One of my mentors ice climbed waterfalls with me. When waterfalls freeze up in winter in the mountains, it’s possible to climb them! He must’ve known i’d need it in this season…..wrote a little slant poem for him today…

My teacher and i climbed iced over waterfalls once in mid winter mountains up north somewhere …

half way up, iced over, and iced picking through life’s
water fall cliff clime, Berkshires in rhyme, us; two men dangling, where they were;
we ate lunch as men, in time together half way up…
hanging there, on our particular hooks, considering….
vulnerable as leaders are; just then, a willow or wren passed, at least, or hawk’s relief flew through; something regardless (which i can’t recall fully), flew above us;
and maybe through us, as we reached upwards….

that teaching is still in my colder knowing bones,
my mentor friend.
Ice climbing waterfall in winter with you, went in.
Let’s climb on.

Trying to hear the poem…

I can’t hear a poem anymore
with the sky covered so quickly;
can you speak through this cloudy dissonance?
can we hear, as we are.
i’m trying to hear your poems, but
so much interference
black noise on rivers
whole city’s silenced
black outs everywhere… earthquakes fear, mainly fear instead of Love.
i’m trying to hear your poem Lord and
friend
i’ll transmit it,
i promise.
Let me be
your cup of tea
in the dark.
Let me be
something you enjoy
at the end of the night.

One of my mentors ice climbed waterfalls with me. He must’ve knew i’d need it in this season…..wrote a little slant poem for him today…

My teacher and i ice climbing waterfalls once…

half way up, iced over
water fall cliff clime, Berkshires in rhyme, us;
we ate lunch as men, in time together half way up…
hanging there, on our particular hooks,
vulnerable as leaders are; just then, a willow or wren passed, at least, or hawk’s relief flew through; something regardless (which i can’t recall fully), flew above us;
that teaching is still in my bones my mentor friend.
Ice climbing waterfall in winter with you, went in.

Taking off cultural clothes….a friend’s great question! What’s your naked religion!
“If you take culture off Christianity, what do you have left? I would like to meet Jesus, but can’t get past the cultures (especially American and Western Europe’s versions) which developed in His Name. The culture of christianity is blocking me from meeting Jesus.” a friend asked last night. Wow, ok….
She went on, “What is your naked religion? What is it without all the cultural manipulation of expression, it’s cultural branding and marketing? What’s its essence?” Always a great question! If anyone’s gotten to that point, they actually want to know!
My favorite question anyone has asked me in the past five years. And led to the best depth dialogue, I’ve had in a while! What is the essence of that faith? Was her basic inquiry. What are it’s core symbols and metaphors which would help me live better?
Especially in the post religious (or global supermarket religious) times we live in. What is the essence of your faith, outside of its cultural expression. Good inquiry.
And what a great moment in history for authenticity! A transparent faith is the most useful now. People living out their spirituality out loud. Telling their real stories. I met an angel, i met Jesus, i had my life protected….
We started by separating spirituality from religion. I love starting there. What are you actually guiding your life by? What is your higher or upper story, how to define or value your life? Daily, what keeps you motivated to wake up! We went there, but as with most best conversations, things often start with a good earnest question!
How to encounter the actual essence of a way, still matters. And listening to one another’s deeper stories of life. So thankful there are folks still asking the basics.
What’s your naked religion? If it were just you and God in the entire universe, who would you be. Would you feel loved, seen known valued, purposeful? If you took the cultural clothes off your faith, what would remain?! Great quest-ion from a friend. I love great questions! Keeps us questing forwards in faith!

Telling our true stories!

How to find and then tell your life story still matters! It makes meaning obvious, and helps keep us to turn the pages into new chapters.

Learning how to tell our true stories through art, still matters to me. Once, we can read and tell our stories, we see that they are meaningful, valuable. I like helping people do that-find and tell their stories through art! Here’s one of mine i started telling and drawing as a kid!

The man between worlds:

A long time ago, i too, like most young artists, created a mythology of life for myself in this little character of a stick figure walking between worlds. The man who walked between worlds was the narrative. And it was a man like the man on wire, who set a rope between cities and the heavens going through musical notes which were the sky, and joining or at least walking towards the rays of the sun which were hope’s musical Source.

