At Home in the in betweens:
Back where I belong today; in airports and on the road, or in the air. Don’t know why the in betweens always feels like home, but it still does! It’s always on the way to..something beautiful, unexpected, transformational happens. Perhaps i have a pilgrimage spirituality. As soon as i start packing for a venture, i get joyful.
My spirituality is at least one of liminality, the God of to and fro, the in but not of space, the ironic participation. I find God in between the lines. The Jesus before, through, and after the bible, the already not yet… All those Psalms of ascent are my favorites. Perhaps we are all slowly ascending…at least I am today! I spend lots of time on rooftops to remember this space, but planes make the metaphor obvious. Especially now that you can write and broadcast from them. I don’t mind living an octave too high, as Heschel put it. Or at least in the in betweens.

People of Peace ….
There’s always a person of Peace in each story, or neighborhood; an Ebed Malech in the story of Jeremiah, and advocate for God’s friends. Someone who gets you out of the pit, sometimes just with kindness.
Ours is this nice Thai lady in our local market, who always asks about our days, and means it. “You are your wife are such art,” she said today. And is genuinely curious about how we are. If the electricity went out, I’d go talk with her, and her family.
Interesting, everywhere I’ve ever lived, there are always these characters of Peace planted locally, who keep Love’s glow going daily in practical ways. People who “keep the light on” for you, as another friend, and local man of Peace, JV often tells me. “We’ll keep the light on for you big D.” (A very Texan expression of a person of Peace).
Anyway, this lady, often slows me down if I’m going too fast, or am not present, and asks me questions and listens to my answer, until i come into the room-some present.
Makes me a better human. Thankful for these characters in every story each day. And I try to be one myself. May you find your people of Peace today, and be one for others as well! They keep the world turning in hectic times.

Counseling a bit last week, and had this thought again: Find the conversation Love is already having, as Love is always already having a conversation before you arrive!

So much of actually helping someone, is just about listening well, and joining in the places where you hear Love already talking with them. This is true with people and cities, i think. Finding the conversation already going on, and joining in…helping bring more Love there. Amplifying Love.

That’s so much what life is, and certainly counseling! Counseling is so much about being present and listening into where the real conversation is already occurring, and amplifying it! In counseling training they speak of “The Third”. One way to think of the third in a conversation, is where Love already is in the room or conversation, and entering there.

Being truly heard and seen, is healing. It’s not always solving the problems as much as a ministry of sitting with, being present in Love. That’s at least over half of healing. The ministry of sitting with, in Love is underrated. “Tools help, but Love goes deeper, and last longer, for Love teaches people how to use tools.” as one mentor put it. Just being with in Love, is a lot! Find that conversation Love is already always having! Enter and expand there!

All the world’s metaphors are on the shelf! Every book shelf is filled with our ways. All there for the reading. Telephones, communications, heroes, our best thoughts, fables and geography. What’s left is to choose which metaphor you want to enter most deeply, and learn to live.

As my friend said to me recently: “Marriage is punk.” That feels more and more true as I go. In my neighborhood, it’s rare to be married, and you are certainly a minority, especially as an artist, which is most of my neighborhood.
A minority platform is alternative, and people are always curious why I’m married. It’s a conversation starter. Interesting.

I love being married. It makes a great frame for intense transformation. Plus it’s fun making up and sharing stories over time and seasons. Used to be normative to be married or aim towards it. Now, it’s punk or alternative. I’m glad to be in that minority these days, and thankful to have found someone to make poetry of life with.

Marriage is still one of the highest and hardest metaphors to incarnate well. Still learning, but glad to be married. Just a pro-marriage thought for you today. Be a punk, be truly alternative, be married—the bumper sticker. As one of my Christian friends said uncynically, “Marriage is a deeper level of fellowship with His Suffering.” Sounded ominous, but i got his point. There’s lots of sacrifice involved. But also potential beauty and formation.

Of course, as my Jewish friends say, you do have to get married at least 12 times to the same person over the course of life. It’s a journey with many types of chapters, in other words. Anyway, thankful for my marriage today.

I have a friend who lives in a local park. He stays in his truck, which he moves around each day, to find shade, and not get parking tickets. I also lived in parks, and in my car for many years all over this country. I relate to him. He gets up early and finds landscaping work each day, and likes to watch movies in his spare time. Nice fellow. I learn lots from him weekly about spiritual contentment. It’s too expensive for many people to live in our city now. And this is his neighborhood, he knows the trees and squirrels by name. So he decided to live this way, to be where is home to him. He is more at home here, than many who have homes. He knows the inner rhythms of things in the neighborhood, and watching and reads the skies well for storms or special sky nights (which we’ve had several recently). Anyway, i like the fellow. Glad we are neighbors and friends.

