My wife saw me today, as we were talking beneath a local tree….

Today she saw me-
a native american old world singer of words
sitting beneath a Texas tree ironically
The old growth live oak represents what is here forever
(this part of God on this land)
But, me i could sit beneath any type of tree, i like so many aspects of God
( i prefer the ones in scotland)
and still be me, my rainbow feathers unfurling slowly in prairie winds here,
from somewhere Unseen beneath the trees of every nation, in the long wind,
each of us foreigners somehow again, and at home. Each of us also too tall for here.

Every place is an ironic setting for you, she said
I agreed, but added, yet, each is a poem which goes on, forever.
And each tree is uniquely sacred
worth seeing home, back to itself that is. But, anyway
Thanks for seeing me beneath a particular tree somewhere today my Love.

For incarnation is the only option for us now,
and is the one my Master choose somehow,
and He hides in every garden and sits beneath each type of tree.
And just enjoys me being me. And you my love are a shining Gem
within His Tender Palms. And this moment has become sacred now again
to Him who is always with us when we see Him in one another through love.

You don’t live in world boxes of men, she continued,
all the world is an open stage, a tabernacle of potential meeting
…you live from another place by meeting Him through everything
life is ironic immersion to you, so you stay alive and playful while here
What was the other option, i asked…being seated above while walking on earth was the given map for us. We exist in a bigger context than here
is my testimony, i suppose.

But the proof is sitting well beneath
particular trees on a Sunday afternoon in Texas light.

Sometimes, Sundays for us is just about us seeing one another spiritually again! It is good to be reminded of the poems we each are, and keeps us going as we work on the daily scars of life down here. To be reminded, by sight, of who one another really is, helps us motivate to steward one another home, to our true selves through night. Nice to see one another from time to time. And today my wife saw me beneath a particular Texas tree! Keep marriage alive to stop and see one another as poems again, and sigh!

People are epic poems! My wife often says you see people as big as they really are, so it comes across as hyperbole!

I really do see and read people, and try to live as a parable. I’ve never met someone who was not an epic poem! Each of us an endless song worth be-holding and singing, learning from, forever! And tragic comedies us all as well!

People really are words and parables if you read them deeply enough! People are great art and I’m an art appreciator! And each is unique and worth stopping the universe to behold or encounter in Love. To read the Tone of God through, that is!

Obviously part of my motivation in life is seeing and hearing people deeply and in thanks, and meeting God in that depth dialogue. To have depth to depth dialogue with one another, transforms us both towards our better selves.

People and cities become part of your spirituality when you read them as tabernacle (places of meeting) poems! We’re His poems after all. So I’m just reading a poetry collection by God down here. And, i love poetry!! No matter whether its free verse or has broken lines! Healing people, is like healing language itself! Restoring Word to word, breath to syllable…

I love it when people have both architecture and fluidity (order and freedom) in their art and lives—are comfortable with the void and the order, and let both interplay.

To find the inner story of things requires the hovering over darkness, shedding light in pleasure, delineating/naming, finding the elements and narrative and their relationship with one another, and sharing it with others—just as it did for God on the seven days of creation. Then resting. Each phase of creativity has its goodness! Its, it is good spoken over it! Each phase has unique aesthetic joys.

Nothing has changed in the creative process! All the stages together make great art, or living. If we miss the watery darkness, we miss potential; if we miss the shedding light, we miss the glory; if we miss the naming and delineating, we miss the pleasure of distinctions and narrative (which is underrated in our days), and then if we don’t share it, we miss the pleasure of giving and collaboration. Lastly, without rest, none of it works. In this sense, the creative process itself shows us how to live well!

Prayer changes the atmosphere that the problems occur within.

About listening through images…or letting symbols talk to you. These two have been talking to me this season. One from nature, the other urban life (or at least mine-disco balls are important to me!) Integrating different types of glory!

I often wake up with images, and try to see what they are trying to say…sort of like doing art therapy on yourself! Or tuning in to where your at through symbols, and that level and type of communication.

Feeling like working these two symbols into a poem today. Let you know when i get there. The inner life of disco revealing itself-its inner, rather than reflected glory; and the green clean sheen sheerness of mountain stream (this one up in Colorado)-just seeing it is refreshing. Let’s see how these two symbols converse with one another…as i keep being drawn to them.

(finally the disco ball stops just reflecting other’s light, and reveals it’s own inner light, while the nearby mountain stream cuts Silence leanly through the pathways of forest-how do the two types of glory meet?….something in me is related to these two images today; perhaps it’s where i’m at, to reveal more of my inner light, and to move in clear swift refreshing glistening communication down the mountain….that’s assuming the two images want to speak about now, and to me!)

i like the art challenge of putting two very different symbols into the same narrative. I often feel like that myself. Hum…I’ll keep listening to their conversation! Maybe it’s time to let my light shine and jump in a river! We’ll see!

What images are speaking to you this season friends? It’s good to locate the images of each season of life, and let them converse in and to us! In order to see where we’re at.

Some of my images are life long ones which just change nuance over time. Others feel newly introduced each season. Fun thinking about what each person’s images are each season, and reading what they need from them. It’s an art practice i like for myself and with others!

These seem to speaking of integrating different types of glory, and letting them both shine from within outwards. They also speak of integrating natural glory with urban types in myself, and finding God in both! Also, perhaps that He wants my disco part to erupt from the inner self, and my communication to rush like a clear mighty stream. Natural wonder and urban wonder both conversing. Or, let out the Light and let it flow like a stream… They will keep speaking I’m sure!

