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How books talk…and…one’s I’m dialoguing with now…(some again)

20 Monday Mar 2017

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Starting a series on books I’m reading, and why, and how! I like having I-Thou encounters with books and art. To be transformed by their most illuminated thoughts or ideas–what I would call their “revealed theology”. The best thoughts of men, pale in comparison to one single thought infected by God. I try to find God thoughts with books, and just as with people, search for the “good soil”–where God already is, and is working to form Himself. I start my conversation there, just as in counseling.

That’s how I read. I try to find God in other, and amplify in that area, until I can hear well. Usually it is where Love is. In conversations with people, i try to find where their heart is responsive to His Spirit and expand that area. I think it is the same with books for me. I love books, as if they were people. And some really can change your life, if you are willing to deeply encounter them. Some seeds are eternal. Some must be uncovered, others are more overt. When we love something, we start to see it as it is, and call it towards that place in itself. And in doing so, we are transformed. This is the art and purpose of seeing well.

I try to go spirit to spirit or deep to deep, or I to Thou when I read. It’s a bit redundant when actually reading I and Thou again, which arrived along with other friends in the mail today. I love getting books in the mail, tiny regalos or gifts containing whole worlds, just arrive in a little box, and when received as treasures, open up inner riches.

In this new series, i’m going to be writing about books I’m reading and some I’ve been reading for nearly 30 years and still gleaning from. These guys arrived today, so thought I’d start there.

 So just today, two of my favorite Jewish thinkers from our century arrived in my little silver post box by the front door! I’m replenishing a few lost books this season. I carried “I and Thou”, along with with Brother Lawrence’s “Practicing the Presence” around in my back pockets in my college days, but they fell out along the way-not out of my heart, or mind, but out of my clowny pockets.
Back then, i wanted to have a small library with me at all times. I liked having knowledge on my body, just in case. Maybe I thought I would forget everything, or just wanted to be surrounded by people’s best thoughts. Later when I lived in my car, it became a mobile library and art gallery. This may have all started as a kid when i could just stack books all around me, in order to think.
 Often I wouldn’t even read many of the books, i just liked being near them like having lots of friends nearby while working. I’ve never stopped loving books themselves, as well as many of the eternal seeds that somehow get pressed between their codex covers. Surely, there are many many books and scrolls in heaven! But back here on earth, back to today, back to Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel, back to Walter Brueggemann. Back to old and newer friends. Martin and Rabbi Heschel arrived first.
 These two great Jewish revivalist were friends in Berlin, so I think it’s cool they arrived in a package together today for a late birthday gift. The package, marked NYC and other cities, seemed so small and profane to contain such huge and sacred profound thoughts. It sort of forced me to do what Heschel teaches: put the everyday and God into the same thought!
My mentor in college, was catholic mystic aestheticist, and great friend of Buber’s thoughts. I’m thankful he taught me about art through Buber’s categories of thought! To this day, i still try to find the inner thou in art I’m looking at! Or people or cities for than matter. To try to have I-thou encounters with them, rather than I-it! I try to read books that way also! So they change me with their brightest seeds!
And of course, Heschel had such heart ecumenism and a poetic voice, he’s hard to ignore on any topic, especially the prophets, who are my favorites!
 Enjoying them all dialoguing at my table this morning. Of course, Heschel and Buber were friends, so I think they liked being in the same package which arrived today. I left my last copy of “I asked for Wonder” on a plane recently, filled with my notes. Someone is surely enraptured in wonder now, and considering what really gives meaning to this short version of life down here…enjoying a study morning anyways with some old friends!
Again, when God asked Heschel what he wanted in life, he asked for wonder rather than success. God liked his answer and gave him both.
 I’m throwing Walter Brueggemann, the christian old testament scholar, into the mix because his book on Sabbath has the same density of knowing as the other two, and it is good thinking about the commandments, mainly the ten but a few others, more deeply from a Christian perspective. Nice rainy morning Monday meditations! So much to learn yet! One thing about books and thinkers—like these flowers they seem to say more in conversation with one another, or become more than themselves in unison. Nice conversation to overhear thus far!
  I’m still moved by books, men, women, cities, nations, by people, places and things and by beholding them in their inner truth or essence–finding their true image and loving it alive, as I become alive. In doing so, we both become more ourselves. Spiritual perception changes us. We practice this by reading books well or having good conversations with people. We practice this depth beholding by making art, and encountering art well. Seeing things in love honors, calls forth and allows them and us to be what we actually are. Seeing things with deep curiosity and through the lens of love, changes everything, including us. This is what we talk about, when we talk about spiritual perception, seeing things into wholeness or more as they really are, or seeing the world through God’s Eyes.
  I still love art,  books and people. And, I am still humbled by those who have gone farther into the forest of The Father’s knowing than me, as these three men have. I’m thankful for the clearing in the woods of knowing and becoming they became and are! Glad to be in conversation with these fellows today! Like these flowers they seem to say more in conversation with one another, or become more than themselves in unison in my heart. So I’ll let them have an open dialogue. I’ll garden steward their conversation, as they interview one another in my heart. Thanks for arriving at my table fathers.

