The security of our identity in Christ. Our identity is actually inviolable in Christ! He knows us, for He made us, and He can reveal us to ourselves!

Who you actually are is inviolable and eternal in Him. No part of your identity is ever lost. It is all hidden and housed in Christ Himself. When Peter was given His name, it was because He saw who Jesus was.

When we look at the author and finisher of our identity, we know ourselves.

And He continuously reveals our true names to us, as we go on in Him.

Nothing can be stolen of who we are in Him. Death itself cannot steal a single line of your story, and single tone or nuance of the poem you are. There is great security in knowing this.

You cannot mess up in terms of identity as you trust Him to hold you more tightly together. In Him, we also are one integrated identity. We are His poems.

And these poems are held in Him—all the things we were meant to do and express are all there flowing in and out of Him.

The way to know thyself is to know Him, for He made and holds our entire narrative in His Own Being and Heart. We are then safe and free to be ourselves.

There is no part of your identity that is violatable in Him. Nothing can be moved in Christ. There is great security of being and identity in Christ. He knows us for He formed us in the hidden place—“knit us together in the womb and beforehand.” So we are free to become and allow Him to give us progressive revelation of who we are in Him.

We cannot miss our on identity because of who He is. No single part of you can be stolen violated or taken away in Him. We stare at Him, and walk home into our true selves.

We must learn to act as if we really do have eternal security in who we are, in Him. We have to trust Him on that. To hold us together, and to know and pronounce our narratives, even partially on the earth. He is able to cause us to stand into who we really are! And He is the only one who knows who we are anyway.

If you want to know who you really are, get to know who He really is. For you are encompassed and found or housed in Him.

We are told our names as we look to and at Him-our depth of level of gazing at Christ is the portion or measure we will get to know who we actually are. The world cannot tell us who we are. The white stone room is in Jesus. The room where our eternal names are written. He is the only source of identity.

He is, therefore we are; and we are able to discover aspects of our names even while on earth, because of who He is! He is our source in the area of identity, and in Him we are safe to become the very thing we were meant to be. Our fulfillment is in this becoming—to walk out, the “path prepared beforehand to be our way.” as Ephesians put it. We are safe to become in Christ, and there is great joy and security in this, outside of our particular circumstances. Jesus is faithful in the area of identity as He is in every other area of life. He is Lord over the nature of identity, as He is Lord over all of Reality.

In therapy or counseling, we are often trying to find out who we are, and to examine our wounds to seek healing. Jesus is not just our healer, He is also our namer! He can reveal us to ourselves!

Seeing well is key!

To see well is a ministry! We give His Eyes room to look through the lens or our own perception. He looks through us like a lens, and wears us like a suit. We allow Him to heal the earth, by allowing Him to look out through us at what He Himself made.

When we behold something for what it truly is, we inch it towards its true nature and being. To see from our “I” calls forth the other’s “thou”, as Martin Buber might put it.

How deeply we see, is the depth to which we will bless the other into being what it truly is. My gaze is then a gift to you as well. Part of the role of art is to teach us to see well. And particularly. It is both an expression and model of perception. Once we yield our imagination to His incarnation, we become models of seeing. We are vessels of His Perception in our partial ways.

Our own way is in His Way. We discover our vision, but entering His. His Imagination infects and incarnates ours. At first, it is like an infection, because we are not yet made new; then, we start to see as He does more often. We begin not only to feel more of His Heart, and think more of His thoughts, we also start to see more how He sees.

That is the sanctification of the imagination. We are in that process as kingdom artist. His little poems, He desires to pronounce Himself through.

If we truly are His masterpieces as it tells us in Ephesians 2:10, then when we yield our perception, we start to be His cinematic expressions of His Own being. And our own being gets to collaborate in that perceptual becoming….

Most people don’t think of the human imagination as a place of meeting God. But it clearly is. As He is Lord over the whole person, as He is Lord over all of Reality, we are free to meet Him in our imaginations, and be blown away by His.

His manner of perceiving informs a new interpretation of life and what is around us. Our hermeneutics are altered by His Presence in the seats of our imaginations. When we let Christ into how we perceive and thus express, we are able to channel His Own art!

To see from Him into Him is to see deep to deep, spirit to spirit. When I see Christ in you, i am seeing from Him into Him, The sustainer of all things. How we behold matters, and from where!

The implied ocean. I like it when things are suggested rather than overtly stated. Subtlety reflects how Reality actually is to me. I am a clown, but the universe is subtle—it suggest something beyond itself constantly, something infinitely complex and beautiful. “The unseen attributes of God are revealed in creation, so we are without excuse.”