It came from a funnel vision i had when i was younger; in the vision, where I saw Jesus at the end of a huge funnel. The funnel itself was made of music. And as long as I looked only at him i could walk in air, or float, but like St Peter (in my case though on air rather than water); as soon as I looked away, I sunk. In my case limbs would be torn off, and my eyes or gaze seared. If I stared at the demonic the atmosphere outside the funnel of music, i would immediately decay, but if i stayed focused on Jesus, i was free to create in this huge funnel filled with living notes. In my drawings, the people in the music were actually made of notes.

Great vision, and so i did a series of drawings about that stick man who walked between worlds. Thinking of making a children’s book from it now. How to walk between worlds without getting torn apart.

This little character, “Sticks and Bones” i’ve called him since, wore a tall hat, had a cane which could also be used as a balancing pole, and always had a slight smile, and usually a single flower on his hat—a sunflower in fact. I still often think of him as my future self talking to my younger one, and offering hope for the atmospheric journey we all take upwards.

In college, when i first heard about Philipe Petite, back before everything was documented, his symbolic stunt of walking between the world trade centers, a prophetic stunt as it turned out, for I was also there the day those symbols fell; i always thought, that’s amazing, but he is going lateral, in my vision I was going vertical gradually.

In my story, the fellow can also go back and forth between the city’s rooftops and the source of song or heavenly realm. Heaven also is not depicted as everyone in bliss, but as everyone very creative and still learning things.

I’m going to work on this little story again, for all the kids who want to keep climbing towards the stars! Regardless, interesting how when young we make up stories, that we need, in order to know our own!

Learning how to tell your life narrative through different mediums like fairy tale or visual art is a way to remember who we really are. That especially is helpful at certain seasons of life, and builds trust in the Narrator! The One who is telling your story, wants to finish it!

I still love helping people find their true stories and express them. What our lives have to teach can be expressed symbolically, in short! Know your story, to keep telling it, or rather having it be told!

Cicada song

The cicadas started talking
today in Texas.
each year they
start their strange rattling
vibrations, all
at once. Startling and somehow soothing simultaneously,
these insects with
their rusty bowed orchestra
happening at once, It’s a sign
Summer is fully here.
There is a dark rustling distance
in their odd scrapping song-
like dry leaves being crushed
in a green glass jar…
or memory.

or more like a memory which keeps returning.

teenagers like to stare at things.
i like that about that age
they aren’t afraid to look into
the matter, or one another’s
eyes. they haven’t learned
the fear of looking away yet!

My dog often thinks he is a giraffe
and climbs the fence to eat fresh way-up-high leaves
from the next door neighbor’s yard
(always reaching for the stars, that guy)
i try to gently remind him of his name today
until he comes back to earth
and eats his food.
I’m sure God has to do the same
with me often.

a bird, this one, a wren
is a little poem in constant motion
pecking it’s way through life, in search for something…
which never leaves its identity.
i don’t know if squirrel’s sleep, but
i’ve seen them relax.
we are clever enough
to outsmart ourselves
but they all seem to be themselves
better than us.
they know
to continue to grow
is just right.

A fishy dream:
the other night
i was fishing in several nations
in my dream,
asking friends
the difference
between catching a perch
a bass a trout a brim

as each creature
has it’s own density
of mystery.

what was the weight
of mystery on each line?

what did it
require
of us
to pull
into
time.
to bring
to light.

Did i neglect your name
your sadness or your love. some regret
you implied, or tried to tell me, i missed along the way.
I’m sorry friend. We could have been
better. But, i’m finally thankful
for the nuances of your name today.
Even the parts i didn’t say.
Each day, I’ve tried to listen well
tried to make strangers come into the focus of friendship;
the focus of being named, that only friendship can bring!
but i’m sure i missed a line or two along the way.
I bless then, today, your missing lines
that could’ve been written by my heart’s gaze.
I’m sure the angels are reading them now anyway,
none of us are in haze,
despite me, despite us.
but i could’ve been a better poet
of your being. Still, we’ll get written
down as friends. Maybe,
that’s enough, to end well in Love.
We’ll wear each other’s names better in heaven,
I’m sure!

