Visiting a friend…

 We kept this little studio space we lived in Belgium, before getting our home in Austin. It’s become a creative haven for us, and many others over the past ten  years of so (maybe 12 now). And a place of creative exchange with our many european friends. So thankful for what it carries and continues to carry for us and others.

 Always great to come back. Sometimes, we spend more of the year over here, but recently we’ve been renovating our art house home in Austin, so have used it more as a base of landing and restoration when hanging in Europe. Such a love-space with tiers (and some tears) of memory for us. Good to be back.

 Nice working on our little studio here in Antwerp this week, and getting to be monastic for a bit. Always like awakening to church bells, sea gulls and ship fog horns (some of my favorite things conjoining, convening, co-mingling in mid air!)-like waking up in a morning poem, or a Chagall painting.

 From here, i can see three churches, and europe’s first skyscraper (not as beautiful as the churches). Good to be back friend! Love this little monastic haven studio.

 Getting it ready for the next monks today, along with the church bells and the sea gulls (zeemeeuwen). Nice Saturday in Antwerp. Indian Summer here.

  Pieter Bos (dutch author of “Theology of the Nations”), who i spoke with several times about coming down here, calls this city a creative friend. I’ve always experienced that to be true. Feeling welcome, is needed in our times, as is friendship. So glad to see you again friend.

 These photos (sorry been in a pano mood lately) are just in and from our studio apartment space, and our courtyard garden with fish pond-things like, our czech spices, because Amy learned how to translate all the spices when we lived in Prague, and gifts from friends over the years (some wedding gifts from dear friends, some left by strangers who passed through this way once, some left their spiritual journals or art sketches; i love how spaces collect layers of meaning over time-and how each layer matters, “each person we’ve known and dared to love is part of the exhibition of our lives!”).

  Sorry for the longevity of my musings, just cleaning this space today-i like to integrate art with the seemingly mundane chores of saturday cleaning- and it made me thankful again for the grand narrative of our lives, and how they collage with one another! Life is beautiful also in the end, as well as difficult.

  I’ll put some up of our hood up next. Enjoying being monastic here this week.

 Thanks Antwerp, good to be back friend. We’ve loved being here over the years- it’s good to know we will always be friends. And good to see you again.

  And this is also of course to prove to my wife, that i did in fact clean the space today, as I promised! Nice to see it shining again!

What are the spiritual gifts of your city? Thinking again of cities as people and looking at what their unique spiritual gifts are, and how they are meant to connect with other city’s gifts!

Sent not formed! In Acts 13 the elders had a responsibility to pray fast and minister the Lord, before they know who to send. This is an apostolic warning. Be careful who and when you send. Premature sending is dangerous.

Apart from Me, Jesus said, you can do nothing. So if this person is not mostly in Him, they are not ready to be sent. Formation of the Life of Christ comes before, calling or sending. The challenge of the elders is to pray fast and minister before the Lord. Then, we are shown who to send in the power and impartation of the Lord. It is the Holy Spirit who sends, and our job is to be tuned in to when and how and whom He is sending. That’s the apostolic warning and example in this passage. Don’t send too soon. Formation of the life of Christ precedes calling in ministry. God knows when someone is formed enough to be sent. All too many have been sent too soon, and not only get destroyed, but are unfruitful in ministry. In addition they mis-represent Christ. Remember what Ghandi said: “I’d become a christian, if I ever saw one.” I have seen many mature christians who were sent at God’s time, and are beautiful cedars in the land. Unfortunately, many are sent too soon, and become living examples of what happens when we are not yet formed in Christ.

Discernment means to see the inner motivation of the heart of something or someone. To see them as they really are before God. Discernment then allows you to love and teach with Wisdom into what really needs to be addressed. Jesus only did what He discerned the Father was doing. That’s the key.

Discernment then precedes prophecy or intervention, in that we cannot plant words without understanding how God is doing do. It’s a useful pre-tool in actually helping others. Then you are not ministering to their surface questions, but to what their hearts are asking! And you are also not helping others for your own needs! The woman at the well had many questions, but Jesus addressed her real questions. He did the same with religious leaders. He discerned their hearts, so taught accordingly. Helping people get to their real heart’s questions, is a great service. Discernment is the key to doing so.

Raw notes on the process of my life (Antwerp, 2015):

The basic spiritual theme of my story is a quest to find in Christ a context for the arts in the church and in the world; and, an integration of imagination into one’s authentic spirituality.

