Soil, Sight and Skin—rediscovered!

Just re-discovered this entry in one of my old notebooks. (“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now,” to quote Dylan; and yet, nice insights from when i lived at L’abri, a spiritual community in Switzerland) I was thinking lots then, about where traditional Christianity was lacking or not tuned into the Divine conversation at the time:

“Soil, sight, and skin. Three neglected areas of Christ lordship and our partnership with Him, or open dialogue with the Divine understanding. These are areas, we haven’t entered the deep and practical dialogue yet, and pressing areas of concern and burn.

Areas of understanding our relationship with the earth, the healing of how we see (perception, art, symbolic—there is a poverty of the imagination in the church) therefore, interpret and know (sight is related to knowledge, if we don’t see right, we don’t know well); and our relationship to our physicality, our bodies (what to do with our tents, as one teacher put it).

He is Lord over every dimension of Life, every area. So, He is waiting to be dialogued with in each of these vacuous areas. These are also gap-zones where the vacuum gets filled by many things.

In the area of the earth, new age and paganism enter, in the area of perception, pornography and advertising and commercialism (disguised materialism); in the area of our bodies, “mass supermarket- yoga” and other partial forms of integrating mind and body. Christianity has still not properly dialogued with these three.” I must have been deep back then! Nice to discover, at least I wasn’t asleep spiritually, and was “minding the gaps”! Are we dialoguing actively and articulately with these three areas yet?

Considering Parables

Thinking about Jesus’ method as well as His Message, which He was—in His case, the medium really was the message! He’s talking about planting words of truth, even as He IS The Word and The Truth! Gotta love it. There’s a self irony in Jesus’ Way!

And then, this little parable is all about planting the Word as little mini-farmers!

Anyways, just re-reading the parables today. Just the fact that symbolic stories were the way Jesus taught to people in the outer circle is cool and kind. Not just stories, but symbols.

Symbols draw people into the Reality of what they symbolize, as all good art does! Riddles, puzzles, parables—what an interesting method to draw people to spiritual understanding. Someone said the purpose of art is to drawn people into Real Reality!

Not abstract truths, but metaphors which called them towards…something which puzzles the everyday habitual mind (as clowns came out, in Hopi culture, before the chiefs, to get the people ready for wisdom!), and attracts the spirit towards some deeper reality.

He shocks, shakes, calls awake and forth—listen! Pay Attention, if you have spiritual ears, hear this…then He precedes to deliver the message in symbolic story. Fascinating!

Love this particular parable-a gardening farming one; (Jesus used farming, finances and fishing metaphors most often—all very down to earth!).

This sowing or planting metaphor reveals our typical obstacles to spiritual growth. Could meditate on it forever.

Jesus is in a boat on the water as He teaches. You have a Master on water teaching! Water=message word, mystery; and the people are still of the flesh= land shoreline, but the ones who are seeking, come to the edge of the shore. The whole metaphor is pitch perfect.

Then He starts teaching them about their obstacles to encountering the Kingdom (and describing the Kingdom itself as that which is reproductive and fruitful), and to spiritual growth-he does so, in a way which draws them towards overcoming them, at the same time as training His disciples with Him.

The three basic obstacles to spiritual growth: bad soil, no roots, cares of this world. So simple and true. He uses stones and thorns as symbols of types of blocks, and really breaks the inner meaning down of each type.

He articulates each type of block to growth. And at the same time, He is training His own students through the experience. He, breaks down the riddles and puzzles-the symbolic expression for them later on the water.

Then, He rebukes the storm, again training them about what is about to happen—understanding how to take charge over things which are being rebellious against His Nature, and He keeps teaching by symbolic actions!

Then, they arrive on the other side, where, immediately, a demonized man needs deliverance. He was preparing them to experience what He modeled!  Great passage. The whole trajectory of the story has teaching in it, and is itself a symbol! Modeling it as your talking about it, real Mastery Teaching. This is how to sow-look for good soil! Here are the things which will block the growth of what you plant.

