I lean myself into my words, until i become them.

Certain cities carry integration:

A quote from a friend who recently visited a city which made her feel more whole, or able to invite more parts of herself into the same house.

“That city lets all the parts of myself come under one roof!” My friend said of Jerusalem. They don’t have to struggle against one another-we are both being ourselves, where we are at. They can be in active dialogue and respect each other. Integrative cities! Places where the whole self can be and come home!

“I’m able to be my whole self there, even while it is all present and becoming. I’m able to bring the parts of myself into one city and bless her as she does.”

Our biographies often align with our city’s. Mapping the two helps us chart our trajectories. We are mirrors for one another! How your own story relates to your city’s matters, and is part of your mutual healing, or becoming more whole. We are also not victims of our cities, we are co-laborers of becoming with them!

Why are you in a healing or haven city? Why in a powerhouse building city? Why in an alpha versus a mid sized entreprenuerial city? How does your personal story relate to your city’s? And where are you both at in your journey? Fun questioning my way into these city and life conundrums today!

We live where we are, but it’s good to know where our stories overlap! What city do you feel most fully yourself in? And why. How do your journeys meet. How does your narrative fit into your city’s? Love to read some autobiographies which included the autobiography of the cities we live in! And how they reflect and refine one another!

For this woman, the city she visited carried integration. Some cities have an integration gift, others a haven until you see gift. Each city has it’s gifts and shadows as each person. Knowing which city carries what you need seasonally is a key to meaningful journeying, and spiritual development.

We choose where we live, and need to know her story before we came along, and see how ours fits in, and can potentially bless our city. This is part of being in loving mutually formational relationship with our city.

Thinking about humor today, as part of who God and we are:

God is also funny! People underrate His humor. In college, i studied humor (which in itself was funny! There are many very serious books written on what humor is, and how to be funny!)-the simultaneous placing of things normally in different rooms into the same-the sudden paradoxes which make us laugh, or the exaggeration of something we already know, but hadn’t considered in an inflated form-hyperbole creates laughter, as does odd juxtaposition.

Even pun, a lower form of linguistic humor, is making us aware of multiple uses of the same word simultaneously! Something about that sudden aha in a fresh pun, that could also mean that- makes us laugh. God liked to pun with Jeremiah, you will remember! And many others who enjoyed that type of exchange.

Aristotle in his “Poetics” has a great chapter on the nature of comedy. In it, he speaks of the necessary laugher to earn a tragic moment. Indeed, the two do go hand and hand–laughter and sorrow. They appear to be tethered to same post in Reality! Laughing and crying simultaneously is part of the human condition. Don’t miss either, as they say!

Freud thought humor was an act of power over something inferior. We laugh at, to feel more powerful than others. Interesting, but cynical at best, his theory. I tend to think more it is an act of hope for all our wholeness. The Father even chuckles at us trying to figure out how our humor works. I could almost hear Him today laughing as i wrote about it.

In my spiritual journey, i’ve come to value God’s humor more and more, as I get older. There is deep chuckle in Father’s throat as He deals with us all. One we need to echo daily for one another. This too shall pass, yes, but also, we are genuinely odd and funny, even in our rebellious states. Life is always deadly serious and hilarious simultaneously. God has to laugh to get by, as one monk put it! We certainly need more laughter in our days as well!

Laughter creates trust and is the atmosphere of friendship and prayer. A friend is clearly someone you can let down your hair and laugh with. And God is into friendship-His favorites He always calls friends.

Even prayer can be playful. If He wasn’t funny why would He make us, and want to be in some sort of relationship with bumbling stumbling forward fools, who are clearly a series of hilarious contradictions.

Life is deadly serious, and hilarious-don’t miss either part of God. Sometimes we get too austere to be useful.

Let’s not take ourselves too seriously, and, instead, enter into the Father’s endless chuckle with us as we become ourselves. Joy is not just a idealistic fruit of the Spirit, it’s part of who Father is. “There is a deep chuckle throughout the universe, which includes us.” (as one monk put it!)

I’ve never heard a great sermon, which lacked some humor, and the great ones, usually start with it. Humor sets the stage for Wisdom to enter! Humor places us in between, so we can receive truth. Entertainment means to enter in between. To take someone to an in between space is a responsibility. What you do then, once you have everyone laughing, is up to you.

The Hopi Indians used to always send in the clowns before the chiefs and wise men. A great preacher tells several great jokes before launching into whatever Wisdom he or she has been given!

