I worked with elderly people for many years doing art therapy; I still love it when people grow better, and more beautifully themselves, and not bitter as they age! They become living portents of the possible! Signs of the cadences of seasons, and that a life lived well is still possible.

I watched more than a few die. How they died symbolized how they lived. The end essentialized the whole story. They had crystallized the symbols they carried. That’s the best death, because it leaves true art behind.

Some of the people who blessed me the most were in the last chapters of their lives! And were able to speak a clarified truth from experience, a sheered wise poetry into my bones and heart, which made me hear the call to life.

What they sowed in youth, grew into beauty, and even clarified and rarefied Wisdom. The laws of sowing and reaping with a huge touch of Grace, go a along way!

Some of my greatest heroes are those who aged the best like fine wine!

How we live the later seasons of our lives, teaches everyone the point of all the previous ones. And offers hope. Thankful for those who keep growing and being themselves in each season of life!

I love all generations, each has it’s unique part of the poem to carry (I see them less in terms of age, as “generations of God’s purposes”, and many of us get to live out several!), but there is something powerful about watching someone grow old well! Old oaks are the best! Thinking about this week, as an older friend passed.

Generations are not just ages, they are purposes to accomplish on earth. Each generation has certain gifts to accomplish these purposes, and they each fit together in the overall narrative.

Knowing the purposes of your generation, and the ones before and after help us move in wisdom, and God’s overall pattern of revealing Himself. It helps us appreciate who He is. And it helps us find our place in His long poem. Of course, some of us like Joshua in scriptures, get to walk out several generations of His Purposes. That’s a nice gift, as you are getting to see how things fit together between each generation.

Of course, there is lots of disruption and even hostility, between each generation, but they are meant to be part of a seamless narrative of God’s purposes. This is why reconciliation between the generations has always been an area of labor for me. I love elders, and I love youth, and I even love my own strangely authentic interpretive generation. Each has its strengths and shadows, but the more I love what He loves, i find myself at home with all ages of generations of His Purposes, and enjoy helping them work more as One.

I’ve had many dreams about His Love for each generation. In the dreams I was training youth, encouraging peers and honoring those older ones who have gone before me. I think I’ll keep doing that.

Been thinking more on Love:

Love doesn’t just assume the best, it sees the best, and the future of what you actually are. And in doing so, it calls it forth in you. The gaze of Love activates the best in you and me.

Love goes out of it’s way to bless other into being what they actually are.
Love perceives best! In order to see something well, we must love it. And to the exact degree to which we love something or someone, we know it. Love is the highest way of knowing other. For, Love precedes and informs interpretation. Love leads us into how things really are already and will be.

Love perceives a banquet beforehand in every conversation!

Been thinking more on Love:
Love doesn’t just assume the best, it sees the best, and the future of what you actually are. And in doing so, it calls it forth in you. The gaze of Love activates the best in you and me. And, causes it to be.
Love goes out of it’s way to bless other into being what they actually are.
Love perceives best! In order to see something well, we must love it. And to the exact degree to which we love something or someone, we know it. Love is the highest way of knowing other. For, Love precedes and informs interpretation. Love leads us into how things really are already and will be.
So, let’s watch the tone of our words in each season, for our words start all sort of fires in one another. Let’s make sure we see and speak in the tone of Love as we go and grow.

All your metaphors are on the surface now America! So,
live them out now in kindness despite yourself.

I don’t know why our shit makes the best art, but it does. The worst parts of our lives, become glory. He seems to form Himself mostly within our wounds. And that’s where our authority seems to boom and bloom-the part He lays closest to in us. The gory parts become His Story. Maybe we are God’s compost. It’s a gothic story. Stinky proof of redemption. Maybe because we are being real with ourselves and others out loud and begging for The Cross to be true, maybe just because me and you, need to see someone limping and vulnerable to relate, or maybe because we are just falling out loud in clouds of becoming what we were meant to be. Anyhow, at the end of the day, as we pray, we know how related we all are in our stumbling forwards, through the stench of ourselves, and into the other glory…and prayerfully, upwards, as some sacred incense us, burning to become…though we still stink down here. And yet, are somehow being made One.