Even if you hate religion, these parables rock! Jesus was a good teacher. Even if you just consider how people learn and grow. Enjoying studying them again.

Take care of how you hear—what you listen to, and how you take it in! Take care of how you symbolize and teach. Understand the resistances, and be wise. All just in one little passage. Jesus rocked and rocks.

evening light:

each part of day, has its own particular glow

that part of day, we call evening, when even our noisy jets, overhead,

glow in their long streaked stretches towards something….recall what

 the gulls have been doing at sunset forever…especially this one-

reflecting, as we do, with their wings and sound-calls of something like lament.

feathers tumbling through light…

which, we, somehow, try to emulate…

(or it happens, regardless of us, unless we’re not willing)

So that, if you look on any particular sunset

into our busy skies, all you see

are fuchsia and gold streams of glory, us.

trying to re-enact something above us,

even with what we leave behind

which still-glows without us.

How to translate becoming…

//

I have to recognize,

our firmly placed insignificance. And.

Simultaneously, our cherished-ness.

//

The running fountain water

I saw this morning in the park,

is enough to keep me flowing all day.

Let’s play in it with our eyes, until we spy

our significance again, until my mouth overflows with blessings…

Thanks for pointing me towards that running water, this hour again.

Now, let us drink it, in gaze together until the end.

Where we begin again, in some towering fountain stream, Somewhere.

//

Coughed up, before circumstances prevailed

we were surprised to see the glory of the object still glowing.

the beginning of a short story still unfolding…

or a friend’s body, who lost it in the night…

//

the rattle of words heard at that particular instant were

softened by the pavement of falling that night.

having found a friend passed out on the sidewalk, they

called the cops and me, for some reason.

if he bleeds to death from the blow of an imagined foe

i will still shed real tears for him, regardless, I remember

saying to myself or someone.

This looks like an oil spill, the cops said.

that’s blood friends, mixed with liquor maybe.

test it in the lab of life

until we each know love. Or,

until, we taste Grace.

//

two squirrels criss cross in the midst of the street today

just before my jeep nearly interrupts their frenetic meeting.

is that a dance, symbolized

or how we actually were meant to meet.

//

types of streets:

the street outside my house

is too proud of itself today

thinking about its Roman origins

gives it a false glow. a lofty thought as if it knows

the way to go.

We know better, who grew up on dirt roads, pathways really-

and the basic metaphor of human travel.

He washed our actual feet.

Glad to have it smoothed over,

but not glad the road lost her glory.

//

Diary entry about what I learn from my dogs:

I have two types of dogs-

one with very specifically focused affections;

the other, who gives them everywhere;

both ways, seem useful

depending on the day

or the situation.

Jakob doesn’t care

as long as he’s not in trouble.

the rest of his life is sheer

love of everything at once-every scent and motion, a

potential path to explore. ( i relate to that)

a gusto for the universe

without discrimination,

a ubiquitous scattered passion for all.

So, a love willing to be worn thin again and again,

yet, trusting it will return.

The priest, Henri Nouwenn spoke of

putting boundaries on our loves, so they

become more potently focused, more accurately planted. More, potentially fruitful.

As you put edges on a garden, so you can notice the whole process,

make it yours,

 learn from it.

I’m not sure Jakob has downloaded that teaching yet.

Nor have I fully.

Pearl, my other dog, is often pointedly concerned,

she carries the weight of caring, the burden of being,

having come out of Hurricane Katrina-

a pearl of great cost forged in suffering.

Often, I want to make her life simpler, lighter

for her, for her own sake.

Just so she never wastes her suffering.

Both of my dogs teach me things about who God is,

and how to be a better, or at least more observant, person, more my best self.

Freda, who passed or even walked over death recently, had another gift.

When she prissed into a space, everyone noticed her.

