More insights from counseling this week….since, a friend asked, what are you gleaning from your fields of interest this week! Great question. I’m mainly counseling so…

The main thing with helping others is to bring in Love’s actual presence. To “hook up” with Love’s actual Presence towards myself and then others, and specifically start to tune in to the nuances of Love towards this other person i get to encounter and hopefully bless today. To get into the I-am part of God. The God is Love part. The Father’s space towards myself and others.

We have to often step outside our roles and frames in order to see ourselves and others more accurately! I practice that through counseling. We are bigger than our roles in life. But to see others outside their frame is helpful. And to ask them, who are they outside of their roles, is also fruitful. I try to practice it before I preach it!

This requires us to come out from the time pressures of the moment, and just sit I am to I am with God, to rest in Him. But it’s always worth it, in the long run. Whatever brings you into living Sabbath, enter there, before you try to move in rest and peace towards others. Then you might receive some useful insights for them. And yourself.

And, I sit there, in that space, for a while, before attempting to help others. To, as on airplanes, breath the oxygen first before administering it to others. But then to really seek how He is giving them their needed seasonal oxygen. I take time on that part beforehand. As long as it takes. It’s always worth it. Because then, i’m not just giving from my gifts, but more from empathy for who they really are, and what they really need. Sometimes, i even decide in prayer, i’m not the best person to bless them today!

So, to be fully present with them. That makes safety for real growth. So beforehand, i pray for the person, until i can see them more how and where they are at. This helps on lots of levels. It helps me use my gifts to bless them more efficiently, but also it gives me a better view of who they are, and what blocks they may need to clear to move forward in life.

It’s a great way of getting to know God’s heart for others. Prayer is always the pre-requisite or prelude to really being helpful to others. It’s not a religious thing for me, more about tuning into a higher perspective of the other person, and therefore being able to love them more deeply. Then, just being very present with them, actually caring. In some sense, it’s so simple, but to get ourselves in Love’s orientation towards others transforms us all.

Often in prayer, i also get tools or useful insights to overcome blocks. But mostly i’ll get a deeper sense of this persons value, and uniqueness and longer narrative.

And since, counseling for me is just another medium to appreciate and get to know the Wisdom of God’s Love, i’m usually blessed more than the other person, by the encounter. I learn so much about who God actually is. And the complexity of what real discipleship or formation is.

I also often ask:

Who is He blessing through me today. Always a good question. Especially if you are constantly trying to throw your arms around the world, like me. Efficiency with our gifts towards one another. We are not meant to minister to everyone each day. There is delineation and specificity of giving if we want to actually meet Him through the tabernacle of helping others. This is the actual spirituality of ministering to others. It’s mutual formation!

Especially on line this requires on line discipline, and pre-prayer. Knowing who you are meant to bless today matters. Who is God giving you to today? And why? Why is He offering your gifts to this person or situation today, helps make counseling part of your actual spirituality and formation. And ends up blessing others more!

So how do you counsel? I pray, i try to get inside of Love, and see the other person where they are in their story. I seek any tools i carry which might help them; and then, just listen well in Love. I’m glad my friend asked me. I often forget that helping others is part of my actual spirituality. I love helping people, and meeting God in the process.

What insights are you gleaning from your fields of interest friends?

Both identity and calling are hidden safe with His Heart.
“Some things are inviolable, for they are held inside of Christ. Like our ultimate identity for instance, and true spiritual friendship.
Our pathways are also hidden in Christ. So inviolable-not able to be penetrated or fractured. We may miss a step or two or even three, but who we are and our path is ultimately hidden inside of Christ’s Heart. Therefore our identity and callings are safe there, as we walk them out in creative collaborative freedom.” Wise older monk.

On listening well:

“One of the biggest needs in America is to listen better to one another. To slow down and listen to others well. It gives God room to be in the room. And it consecrates conversation. Listening well is a spiritual practice, and one of the greatest gifts we give to one another.” Eugene Peterson.

