causing us to stand into the contours of our true forever names. Great meditation, and great way to live, implied. It was nice to find out that it is also the favorite song of many rabbis throughout history! It’s basically formatted as an overheard prayer, a private spiritual moment between David and his God. Those are my favorite passages in the book, when we are overhearing other’s personal spiritualities. But this one has something for us all about celebrating the poetry we truly are becoming….from His rather than our perspective! Let God sing the song of yourself!

Marriage is a mystery novel worth reading, at least ours has been!
15 years ago this today, my love and I were united in Prague. We did a huge international arts installation in the backyard of dear friends, had a parade, were served tea by a white gloved gentleman in a play lot, and turned an international spiritual arts event into our wedding. Literally know one knew beforehand it was actually a wedding (but that’s another story). From there the new poem started.
We’ve lived everywhere since then, but the poem keeps being written where ever we roam. Thankful today to still be transforming with this remarkable gem and poem, poet, thinker, teacher, artist, and real woman of God.
Our audience for our wedding was international artists, church planters, writers, thinkers, dreamers, poets, singers (German opera), film makers, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all stripes and colors and languages-a banquet of creativity among the nations (my kinda party!). We were and are blessed by our funky global family, and our cloud of witnesses. Glad to still be becoming God’s art down here together!
Pictures later, as today, we are just giving Him room to celebrate this strange and beautiful conjoining of two oddly remarkable people. Who says artists and mystic types can’t get married? We did, and the collaboration keeps bearing fruity fruit! Although the poem we are together is slant, the lines are written in the ink of love from above. We couldn’t make up something this cool, strange and beautiful.
That day we (our anglican friend from England; and Reverend Sir Andrew Jones, whose home, hospitality and family, hosted this fine arts affair, offered the creative improved homily-which had some holy heat on it, not just because it was Summer! Angel slam poetry coming down on that altar of Grace!) read Jesus’ prayer for union for his followers-John 17 (one of my favorite passages in the book, where we are overhearing Jesus talking to His Dad on behalf of us; His prayer for unity and oneness.
We read it over and into us, and over our future hope for others as well. The mystical union of marriage is a mystery, worth deeply entering, a song worth becoming. We are thankful to have given Him room to form that cadenced, nuanced and uniquely shaped prayer in us over the years. We are still learning how to embody it more fully daily—“the pleasant lines of our inheritance” together.
But we, together, obviously bring God pleasure, and room to dream out loud, to make up new songs, and to improvise, and that makes me happy today. He wanted dance partners to collaborate with. And I think we’ve let Him lead!
And thankful for my love. His little funky temples us each, and together, an odd shaped sanctuary.. The new creation we are becoming together still ignites, excites, and surprises me!
Though of course, as someone said beforehand, “Marriage is also fellowship with His suffering for one another.” Good advice, though foreboding at the time. There are many types of death to self involved, required to “Give God room to form.” Another said; “Love is choosing to die daily.” Doesn’t sound inviting, but it is. For it, makes the best poetry. More like a gospel song.
Love is less an institution than an opportunity for mutual transformation daily. “It forces us to The Cross, more often daily; and God knows we need it!”
We’ve tried to allow inner room for that formation, through the poem of our marriage, over the years and among the nations, and cities we were planted. And I pray it’s fragrant lines bring people hope from time to time, like a good line in a poem returns at just the right instant as a joy seed.
So, thankful today for the poem we are becoming, and the lovely lines which have already been written and pronounced. Looking forward to reading the whole collection of poems at the end; enjoying it being written in the meantime! Good to have little bookmarks along the way! Happy anniversary to us today! Thanks God—we were a good idea!

At Home in the in betweens:
Back where I belong today; in airports and on the road, or in the air. Don’t know why the in betweens always feels like home, but it still does! It’s always on the way to..something beautiful, unexpected, transformational happens. Perhaps i have a pilgrimage spirituality. As soon as i start packing for a venture, i get joyful.
My spirituality is at least one of liminality, the God of to and fro, the in but not of space, the ironic participation. I find God in between the lines. The Jesus before, through, and after the bible, the already not yet… All those Psalms of ascent are my favorites. Perhaps we are all slowly ascending…at least I am today! I spend lots of time on rooftops to remember this space, but planes make the metaphor obvious. Especially now that you can write and broadcast from them. I don’t mind living an octave too high, as Heschel put it. Or at least in the in betweens.