Of course, entertainment can be escapist, but doesn’t need to be. To laugh is preparation for reception of a new truth, as one funny zen monk put it. If I cannot laugh at myself, I am in trouble in terms of encountering the Almighty, as a hasidic jokester put it in the medieval days. If we can’t laugh, when we look in the mirror, we probably aren’t seeing ourselves clearly! Humor is simply part of being human. A needed and precious part of being part of His Image and Reflection. Let’s laugh on friends!

“Never mind whether God exist, try finding a plumber on Sundays!” as one comedian put it. “Parallel lines have so much in common, it’s a shame they never meet!” as said another. Or, “The Lord said to St John, come forth and I will give you eternal life. John same fifth, and won a toaster.” Life is still funny people! And so are we.

A counselor’s confession:

Some nights i have the favor and fervor to bless through depth listening. And so i do. People just tell me their inner, unheard stories and I listen and feel like i am so blessed to know and behold them.

People perhaps tell me too much, but it goes into some unseen blanket of Love, where our inner tapestries are eventually written. I’m overwhelmed by each of us. And amazed over and over again, by Our common Father, who is constantly, leaning in to hear us, in and into, Love!

I’m writing a longer more detailed version of this true life story elsewhere, but felt like sharing a condensed version here, because it’s a cool story, that i got to be a character in!

One day, when i lived in Paris, i saw a man about to jump from a high bridge. He already had his legs on the other side, and his body was trembling in wind.
Immediately, i felt The Spirit’s pacing as I walked slowly towards the man. I made eye contact, and was directed to pull out a sketch pad and draw three images. I did so—a door, a gate, and church house with steeple. Simple images. I was surprised how quickly and clearly i drew them with charcoals.

I approached the man, and held them up. Then started praying out loud. Amazingly, the man could understand me and started crying and speaking to me in fluent french, as if he understood everything i was saying. We conversed like this for a few minutes through tears. He then hugged me, came off the bridge and we walked to a nearby feeding shelter in a church. Everyone knew him there, and embraced him openly and lovingly.

That was my favorite day ever in Paris.

What struck me most was how The Spirit can communicate across cultures directly into a person’s heart, using images and prayer language, if we stay available. Since then, i have had other similar experiences, but I’ll never forget that one. Watching the Spirit save that man’s life, motivates me to stay available as I roam.

Praying for cities today….
The translucency of cities! When we pray for them, they become see through! Pray, to see, as my mentor put it. Prayer is also a method of interpretation. We then see through His Heart–the best lens.

One of the most impressive things about Jesus is His willingness to enter intense human suffering for us! It’s still what impresses me most about Him. His teachings are amazing, but His model of entering into other’s suffering may be the highest mark of His character. And sets Him apart.

From Gethsemane—He is truly intimately acquainted with all our sufferings. He is that type of God; one who enters through our particular suffering. Because He suffered so intensely—isolation, rejection, and physical abuse etc-He is able to empathize with all of our human suffering.

This is not a God who is floating above human suffering, but one who enters it fully, so can be met in our daily sufferings. That’s one thing Gethsemane teaches us. Jesus was a suffering God, who entered into ours. He knows human suffering, so can be met through it.

He did not, even when given a chance, avoid it, but rather dove into death to overcome it. That’s still one of the most powerful things about His Life on earth to me. He is a God who can fully relate to us in our pain and sorrow.

He knows racism, poverty, physical sickness etc. He is intimately acquainted with any sort of pain we know. That’s a meet-able God! One who is knowable, because He knows us!

Jesus as symbol completer:

The other take away this week, was that Jesus was very Jewish, and a completer of Jewish symbols. This may seem very obvious to some, but becomes more embedded in your knowing, when walking around where He did His thing on earth.

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, a peaceful ancient wind blown olive tree textured space just across from the temple mount, which really is a power spot in His ministry, a place where He conversed intimately with His Father, and drew down strength to finish His tasks, He prayed facing the temple. Of course, in His case, He was ultimately facing The Father’s Heart, but He lived out His spirituality within and in response to, and completer of Jewish symbolic frames. This become overtly obvious when there.

His Life, death burial and resurrection all occurred within the lines of prophetic or living Judaism, and its geo-spirituality. Good reminder which offers hope that all the symbols of Judaism will one day be completed even more fully in the future! All of Isaiah and Ezekiel’s visions of completion of each symbol in the future, become more assured by watching how He completed symbols while here. The Author and Finisher of all symbols.

