Last year’s christmas was for us about the starlight in the story. It was about the range of radiance and constellational patterns made by stars, and why God chose to express Himself as starlight-esp in the way of this story, as a signal of the birth of The Son. It was a meditation of varying degrees of glory from a single source–His Star. This year, we are meditating on the wise ones from the east. The whole way of God that is the east–what it says of Him, and the nature of its silence.

Last year, we expressed our exploration by having disco balls and euro club lights, projected images onto the house, and lots of swirling pools of different types of light (again, exploring star light). It was frenetic, and had motion and sound activated lighting–the swiss machine shooting 12 different patterns onto the barn, activated by kid claps and even laughter.

This year, I see less pools of motioned light as last year, and more still streaks of single colors. More about the inner life of wisdom, and the gift of being able to examine each element distinctly.  I see more of a cubist tokyo Jesus this year. I would love to do a nativity with just the wise men in it–to meditate on the fact that the baby actually made the wise men, so is reflected in their questing!

As I walk around with Jesus as the backdrop for everything—I am able to see what each thing truly is—whether a city, nation or person, or even a street corner, a train station…Jesus is my walking meditation, my transparency, my filter-HE comes into the illusion and bleeds, making it Real again. He incarnates in the samsara.

There was a city once, i didn’t know how to love her-i was a boy. Then I came back as a man, and i could see what she needed. After I felt bad for not blessing her, i decided to do what i could to help her come into her fullness.

Grace is a difficult sound, when your bound by your own strivings to come clear. But Grace is the starting place for all losers to become kings. It is grace and freedom, the bells I’m ringing. May my face come clear, as the billboard man expands to renovate the stars.

I have a burden to fly.

Slowly retracting from the descending clinch of stress, we recall cacoon of womb–this shape around us telling us where we end…in mortal light’s dim referal, we can be happy to have landed in one of the universe’s soft spots, so gracefully held despite our gripping.

Cities are shining stories. People are uniquely shaped reflectors. I cannot say why we fragment, why we implode…so many pressures, forces unseen, within and witout.

I am a star, so I shine. It is my purpose to reflect His Patterns. A city is not unlike me-meant to reflect some composite, some nuance, some singular ray back to Him, so He can be thankful He shone. We dull ourselves too often. We mute being, and in doing so obscure His Reflection.

We are distinct. Land is not sea–distinction is His Essence.

We make homes to house our own stardom, the unique domain of our own density and velocity–we form the pleasant lines of our inheritance. Celestial homes for stars, for we need the sheer magnetism of our specific boundaries. We need to be framed in the sheer fabric of our own beings. It is not for us to worship one another, but to be illuminated into His Mapping of His own contours.

With origins, presents, and futures, it’s hard to say what we are, until we see, the entire story (of a person, city or nation). Wisdom hangs out at the cross roads for a reason.

Impossible to treat a single person in ease-ie, without perceiving the need of knowing the whole undertow of their story. Who am I to presume you are not much more than a blade of grass in wind.

You are seasons gathered in wrinkles across time into some composite of His Glory- a story He has been willing to tell from the start. And I am perceiving you. Who am I?

Culture collects itself in dynamism. It is the collective symbolic self.

When it codifies, it becomes an it–ink frozen on paper- and drifts away from itself. Meant to be one, many-nuanced, diademic poem of self as expression of God; but when it calcifies, breaks off (it as an it) is often idolized and becomes something outside of itself.

And yet, and yet, we are one, as He is one. A city is a poem, a culture, a novella–let us remain attached.

Sometimes, in time, He commences a funeral, so drifting aspects can return, and be reborn.

Icons fracture in the blaze of core identity.

Come home and burn, it seems to say to me; don’t project yourself onto others. It is finished. We are meant to be one. We are dynamic, and He is the Dynamism. Let us collect ourselves!

From here, i see whole cities turning in time. I want to kiss each one, until it spins on a dime and knows itself so purely that it enjoys itself with no ego. Instead, to see herself as God’s art. From here, i could meditate on one thing only: the center of this star, magnetically rotating, so brilliantly, as to attract the universe. Or even a single stranger. What’s possible! What would it look like if we were ourselves, truly shining?

And then a supermarket at night, another type, of beauty. Nothing less, somehow.