“Make things more whole, wherever you go, as you yourself are becoming complete. Help bring things towards what they really are.” Nice life goal, i came across today in study.

Sort of the Shema prayer in a nutshell: God is One and wants to make us more one. And as St Paul taught, He who started a good work inside of us, IS ABLE to complete it. Nice morning meditation today. Hopeful.

Sort of an argument from true identity–help others, things and places even, become who they really are, as you are becoming who you really are. Help things align with Reality in other words. Nice daily mission!

This is applying the Shema prayer about God’s oneness to us as well. It is saying He is One and based on that fact, desires to make us one integrated expression–in short to align us with what is Real in Him. That’s why the Jews pray this daily. God is into the business of restoration! Restoring things into their true identity. We are those who partner with Him in helping make things whole, or more “in Him”, as He sees them. That is what is Real.

So in some sense, we are helping others become more Real, more what they truly are. That is part of our mission. We do so by being in His Love towards them. Love is the method, for making things more whole.

As we do so, we ourselves are being made complete, one whole expression in Him. That is one of His mysteries about true identity. As we help others shine into theirs in Him, we ourselves are being completed as His exact expressions.
It was said of Jesus that He was the exact expression of The Father. He stayed “in” The Father–that was His secret. We must do the same. We stay in Christ, and He keeps us in The Father, and this is the path to true identity.

It is also part of our commission on earth–to help make things whole (kratos–to help complete)! We are helping people, places and things, align to Him–what is Real. Grounded and founded in His Love, we are being made whole by the One who is already One! Behold, your God is One! We are caught up in this mission of oneness!

As I was praying for a friend today, caught a blessing…
Caught a blessings from Psalm 139- my favorite song in the book- today!
I hope that I’m described as the commenters describe Psalm 139—“this song, defies all categories! It’s a non-egotistical look at the celebration of being human from God’s perspective, the highlighting of identity as a song of God, or at least, the perspective of someone in love with God!”

Nice reading commentary today on my very favorite psalm—the bible’s song of ourselves! David takes himself as a meditation on God’s creative goodness. This Psalm really has carried me through life! Nice to come across this commentary today, anyway.

Perhaps, each of us defy all categories! Such wondrous poems, each person, God’s specific poetry, despite our personal interrupted cadences at times, we are God’s autobiography!

Fun celebrating other’s identities in prayer today! Let’s celebrate one another as poems of God today! Why not! It can’t hurt to treat one another as the poetry of God!

Two little alliterative thought homilies for ya today:
Soil, sight and skin—the three needed, and often neglected areas which Christ wants to incarnate more deeply in us: His conversation with ecology, the imagination, and the physical body.
The other teaching I’m working on is about where Wisdom and the prophets tend to hang out: rims, ridges, and rivers. I’m getting very alliterative in my old age; must be my baptist background!. Baptist’s love re-callable application, and repetition-making it easy for people to remember and reproduce. Not a bad thing, though sometimes, a bit oversimplified. Yet it, makes it easier to remember so i can write it on tablets quickly, so others can run with it!
These two teachings i’ve been working on for some time, and they just get more simplified and essential over time. Looking at where God wants to incarnate globally (the conversations already happening and deepening), and looking at those at the edges who are receivers of His Realm. Fun study.
Simplicity is a Kingdom virtue, as a friend recently said to me. Eventually, my life poems will be written in haiku! Until, then I appreciate your patience with my loquaciousness!

“You are wearing time well!” someone told me today. Nice compliment. I hope so.

I like getting older. You gain efficiency, as you work on completing your symbols, which you finally already know. If the first half of life is about finding who you are, the second is about refining it, stewarding your symbols, and making them more fruitful for others. You get to be a beginner again-new motivations for service. Time gets a bad rap. Time’s not so bad, especially as our names somehow go on forever. We are God’s great ellipses! Takes the pressure off! I think I’ll keep wearing time.

At my wedding I wore nine watches, one even ran backwards (my Hebrew watch) all set on different time zones. I did this mainly back then to remind me to pray for all my friends all over the world, but I think i was into time, even back then.

Looking at comedy again, as a mode of knowing: Comedy as a form of epistemology or way of knowing things! Been studying it since college, but comedy as a way, seems more needed now than ever.