She seemed almost only temporarily a dog; a type of grace.

she walked lightly, even prancing at times

she also saw angels. With her, it was more

about giving her room to shine

to carry glory well. She still, had to pee and poo

(like the rest of us)

but even that was a private privy affair with her.

she had no carbon footprint, but

 left a light trace on the earth when she passed-i still have an imprint in clay. it,

like a streak of light or fleck of color on water really, but still

with a sort of weight.

She, more like a glisten, a shimmer. Maybe she had more to do with Glory-

a creature, outlining the contours of Light, or at least, highlighting them.

and it was almost as if she didn’t die, but stayed herself, immediately, in another realm.

She had an Enoch ending, one i would like to emulate myself.

She also already lived in both worlds at once. So,

was used to the atmosphere of heaven when she got there.

//

Why wood? the construction worker asked me….

Wood is just a world

of memory and knowing.

It holds us, somehow in place

until we ourselves, remember, who we are.

The Cross was made of wood.

The ultimate juxtaposition. It’s a material meant to hold stories,

without splintering, recalling endlessly,

the ultimate story occurring forever.

Skin and bones of the right one, on wood

the memory of that wood still echoing in my bones…

tells us who we are. Sorry if that was too deep an answer.

But we, definitely, need to work with wood. Is that ok?!

Perhaps, i over explained why we need wood on that particular

counter top.

//

I’m not sure the difference between light and glory.

We are told to walk in the light, but to move

from glory to glory…

Perhaps glory is her contour.

In the meantime, which is where we all live,

this grilled corn

tonight in yellow texas evening light,

looks nearly perfect.

//

you gotta do what you mean.

//

across the street a young woman tends the elderly.

today they are watching rain fall

and being thankful in small ways

she often wears blue dresses

but unlike a nurse, for pleasure.

today, she leans over the railing with one elderly man

looking at a freshly wet blue bird

stuttering around for seeds or something

the bird is startled to be seen, but then returns to her happy hunting

in the moist earth. today, i notice she is pregnant.

//

write your own name on your loves

as they say

define things with your love

tell them, they are, they exist, they matter

the pen we write with is Love, the ink, His Blood. That’s how we contour things

into Being.

if you can’t tell something it is loved,

you can’t be yourself, yet.

//

europe is lonely.

in a dream, i come to her to listen. to be with,

her thoughts seem so deep and distant, as if

she feels irrelevant to herself.

i ask her what she thinks about at night-

“all that has come before

how did i get to this place

given so much foresight?”

we talk for many hours

i slip my hand into hers

as the sun, finally rises.

//

don’t pare down your life.

the old man said, then he went on…

i gave my wife a bucket once for her birthday

told her to fill it with things she wanted;

she chose chocolates.

i was happily surprised as she could’ve

filled it with car keys or diamonds

or anything else which made her smile;

we ate dinner, then made coffee,

and eventually made love, and then

 had chocolate for dessert.

////HE

 He went around shining, in a

simple, understandable, form.

People could mingle in His Light at will.

He was trying to make Love

conducive. To make a condensible expression and compression

of “love

one another.”

/…

what we said here, were pools of light,

to dive into, whenever.

or, wherever language made us

most likely to jump!

Another anonymous monk’s prayer poem translated! This one is about communing with God through perception! One of my favorite subjects, and something i believe is, at least one of the reasons for art. The original language is more musical, but i did my best. I was born on St Patrick’s day, so i love this mystical stuff!

Sear me into Your Sight:

Be my vision. Be my delight. Be my eyes today too.

May they merge into the open sky of You.

Sear me into your watching.

For once I see, perhaps i will be useful to others, and to Thee.

Also, be my strength, my fortitude is frivolous apart from Yours.

And let me wear You today again, until i know You as my own skin

Let me put on Your suit, until i recall my own contours again.

See, I can’t recall who i am today.

But I do see You in all i look at.