When I look truly, i cannot lust or take anything from you. I can only bless you with my sight, and be in wonder of who you truly are. I do not see you in terms of my own needs, i value you for yourself—and am astonished by the poem of who you are! I see you as a thou and not an it! I see you as a friend and family member.
I look out at your eternal self, and by seeing it, bless it into becoming. This is the role of a good gaze in the healing. I make you whole by staring at you from the spirit of Christ in me. True perception is an underrated healing agent! How else would you even want to use your imagination. How I image you helps you become that.
How we look at one another matters practically and eternally.
The role of how we see one another is bigger than we think. I need to see you more and more as how God sees you. That’s my task of perceptual sanctification! It heals my imagination as it calls your true image forward!

“You see people deeply before you talk to them—that’s a gift.” Nicest compliment today! I do try to see people from my heart before I talk to them, as best I can. I really do love people, and just try to receive them as and where they are. That always starts with trying to see them well first! And recognize them as a poem, i have only begun to encounter….I’ll keep trying to do that in life! It’s not just assuming the best, it is actually trying to see them outside myself for their intrinsic worth and beauty. That’s my practice. I hope I’m getting better at it. Nice to have someone say that today anyway!

This film being shot using the art building in Antwerp this week, where we have a studio! My landlord’s, both great artists, are doing clean up today! Bless them! As film making is magical and also makes a mess. Beautiful and messy at times, artists, and us all!

Well, at least our building in Antwerp is famous, it already was a character! When i return to our studio there, i will get the building’s autograph. This is a film being shot in Antwerp by de Palma about european terrorism. Should be interesting. All the world is a stage…i do like how film heightens reality long enough to realize everything is more than meets the eye. Or as Buber put it, “beauty is in the “I” of the beholder.

Film, having been involved in several, is also like circus in that it suddenly shows up to town, and sheds light on everything, and then is gone…there is so much which can happen in that space. When I met Steve Carrol last month on set, i realized also, it can be a place to bless from! To humanize by seeing well, and to realize that even every day life is art.

Film is like opera—team art; or just like life. Layered, collaged in meanings…in real and imagined life. And yet, i know artists are beautiful and messy in life.
After talking to my landlord today, hoping clean up afterwards goes well. Artist, in general, seem to always heighten things, and leave a residue to process afterwards! Alas, that’s us.

Blessings in cleaning the temple afterwards friend Agnes Nys! My landlord’s are also both brilliant artists, and had to host all this hoopla of film making. No easy task! Wish i was there to help clean up the set for you guys! Soon. Artists throw the best parties and leave the biggest mess, on many levels! Alas, that’s just how it is. Anyways, thinking of my friends there today, hosting and doing clean up for this film today. Thanks for sharing Agnes! I do like that our building is famous now! Hopefully it can quickly get back to being itself also.

Running through the whole church…

I’ve noticed different gifts in different parts of The Church through the years. I love getting to know the whole Body….
Baptist like word and fellowship! It’s an underrated part of baptist churches that they have a value on eating and fellowship even if you end up talking about whether or not you are saved. Presbyterians always leave me thinking, contemplating, with kindness and a sense of history. Vineyard and some charactismatics leave you you filled with worship and the spirit, but not sure where you are meant to eat—rarely had food around. However, Morningstar was an acceptation as they often had barbecue socials after prophetic sermons, and staff Harley rallies.
Anglicans are pretty balanced i think. Though perhaps they overemphasize social justice to the exclusion of personal formation. It’s cool looking at the gifts of different parts of the church. It’s not as simple as it seems. People often either throw the baby out, or just put the whole church into one “it” blob. Experientially its much more complex than that—and each part has its gift—i mean those pentecostals know gold, but could lose the bouncer deacons in the back of the church who make sure you can’t get out. Then there are the “catchers” in lots of Holy Ghost churches. I like those guys who catch people when they get slain in the Spirit—I’ve been caught a few times, and was thankful they had my back! (Happened in Toronto to me after i met John Arnold and literally got the blessing!)
I’ve gotten to meet many great leaders from different parts of the Body, they all carry special aspects of the whole. Dallas Willard, and other great baptist teachers, as well as many leaders in the more charismatic movements, and gotten to eat in their homes and talk life and God. I’ve been blessed in that way to know so many parts, and get to sort of be a joint between them.
Some are much more socially oriented; others all word and salvation; some power evangelism and healing etc…when you step back and try to see the living parts of the whole in each culturally unique instant, it’s fun to watch the Blood flow.
And I often think we should switch churches monthly, so we get the fuller picture of Him across His Body. All together we are a more accurate picture of Him.
Strengths and weaknesses in each part of the church, but with the baptist was missing that fellowship family gift they carry today. It is rare still to have ten different pies flowing from different houses in the church, as a gift to the whole. Unusual in the world to want to share home that much.
I once had a dream i ran through all the parts of the Body, including the catholics starting at their renewal in the 70’s—great dream which pointed out the best gifts each denomination still carries, and then how to integrate them all in Him. Having so many friends from different branches of the tree always leads me back to The Tree of Life. Yet, it does require some humor to stay friends with the whole Body.