This involves identity formation and creativity release. It’s about spiritual perception ultimately. What art is, in us, and in Him, and how to align our creativity with Reality.

The Nature of Reality includes the symbolic dimension, and is meant to be apprehended by our creative faculties in collaboration with His. It’s part of His communication method, and creativity is part of what we actually are, and know by. Some people highlight it, but all of us have it in us as images of God. We are His poeisia. And we apprehend the nature of Reality through our creativity, as we yield it to His!

His living spoken words, we are.

I’ve been on a long quest to become a context where others can be truly themselves and truly creative and absolutely centered in the Life of Christ. You believed that was possible, had to faith to allow Him to do it in you; now you have to learn to teach it well. I’m in an interpreting, completing my symbols and teachings phase of life. These are raw notes towards that quest!

Human creativity, what it is, is one starting point. Human identity—what we really are. That’s my philosophical interest. But on a being level, ontologically, a strata of what we are, is His Creativity. We talk about our imaginations, then we see the prophetic imagination, which is really God’s imagination being channeled in collaboration with our yielded imaginations.

We yield that part as well as all parts to Him, first His healing, then His fuller formation. The stages of spiritual growth: surrender, abandon, union, friendship into collaboration in cultivating the earth (the pleasant lines of our inheritance!) When we do, we can get to know God in the area of His Imagination. And that is something powerful!!!

Most people offer God their best thoughts, and He listens well. Even lovingly.

But few people offer him thought itself. Many offer their art to God, but don’t allow Him to make His art in them! All my best thoughts, all my best creativity or art; offering Him our total or whole selves including our creativity; and then see what happens when Christ comes into the true imagination and makes His Home there!

 It’s atomic power. It’s actually second Adamic power! This is why we need to bring our imaginations to His banquet, and let them be transformed by and in His Presence.

A sanctified imagination! We desire our creativity itself to be included in our transformational relationship with Jesus Christ! It is part of what we offer Him to make a new creation out of!

Spiritual perception, a sanctified imagination allows us to see and collaborate more with God’s creativity. We co-create with Him. Like Adam naming the animals, leaving some unnamed it seems. We can help complete (kratos) the earth, as collaborators with God. That is part of the human role on earth. To collaborate with God in cultivating and completing what He made.

Practicing His Presence at the center of your own imagination is a useful tool-just making art with God. Dancing with Him through whatever medium you choose. Practicing spiritual collaboration with God is a basic way of getting to know Him in this area of life. Of getting to know how He creates, we must collaborate with Him. Not just self expression, but a collaborative process is what we need to practice.

When young, it’s ok to just self express, and God likes our art, but as we get older, we want to collaborate with God through our art, as we recognize Him as the Source of our own creativity. Art becomes more like praying when you collaborate with God.

A theology of the arts, starts with who God is, who man is, and how they relate. God is creative, man is creative, they can encounter one another by creating together. The symbolic is a place of meeting. The foundations of a theology of the arts—God is whole or One, Jesus is Lord over every dimension of Reality, including the creative; God loves the whole person, including the imagination. These three remain.

Identity means: what are we as humans. Reflections of Creator Father. Partners with Him in stewarding His creation through our creativity. Creativity itself is a basic part of being human. It’s not a luxury or superfluous. It’s a basic core part of what it means to be human. We exist therefore we create. Creativity is not an idol as the Romantics made it; but it is at the very core of what it means to be human.

We make new combinations, discover, hover, consider etc; even as children learning to walk, exploring a room, then the universe. We are human, therefore we creatively explore. God made us this way. He and His endless galaxied imagination!

Creativity is at the core of humanness.

It’s meant to be a collaborative space with God’s imagination—a way of knowing Him more! Under the command to love and know God—the arts!

The arts is part of the mandate to know and love the Lord your God.

Life is boring apart from God. He is our studio of becoming and living well.

I am more like Joseph, in the bible, than i know. Others get jealous, for i have the great favor of the father, even in real life, how my dad lavishes me with love and acceptance and support. Many of my friends didn’t get this. So, i have that responsibility to offer validity and acceptance into those parts which got Father-rejected. That is part of what I offer, especially to men leaders. But also to women who never god Father affection and attention. I offer that daily. And I do wear a coat of many many colors. Nice calling actually. But not unlike Bono, or other shiny folks, people get jealous. The enemy hates colorful coats!

Personal notes:

In my lifetime, i’ve tried to be generous with my colors, to give them away. At first, for approval or acceptance, later as real gifts, out of gratitude that the Father made me a like this.