Perhaps, I did die already, or some parts, at least.

Am I dead enough yet? Is our sight merged?

What’s left of me feels rowdy, boisterous, even clamorous.

I’m tired of myself.

You seem silent to me at Your Center.

I seem, far too noisy…

shifty like wax, me

You, stable like fire.

Burn me up if I’m not already burnt.

Put me in your electric choir.

Make me what I am in You, this hour. Or,

at least lunge me towards the furnace of You, where,

I am seen, illuminated, even on the surface like a planet reflects light.

I want to be re-calibrated, to be made right. A disco ball in Your sight.

Become Yourself in me! Help me see.

We see together here. That’s what we do!

I lurch behind Your eyes-like lint

on sunglass shades. Or dew on a leaf blade.

We gaze out together

And this will be

our perceptual communion

until the end. We see together.

And this is how we will see one another on that day-

as we are seen.

I’m havened again, in Your gazing today.

Sear me into Your sight.

And let that be Your delight.

A much shorter version:

By sight,

We are becoming one.

union.

You, giving me myself.

Me thanking You.

And me also staring back.

Us, lost in this co-gazing.

It’s a short story really, but the one in which i learned true guilt verses false shame. When i was young, i loved silly putty. It came in a plastic egg, and you would take the magic stuff, and roll it over comics or any newspaper article and it would make a copy. Sort of permeative zeroing. To me it was magical. It’s all I ever wanted, and endless supply of silly putty. Anyways, I had bought some with my ice ream money and stashed it in my grandmother’s sewing drawer.

She said i could play with it at the end of the day, if i did all my chores. But I just couldn’t wait. As I picked up the papers and books around the house, i kept seeing potential things to copy. I’ve always had this desire to copy things, and to make them portable.

When I lived in Jerusalem years later, i would record all the conversations I had with the kids I was teaching. That also got me in a lot of trouble when i left the country. But that is another story.

In this one, i decided to “clean” out the sewing room. Of course, i got out the silly putty and started making copies of magazine prints. One of them, it turns out was actually a pattern my grandmother was using to make a garment.

She eventually returned to her sewing room, and saw that part of her pattern had actually been lifted. Let me explain that silly putty is not a perfect medium; sometimes, it actually lifts off the print on the thing it is making a facsimile of. That was that. I was busted. My grandmother came downstairs with that look of justice. Derek, did you use the silly putty to copy my pattern upstairs. Yes mam, I did.

It was useless to plead innocent, the proof was still in the putty.

She put the fear of God in me that day, by making me sit in silence for one hour and consider what I had done. After that day, I never disobeyed her again, but I did maintain a healthy supply of silly putty all the way into my twenties.

I remember the first time I went into a small printing press and had that same rush of excitement I’d had when i first discovered silly putty. That never went away. Neither did the fear of disobeying my grandmother.

It was a new pack of crayons with endless colors. Those huge packs that had colors in them which had barely been invented or named.

I had snuck my little sunkist can radio into school that day. They used to make these radios which were in the shape of a soda can. I would wrap mine in tin foil so the teacher couldn’t figure out it was a radio, or were that sound was coming from.

On this day, the teacher was out of the room, and i turned on the radio.

They were playing motown, and I saw this amazing pack of crayons on a desk in the back.

Recently i had seen a picture of a painting by Jackson Pollock. I knew what I had to do. There were those old golden colored radiators in that school, and today was a cold day, so the radiator was very hot. Well, the rest is art history. After going to the principal’s office and being told I would be suspended for three days, I realized the price you pay to make art in school. After that, i really only ever wanted to go to art school when i grew up.

I remember the principal called me son, then he called me boy. I remember telling him, or rather singing to him the little song i used to sing to myself all the time at church: “I’m not a boy, I’m Derek Demonte.” It had a melody, and I would repeat it all the time. I’m not sure why i felt the need to sing my own name all the time, but it kept me happy back then.