Spiritual Fatherhood

20 Monday Mar 2017

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Notes towards an article on father like spirituality!
What is a father’s spirituality? What does it look like? Firstly it is a person in direct relationship with Father God. One who reflects His Ways—thoughts and heart. One who is concerned but never worried. One who leans in, and fully incarnates, but is not traumatized by darkness. One who instead is in but not of, is fully suffering with, but is also living in the hope and knowing of resurrection.
When I meet true spiritual father’s they have that mixture of grieving with Christ, and hope in Christ. They have that type of paradox. And they tend to enjoy paradox, or the yet, unsolved riddles of life. They love, but are not looking for the simple solution, but rather the one which ushers in the most love and transformation on all sides. In short, they walk in mercy. Not in denial of all that is vial in themselves, others and the world, but in full redemptive hope. They are trying to be agents of redemption in each situation. How would father redeem this, and make it beautiful.
They are also, by their own presence, walking in His, calling forth beauty around them.
Wisdom hangs out on ridges rivers and rims—crossroads, where people and ideas meet. The gates, the places of exchange. Some fathers are always posted at these spots in life. Just to be in Him. Find them, and you find life.
A fathery perspective above all always has Peace in it. Come let us spiritually reason together. Let us consider how God is moving in and through all the events around us. And let’s do so, in His I Am Peace of knowing. That practice of staying in His Peace is paramount in our days.
Jeremiah felt it all, but remained in dialogue with God. Daniel knew so much, yet remained faithfully present in God. There times were much as ours. They set their minds to gain understanding of His Ways. The disciplined and bridled themselves, and their hearts daily, even hourly into His. This must be our spiritual practice in our times. To abide more constantly “in Him”. Then we will be drawn to what He loves—His Father, His church, His people etc. We come to love what the one we love most loves. And as we grow in Father’s Life, we find ourselves soaked in and pouring over Love. Love is the hallmark of the spiritually mature.
I’ve also found that most fathers have a greater interest in His Ways, than just what He is doing in the moment. They want to enter the patterns of His Being. They want to know the why from His Perspective, more from their own. They have yielded their thoughts to His, and want to enter more deeply in His higher perspective of the passing situations of life. Father, how do you interpret this situation I’m considering. Show me your interpretation of this matter. And then, perforce, we must listen well to God. We have no choice but to become great listeners. And I’ve seen this with each spiritually mature person I’ve met. They listen deeply and humbly even to the weakest.
Since we live in times such as Daniel’s and Jeremiah’s, it’s good to look at them as models of how to remain steady in very unstable times. Their personal spiritualities are examples and contain keys for us.
They were both prophetic, intimate friends with God, had the ear of kings and leaders, but also willing to suffer for their intimacy with God.
Prophets are basically more concerned with being near God than people, and yet by doing so, gain His Heart and words for people. They are intimates firstly, like priest. Then, they have a heart for people to understand how richly loving and communicative Father towards each of us. The prophet’s role is to make that clear and manifest. To overflow from that Fount of all blessings.
Yes, they are messengers, but more they are impartations of His Presence. They carry Him with them, and His messages and words. But their personal spiritualities are always about intimacy and receptivity to Him Himself.
You can only prophecy to the measure that you have His Love imparted. And your words can only go in to the degree that the soil in another’s heart is prepared by Love. Finding the good soil is part of maturing in the prophetic ministry.
It is Wisdom to find good soil for His Seeds. Often a prophet will have “the word” but the soil is not yet readied to receive. So they must hold that gap in fellowship with His suffering, knowing that He is trying to speak into the situation, but has not yet been allowed. I’ve experienced that many times over the years. It’s tough to sit with Him in that space. It’s a very good place to pray and intercede from though!
Then your prayers have authority. To the degree you are willing to fellowship with Him in that already not yet suffering, your prayers will have authority to ready the soils!
You are looking in ministry, for the part of the other’s heart which receives living water, rather than repels it. If that area repels it, then you start looking to remove blocks or stones. Or praying that they be removed, so that area can be receptive to growth again, or for the first time in Him. This is basic in counseling, and often occurs in prayer firstly.
Often I’ll pray before counseling, asking Father, what part of this person are you loving into. I think that is the role of a father for the other person. To seek to be in Father’s Presence, and to touch only and in the tone and way that the Father is intervening and incarnating the life of His Son into this person’s heart.
Eventually we become more concerned with other’s whole formation than just solving momentary problems. We look at roots, not just fruits. If the roots are cared for, the fruits take care of themselves, as one mentor told me.
Jesus came, that we would know The Father. When we love Him, we are guided into the Life of His Father. Once there, we like and in Him, want to share from and impart that Life. Counseling and helping others, is basically the art of doing that—imparting the Father’s Life and Ways into other’s hearts! This can only occur in the Peace of His Presence. For apart from Him, just like Jesus, we can do absolutely nothing of eternal significance for others. So our practice is to be coming to know and love and be intimate with The Father at all times. That is the spirituality of a father. To live with and in the Father in all realms at all times. To stay close to Him, and continue to grow into His Ways. When someone has been doing this for a long time, you know it. The fruits of the spirit are present in their lives, and the loving concern of the Father’s Heart is ministered almost automatically.