For younger creatives, i offer this acceptance, and offering to come Home to Him and themselves.

For peers and elders, i offer affirmation of parts which weren’t affirmed when younger—especially around creativity and hence freedom to be ourselves. To have authentic spirituality. I give that to pastors as well. Outside of their roles, they open up to me, and share from their real relationship with God. That’s a privilege.

Also in prayer, my creativity is there, teaching me and showing me what God is really like, and is saying, or trying to communicate to others. That’s where prayer touches the prophetic.

The gift of just being yourself and being in Him, is my core blessings to others.

We become ourselves by getting close to Him. That aligns us with what is Real.

Creativity and spirituality are under the same roof in Him.

The church has often separated them, but in Him, they are integrated.

The church has often prostituted the arts, or only used it to evangelize. But it is a deeper part of being human than that. The imagination of His church is also on a journey of being more fully integrated. The charismatic and prophetic movements of the 20th C are helping with that. Or are signs of it. Jesus is pressing in deeper to the whole person, and the whole church. He is Lord over every dimension of Reality, including the symbolic. And He will form Himself fully in His People.

This deeper baptism into His name began again with The Reformation. But in our times, we are seeing the opportunity and quickening of a deeper incarnation into His Name and Identity. He is offering a deeper embodiment of Himself. You see this manifesting in the church’s emphasis of spiritual formation, and depth discipleship which is being emphasized throughout the global church.

He is coming more fully into His People, for His Purposes in our times. The contrast between what is in Him and what is not, is becoming more starkly clear. This is His Mercy, so people can choose.

An enlightened or embodied creativity is part of His Mission in our times. To come more fully into His People and manifest more of His Kingdom. The creative is one of the rooms He is painting in His church now. And you will see new levels of creative expression pouring out of her as she yields. Greater than Bach and Mozart. Art like the world hasn’t seen before. Heavenly art.

This new re-formation is really just a deeper formation of the life of Christ in humans. He wants to come more deeply into us and us into Him. John 14 and 15 are the prayers over our days now. This prayer for union, which Jesus said out loud to the Father. That we would be in Him, as He is in His Father—caught up in that creative loving joy. That’s our home, and we are being allured towards it in our times.

It’s beyond revival. It’s a deeper incarnation of the Word of Life in us. It is Jesus preparing for His Own return. This starts in us.

The arts then are apart of a movement of God into HIs People, and then out through them. He is inhabiting our imaginations individually and collectively as the Church, His people called by and into His Name. And called to baptize the nations and others into The Names of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The arts are part of this grand commission. And let it begin in us! Come occupy us more fully Lord, including our heart’s imaginations! Amen.

Then we will dream new dreams and sing new songs, as our creativity is ignited by His. It shouldn’t be that you get only a few CS Lewis’ a generation. His people should be on creative fire this season. He is pouring Himself out more profusely than ever. And we do well to yield our imaginations to His to usher in this even greater awakening!

The art world is caught up in low ceilings. Market economy, advertising…there is a much bigger context and role for the arts to play in this human formation. It is a place He wants to inhabit, and explode out through onto the earth. It will effect the entire planet, including nature itself. Our creativity if yielded, will be a place of atomic force spiritually.

We aren’t just harnessing human creativity! We are yielding our human creativity to His, and in doing so, He starts to make it part of the “new creation”. God is creating us. It’s actively happening. He calls us His new creations. And as we yield, confess and find His Cross, our creativity will be re-invented by God directly. A new direct spirituality is coming! And is already sizzling in His Spirit! Let our personal creativity be His synapse point for His New Creation! That’s the offer for artist today!

Let your creative gifts be formed and transformed by Christ, and you yourself will never be the same. Art becomes a place of transformation of self, others, and world.

God is the transformer, and we, his little creative temples!

I like this idea of God’s direct spirituality. Direct spirituality. Yeah, that’s what we need! Person to person, face to face, authentic, real encounter in order to know and be changed into that face to Face. That’s what we are moving towards. If it’s not direct encounter, how can it transform us into what we truly are. We must surpass religious system into the realm of relationship with Reality itself, and the One who is behind it! People really want a direct spirituality, an incarnational spirituality. That’s what Jesus really offers.

 An alignment with Reality as it really is!

Reading “I asked for Wonder” by Abraham Heschel this week. It’s a spiritual anthology. I like reading wise people from different traditions. Abraham knew Martin Buber, who is one of my favorite Jewish thinkers.