I think, even then, i liked to celebrate the identity of things, including my own. Later when i read King David’s psalm in which he celebrated himself as a poem of God, i felt vindicated. It’s ok to celebrate our uniqueness as part of the poetry of God.

When we write the song of ourselves from the right place, we are actually worshiping God, as one friend put it.

I think David probably melted crayons in school too.

My wife always says, you always put your best thoughts on napkins and receipts. Well, i don’t know if they are my best, but i do find that i write on everything and get my best ideas during transitions in the days…after this trip, i looked around, and it did seem true that i had been writing mostly on what was most readily available. When I was a kid, i wrote on my walls—the word believe was my first “big” word, the second was “beautiful”—i remember i had to write those two words everywhere. Perhaps i was doing graffiti before it was cool.

Either way, i’ve never not been able to constantly express. Funny finding all these coasters and receipts and instruction manuals from this past month, and all my funny comments on them. I was thinking in Spanish and english, it appears. At the end of my life, there will be a huge pile of all these papers, and perhaps i will do an installation piece or some type of sculpture, so they might be useful to someone!

Once, i had a vision I was sitting on a huge grandfather’s lap just talking endlessly. He was enjoying everything i had to day. One day, He handed me a scroll and told me to take it down the hill we were sitting on into the valley. So I took it and ran quickly down the hill. Everything was lush green like Ireland, and there were many animals along the way, all of whom i could talk to. When I arrived, there was a village, and i knew where to take the scroll. I talked to everyone along the way.

When I returned to grandfather, He was so happy. He had watched me all along the way, and enjoyed all the animals and people I met as i delivered his scroll.

This vision was so simple, and child like, but has stuck with me, as a calling dream since i had it years ago.

In another, i wore chimes all over my body, and simply walked around chiming. I like that one also. I did a painting of that one once. I love chimes and the idea of making something invisible visible something inaudible audible. I feel like , when I’m at my best, that’s pretty much all I do.

One time a famous prophet came up to me in my dream. We had been on a boat in silence. He was showing me how to navigate a huge river. When we came to the shore there were lines of people waiting for words from him. He gave everyone their words, detailed words about things they needed to know.

When he came back to me, he laughed, and just said, “be In Him.”

People often ask me to write down my stories, especially the spiritual tales of my life. So I decided to. Mainly, because I forget over half of them, and writing them down makes me thankful. Maybe that is the real reason. When I look at all the remarkable things which have happened to me in life, i am thankful. And it’s clear we enter His courts by being thankful. Hopefully, some of these stories make you thankful also.

I’m going to publish some of these tales here, as I am too inept to find a real publisher. Hope you enjoy them. Some of these are just rough sketches-kindling for the fire.

I’m not going to tell the whole story of my experience of 911, but here is what led up to it for me. Im in England, i have an acute sense that i must go to the airport. I do, and feel i need to buy a ticket to Boston Logan. I sense the airline to fly. I do. I’m land in Boston, and sense i need to rent a car and drive to NYC. As I arrive on the George Washington bridge, the first tower is hit.

The cars stop , national emergency signs start blinking, jets fly overhead, and i see an enormous cloud like a black dragon forming over the towers. I get out. Lots of people are running. I see truckers crying. I leave my car, go to a payphone call my parents, then call people I know in the city. I’m not sure at this point whether we are at war, or if this was an internal attack. There was lots of confusion in the air, along with the bodies eventually, and paper cups, zero machines, and shoes, and lots and lots of smoke.

That’s all I want to say here. I’ll return to this story often throughout these pages.

Afterwards, peace came over me through a woman and her son who were swimming in a nearby lake. They did not know what was happening and were in that simple exchange of a mother and child. Somehow seeing them being normal and very human ministered peace to my shaky body.

I did not sleep for three days after 911. Not until I delivered a red scarf to my fiancé in Cincinatti. That’s another story.