My mom is a great performer and has an angelic voice, and long ago, though she may not remember, as we are all getting older, she gave me a small riddle which stuck with me for life?

My mom gave me the first part of a haiku years ago, when i was a kid and already performing in the neighborhood, and later in bands. Every kid likes riddles!

Derek you are always loved because the fat lady never leaves and always applauds, regardless of how well you perform; though she often, like you sits in the back row of church. My mom is a tiny lady, so i knew she wasn’t talking about herself, but some other Source of staying constantly loved. Hearing the daily applause of being!

Sometimes she gives standing ovations, my mom said. Years later, she told me the fat lady was named Grace, which was my grandmother’s name, so i thought for a while it could be her who was praying and cheering me on.

Then years later, that her real name was Jesus. I had already met Him, and immediately agreed! He’s the one who always claps for us, regardless.

That little koan stuck with me. Jesus is the one always cheering for us, celebrating our identities, and always excited about our performance in life! Ok, got it! Wow, that only took 50 years!

Who knows what i will learn in the next, now that i know my audience! Although seeing the Holy Spirit, as a fat lady, has always slightly troubled me. Perhaps, that is just her current form! One for our benefit!

Our need for meaning:

Reading from some of the Viennese psychologist this summer to remember what they gleaned: I always look first at what someone thinks drives us to be human, and to change. The core motivational factor helps essentialize method. In Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl that core would be our need for meaning!

For if we really don’t believe in meaning, it’s hard to make it through any level of suffering. His logo therapy was aimed at meaning formation or discovery! For he came to think that life had meaning regardless of suffering. How we interpret suffering is the key.

Freud put the will to pleasure at the center what it means to be human, Adler, the will to power, but Frankl put the search for meaning as the most important human need. Feels closer to the truth to me!

I’m enjoying re-reading, “Man’s Search for Meaning” this Summer. His philosophy of course came out of working with holocaust people, and his own life. He calls his theory, “logo-therapy”. Meaning therapy.

I still like returning to this book. Clear and humble toned, and kind.
Doesn’t meaning and what we value in life end up being one key motivation for dealing with pain and suffering as well. I think Frankl made a simple and profound observation about what it means to be human. We need meaning.

We need to be involved in a story which has meaning, even if there is great suffering in it!

Of course, Christianity might add that we have a suffering servant savior who is familiar with all our suffering and offers a meaningful narrative rather than escape to them. We don’t escape but rather enter suffering with Him, which gives them meaning. Rather than escaping suffering we fellowship with His through ours. That’s basic christian spirituality.

Regardless, this book is clear, helpful and even hopeful! Good re-read! And like Aristotle wrote about art in “Poetics”-we simply like and need to have a beginning middle and end in stories and in life! We need things to mean things, and have meaningful progressions. And according to Viktor Frankl, they do!

From an article I’m working on about the role of artists:

Great art is a new world which starts inside us or is implanted, of one closer to how the real world actually is, of meaning taking permanent root and residence in one’s heart, and being expressed symbolically, outwardly through some medium, as a blessing and a room for other’s sight and response to what is Real, and to increase their receptivity to Love.

The role of the artist is to find and reflect Reality well, as it is honestly, and will be, so others can enter living transformative contact with Love in Hope. Or meet God, in short! Artists are meant to be that sort of sign or pointer or highway towards the reality of hope. Artist are meant to correct our vision towards the dignity of life’s true dimensions. When we see things more as they are, we are by sight transformed, conformed to a truer image. Creativity is re-alignment with what is. In this sense, good art is evangelism towards Reality!

If Christ is real, one will find Him as one travels towards what is Real! Art trust that metaphysical fact. If no one comes to The Father but through Him, then to get there, we will have to find Him. Art trusts that, without making religious excuses. It says, instead, if what is is, then we will be fine. Let’s create. Let’s play vulnerably like children again! Art declares an unspoken trust in the Universe. In short, it says yes to things, as they are and will be! It implies there is meaning to life! A reason to continue. It’s an unapologetic apology for Life!