And in the quiet part of the day, we finally share our true words and mean them from the bottom of us. And they touch something, stir something, mean something to someone somewhere, in hope. Our words finally settle into themselves and can really bless. IN meantime, we rush and blaze to know. we try to react or work too hard or defend….but then again, the evening comes for our words, and we know—what St John told us” blessed are you who know and rest in….”

Reading some poetry today…

My favorite poets have such a depth tenderness of observation. You feel they are caring things into place through their beholding. That it is less about them, and more about mending the world, as some have put it. Beauty is in the “I” of the beholder as Buber put it. When we engage in Love, both and the other are changed towards Life. I love thinking of aesthetics as a healing act. To behold well, calls forth Life in all directions. When we see even the creatures for what they really are, outside of our needs, we haven them, and somehow ourselves as well.

The Homily from the Hill or the Sermon on the Mount!

This is that passage, where Jesus is giving his most extended and collected sermon recorded. I’m reading Matthew’s version this week. What a power house of goodness! It’s atomic energy this passage! Watch out if you really read your way into the Reality of it! You will be seared into change!

Been delving into and around Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain this week. Wow! It’s packed. No wonder Ghandi and the gang liked it best in the New Testament!

It’s better than teaching, it’s a invitation into another type of world. It’s sort of describing things from that world, what things really look like from there, and how it interfaces with here, and daily reality or life. Seems historically, that people got lost on seeing it more as a list of to do, or new standard. I’m sensing it more as someone standing between worlds and speaking from another one into this one. It’s that mountain space between heaven and earth where He is teaching from.

I also don’t think it’s a works versus law section. But more how the Kingdom engulfs both. Getting caught up into this passage is clearly transformative, and has been for millions of humans for a very long time. Nice to re-visit the mountain and overhear Jesus teachings! It also appears to be an invitation to live from that Mountain.
In that place, there is another type of order of things. A fresh cosmology, and stream of ethics which complete the older ones.

Anyway, good to re-visit some of the spaces in scriptures we tend to take for granted or which have become so normalized that we can’t enter them afresh!

If this is a keyhole into The Kingdom and it’s ways, it is the largest in the New Testament!

When, as a child we trust our Dad, the whole universe alters! Everything resist that trust. And yet…it’s the calling.

Waiting patiently in hope implies and develops, and even calls forth trust.

Another quote I liked today about being caught up in that John 17 space where we are overhearing Jesus talking to His Father:

“The movement from The Father towards The Son and His Spirit is where our names are hidden. We find ourselves in that space where they are naming each other. Both our identities and our pathways are hidden somewhere in that space between them all.”

Nice way of thinking of the Trinity relationship as a space we can enter through prayer, and find our own names or identities in the meantime!

Studying the story of Ezra and Nehemiah today…that period of restoring unity, and renovating a desolated city….
Looking at the particular aspect of the Nehemiah story today, when he is on his horse at night surveying the ruins! Love that moment! Here is a man with a vision, who now has support from a king, sneaking around at night scouting out the broken gates of his beloved city. Great part in the plot of restoration and making things whole again!
What a poem: Nehemiah sneaking around on his horse at night observing the ruined gates of Jerusalem with a vision of restoration in his heart, which he hasn’t shared with the people yet.
A special private moment, which we get to overhear in the narrative, where restoration has been planted in the heart but not yet incarnated. Soon the priest will all join in, and the gates will begin to be restored, but in that moment, it is mere vision, and hope of heart.
Looking at that instant in the book of Nehemiah today, if you want to know. I relate to that instant in the grand drama.
Nice keyhole into our times today to come across again!

Just a little counseling insight from this past month talking with, listening to, and dialoguing with, other poems and people, cities and places….

What people are really like in their eternal spiritual selves! I always try to see that when i’m working with where they are at now.

It’s not idealism. It’s not just, I wish they could be like that, it’s sight into what they really are. Maybe it’s easier to see others whole, than ourselves! We need each other, it seems!

It’s trying to contextualize the current versions of us, in the larger story. Once i see a person, more as they really are becoming, they are always taller and more themselves, and usually filled with kindness of being. It helps me work with myself and them, where we are at. To heal is to be made whole. When I see someone more whole, i’m able to listen them towards that taller expression of themselves. Maybe that’s the goal of counseling.

Anyways, i enjoy seeing people as more themselves, and helping them move towards it. One of my favorite parts of helping others become! Hope i am getting to be more myself as I do!

Today found these two photos, and had to talk my way into them, to see why they interested me. Then, i realized that I often have to express in order to know. How annoying to others, i thought, then kept talking…so,

Confessions of one who must talk or write or art his way into Life each day…no longer for approval, but just to know where I’m at!

When I don’t know where I am, i speak and write, until i am grounded again in what Is. It’s always been like that. Expression is an anchor for me. Or, a tracer i shoot out to see the way through the skies of knowing each day.

So, Let my little words, meet Word in mid air then, and be happily informed, grounded and contoured, edited by this unseen encounter. And let my angels, much less other people, be not bored by my sonic explorations. I know that half my prayer is stumbling into what i’m (then Your) really praying. So forgive the introduction God, let’s skip to the good part. Thanks friend again, and also thanks for not stop talking to me over the years. If You, oh God, were not a babbling brook, I would not have learned to swim at all! Amen.

And some days i discover a ferris wheel above my head, and others that I am talking and walking towards a mountain. Those are good days.

Confessions of one who must talk or write his way into Life each day…

When I don’t know where I am, i speak and write, until i am grounded again in what Is. It’s always been like that. Expression is an anchor for me. Or, a tracer i shoot out to see the way through the skies of knowing each day.