Finding The Day:
When I was a kid, my mom would often wake me up with this verse: “This is the day which the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.”

But it didn’t always feel like the day of the Lord to me. I never loved early mornings which school required, I was an artist, and even then, stayed up late at night. It took me many years, to realize that we actually had to find and faith our way into “the day of the Lord.” To actively position ourselves towards the Day of The Lord.

It’s certainly there, but takes a little work on our part to find it, and live in and from it daily. Yet, it is still my practice to find “that Day, each day, in my days.”

Finding the Lord’s Day within our days is a spiritual practice. Everyday. This is the Day that the Lord has made, i will first find it, and enter into it, and then find myself rejoicing in it! It is a spiritual discipline to find the Lord’s Day everyday.

To pray our way into The Day, to turn towards it, makes ours meaningful! And the Day is always in our midst, but sometimes we must discipline ourselves to find its already dawning.

Spirituality is not passive, and we can choose to accept our own version of each day, but there is another Day just behind the curtain, which helps our’s shine. Try to find the backdrop which puts our own days in spiritual relief, that’s the practice. So that our daily lives become an active part of our spiritualities.

I think we wake up near the Day, or even in the midst of The Day, but have a part in actively placing ourselves in an orientation to enter into that Day experientially or existentially. When we do, our own hours and activities are contextualized in a long stream of meaningful days.

I’m still thankful for my mom telling me The Day was indeed there; but have had to learn how to find it each day.

Hope that you are finding The Day, within your days, today friends! And then, rejoicing in it!

Here’s a Celtic woman, Rosalia Castro, encounter of european bells, near the turn of the century. I love the Spanish mystics! Not unlike my own heart’s! I love bells, i love europe, and echoes teach still even back into where they first rang!

I recorded bells for over a year from our single window in Antwerp, it’s an ongoing project to record bells at all times of day in europe. Let you know when it rings forth! Or when the bell tolls on that project!

Bells fascinate me! She seems to understand them well! And what they meant! Born in Santiago de Compostela she had that celtic mystical “porous vision”, as some have described it. Interesting when she turns it to what the sound of old bells (a more relatively modern metaphor) carry!

Here’s a nice line from her turn of the century poem:

Of Europe, she wrote…

“Should her bells become forever mute
what sadness in the air and sky!
what silence in the churches!!
what wonder among the dead.”

In Spanish it reads:

Si por siempre enmudecieran,
que tristeza en el aire y en el cielo!
que silencio en las iglesias!!
que extraneza entre los muertos.

The sadness of bells no longer ringing! So glad they still chime from time to time! Let’s keep listening to the bells in the old world friends. They haven’t stopped ringing yet! I’ll do a reading from some of this lovely poet’s works soon! I’m glad someone beheld the bells! If they stop chiming, we may all be in trouble!

The Snow, in the end
fell from a Hand.
And we were satisfied
like kids again, by it’s sheer wonder.
We looked up
and manna like honey
filled our open mouths.
Each flake, like words we
could never speak.
Like baby birds wait, meekly
for worms at night…
trusting their parents in dark’s rustle
to feed them until they too
can fly, gliding gracefully into the glistening wonder of snow.

Came across a woman celtic (Galician) mystic who meditated on the bells of europe!

I recorded bells for over a year from our single window in Antwerp, it’s an ongoing project to record bells at all times of day in europe. Let you know when it rings forth! Or when the bell tolls!

Bells fascinate me! She seems to understand them well! And what they meant! Born in Santiago de Compostela she had that celtic mystical “porous vision”, as some have described it. Interesting when she turns it to what the sound of old bells (a more modern metaphor) carry!
Here’s a nice line from her turn of the century poem:

Of Europe, she wrote…

“Should her bells become forever mute
what sadness in the air and sky!
what silence in the churches!!
what wonder among the dead.”

In Spanish it reads:

Si por siempre enmudecieran,
que tristeza en el aire y en el cielo!
que silencio en las iglesias!!
que extraneza entre los muertos.

The sadness of bells no longer ringing! So glad they still chime from time to time! Let’s keep listening to the bells in the old world friends. They haven’t stopped ringing yet! I’ll do a reading from some of this lovely poet’s works soon! I’m glad someone beheld the bells! If they stop chiming, we may be in trouble!