I had bought the scarf as a gift, thinking that delivering this romantic silk gift was the purpose of my coming back to America. In truth there were three parts to my coming back. One to bear witness to 911 as it happened; two to court and solidify my love for a woman, who should eventually become my wife; and three to tell a young man to move to a different state. I love threes, but I didn’t realize I had a three part mission on this trip until much later.

When I arrived in Cincinnati I was led to go to a particular parking lot and wait until I saw a woman getting out of a car. I waited for about twenty minutes, no woman came. About to leave, when a woman pulls up just in front of me. Ask her, if she knows Amy, a voice whispered. So, i got out of my car, and asked the lady.

Sure enough, she was Amy’s best friend. She was shocked, but being quite spiritually adventurous herself, led me back to where Amy lived. Amy was at work. I left the scarf on her pillow, and pressed on to the last part of my mission.

I don’t remember why i didn’t stay the night, until Amy came home, but something was pressing me on. I drove to Denver for the next part.

I had a dream of a young man who needed direction. Where is he? I don’t know Denver, and felt I didn’t have much time to stay there.

I go to a particular coffee shop. When I get near it, i start hearing, this young man needs to move to a particular other city. I walk into the shop, and look around. There is one artistic looking guy in the back corner. I get his name before i meet him, and ask him if that is indeed his name. It is, I give the word I was carrying. We talk for a while, and I leave, heading towards California.

That’s all for now, on that three part tale.

Slouching towards great writers…a few women i met who had that slant straight look!

I remember when i snuck onto the great southern writer Flannery O’conery’s peacock farm in Middletown Georgia. I remember her kind reception, and the sharp knowing in her eyes. That humor mixed with sharp insight and kindness. That same sense I got when I met Willa Cather, another great southern writer. Both women had this depth of listening, and years of inner beholding in them. But they could also both be very funny.

I also met Robert Bly on my birthday, we spoke of Jesus and death. He dedicated several poems to me. He had a tender bear heart, and a contagious concern for things. He had a tone of being which lingered.

But these two women made an even deeper impression on me with their eyes.

Both of them shared a sharp acerbic wit, mixed with a grandmother care less what people think-ness. I respected that then, when i was working my way through school, and taking long road trips to places where great people lived.

I went to the delta blues museum on a little library in Mississippi on the same trip I met Willa Cather. I wanted to see the spaces which formed the spiritual sight of these writers. I wanted to taste their atmospheres, there environments. But I also wanted to meet the ones who were still alive. Those women were two of my favorites, outside of their art, just as people. They had presence and concern, and something which felt like wisdom.

Of course, i would read all their books on the way to their places of residence. And I really didn’t care, when i got there, if i got to meet them. I just wanted to get their thoughts into my bones in an experiential way. Fortunately, i did get to meet many great writers and artist over the years. But these two stuck out.

I know the roads in the south. I’ve memorized them. It was never nostalgia to me. I’ve never had an image of some romantic past. Both my grandfather’s were farmers and homesteaders. So I know how much work they had daily, and there is nothing romantic about a watermelon patch in terms of work. But there is something special about sunset over a watermelon patch.

My grandfather used to have people jump off the train and steal his melons. So he kept his shotgun on that part of the field. Regardless, i never was romantic about their generation. It was lots of hard work. Still, i felt that my own heart felt more at home in their time than mine. A bit like that movie Paris, Texas. At least the tone.

Anyways, Willa and Flannery both carried all those “Christ haunted south” ways in their eyes. And I was glad to meet them for that.

Later when i met Madonna, i started thinking about the difference between live performers and writers. She had such buzz around her. I liked talking with her, and she was very open spiritually, but in terms of that older inner listening spirit, those writers had more of that. Perhaps it’s just different mediums lead to different formation of the soul. I like all sort of people. But there is something about those who have spent a life listening, that creates an inner bedrock, that is also somehow water softened.