People of Peace ….
There’s always a person of Peace in each story, or neighborhood; an Ebed Malech in the story of Jeremiah, and advocate for God’s friends. Someone who gets you out of the pit, sometimes just with kindness.
Ours is this nice Thai lady in our local market, who always asks about our days, and means it. “You are your wife are such art,” she said today. And is genuinely curious about how we are. If the electricity went out, I’d go talk with her, and her family.
Interesting, everywhere I’ve ever lived, there are always these characters of Peace planted locally, who keep Love’s glow going daily in practical ways. People who “keep the light on” for you, as another friend, and local man of Peace, JV often tells me. “We’ll keep the light on for you big D.” (A very Texan expression of a person of Peace).
Anyway, this lady, often slows me down if I’m going too fast, or am not present, and asks me questions and listens to my answer, until i come into the room-some present.
Makes me a better human. Thankful for these characters in every story each day. And I try to be one myself. May you find your people of Peace today, and be one for others as well! They keep the world turning in hectic times.

Counseling a bit last week, and had this thought again: Find the conversation Love is already having, as Love is always already having a conversation before you arrive!

So much of actually helping someone, is just about listening well, and joining in the places where you hear Love already talking with them. This is true with people and cities, i think. Finding the conversation already going on, and joining in…helping bring more Love there. Amplifying Love.

That’s so much what life is, and certainly counseling! Counseling is so much about being present and listening into where the real conversation is already occurring, and amplifying it! In counseling training they speak of “The Third”. One way to think of the third in a conversation, is where Love already is in the room or conversation, and entering there.

Being truly heard and seen, is healing. It’s not always solving the problems as much as a ministry of sitting with, being present in Love. That’s at least over half of healing. The ministry of sitting with, in Love is underrated. “Tools help, but Love goes deeper, and last longer, for Love teaches people how to use tools.” as one mentor put it. Just being with in Love, is a lot! Find that conversation Love is already always having! Enter and expand there!

All the world’s metaphors are on the shelf! Every book shelf is filled with our ways. All there for the reading. Telephones, communications, heroes, our best thoughts, fables and geography. What’s left is to choose which metaphor you want to enter most deeply, and learn to live.

As my friend said to me recently: “Marriage is punk.” That feels more and more true as I go. In my neighborhood, it’s rare to be married, and you are certainly a minority, especially as an artist, which is most of my neighborhood.
A minority platform is alternative, and people are always curious why I’m married. It’s a conversation starter. Interesting.

I love being married. It makes a great frame for intense transformation. Plus it’s fun making up and sharing stories over time and seasons. Used to be normative to be married or aim towards it. Now, it’s punk or alternative. I’m glad to be in that minority these days, and thankful to have found someone to make poetry of life with.

Marriage is still one of the highest and hardest metaphors to incarnate well. Still learning, but glad to be married. Just a pro-marriage thought for you today. Be a punk, be truly alternative, be married—the bumper sticker. As one of my Christian friends said uncynically, “Marriage is a deeper level of fellowship with His Suffering.” Sounded ominous, but i got his point. There’s lots of sacrifice involved. But also potential beauty and formation.

Of course, as my Jewish friends say, you do have to get married at least 12 times to the same person over the course of life. It’s a journey with many types of chapters, in other words. Anyway, thankful for my marriage today.

I have a friend who lives in a local park. He stays in his truck, which he moves around each day, to find shade, and not get parking tickets. I also lived in parks, and in my car for many years all over this country. I relate to him. He gets up early and finds landscaping work each day, and likes to watch movies in his spare time. Nice fellow. I learn lots from him weekly about spiritual contentment. It’s too expensive for many people to live in our city now. And this is his neighborhood, he knows the trees and squirrels by name. So he decided to live this way, to be where is home to him. He is more at home here, than many who have homes. He knows the inner rhythms of things in the neighborhood, and watching and reads the skies well for storms or special sky nights (which we’ve had several recently). Anyway, i like the fellow. Glad we are neighbors and friends.

When I look truly, i cannot lust or take anything from you. I can only bless you with my sight, and be in wonder of who you truly are. I do not see you in terms of my own needs, i value you for yourself—and am astonished by the poem of who you are! I see you as a thou and not an it! I see you as a friend and family member.
I look out at your eternal self, and by seeing it, bless it into becoming. This is the role of a good gaze in the healing. I make you whole by staring at you from the spirit of Christ in me. True perception is an underrated healing agent! How else would you even want to use your imagination. How I image you helps you become that.
How we look at one another matters practically and eternally.
The role of how we see one another is bigger than we think. I need to see you more and more as how God sees you. That’s my task of perceptual sanctification! It heals my imagination as it calls your true image forward!