Why I still like St Patrick

20 Monday Mar 2017

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St Patrick! Why I like him still!
Some people don’t like to think about saints. I do, partly because I’m curious about their personal spiritualities and what really motivated them.
 Why I like Patrick. He was a practical mystic. And an authentic one-singular in many ways, unique, but moved in that ancient way of Christ.
 Was enslaved when young, and then went back, led by a dream/vision, to the place where he was captive, and brought supernatural power to deliver a nation, through relationships. So was a prophet poet to the nations, like Jeremiah.
 He also left confessions and poetry, as his legacy of words. Good art and an apology– not a bad legacy.
 I walked the St Patrick path across the heart of Ireland years ago, and was really touched, and imparted by his love for other, and spiritual fatherhood. Interesting saint. Worth considering. He also had strategy, worked with kings, but also the poor and outcast. I like his style of carrying life. Plus, lots of cool miracles happened around him which included nature, the earth, the creatures.
 He was ecumenical, missional, loved and sought out “other”-even often “pagan” or rejected others. He was often rejected or misunderstood by the institutional church, but kept following God. This guy was cool, a poetic maverick and pioneer of being.
 He seemed to have forgiven the mainstream folks who were threatened by him, but still lived out his calling, walked his path. Didn’t seem like a bitter fellow, or egotistical. Just having sat with him for years, i think he is an interesting saint, woetht emulating or at least considering when you think of The Way. And he had that inner burning in his heart to bless others, especially multi-culturally. He couldn’t shut out The Voice of Love.
 Considering him and his way, this birthday week.

Birthday wonder!

20 Monday Mar 2017

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  The textures of my birthday, have been like a Gustave Klimt painting and a circus so far; this part a hidden edible garden on a hill with a mystic meadowy melody of valley view! Thanks friends! Felt like I was in a Van Morrison song today, or Chopin sonata, or a floating place of vision! The textures of love never end. We’ll keep walking in them. And my wife loves getting lost in gardens which trail into wildness, and untended melodies…it’s a shared inner landscape!
 As our friend put it, beauty ministers, and is a ministry.
 My eyes are rich, as is my heart. Thanks friends!
 Of course, i got obsessed with these resplendent fish just being in their silent world beneath the trees, reflecting another world-where the types of silence of fish and silence of sky, meet and converse in light, is one of my favorite places. How they somehow reflect one another is something which has always captivated me.
 Good to have friends in high places and low. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, and continues to reflect and praise by being itself.” The gift of beholding some rarefied earth this year, blessed me. Anyway,  nice to return to this part of it, and these friends again this year! Cherished convergences, conjoinings, confluences, and collaborations through life’s many chapters. Let’s write more hours and daily life poems together friends! Thanks again. What a wonder filled birth celebration it’s been!