 Being blessed by this Jewish poet, theologian and mystic this week, who asked not for success in life, but who asked for Wonder! I’ve always appreciated his thoughts, and especially his writings on the prophets. Mysticism can be practical, as it was in the life of the prophet Daniel, among many others. It’s helpful to see the spiritual realm to make wise decisions in the natural one. That story of Elisha opening the eyes of his disciple to see what was really going on!

 Heschel was a hasidic Jew from Poland, so had those basic tenets of God’s immanence, our ability to know God by practical union, and that God can be met through the mundane daily activities of life-that there is a spiritual dimension which interfaces with the physical. Not bad tenets. He also was friends with many Christians, and even at his death priest were present. Two days before he died, he was at a jail protesting for the release of a priest friend of his. Good fruit.

 Here are a couple of his spiritual poems:

Light

God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions,

but an immediate insight, self-evident as light.

He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light

of reason.

 He is the light.

By Degrees

…Awareness of God does not come by degrees

from timidity to intellectual temerity;

it is not a decision reached at the crossroads of doubt.

It comes when, drifting in the wilderness,

having gone astray,

we suddenly behold the immutable polar Star.

THE GIFT OF GRIEF:

Grief brings potentially useful blindness. The same One we could see yesterday clearly, goes dark, or into seeming hiding, behind the dark lens of our soul’s pain. Jesus taught us to pray to the One who sees us from the hidden space. (The Lord’s prayer-our model)

Help me to trust when i cannot see. And to allow that to be, our meeting space.

Grief is blinding and yet, if we allow it to work in us, we can enter new parts of God.

 We simply must trust without fully understanding or knowing.  And grief offers that opportunity. What an opportunity of transformation! God is the same in the dark, as He was in the light. In fact, He wraps Himself in night. The unseen informs the seen. The roots in darkness, supply all which is needed for the fruits which are seen.

Grief is a time to wait patiently and know. It is a place to get acquainted with The Man of Sorrows. It is a place to lose your sight in order to find it!

This is one of the gifts of grief to increase trust in the invisible God who sees, searches and knows us, even when we were in the mother’s womb.

 Faith is easier than trust, trust must be developed, and grief is one of her developers! Especially in the areas where we go blind in pain. We can come out of it with a much firmer faith. I’ve experienced that, even in a limited way. When we go blind in certain areas, we have the opportunity to trust without seeing-by faith, not sight. When the wine is in the dark, it ages well. That’s where all its character is formed.

 Grief has great potential for deeper formation of Christ’s life in us. It may be the most effective method of God forming His Life in us. If we stay with Him in it. Not denying our pain, nor His-for He does care about our suffering. But we can also from that place of personal grief, meet Him in His Suffering on another level. And that is transformative!

 He showed me once graphically, that we cannot carry His Suffering, but He can carry ours! There was a time I was praying, and He was weeping, and I wanted to bring Him some tea, and He asked me to step away a few steps. I couldn’t bear seeing Him in that much pain. Then, He looked up, smiled and said, “I’m so glad you’re here.” He knew I couldn’t handle the level of pain He was experiencing. But He wanted me to see it, and realize what He who ever lives to make intercession is feeling. Yet, He was also really happy to see me. It was an intimate moment with Jesus, and taught me the difference between my pain and His.

 Another time in a dream, i watched a singer who looked glorious to the audience from backstage, and he was bleeding all over and badly bruised, in real pain. But the audience could only see the star quality. I asked God what I was seeing.”He is interceding as He performs. “That’s My pain for this audience.” But they could not bear it. He alone does.

  The potential for growth in trusting God is immense, as we cannot see so many things accurately when in heavy grief, we must believe that God is there, and seeing clearly for us, and He is good and working for our good. Just as beforehand.

 It throws  or thrust us, if we are willing, into another level of intimacy and trust with our God. Grief is a potential door into a deeper level of  knowing and thus, trust in God.

Jesus trusted The Father even when being killed. That is the opportunity of grief. To fellowship with His sufferings in absolute blindness-His Sees, we do not, but we can trust He who was the same yesterday, is still there today! Those areas, we simply can no longer see Him—that’s where to hunt again and find Him! That’s where to faith He is there.

Others around us are not suffering today, so they can sense Him in another way. And it’s good to stay social while grieving! Keeps you more objective that your temporary lens is not the only one. But today we can see through the lens of our pain, and if we keep our gaze fixed on Him, we will see wonders, and be healed.