I love studying comedians, but also recently preachers to see how they use humor much like the native americans do–to prepare the mind for the wise men’s words. Often, a preacher will tell several jokes before giving their message. I grew up watching this, and it makes sense. The clowns prepare us for the wise men and women!

Freud’s book on humor isn’t funny, of course, but it does have some interesting ideas about what humor is, and how it works. I don’t agree with his basic premise that humor makes us feel superior to what we are laughing at, but he has a nice section on bringing two things which normally don’t hang out, into the same conversational room, and discovering their intrinsic narrative. The best comedians do this all the time. How could these two normally separate elements meet and come into dialogue. What are three other things this object could do or be? That’s sort of the basics of improvisation. And life is a form of improv really. Anyway, i love studying humor again. It’s funny.

Of course, hyperbole is another form of humor often used in American humor, but it’s also really about unexpected uses of objects. Exaggeration creates caricature, which can be funny, if contrasted against something unexpected.

In comedy you are always thinking of what else the thing could be or do! At least three other things a car wheel could be etc…you are always seeing other uses for an object. That creates it; then you have to place it in a narrative, or discover one as you go….This plate could also be a frisbee. Ironic or other uses; and then sudden leaps while still connecting them. An evangelical preacher preaching at a carwash sort of thing.

Principles in comedy have to do with bringing at least two usually desperate elements into the same room. A war general and a banana peel; watergate and Woody Allen etc. It can be surreal, but not necessarily. A priest at a pub works also. There are levels of association between things. The further away the two things are from each other, the more narrative required to make the imaginative leap to bring them into the same room. Eddie Izzard does this well, as did Robin Williams. They can both bring things into the same conversational room, which are usually very far apart from one another.

I love studying comedy, have since youth. What makes people laugh. Unlike Freud, i don’t think it’s about humiliating weaker things. Often it is however about taboo topics as he pointed out. Slapstick of course, works with our ability to empathize with vulnerability. In this sense it’s cathartic. I don’t agree with Freud that it is usually about feeling more powerful than other’s handicaps. Usually it’s about recognizing our own through other’s. More thoughts soon on comedy—i love studying it again!

Creative camaraderie!
Nice article in the Sunday Times art section, on life long collaborations between artists today! I love it when artists serve and champion one another’s gifts rather than compete. You see it in comedy often when both people are confident in their gifts, and can be humble and serve and even help the other’s talents shine more brilliantly. Inspiring.
Building one another up as you are restoring the walls of the city makes sense to me, from Nehemiah and Ezra’s days-been reading Nehemiah, what a great tale about unity building! Take the ego out, and put unity and your gifts in instead, and great things can happen-a whole city can be rebuilt, in fact. I see it even on great interviews between artist—both shine brighter for having yielded. It’s true in ministry or any other field as well! It’s true between the creatures as well.
One day the lion and lamb will hang out, though Woody Allen claims the lamb won’t sleep! One of my favorite end times jokes. It’s suspicious!
But, nice seeing art giants play like kids instead of moving in insecurity! Makes sense, these two were friends over the years! It’s the right spirit. Also interesting looking at these two, to see how their art flowed from and was an extension of who they were—even physically! Symbolic expression flows from core identity-you can see them in their art. I love Miro’s stuff, but we got to see Calder’s work in Bilbao Spain, years back–remarkable, kinetic wonder! Our resident squirrel and cat agree! Nice Sunday read anyway!

Some “take aways” from reading today!
Someone once said, if you look at how we all get along, and try to think of us as God’s masterpieces–oy! Still, He obviously loves us, and wants us to get along.

Tone is a practical tool towards reconciliation! IN-toning (making sure your words are in the right tone), in Love, your own conversations with others is a useful practice these days.

Reading “For the Sake of Heaven and Earth” by Rabbi Irving Greenberg, kind man from his tone, about christian and jewish reconciliation (but symbolic of many other types of needed active reconciliation needed now, over and through all types of walls!) and active loving dialogue, which he, like Herschel, and many other of my friends, modeled in their lives. Of course, it extends beyond those two groups.

The basics of reconciliation apply to us all! Assume we aren’t perfect, ask for Help, confess, into thanks that you’re still here, if you can’t muster anything else, at least assume your not perfect, and love others. Confess into thanks into praise, then into action; be humble by the time you act–a basic prayer pattern daily I’ve discovered over the years.