What type of priest my generation needs

13 Monday Mar 2017

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Someone asked me recently what type of priests my generation needed:
  Transparent priest, authentic priest, non-professional priest, as things are and will be priest, a new style of informal accessible priest, as is vulnerable priest, personally relational priest, living their spiritualities out loud priest, as you go expressive process oriented priest, face time Facebook and face to face priest, sermon not quiet there priest, overheard spiritualities priest, not waiting til your done to share your homily priest, as you are leaning towards what you will be priest, being themselves as they go priest…..is how I started my answer. I’ll finish it later, i promise!
 High priest, low priest, clearing out the snow priest, bird priest, cat priest, priest who wear cool hats priest, storm priest, calm priest, taking out the trash, walking the dog priest, city priest, rural priest dreaming of the city of God priest, writing priest, silent priest those somewhere in the middle priest, bald priest, long haired priest, tall priest, short priest, priest who bring the Light to dark places, priest who bring those in the dark to light places, priest who see another city settling down above us, priest who only see their corner of the street and are meant to make it shine and rustle us awake and keep us all in line, priest who call forth wonder, priest who call forth tears, priest who teach us how to leap above our fears, priest who dream, priest who stream, priest who scheme of how to make things better….the list is surely endless in the One who holds the priestly key, making us conformed holy into Thee. The High Priest of all Life forming us again, making us each, little priest in Him!
Priest who don’t have it all together yet, but are following One who does priest, further and farther into the forest of His Father’s Love!

Love births true identity!

13 Monday Mar 2017

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  Love releases sight. We can see one another to the degree we love one another. I can only help you to the degree I love you. We also can help one another to that measure. Skills don’t transform us or others, love does. Skills come from loving deeply over time, learning the rhythms of care. Skills in helping one another, are learned by loving deeply.
  Love conversely transforms sight. We are able to see accurately to the degree we love.
 Beauty is in the “I” of the beholder. Do the degree we engage in love, we are able to see ourselves and one another. For we are gaining more of God’s eyes on the other, and ourselves as we engage in Love. We are seeing more through His Lens. For God is Love.
 In doing so, in taking the risk of love rather than retreat, defense, or assault, we ourselves are transformed, for we come to appreciate how deeply He actually cares for the other, and sees them as they are and will be. In doing so, we hear our own names whispered in Love. We start to sense that we are each beloved. We are then both, when engaged in Love, transformed closer to who we actually are! Love brings us closer to our true selves, and calls forth the real in the other by our active heart gazing.
 To the degree we risk moving in this love encounter, we see both ourselves and the other into being. Love births true identity!

More on Love

13 Monday Mar 2017

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More from an article about what we talk about when we talk about love:
“Love releases sight into the heart. We can see one another to the degree we love one another. I can only help you to the degree I love you. We also can only help one another to that measure. Skills don’t transform us or others, love does. Skills come from loving deeply over time, learning the rhythms of care. Skills in helping one another, are learned by loving deeply.”

Nice to see you again, lover city San Fran!

13 Monday Mar 2017

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IMG_9315Hello again San Fran!

We love cities, but this is one we care about in full view of her shadows, and she is a returning or recurring motif in my own story.

Always good to kiss her, pray for, and dance with her again, and be back! Some people don’t like cities. I’m not one of those people. I experience them as people, and this is one I’ve always loved. We’ve seen each other, and still care for one another. That’s a good sign.

Always nice landing into ourselves here again this week in our space in San Fran…pleasant birthday week thus far!

Good coffee, hidden pathways, books, remarkable breakfast (fresh season crab eggs benedict and lemon banana crepe at one of our favorite local cafes), and this pizza was all they said it is.