What a blue bird shrilled to me today, upon landing here:

Plastic cars
plastic bars
plastic tv towers
plastic head dashboard in my car
plastic computers-looters who mar the unseen
plastic now, so thin and seemingly durable. Plastic branded conversations,
even plastic nations; plastic scholastic thoughts; what happened to the inner Tone of Word, the subtle nuances of being alive, being heard;
and yet, somewhere like today, at a particular hour of morning (6:13-like the laws, her call!)
on a particular cedar wooden fence, beside what is actually me, I see…
a cobalt blue blue bird landing specifically, pensively, surveying, in song, the sea
from her own
private lighthouse made of stone sight and bone, with levity—and what all birds are made of…breath and song;
and in her light flight sight,
the verdancy of being, called
still and shrill
in her own type of tone, her identity secured, known, resonated against, and even echoed into..
or with, the tone of our plastic worlds.
She sees the old sea, bodies of water in Thee,
as it is, as we are—wet and readied. All nations, all of us. She tells me,
there’s time left to know still.
And this bird told me another story,
“the Kingdom is made of Glory willing to re-mold itself, alight even upon, or, into our
plastic storied lives.”

I’ve already done the ironic version of myself. Now again I’ll do it straight. Both were true.

To rest in an actual piece of Peace in our God, is the higher ground. Find that spot in space and be released into another form of freedom to be. Freedom as you must know by now, is proper interpretation from Love in Him, and we swim in Him and know. So our epistemology is based on the ecology of His Being, which guides us into the neglected, unreflected areas of His Being in us–ecology, sociology,the biology of being, not to mention the treatment of our own bodies. When we are kind, we become, and care for one another. Kindness knows other. So we see. He was meant to be in all areas, un-restricted. Allowed in. But we because of wounds, reject Authority, we don’t know what it means to be occupied, contained in being. We reject all authority and as result we loose our authorship, in the face of false writers we sing…yet we, need the Author and Finisher of our faith, despite the faces which erase our contours from the line. So stay in Time–sanctify time and space both, as we are meant to do. Take both and make them a sacred sanctum of forever, while you still can. While time last…and we still have our names to hang His own… For Peace is a space in God, not a set of ideals, but a source of voice. Peace is a room we all need to enter and live from. Peace is not a suggestion, but is bathed, and our bath in Love, which is only possible from above. We channel simplicity. We channel the simplest message ever–God so loved… we are loved, so we love, and we rest in the Sabbath of that knowing..the sabbath of that knowing, which never ends again and again… until we realize it. Until we form into His Form, and start to become sons, daughters, One; living lights shining so bright that even the stones in us, start rolling away, voicing and shimmering and reflecting their own storied redeemed light. We are rolled away stone songs, meant to be breathed through melodies bones…we are types of joys meant to be pronounced, nuanced, some even shouted out, from another world. Yet, we are afraid to be sung. To timid to be timbreled. Timid songs rafting in winds scenes unseen, to hard for us to circumference, almost unseen. But we know, we were meant to be sung, so we cling to the treble cleft of life like a leaf, as best we can to Something which makes us one, some relief; for we were meant to be as Sung. Until the Sea of His Love steadies us again, we come to some Rock which holds, something bold we know from of old. And the melodies of our bones turn to stone. And we know–We are, what He always was singing…through us.

Been practicing phone Sabbath lately:
Phone sabbath—when your phone takes a rest from communication, while you still stay on call spiritually, of course. Constant communication can be tiring and hard to discern, what really matters, and where your brightest spot may bless others most, and at the right time.

There is something about it which makes my phone happy! And as technology is an extension of us, also it helps me not have to discern every incoming call, text, message etc. For there are different densities or weights of communication, meant to be determined by The Spirit and love. Perhaps, we’ve lost that discernment in our times, with the lateralization of all information. Yet, certain text, words, fonts messages, have more weight than others, still!

Anyway, I think my phone needs daily Sabbath, at least for an hour or so, to learn to listen well. And as I am the steward over it, i think i’ll let it be, from time to time!