Anyways, as James Carroll wrote on the back of this book: “This book is a record of, and a testimony to, the Jewish_christian dialogue. It give the world the compelling voice of one of its pioneers, whose testimony shows that criticism and self criticism can work together, enabling the growth, even in ancient rivals, of trust and, perhaps, Love.” If these two religions can do it, anybody can!, I would add!

Nice meditation in times when historically tense communities need to listen well to one another. Slow to speak, til Love baths our tone and tongues. Listen into language. Be quick to confess our own sins. “Assume you sinned in your dreams-wake up confessing into thanks” as one saint put it! Or as Heschel put it: “How to combine loyalty to one’s own tradition with reverence for different people from other traditions. How to honor their collective “thou”. Or as Jesus put it more succinctly: Love your neighbor as yourself. How to pro-actively love your neighbor, in short is the core question of our times.

I guess this read is about ecumenical basics to being human. Or as one of my favorite yiddish proverbs goes: “People are just people trying to be people. If we can help one another do that, then do so with what we have received thus far, and do so, in love, until we know face to Face!”

Anyway, enjoying studying patterns in reconciliation this season! Of course, some form of confession and forgiveness appears to always come first. “Assume you sinned even in your dreams, and wake up confessing into thanks.” As one saint put it! “And confess it for even your previous generations, assuming they also didn’t do great. That’s what heals the land, and allows us to talk again in kindness.”

And kindness really is underrated these days! Check the tone of your words constantly, as my mentor said. Make sure it’s coming from the right place inside. Other’s may misinterpret it regardless, but they’ll keep returning to the tone. Tone is a practical method towards reconciliation! One take away from this book today, anyway! Nice read. I love it when people write from humility and experience.

Or as the tribe of native americans i grew up near said: “Heal the core wound, blunt the knife.” Which always meant to me, if you want to change something, you have to head at the inner wounds in yourself first, and start reconciliation there. The inner walls fall first! Then the weapons of war with others are not longer necessary. The walls start crumbling in the One who tore down the walls between Jews and gentiles, not to mention all other walls! Anyway, good meditation today! The inner walls fall first. We must first be occupied by Love, in order to occupy the world around us with Love! Basics! Otherwise, everything is projected or acted out, as if it were outside of us. We transfer and project our wounds, and those we have inherited, onto others and the world around us; instead of seeing them as they are. Start inside to see others well.

In Jewish tradition, there are two streams coming down the sacred mountain of God’s revelation: one is oral, the other written. God is speaking, and has spoken.

Of the two streams of law running off Sinai, i tend to swim in the oral one; yet both matter. And there are more life guards along the banks of the written river! Rhema and Logos inform one another. I’ll keep trying to stream and swim in both! What He is saying now, and what He wrote down. Wisdom teaches us which one we need to be in now. Fun meditation today!

Today was heavier, denser, weightier, than usual. Some days weigh more than others! Some days are blues songs, others-jazz their way into being.

Today was like a Raymond Carver (american writer) story in slow motion. Still, i trust tomorrow will be a bit more Whitmanesque! More a book of dreams than nightmares (Galway Kinnel). A bit less Lamentations, and more gospel. But, everyday has it’s own type of song, we each have to sing, embody or carry in our own ways.

Today’s, after counseling a friend through some weightier issues, felt more like Anselm Kiefer’s paintings, than Chagall’s, so to speak.

Today’s song was certainly played on a Saxophone—en-toned in blue, as Saxophones are want to. But just behind blue is yellow, at least in my spirit’s pallet. Lament and joy are somehow tethered to the same poll.

Yet, Easter’s levity continues, despite the weight of the times….bless you all in the bearable lightness of being today friends! His burden is Light, as a friend reminded me today! (Sort of meaning He carries the density of the whole color spectrum on His Own Shoulders, so we can still enjoy them daily! He’s our filter, and weight lifter, daily!) We wear clothes of praise to elevate, despite the weight of glory.

a dragon fly landed near me today as i was waiting…

Crouched wings in waiting for the right instant of Wind to come…..dragonfly with leaned wings on a picnic table, nearby still, until it’s time! She became translucent as she peeled her wings against the wood of table. Her hope, to lift off again soon! This little sign of hope today is enough to go on! Help me wait well Lord of all Winds—expectantly, already in hidden cobalt blue golden glory, meet us, even as we crouch in waiting…