And these yellow flowers near our house which come out seasonally here, have that celtic glory which makes my heart sing around St Patricks!

Thanks San Fran, nice to see ya again old friend, and lovely lady. Thankful for our friendship.

You can see how our days often roll here. We like to eat, think, write, walk and talk, look at and make art, lots of gazing at, and contemplating the personalities and design of cities; and be ourselves; and trail into the mysteries around us. Easy to do that here for us. A joy filled ease of release into other.

Thankful for the daily, beautiful and often small things in life. Also for five un-photoed green hummingbirds today, with tiny flecks of red on their necks—magical little words of life hovering and darting around the many early spring flowers and us today! (The unseen things in our days determine the seen!)

“The Word is so much with us, all around us.” as a friend from here wrote to me today. Or as my mom used to remind us daily: “This is the Day that the Lord has made, let’s find it, and rejoice in it!”

Wherever we are, that Day, always feels like home, and I like finding that Day, in this city! Nice to be back. I could list my thanks forever, for all the small daily blessings in life, like light on a city, or on the wrist of my wife’s hand, sipping a drink she likes. Or a good breakfast in a city i love.

journal notes from today!

12 Sunday Mar 2017

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Why Love His Church: Love what your friend loves.
Some of what I learn, is to be better informed when talking with people who carry different gifts—like apostolic people. I like being informed about what makes them tick, and what categories they are thinking in. I have my own pet projects and topics, but I also like learning other’s.  Church planting, for instance is not one of my native topics, yet I love learning about it, as I have so many friends involved in it. It goes back to loving what Jesus loves—which is really my interest in the church. I love what My Friend loves. That’s part of being in union with Him. I don’t have choice to not love His Church.  When you love what God loves, you will find yourself interested in His Church. And you don’t wait until she is perfect before you love her. As Willard said, we have to form in the imperfect communities given to us. We are to love what He loves..not just “the lost” but His Church as well, regardless of her shadows.
To speak into something or about something you must love it. This is true if you are speaking about the church, races, or other genders etc…otherwise people speak in bitterness and hatred and lose perspective. I don’t think you can really speak into something if you don’t love it, and your authority to actually change it is to the degree or measure of that love.
It is just as you can only prophecy to the degree that you yourself have formed that part of Christ in you!
“We can only speak into another to the degree we love them.  The other and God have to enter the same gaze. The measure of love towards them, is the level of our helpfulness to others. Skills alone don’t transform us or them, though they are formed from love over time. Love does.” anonymous monk.
Everything you are is known and hidden in Him. So you are free to be. Free to live as yourself now and forever. Our real life is safe to become in Him, that’s one of His whispered secrets about us. (the whispering monk)
///
Purim!!!
  Celebrating Purim in our own way this weekend with our many friends around the world. Drinking a little extra wine and costuming, celebrating existence, just celebrating being human in this case with all the Purim craziness of San Fran, not to mention my saint Patrick’s day party (this city always wears a costume and looks for a reason to celebrate—wait we do this all the time! Today a Jewish father with a great cartooned royal hat let us cross the road and spoke a blessing our way. I love it when people exchange blessings freely between cultures! Makes us better people. As, we are all just people trying to be people, as one old friend used to say. But celebrating this people group continued existence really does help us all.
 Anyways, thankful that the Jews, and the human family, have survived despite ourselves, and stomping our feet wherever we go this week, that this is so—doing the dance of the human family’s continuing existence! Always makes me just glad to be alive! That we have done more than survive, we are still fruitful as people, is a miracle given the amount of suffering in the world! Of course, I love any holiday which gives me an excuse to celebrate, wear costumes and dance daily. Celebration reminds us that we are still apart of the sacred story.
Of course I was born on a Christian party holiday coming up this week, celebrating the saint Patrick, my favorite saint, so I lean towards celebration, poetry of life, and try to see each day of life as a gift, or as Heschel said: “See each day in the light of God, bring people and God into the same thought daily. The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments!”
“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle…. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.” Source: The Wisdom of Heschel
Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
The degree to which one is sensitive to other people’s suffering, to other (people’s) humanity, is the index of one’s own humanity
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster. To pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question.
“No Religion is an Island”, p. 264