Really spinning lots this summer on the implications of the Resurrection! Specifically in the areas of engaging and motivation for ecology, cultural dialogue etc—how to bring usher in, quicken His Kingdom (the place where He is already King) into all areas of culture and life. When I was studying at L’abri in Switzerland, my big question was about how to treat our physical bodies and the earth. Specifically what was our motivation for tending or helping to complete or steward the earth, and why value our bodies, or the physical. NT Wright and Shaeffer both addressed this issue head on. In addition i was interested in why the arts matter on a basic human level. These areas are still my main interest! Soil, Sight and Skin, i called it back then. Our proper relation to the earth, the imagination and our own bodies. These still seem to me to be neglected areas of Jesus Lordship even among Christians, though much has changed since my days in the Alps! Many more are now actively engaged with Him in these three areas. For which I am so thankful. It’s no longer weird to speak of a Christ centered ecology, or a baptized imagination which is part of our sanctification process of being made whole or more fully new creations. Nor is it as odd to speak of the physical body as mattering in our spirituality—health etc. Even the late, Dallas Willard wrote great articles addressing the sanctification and resurrection of the physical body, and how to live accordingly. Im so happy our theology is catching up with God’s Heart more and more.

Small daily kindnesses!
Today twice people invited me to their table, and said welcome, how have you been. And they meant it. This way, cannot be overrated in our times. Feeling like you are included in the daily banquet of conversation wherever you are is essential to remaining human. I’ve come to appreciate kindness in it’s smallest most daily little forms. A woman at the table also noticed that i liked shrimp with rose and said, “I like that you appreciate that conversation between the citrus fish and the saltiness of the rose, I can see you appreciate their dialogue, and savor it.” How nice to feel seen today! I really do appreciate the conversation between fresh sea food and a salty rose, and these two in particular were talking today, and in the heat, it made sense to engage in their conversation! Nice to be welcomed and seen today. I’ll try to do the same for those who come along my way later today. It really is the little kindnesses in life!

Just dreaming this week…

Two dreams this week. In the first I’m in europe and given access to an enormous arts library gallery; in the other, I’m creatively playing in Europe with friends arts friends from California, integrating the purified version of their identities through art- full play! Love it! I learn so much in dream. Transforming and finding truer images of ourselves and our cities is one of my oldest passions.

Deeper formation through the arts, baptizing the imagination towards a truer version of ourselves, still gets me jazzed! Plus, i learn so much in play. Watched a video of sea otters juggling rocks while relaxed.

So many creatures also speak to us of playfulness. And I’m sure my dogs dream as well—mainly of things to herd, as they are sheep dogs. So, playful dreams are my favorites! God speaks to me like that often.

Plus, just the lighting alone in dreams always blows me away. If I could reproduce those sets in real time, as many artist have tried to do, i would live in dream. Anyway, fun listening through my dreams each season! I often ask, where is the Kingdom? It often shows up most clearly to me in dream. Somewhere in between!
Dreams are cool. Like we have mini-cinemas going on as we sleep. How cool is that! Some books, especially children’s stories, feel to me like dreams written down as well. Those are my favorites!

Why love is still better than hate: thoughts from study this week.

Three areas God is talking about now according to NT Wright: How we know anything, who we are or the problem of determining identity, and are their any better or worse narratives-ie what is your narrative in life (what is your matanarrative?); how do you interpret Reality and Life. These three areas all shifted as we trailed in post-modern culture. And these three areas are where our answers matter most. Willard, would say identity, purpose and narrative also are the three big issues today. How we know, who we are, and what’s the best story of life? These three areas still matter.

The postmodern assumption that all metanarratives are suspect, has left it hard to interpret one story as more true than another. A crisis in knowing is the result. Or seeing everything in terms of power dynamics, and personal choice.

Then, there is the deeper ethical problem we all face. We can’t really live out of ethical pluralism where every story has the same weight. If so, we can kill jews or take ten wives or kill when we feel like it etc. Ironically, the refugee issue in europe has brought up a call for justice and fairness—but based on what standard or metastory. If all narratives are truly equal we face a crisis of interpretation in short. I like that point, NT Wright and even Tim Keller make in the area of ethics. You can’t really live out life if all ethical systems are equal! Nice reminder today in study!
The human heart still thinks its better to love than hate. Why is that, and based on what? It still matters which story you choose to live by!

I once asked a Rabbi also, what empowers your ethics? For Christians, though one doesn’t always see this in practice, but it can be found among spiritually mature folks, it would be the Holy Spirit forming himself in our heart and causes us to live more from and in the fruits of the Spirit—patience, love gentleness etc…

Dallas Willard points out that we need some sort of Power to live out our ethics. It’s not enough to just want to do good, to help the refugees and those suffering, we need real empowerment to do that, and live well. And some ways of living are better than others. It is better to love your neighbor than to rape them. Most people would agree with that statement. But if I believe all ethical systems are equal it’s hard to say love is better than hate!