I remember in one of the chapters in one of my dad’s books, i wrote a poem about his gift of listening to me way past dark. In the evening, my dad and I would stay up talking together. Me talking mainly, and him listening. God bless him. He birthed a babbling brook!

But those times together internalized a deep sense of being heard and seen in my inner heart. And it affirmed a sturdy sense of self. This is what father’s can do—affirm your existence by tuning in. Maybe that’s the highest job. But this is also what we can do for one another daily. Valuing another enough to really slow down and listen well is healing.

So many people I work with have really never been heard well, tuned into, depth listened to. And i love listening to those people, learning to honor their own narratives. To sense the inner cadences of their stories. The gift of listening to one another changes lives, calms anger, let’s pain be grieved, and brings humor back to life.

I was blessed to have a listening father in life, but many weren’t. It’s a very simple gift to listen well to others, but it changes lives.

It is one of the largest love gifts i got from my dad, to feel heard, seen, listened to, and it is one of the most useful ways of actually helping others. Being present in love with others can’t be overrated. My dad listens really well, that might be the part of his life which has impacted me the most in my own development.

All the spiritually mature people I’ve ever met, listen well. They are slow enough inside to pause and be with others. They value beholding others deeply. The space they create by listening allows others to become, to come home to themselves. And that walks a long way in life!

This is why i like reading books and learning from those who have learned to listen well. Some film makers have this gift of depth beholding, many ministers and spiritual teachers do: like Henri Nouwen and others, who wrote lots about how to listen and encounter others well—deep to deep heart to heart, or as Martin Buber put it, I to thou! Those types of encounters make us more fully human, more ourselves. Being listened to from the heart affirms and even calls forth true identity. It’s one of the simplest and most profound gifts we can give one another, for listening is one of Love’s favorite mediums.

“Immature teachers don’t ask this question—is God giving what I carry to this person right now in their life? Or am i just needing to share it. Or is He imparting another aspect of Himself, through someone else. They just want to teach what they carry, regardless of whether their seeds are useful. But the wise teacher waits for the good soil, the teachable student who both needs and wants to learn what they carry! And the wise teacher then learns what they themselves have to teach in wisdom.”
(Medieval monk scholar from a diary entry called, “Be careful when and who you teach”. If your seeds are meant for that person, you also will be transformed by it as well, was his basic idea. Nice!)

Since I’m doing more counseling this season, thought I’d share…
Five (5 1/2) questions I always ask when counseling folks:

Where do you see yourself in your own story? (assuming they can see their story and believe they are one!)
What’s the next chapter?
What are the current and past blocks to walking into the next chapter?
Where are you spiritually alive and growing?
How do you interpret your life?
What is your “upper story” for interpreting—your grand narrative?
How does your story fit into that grander narrative?

After prayer beforehand, I always start there, and see what emerges in conversation! I usually use the arts in counseling, asking folks to make some art about where they are now, and what they see next. An image of now and next helps!

If they are blocked, often the art in collaboration with The Spirit, will by pass it and give them an image of the next season, so they can move forward, or work on removing the blocks themselves. The more I counsel people, the more i see the same patterns. What a joy to help someone move forward in their narratives! It’s been my chief joy lately!

I mainly like teaching or counseling people towards living from their truer self, or deeper self; how to have an authentic spirituality; how to keep growing spiritually; and how to integrate their creativity with their faith or spirituality. These are my life topics, and passion points i keep returning to. I’m fascinated by true identity and authentic expression. How our creativity can flow from our true self.

“What is at stake here is the tendency for human beings to have spirituality without God. That’s most often the present occupation, or what goes by the name spirituality, but it lacks true transformational power. This is why we talk about actual formation of His Life in people, true christian spirituality is a way of union, that leads to incarnation ethics! One cannot self generate spiritual growth, it grows from authentic relationship.” Dallas Willard.

True spirituality from a christ-centered perspective, is Him making us more of who we really are by baptizing us into His Actual Name and Life, as He forms more of Himself into more of who we really are! We become our true selves by losing our false selves, as Merton might put it. We take off the old person and put on the new person actively, as St Paul put it. We find our names by entering more deeply into the Life of the Namer. That’s a way of true identity offered in Christ-ianity. In some sense, He is making us more of who He is, and in that process our own white stone room names get revealed over time, even to ourselves!