After a long summer of heat and floods and overexposure to life’s traumas, looking towards and forward to some fall in europe again—that soft cool inner reflective mood…autumn gives room for memory, it’s the beginning of a type of necessary introversion for us all to interpret our lives properly. Maybe that’s the gift of autumn! Missing that mood of being today. After the extroverted blare of Summer here! Time to notice nuances again. Somehow, all four seasons are within.

The beginning of Autumn alone, or merely last night’s glowing moon song, after all sorts of eclipses; or even a friend’s eyes, or crackle of their voice last night which said of prayer, “She’s been singing her way through hurricanes a long time”, teach us enough to know, there is no end to one another’s Glory! Or our stories! Something underneath is still turning and churning towards…

We are more than commodity!

Great conversation with some younger friends on not branding one another in life (on line or anywhere else—not seeing others in terms of how you can use them and their gifts), and how to practice seeing others as more than commodities. Since the economic metaphor seems to be where most people are placing their security and source of interpreting life these days, a needed talk with the next generation!

In a consumerist culture, these questions have become essential. If consumerism, celebrity, and branding of identity are three major cultural problems in the west, then best to address them now, as my friend pointed out!

How have you stayed true to yourself or authentic, with all the pressures to commodify your self and gifts? The one fellow asked! Great question. How do we stay authentic in a consumerist culture which worships celebrity? Good topic to converse into!

Part of my answer: Try not to see one another as economic units, selling one another’s doves and gifts in the temple. Rather how to treat one another as images of God, not marks of money to be bought and sold. How to be living temples as St Paul put it. We are more than products. Even on line, how to treat one another more as whole people, with intact narratives worth reading.

We spoke of how easy it is to commodify identity these days, especially before even knowing who we are, and what identity is. In other words, to content poor, but have such professional interfaces with the world. How the internet often encourages presentation before knowledge of identity or content. That as teenagers it may be ok to “try on” representations of self, or borrow voices in order to find our own, but then a stage comes when you need to be representing out of true self.

You must know yourself, to lay down your life! Or represent it to others. Good stuff! I learn so much in conversation.

On the way home, i was thinking about “entertainers” who had maintained their real self, even while having public personas. Can we interface from an authentic space within, regardless of how we are perceived by others. In a culture of instant and constant celebrity, this becomes important in the art of really living! Made me think of Johnny Cash, and how his whole life story became a parable of Grace, and he somehow managed to be himself in it!

Let’s not presume to consume each other; or, commodify ourselves, let’s see one another through Love’s bigger lens! Just a thought from last nights conversation with younger friends. Good concerns they had.

The motivations for self commodification are ancient—fame rather than significance, affirmation by others, and power or realm of influence.

Conversely, Jesus was famous for the right reasons. He also knew who He was before He laid down His life. He did not have amnesia on the Cross. He knew he was a King. Our motivations for self representation still matter and need to stay in check.

Liked this talk last night. Especially good food for thought for those with public personas, which is pretty much everyone now! Is your public face flowing from your true inner image? And are you treating others as more than their persona or a package of gifts to be bought an sold! Good questions this fellow got me spinning on last night! More later… thank God we are more than commodities!

Working towards an article about on line identity—how the internet has effected our actual intimacy with one another, for better or worse.

What is our actual tone towards one another on line, and how can it become more loving or mutually activating—i.e. as if we were actually in the room with each person is one of my guiding questions!

How to treat one another as the depth of poetry they really are! How can our on line encounters be overflow from our real love for one another?! Looking at some of those questions anyway!

Thinking about virtual representation as flowing from true identity! Rather than a mask of it. One of the questions i keep coming on—how would you treat this person in real time or real life?

Tone is so important. Often on line, our tone doesn’t communicate care. Tone again is the “orientation of the writer’s heart to the words”, classically defined. What is our hearts orientation towards one another, and how to we communicate that in each medium.

I’ve always been interested in representation flows from true authentic identity. So internet would just be overflow of identity. But when it’s reversed, when persona becomes personality, people get lost. A teenage stage of life, is to identify self with persona; but a healthier version is the symbol of ourselves matching and being attached to who we really are. Identity precedes expression, or on line representation. The branding of identity is another problem.

That’s self as commodity, but that meditation is for another day! Enjoying thinking about how we represent ourselves though. Sort of like what clothes you wear, and how they reveal what’s going on inside.

Still, we are often way too flippant with one another’s real self on line. How deep a poem each person is! Let’s treat one another as the art we are! Would i treat this person like this in real life? Words still matter! And tone indicates the heart’s orientation towards language and other!

If our on line selves are representation flowing from our true identity as art flows from the artist, then we need to treat each persons art as holy being that is an actual extension of their inner dignity. Just some thoughts today. Let’s treat one another as poems in every medium!
Who we are off line informs and creates who we are on line. On line is like a stage, where we dance and overflow…

Saying this week:

Grace is firm also!

How many iterations we each teach of the same poem! It must need to be spoken.
Speak us!

Practice implying God in all you say and do!

I like seeing things be themselves. Maybe that is one of my highest joys, helping things become and be spoken what they are.

The moon, really. Seriously, it alone is enough to know..each night it glows, reflecting the sun from another place..of course, we wanted to touch it. We, too, reflectors of a Son.