Fun photo-ing my wife this week, as always, as we roamed. One of my favorite things to do! I could take or make pictures of my love forever. Think I will! Makes it easy when we are in a city we love as well. Operatic settings make us feel at home in the enormous room. My wife is cool, and fun to photo! Excuse my excess of love! But love may be the right thing to practice these days. And thank God, love never sleeps, but rather grows in measure and depth as time passes. Just to be art friends is a gift, to co-behold together! Thankful for that small but splendrous gift! Sharing life with another seer, always good to also see her! Gazing is a form of love!

Do each entry as if it were your last. Good practice, I’m finding as I write this week. Makes you pack your heart into each word! And mean, or have become, whatever it is you have to say or share with one another!

Prose poetry is still one of my favorite forms. The prophets in scriptures often perforce, tumble into it to express what they see and here. Prose poetry makes the most sense to me, it’s a big room, and includes more of what is.

It uses more of ourselves-heart, head, body, soul, spirit, limbs engulfed more in and by Love (which seems to be one of the main points of being here-incarnation, that is!). Maybe we never express what we know all the way, but it’s fun watching people try in the long human story. Came across one section by a favorite poet Rilke today,
about the inner intrinsic glory of daily things.

Like this section of what he was trying to encounter and name well. Maybe we should be telling todays news in prose poetry, or try to live in it. It’s closer to what Reality is really like. Anyway, here’s some lines i liked today from Rilke (ninth elegy)! I added the last line myself. I like to dialogue with the poets, and add my two cents, or lines from time to time, it helps me enter in to their best thoughts…

Are we here, perhaps, for saying: house,

bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit-tree, window –

at most: column, tower……but for saying, realise,

oh, for a saying such as the things themselves would never

have profoundly said. Is not the secret intent

of this discreet Earth to draw lovers on…

(and into themselves, that is, what they really are in song).

Each of us, forever poems…walking towards our names.
Each of us, more than our function, each of us eternal poems, more than skin and bone; we are Thou’s forever poems. Names with a home.
Each of us forever names and thous not to be used by one another, to be it-ed out of existence, but to be cherished and pronounced, nurtured into pronunciation by Love’s beholding and kind tone!
We read one another on open mics, beneath the sparkling stars, en-toning one another’s nuances into Grace, healing with gaze our scars. That Tone is where God is. That tone is called our home.
And as we listen well to one another, we find Him there in the midst of us. And in the mist of conversation, we turn, finally, towards…
Each of us, Love’s sons and daughters. poetry becoming free verse. Each line a tender branch, waiting to bloom with words spoken in love. Each of us worth pronouncing forever, as meditations and reflections on The great Romantic Poet. And slowly, we drawn into our forever names. Slowly, we walk home in Love’s kind tone. That walkway is what we give one another, a highway, down here. Something free from fear.
Each of us, forever poems, walking towards our names! Each of us, when well encountered, will never be the same.

I too am art:
Something beyond function, i am
the broom with two heads, which is also practical
because it is there. I am here,
so there must be a reason
for such beautiful disfunction
on this earth. Even if, it is just
to sweep out two corners of the house
at once! To dust off probable impossibility for the future.

One of my mentors back in the day, was an artist who made long brooms with two heads. They were beautiful pieces of sculpture he would hang on the wall as installations. People often asked him about their practical use.

Julio’s brooms

He made brooms with two ends
and hung them on his walls.
people asked him why?
because it is possible to do so
i recall him answering
and they can sweep two corners at once
art is also practical.

Going old school, studying the beatitudes today! Great to re-visit them afresh! They’ve been seen as ethical ideals, but they are something more than that. Little practical keyholes into what is available! Little invitations to the party. Little koans on the Kingdom. Puzzles which require us to enter in order to solve! That way of teaching, which calls forth transformation in order to find the answer!

People have been astounded by them from all religions and in art history, and in some ways they were just an introduction to the longer sermon…(important how we use our introductions, especially if they are into a spiritual kingdom!) They really are remarkable art.

The beatitudes are like blessings from the other side into exactly where we are now. Enjoying studying them again today. They are truths breaking into being, invitations, challenges…like warm rain cracking ice.

Enjoying them today as a warm up to the holy homily on the hill! Little keyholes poked or impressed into our doors these little blessings Jesus was already offering and living from…fun and challenging hovering in them today! So much to learn and become through them.

The beatitudes are like blessings from the other side into exactly where we are now. Enjoying studying them again today. They are truths breaking into being, invitations, challenges…like warm rain cracking ice. Enjoying them today as a warm up to the holy homily on the hill! Little keyholes poked or impressed into our doors these little blessings Jesus was already offering and living from…

Out of counseling this week…how to inhabit the whole house of who we really are!

Sometimes we have to imagine ourselves outside of our wounds and others who have wounded us, and amplify the part of ourselves which is free from those external relations. Who are we outside our wounds and those who have wounded us. Can we let God see us there, and amplify our healed or more whole selves, to the point where we can forgive yes, but also to not work all our inner issues out on others. Can we reel in our projections enough to experience, own and forgive? This is one of the process of healing.

Displacing our false selves with our true selves (as God sees us, and created us to be!) is a starting point for many.

If my father wasn’t present, if my mother was controlling for instance. Can I imagine myself as someone adored, seen, validated and not controlled but rather nurtured in kindness. Can we see ourselves with true spiritual parenting. Can we start to live that out? Can we amplify our true or best self. Can we take the unvalidated or unloved parts of self and let them come into the light, in all their anger, grief and hope to become? Can we take that internal risk, rather than acting it all out through our external relationships.

This was the challenge i gave a friend this week, and am still trying to live out myself. Forgiveness is not denial of others sins, it is getting free within, so we can live more in Him, and from His Perspective of who we really are.

There is sadness and lament when we have been hurt or neglected in certain areas, but there is also new life to come in those exact areas! First we must all ourselves to be there with them, these wounded parts of self, then to imagine with and in Him what was meant to shine there. What did He intend this part to be in the whole? And then we grieve through into forgiveness of the many others who hurt us there. Forgiveness plows the soil for new growth there. Then once new growth starts we can tend how it integrates and gives life to the fuller self.

As we are grieving the unmet parts which are immature still, we can be expanding and imagining what was meant to be growing in that neglected area. This is coming at growth from the other side. What did God want me to be in that area. And if it was attacked or hurt, perhaps that could be an area of my greatest strength in the end. Paint and make art from the already healed self, to see what is meant to grow in the places of deepest neglect in life.

Eventually, the whole house of ourselves, must be inhabited by Christ. He renovates each room in order, and lets us paint and decorate them with Him. Deliverance is a process, so is renovating the whole house. Some rooms we have neglected for years, or ignored. But each is coming into the Kingdom, through inviting the Friend King in! The door to each barred room is often anger, and there is pain and grief to pass through, but each room is meant to shine as part of the whole house of who you really are!