I appreciate that about nature. It unabashedly suggest something even grander than itself! A good model for us all. I prefer art which is suffusively suggestive rather than prescriptive. It is the same with good preaching or anything else. Show down tell, sort of rule of thumb. Paradox is just our perception of something more complex than we can understand. In some sense paradox is always seemingly. I see as more than a clown, but i think i still am presented as one. Nothing wrong with the gerber, but there are also clearly roses. Each of us must be what we truly are. But we can certainly appreciate what others are as well.

From a 20th C art monk i came across today in study:

“We cloth ourselves with Christ, but He also clothes himself with us. We are His fashion statement. Also, He peers out through us like a unique lens, which He takes pleasure gazing through. He gazes through us. He wears us like a suit. To the degree we conform to His contours, we fit Him perfectly.”

Interesting meditation on what union is, on the experiential level. I like the idea of Jesus wearing me like a funky suit, when He goes out dancing. We are His cameras, His suits..great metaphors to understand union with Christ. Otherwise, what does it mean for Christ to be inside us, seated on our hearts or core center. His enjoyment of how we are truly made, is part of His pleasure of being. “We are collaborators, yielders to His Life’s contours in us.”

I think lots about St. Paul’s midrashing (which most of his letters are) about “being in Him”. His Spirit in us, and ours in Him. What are useful metaphors for that union in image? A camera lens and a suit aren’t bad images of what we are. Fun study, regardless. Looking for images of what we really are.

Considering a hawk i saw on the way to the airport yesterday in San Fran:

that golden gate park hawk flew over my car when it chose to, i suppose.

Me, halfway out of the city on 19th Avenue, internally noting many friends along the way, each block, over years, rolling along the ocean’s folds, stress-lessly to behold her again. freed, in gaze, by her  bold certainty of flight, her clear sense of direction of knowing herself fully, unquestioningly….

sheer in her descent, and sun flecked in her rising…assurance of when to

hit which waves of or years of light…

i, at least, saw her through the car window, in pursuit of morning.

And, in eucalyptus’ scent that seemed like a crimson green crisped colored blanket leading to the east, warming and in-freshing, even my car, she was

enough of a gift for a proper sunday morning in san francisco. Instantaneously,

the synagogues and various other services were being held in the open air like us

 being formed like this hawk or the earth before cities and now through them…the Pope was talking to the Lutherans in Swedish on the radio, judgement was starting to begin with the house of God; watching her also being slowly reconciled to herself; but for me today, there was 2.3 ounces of hope in her powdery red hawk breast alone. here,

with everyone slowly lounging on, towards breakfast

in that healthy receptive gaze of being that marks this city

when it chooses to look outwards and serve, and truly be itself, freely offering its jewels, birds and songs for free, in kindness, not hoarding the sonic scenic banquet of her solar blessings,

or losing herself in the insularity of glory, the naked surfer lost in himself at dawn,

who knows but won’t share the wave, but, rather, sharing how to ride the recently occurring waves gladly, like the Pope, did ok, today on the radio or through whatever media or mediums the treasures of life fly…which, we kids passing through take note of…

Just before i saw that hawk, i was considering how fast and efficiently, the golden gate park dogs caught frisbees

(not how happy they looked, or are, but how alive, how readied, poised, positioned, like this city…modularly potentially adaptable to the fractal nature of The Light things are here-water, wind, wave-the three characteristics of The Holy Spirit- even this golden park is meant to reflect back that fact!)

how in “sweet shape” the earth still was or is, despite us…

some days or moments within, are clearly outside of us

like the inner potential of a city still

reflected in a single bird’s life who flies through her.

I wish i had a bird’s eye view constantly.

Regardless, that red tailed hawk

caught my eye and heart today on the way,

seeing, through a rental car glass dimly,

to the airport.

Church bells, sea gulls and pilgrimage pathways, and books…textures of Antwerp…

Doing a little church history research this month in Antwerp, not just monastic beers but also churches!

 Got to visit this church again—Saint Carolus Borromeus. They gave a blessing to all visitors of the nations. Nice blessing, as i feel like a visitor everywhere I go, including the nation i was born in, but rarely get a specific blessings for being one. Afterwards, walked the pilgrim’s path (the northern leg of the medieval Camino trail) back up to our studio across from Jakob’s Kirk. Nice that these buildings are still offering creative haven and a chiming for travelers and those passing through, which in some sense, is all of us.