I often return to my pet life topics: spiritual growth, integration of identity and creativity, and authentic spirituality, and useful counseling. I like collecting them from all over, whoever moves in wisdom, or the truer spirituality of their own traditions. Love collecting quotes around these topics. I’ve got a whole box full!

Been thinking again about the ministry of true identity this week:

“Can we be so much ourselves, so fully in our real story, that our presence alters the atmosphere and gives permission to others to be. The problem is rarely, do we have the right information, it is usually that we are not being ourselves fully enough, to convince others to live more fully!” Art Monticus.

I would add, can our testimony be so electrically our true selves, so true to what actually is, that we ignite true identity around us! To be living portents or signs, as King David put it. Can we attest that Reality is so. So that God can argue from what actually is, using us as a point, and pointer to what is True!

Can our identities themselves, and our standing and living from our new selves in freedom become the message, teaching the gospel also in silence. Jesus used words and being, His Presence often was the message, and transformative container.

Authentic spirituality is a word and way on earth, as someone must’ve said by now. Can we become ministers of being in this way?! Can we authenticate the planet by having our presence in Presence, would be another way of heading at it!

Jeremiah, Paul, David (some of my heroes; some of the Johnny Cash’s of scriptures! Living parables!) all had ministries of identity. There lives symbolized and participated in their message! Like Paul Tillich pointed out: “True symbols participate the Reality to which they point!”. Who they were, was part of their message in a unique way.

I’ve always aspired to that way. To be living words. We are more than carriers of information, we are part of the information. His living collection of poetry!

We hear King David singing the song of himself from the perspective of God in Psalm 139! This is James Brown without the ego. This is Walt Whitman singing the song of himself from the right angle or angel! Wonderful poems we are! To be pronounced freely out loud!

More soon as I’m warming up for a talk on identity and art, and authentic spirituality. All my favorite topics!

Among other things…

Marriage is teaching me things and people aren’t disposable like I’ve treated my shoes or even lots of stuff. It’s life long and you have to keep tending it.

It’s a good practice in indisposability! No one gets discarded! Also marriage fights consumer mentality-looking at others primarily in terms of my needs and wants, desires. I-it-ing others rather than I-thou-ing them, as Buber would put it.

Marriage helps us overcome the commodification of identity. I cannot treat you as a product to be bought and sold and used if we are married. I have to treat you as a whole person, who, like me, is becoming more themselves daily.

For some seasons, we’re not “worth” much in a business sense anyways! Maybe we are sick, or going through healing, and not much use to others. Then, to still love one another, is something like faith. That each of us is still worth everything, even dying for in our weakest state and moments! Each of us poems forever. Included in the collection of poetry by God.

When you commit to care for someone for life, it shifts something in your orientation. You consider how to steward the other’s whole lifecycle less and less selfishly. There’s many ways to learn that, but marriage is a good one.

A great challenge in a disposable, get the next big thing, as soon as you want it, culture. Moves in the opposite manner, marriage. That’s why it’s a high metaphor, a life long formational teaching. And a form of suffering, or dying to self towards and into more wholeness! Marriage is a great rehearsal for eternal life!

Marriage is also a means to the formation of God in us. It is a high medium of encountering and being transformed by Him, as we offer our lives to one another. It’s an accelerated route to spiritual growth, in other words! It’s easy and necessary to die quickly to self in marriage if you want it to work.

Marriage is a tabernacle to meet God in.

Some people are so controlled-defined by other-so therefore controlling, in basic competition to be. Perhaps never welcomed in. So boxed in by roles, traditions, professions, the perceptions of others. While all the while, our true identity is hovering over our hearts as the Tone of Love-something most familiar and most strange- already whispering our forever names.

Let’s whisper with The Tone of Love into one another our forever names! Join in that holy chorus of the thousand thoughts spoken over each of us hourly! That’s how love listens.