The bible as mystery novel:

I love how St Paul called things “mysteries”—there is the mystery of marriage (which indeed is a mystery!), the mystery of the gospel itself, and to Timothy, the “mystery of Godliness”, or living well, which is based on Jesus having actually incarnated, and wanting to inside of us, which produces the mystery of godliness in us.

I like life being a series of unpacking or incarnationally solving or embodying mysteries. Then the bible becomes more a mystery novel.

It is like Paul invites us to know or enter the mysteries as well, and sometimes explains them, as he did in Timothy—pursue righteousness, flee the ways of death which include….Nice of him to break it down for us, while inviting us into the mysteries. Some people don’t like mystery novels. I think they are more honest to how life actually is.

The concept of the power of words in Hebrew versus Greek thought. To reclaim the power of the word is desperately needed in our times. I’m looking for models in history of cultures which valued the power of words!

Spoken words especially had great power in native cultures as well; but specifically in Jewish culture. Words had power. Curses and blessings are based on this power. Word is life. Has charge. The potency of words has been a bit lost in our times. We use language rather than embody it. Buber conversely speaks of the two orientations towards Reality as Word phrases! Something we speak! Make sense that Martin Buber the great 20th C Jewish thinker, used language itself as his core metaphor of how to live well!

His words “did things to people”—J Knox

Thinking about the power of words today! Some cultures value them more than others—the inner power of words. Native Americans tend to, as did the Jews—the power of language to create. So it makes sense, with Buber that his two basic life orientations were how we spoke. Speaking creates things in others. Words carry the power of life and death—either curses or blessings are spoken daily to and from us.

“‘Careful with fire,’ is good advice we know,
Careful with words,’ is ten times doubly so.”, as the saying goes…

In certain cultures (lots of indigenous cultures, and the Jewish culture as well), words were seen as activators, creative life force, something which call forth either death or life in things and others. Covenants themselves are of course lodged in words. In ours at times, we often just use language to do things, or don’t consider what life is contained in its syllables and cadences, much less it’s tone.

When St John called Jesus The Word he was tying together both greek and hebrew concepts of God. But it is interesting, that He called Jesus The Living Word become flesh!

One of my spiritual mentors said: be careful, especially as you have a gift with words, not to use, but rather choose your words. Language intrinsically has a gift of life or death. Choose life, hourly with your words.

Or as William Barclay points out about the power of words in Jewish culture:

To the Jew a word was far more than a mere sound; it was something which had an independent existence and which actually did things. As Professor John Paterson has put it: “The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive…. It was a unit of energy charged with power. It flies like a bullet to its billet.” For that very reason the Hebrew was sparing of words. Hebrew speech has fewer than 10,000; Greek speech has 200,000.

My recurring life topics: identity, authentic spirituality, spiritual development and growth; how art interfaces with spirituality (the sacred imagination), creativity as a place of spiritual transformation, the identities of cities…

On this last subject, just started an illuminating book which really is written towards a theology of the cities. “Cities Redeemed (a theology of the city)” it’s called.

It was the last book written by our Dutch friend Pieter Bos, who died a few years back, but nearly finished this book beforehand, and has lots of seeds for good contemplation about who cities are, and their destinies from a city planner and city’s reconciler who was spiritually awake!

Covers the identities of many global cities as well: Atlanta, Prague and many others, in terms of who they are, their wounds, and how their identities are to be redeemed. Nice meditations on their identities and destinies! I like again thinking of cities as people with a story! A DnA, a wound or corrupted version, and then a healed redeemable version! Hopeful model.

Good heuristic (ideas which lead us towards useful streams of knowing) triggering stuff thus far! I love people who love cities, and see them as having personalities and relationships to God and one another. Good stuff. And again, you don’t have to agree with everything a person says, to learn from them! I’ve learned that much.

Plus, i like the dutch mind, it includes the creative three dimensional thinking, but is eccentrically systematic at the same time. Nice to trace his way and orientation towards cities today!

On overcoming the deterioration of language in daily practice…for the love of language and one another…let’s make language rich again!