This particular church’s altar piece was by Rubens, and various other artist through the years. Nice to think about a time when the arts and the church worked in tandem-one blessing and helping express the other. It’s been a while unfortunately.

Also the light in this first Jesuit church square is always special and touched by tone.

This city is also intoned or telling its story, through church bells still, and not necessarily in a nostalgic or touristic way.

From our studio space, we encounter three layers of sonic ecclesial texture which ring daily—St Jakob’s, St Catherine’s and St Mary’s—the first, recalls history, deep rolling bells-take you to this century’s wars and the havening of Jews here (Red Star Line etc), the second, more a tingling, come to life sensation (God is not done with you Europe sense), while, St Mary’s carries a call to a wedding or banquet or both! Conversational intimacy! So much resides in the tone of a church bell, at least for whom it tolls!

Anyway, nice to be back among the gull calls, church bells  and a place to consider from…

 I like thinking of symbols which hold or express the identity of places. Here, church bells, sea gulls, and books; fashion and the arts rest on these. Monastic in that way. Makes sense, Thomas of Kempis and many other great monks (some of whom made great beer) resonated with this region. So do I. Thanks again Antwerp, see you soon creative friend! Still under construction all of us.

“All activities are a medium to commune with, get to know and hence love, and actually encounter, and thus be transformed by God; this includes the arts.” Reverend Shoehorn

Sorry for the length again, I’m long winded and worded-more a Whitman, less an haiku poet-but enjoying studying great spiritual thinkers about art and spirituality again today. Theology of the imagination is one of my favorite subjects. Came upon this gem by Thomas Merton:

“Art-even a true deep to deep encounter with art- allows us to find ourselves and lose ourselves simultaneously, for art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains.

Music and art, photography and poetry attune the soul to God because they induce a kind of contact with the Creator and Ruler of the Universe. The genius of the artist finds its way by the affinity of creative sympathy, or co-naturality, into the living law that rules the universe. This law is nothing but the secret gravitation that draws all things to God as to their true center…it makes us alive to the tremendous mystery of being, in which we ourselves, together with all other living and existing things, come forth from the depths of God and return again to Him. And art that does not produce something of this is not worthy of its name.” (No Man is an Island)

Merton had a great, and unfortunately rare in the Christian tradition, ability to integrate his understanding of the arts and spirituality, and express them both from a Kingdom Perspective-a type of revealed theology, i would say. (I can think of George MacDonald, Oswald Chambers, Lewis and a few others who have modeled this integration well-not the worship of the imagination as the Romantics did, but a sanctified imagination, a yielded imagination; creativity as a place of spiritual collaboration with Our Source and Creator. In this sense, creativity becomes a place where our true identity is called forth or activated.)

“Things are beautiful to the degree that they conform to real Reality. Everything that is, is beautiful insofar that it is real.” Nice meditation today, echoing King David’s meditations on the commandments (Psalm 111), as a way to trail into the Reality in God of what they pointed towards, law into Spirit, sort of thing. (Tillich’s “Symbols participate in The Reality to which they point!”).  Just as we are His symbols or poems of Himself (Ephesians 2:10). Art can facilitate this!

The relationship between the imagination and spirituality has always captivated me. As another creative saint put it, “To have a sanctified imagination is to meet God directly in His and our own true creativity-being to Being-by encountering His, ours is called forth and formed. We become collaborators again, as in the garden, even collaborators in interpretation! Art making becomes a tabernacle of meeting, just as all activities should be.”

Anyway, fun researching this stream of knowing. Now I’m going to go make some art! Or as Elvis sang, “A little less conversation, a little more action.” Or is it, incarnation!

Here in antwerp

awakened today to bells ringing and rain sounds-typical winter but for my dreams

last night. in one my car could fly. i know where i would drive

rain, books, listening…an introverted monk yet waiting eagerly for a sunny day…

even what i dreamed mingles with the bells, gulls and words this morning

i sit for a while and remember back

at least before the wars here, and then turn

towards forward…these bells are also ringing for us here now.

so i pull my phone out and try to put the bell tones inside it

so i can carry them with me. like those who pray at night carry the dead.

and the piano player is already practicing this morning-the warmth of piano tones

with the sight of cold north sea rain through the window—that’s what it’s like

even the gulls are trembling in the never finished church tower of St Jakob’s.

the old people couldn’t make it to church to pray today, as the stones are just too cold on a day like this. So i’ll pray for them, as those who are unseen in prayer.

or like those who pray at night.