That “stone of agony” for instance, that He prayed on by the garden, was facing and had a clear view of the temple, as did the garden itself on the mount of Olives. He often pointed to that place to teach from, as He taught using concrete symbols around Him, as all Jews did. He taught through symbols that His audience was familiar with. Things around them took on new layers of meaning–wild olive trees versus cultivated ones became teachings about Jews and Gentiles, and their future relations.

The geo-spirituality of Jesus ministry was Jewish. And He was working within their symbolic system, helping bring their symbols to wholeness or completion.

Good to meditate on Him as a completer of the Mosaic (Jewish) Law this week-the incarnation embodiment of it! The Author and Finisher. The bread which became The Bread of Life. How He completed all the old symbols. Jesus was a completer of symbols. Container of the whole Law, who wrote them in our hearts, as Jeremiah predicted.

Nice meditation this week, as I roam around Jerusalem with Him, the one who was held up like the snake in the wilderness, for the healing of the people, and completed all the other symbols as well. Wine becomes His blood. The literal symbols become embodied in Him. He ingest and completes them. This was His methodology. He was incarnating the Jewish symbols to make the Word, Living. He was the communication of God. All symbols are meant to communicate. He was that communication. And God chose to use Jewish symbols to communicate through.

Something about knowing that He completed those older symbols, gives me trust that He will complete all the symbols in the end. For He is a trustworthy symbol finisher, a great Master artist in other words, who will finish His Body of work! The Father has placed a symbolic level of meaning in everything around us. The Jews named theirs, and Jesus completed them. And will do so in the future, was what I left with after walking around in his steps while here.

But while here, He clearly worked to complete the Jewish symbols. Jesus was Jewish. And was completing the symbolic dimension of their faith while here, and worked within that symbolic framework. And will complete those symbols in the end!

Someone asked me, should we fear going to Jerusalem….thoughts on and from Jerusalem as a city and person:

What Rabbi Greenberg calls, “the unafraid streets of Jerusalem” are a miracle in themselves, given her true layered and long story. That is, the fact that we can all walk around sharing markets, and enjoying the same full moon settling on white stoned rooftops, is a wonder.

The fact that the Muslim holy days (fridays) come a day before Shabbot (saturdays), come a day before Christian services (Sundays); and that the church bells are ringing as evening chants and daily prayers layer into a daily mid air tapestry which make up her atmosphere. Her symbolic simultaneity alone is a miracle in itself.

Her religious and secular streams from each religion, and her more orthodox expressions all somehow walk with or around with one another daily. Perhaps, that is one of her miracles. How she holds all that in her womb or heart at once.

I experience that daily here in a city which one would think would be contantly terrified, rather than just often disgruntled and conflicted; instead, you find very human markets, schools, holy sites, and rich daily conversations as you wander. Everyone, of course, has strong opinions, and shares them openly, but there is something more than mere co-existence here. There is a strange and often strained type of communion in her streets. Something unspoken, or sounded between the lines. Some tone of hope.

Each city has her own challenges. Some are more overtly religious, like Tiberias, some, like Tel Aviv, more secular humanistic problems to solve. This one seems to have all the world’s city’s problems and triumphs at once. And they walk around together. And talk and often yell at one another, but are all here.

There is a difference of course between religious traditions, and faith or spirituality. Spirituality is how you actually live daily, and dialogue with all that is around you. Spirituality is what your heart is actually soaking in, or in union with; and it’s fruits are made obvious by daily exchange with others. What tree you’ve planted within, will eventually be revealed by the outer fruits, as the books teach us! The fruits of the Spirit have already been named.

And if you don’t take sides, but try to listen well and empathize, to Love in short, almost every point of angle of humanity exist in one conversation. It is a very human city, despite it’s intense unconscious and more overt ongoing conflicts. That it continues daily is in itself a miracle of possibility.

One thing is clear, Jerusalem is not fearful. Being in constant conflict is not necessarily living in fear was one take away from my walks this week through the winding ancient labyrinthian streets and conversations of, in and with Jerusalem.

She is a story spoken in silence.
This city talks directly to me with just it’s ancient eyes alone. Everyone contains multitudes here. Glances alone are layered in symbols, just as the buildings are. And that’s before anyone speaks. Even this silence in our eyes here is a tell and a long tale worth exchanging forever. Maybe as her poets say, the whole world is contained in her eyes alone. And she is like a place you never left, but were always moving towards somehow, and peering out from… Regardless, the map home is written in her ancient eyes, stories spoken in silence, as if yesterday were today and tomorrow, or perhaps forever.