In our times, knowing your part of the conversation, and stewarding your words well, really are important and needed daily disciplines.
The internet is like a global party, where everyone is speaking at once in all directions from all ages, and stages of growth! Knowing who and when to talk to at the party matters these days, and requires wisdom!
Let’s be reconcilers of language itself! Those who bring back together the rich inner meaning of conversation, and host the right con-versings (con=with; vers=to turn; hence, conversation is to turn with one another!)
Let’s choose our words to birth the most Love in one another! Then, we will return the yield of loving conversation, and stay in the wheel of kindness!
Making our communication more One, that is, more like God talk. For language is a medium through which Love incarnates!
Let’s make our language a better temple for The Presence. When talk is cheap, let’s turn our tones to pearls of Love. Let’s land on syllables like that Dove on Christ did! Let’s not “use” language, let’s be in it with God. For Love is no secret, and language is what touches in whispers between us.
By language, of course, i don’t just mean english, but more what St John meant by the word, word! Word! Let’s be, in his words, “words of Life”!
Let’s add quality rather than quantity to the global conversation. Let’s make language wealthy in Love, and humble in tone again. Let’s at least do that, friends!

What I like about trailers and tents, is they remind us of the vulnerability and flexibility that the Jewish holiday of Succoth is trying to teach us! I have an old trailer for that purpose. To go into the tent of vulnerability and dependence daily.

We all are in a wilderness, in tents, before the elements. And it’s good to remind ourselves of that, in such times as these with so much false security—especially as many of our neighbors barely even have tents!

This is one reason i write from an airstream, but also, just a good reason to be equally under the stars together, as we all are. The Sky and the sea equalizes us through common symbolic encounter! Plus, it promotes creativity, to have less but do more good with it!

I like the part of the story where the prophetic symbolic people only had mobile tents for to carry the great Presence. A meager box and tent to hold the Holy Name—that was a real teaching and sign. God puts Himself in humble boxes, tents and people! And reminds us to climb in those vulnerable tents (even our physical bodies are so fragile) each day! The way of Succoth teaches us this much–humble dependence.

Though, i’m glad they finally built a building, in Solomon’s time, and may one day may do so again. But I liked the part of the story, when they, like kids had to follow a Cloud, live in tents, and carry a box! I relate to that way!

I want to live nearby that Name! Living in tents and mobile trailers, reminds me that the Name not the building is my shelter! Asaph, the priest.

Daniel, the Sky reader!

I like to write from the writers of scripture and find their spirituality that way! To overhear the tone of each writer’s spirituality or relationship with God, helps me get at a clearer interpretation of their messages. I studied Daniel for about three years.

So Daniel says: I want to understand more Lord, so i will “fix my gaze to gain understanding.” You come to me in dream, through your angels you bring understanding through trances. I can now see up to a certain point in both directions in history. I will share as much as you allow me with others, and rule this land in my season on earth according to what you show me.

So Daniel wrote down what he saw and understood from God, even through reading Jeremiah and other prophets. His book records it. And Jesus called Daniel a prophet.

Daniel was a practical mystic as well, who lead the subculture of seers in that nation who would later become the wise men. Years later some of these wise men, could read the sky well enough to find Messiah! Sky readers are rare in our days. Daniel wanted to understand how all of history tied together, and how it concerned his own people. He saw very broadly through space and time.

Daniel could read through time. And could see, but also understand. When he couldn’t he sought out understanding, and often the angels would explain what he was seeing.

Seeing and understanding work in tandem. Yet, many can see without understanding. When they go together, you have a high prophet like Daniel.
In our times, post industrialism distraction have increased, and most of the world is now lost under forms of consumerism, materialism and other forms of distraction from the Ultimate. But God is One, and has revealed His Story forever to those who would seek it out! “Love is no secret!” Yet, few are even trying to understand the times, much less read the skies. We float adrift with no context without the wise to interpret the Skies! The skies of history require us to seek out understanding, as the wise men, and Daniel did.

Daniel was able to, and while practically serving in government. A practical mystic, i would call Daniel, who fixed his gaze to gain understanding! He could see and interpret his times.

In turbulent insecure times, we need people who can interpret the times, and read the skies, and restate the ancient narrative told in them. To contextualize our own times in the long story is needed now more than ever. Unfortunately few are doing so. We need more sky readers now!

Prayer helps us to see more dimensions of things; then we seek out understanding and interpretation to fill in what we have encountered with His meaning. We see, then seek to understand what we see. Where there is prophecy, understanding is nearby; they work in tandem in God. That’s what Daniel modeled. He had both sight and understanding! The wise men could both see and understand The Star they were following.

So in prayer, if we are shown something, ask what it means. You can learn to both see and interpret in and by His Spirit! Let’s become sky readers, friends!

Once we see that Father is Lord over space and time, we can meet Him in every direction! Developing a cosmology of meeting God in both space and time was part of what Daniel modeled for us in his personal spirituality!