I think that pluralism is actually a great opportunity to find the great stories again, and to pick out ones which feel actually true. It forces us to discern the spirit of things, to pick and choose wisely what is truer. In this sense, it’s good to be moving into supermarket of spiritualities phase in history. Then you have to really shop to know which ones hold water to what is Real. You compare and contrast and see what actually works in real life.

I personally would still choose love over hate, but to do so, I assume that one version of life is better than another! Nice remembering this, while reading Wright, Willard and others on ethics this week! These questions still seem important to me in terms of practical living, and motivating your ethics. The way of love still seems better to me than hate. And our stories which have begun still seem to desire an ending…

Lastly there is the area of beauty, or aesthetics. If all art is equal, then pornography and picasso are on the same level or plane aesthetically. I have not found that to be true. Just to fruits alone would prove that. Pornography leads to poor relationships, narcissism and a corrupted view of other. Looking at art, leaves you with other sorts of fruits.

Some art actually is better than other art, whether i like it or not. Relativism in the area of beauty seems impossible to live by for me at least. Any given sunset, is more beautiful than watching a bomb kill thousands on the news. At least, that is my view and experience. It’s hard to live in the art world, if all things really are equal. Watching someone kill themselves is uglier than watching someone dance and perform well. At least that’s how I see it. Buber also argued often from aesthetics, and its hard to live if there is no standard at all of what is beautiful.

Why love is still better than hate: thoughts from study.

Three areas God is talking about now according to NT Wright: How we know anything, who we are or the problem of determining identity, and are their any better or worse narratives-ie what is your narrative in life (what is your matanarrative?); how do you interpret Reality and Life. These three areas all shifted as we trailed in post-modern culture. And these three areas are where our answers matter most. Willard, would say identity, purpose and narrative also are the three big issues today.

The postmodern assumption that all metanarratives are suspect, has left it hard to interpret one story as more true than another. A crisis in knowing is the result. Or seeing everything in terms of power dynamics.

Then, there is the deeper ethical problem we all face. We can’t really live out of ethical pluralism where every story has the same weight. If so, we can kill jews or take ten wives or kill when we feel like it etc. Ironically, the refugee issue in europe has brought up a call for justice and fairness—but based on what standard or metastory. If all narratives are truly equal we face a crisis of interpretation in short. I like that point, NT Wright and even Tim Keller make in the area of ethics. You can’t really live out life if all ethical systems are equal! Nice reminder today in study!

The human heart still thinks its better to love than hate. Why is that, and based on what? It still matters which story you choose to live by!

I once asked a Rabbi also, what empowers your ethics? For Christians it would be the Holy Spirit forming himself in our heart and causes us to live more from and in the fruits of the Spirit—patience, love gentleness etc…Dallas Willard points out that we need some sort of Power to live out our ethics. It’s not enough to just want to do good, we need real empowerment to live well. And some ways of living are better than others. It is better to love your neighbor than to rape them. Most people would agree with that statement. But if I believe all ethical systems are equal it’s hard to say love is better than hate!

We are all so social! We become with. How remarkable. Life is relational. We become ourselves with. Jesus was not only in the lonely garden, He also developed in family and among friends. So are we. God is social.

Each person an entire poem in waiting. And each day you see us shine in Him. You see us being ourselves occasionally poking out just to shine. We each actually are meant to shine so very brightly in our uniqueness. I hope that for everyone. It really is nice just shining in our being, and those particular clothes He dressed us in before time.

I think exaggerating True life, is the right way to go, until we are living it more fully!

Circus boat!
By the old river, near where I am staying in Prague, is a performance art boat started by the sons of a local theater hero. I love the metaphor of a traveling, on water, circus boat! Have boat, will go with the Flow of the River!

Also, i’ve secretly always wanted to live on water, and in the circus. I’ve done some circus (worked as a clown during university), and had many friends who lived in the actual global circuses of the world, but never tried it on the water! (Once, gave a pass to a book store i was running to some Croatian circus family, they only bought cook books about fish. But that’s another story!) Love to combine the two metaphors, seems like they already are in my heart.

Water, and rivers (the realm of the prophets and Wisdom) specifically, speak of messages, connectivity and memory; circus, of child like wonder and possibilities (unless we come as kids, we cannot enter The Kingdom..). The two together carry the right message, i think.

Nice to have a friend point out this floating performance space to me last night. Sort of a medieval circus on water! I think I’ll enjoy it! Photo to follow as I experience the show…nice discovering new metaphors this week, or combinations of older ones, which lead and lean forwards…into new Hopes!

People often say I exaggerate life. I’m not sure that’s possible really. It’s much bigger or grander than we imagine, and there are so many unseen realms intersecting at any given moment! Just ask Daniel, the prophet.

The setting alone is an endlessly enormous room which we have barely learned to live in! Each of us are novels God’s been wanting to write forever! Our names and stories (paths prepared beforehand-ephesian 2:10) are written in Him somehow. So, both identity and calling are held secure in Love. Yet, we are novices at being written well!

It’s hard to exaggerate what really is. Hyperbole may be, at least in the right direction of the truth. “Sometimes one must yell, to pronounce Silence.”
Or, as the writer Flannery O’connor put it: “Sometimes I have to caricature my characters, so the reader can hear redemption.”