 For ours is the tabernacle of suffering today, and that is the appointed meeting place with Our God, who is the same loving God yesterday, today and forever. And this is the day for you which the Lord has made, find it in Him, and be glad in it! Cry tears of Joy with Him–you won’t regret it! Don’t waste your blindness. Grieve well. You just may find the One who heals the blind there!

CARS THAT DON’T MOVE—what is their purpose?

Cars that don’t move become symbols. Or cars that only move in dreams.

When you go to a car museum you are looking at something which was used as a vehicle, now purely as a symbol.

I’ve left cars all over the world. They become symbols. They highlight the symbolic.

I left a car in Sheffield. I left one in Antwerp. I left one or two in Austin. There is one in Mexico, if that phone call was correct.

I’ve driven them all over the place, but then they retire into pure symbol.

I wish, like Elvis I had a garage big enough for them all. Maybe my funeral in heaven, they will all be gathered so I can take a spin and consider them.

I like the metaphor of vehicles. Of course, i also give them away, as I did my Kharma Ghia in California. It’s still active, as is my 69 Volvo—somewhere.

Others literally are just sitting. They are the cars that don’t move, aside from in dreams.

In the second half of life we get to complete and interpret the symbols we discovered and started to make in the first half of life. We get to complete our symbols. And interpret them for others. We want to complete our symbols so others can see more whole statements of life.

That’s why we want to walk out the second half well. So others can hear and see the whole testimony of what God can do in a person’s life.

We start to desire less, new places and things and people, and more to tend well the one’s we have. To make fine wine.

We want to complete our symbols which we fought to find when young. Now we found them, know them, so we can better articulate and edit them into a clear expression which is more useful to others.

You see this in artist who age well. They refine the symbols they started in youth. They tend and steward the symbolic aspect of their lives to make a more whole expression.

Jesus completed His symbols. Jesus was in fact a completion of all the OT symbols. We also have this desire to complete our symbols.

When we leave the earth, we want to leave intact symbols to bless and model to others. A life completed. A testimony well told. Something with a beginning middle and end. That’s a motivation to finish well. So that His Whole story can be told through our lives.

A car un-abandoned, can become a symbol of the whole story.

Will you leave completed symbols on the earth? Now that you’ve found your symbolic lands, how to cultivate and complete them. That’s the second half of life’s mandate. The second half of life is about that symbolic efficiency. You know what you have to tend, now you can make it fruitful—finish the lines of your poem!

As you go into the 2nd half of life, you want to refine what you already have. You want to make each symbol more complete!!! Stewarding your symbols becomes a pleasure. When young, you found them, now to edit refine and share them. To tell the whole story. To collaborate in completing your testimony—His story of your life! This becomes your passion.

To complete your symbols on earth, becomes the task of the second half of life. The symbols you searched to find and conquer in the first half of life—the true images of self or yourself, can now be contoured completed filled in, outlined, shared. The story can be told! The second half of life is to tell the whole story well. To complete the symbols in Peace. No longer are you in competition, so you can complete your symbols in peace. Walk them out!

I’ve begun to be less threatened if I don’t make it to the next next…it is rather completing the symbols I have. So my house in Austin, my friends and neighborhood in San Fran, and my loft in Antwerp. These three for now need to be polished off maintained, and made spiritually sustainable-that is reproductive.

 They are on my lands, and they are part of completing the symbols I am meant to tend. This is the stage as in the book of Joshua of cultivating and making fruitful. You have already crossed the Jordan, conquered occupied and possessed the lands which are yours, now you move on to cultivation. You see the pleasant lines of your inheritance, now you can partner with God in making it fruitful. This requires wisdom, and has new satisfactions.

Tending symbols. The symbols of your life have already been birthed and grown up, now, it’s time to interpret them so they can be given to others as a whole story. That’s part of the second half of life.

Each space and project is symbolic of course, or has a symbolic dimension. You start being less concerned with what is not yours to tend also, as you get older. More working only on your own fields. Mine include many leaders and people, but also spaces themselves and cities. I like stewarding the symbolic aspect of my life.

When I leave, i would like to have more complete symbols so that it’s readable.

I’m sure architects love leaving buildings! I would like to leave traces, but very clear ones, which point to His Kingdom realm.

Jesus finished His symbols! And was a fulfillment of many beginnings of the images in the Old Testament—the bread, the wine, the temple etc…Jesus fulfilled these images, completed the symbols in Himself.

That is part of the mission of the second half of life, to complete your symbols.

In the second half of life, we get to interpret ourselves! We get to finish editing and refining what we discovered in the first half of life. The second half of life is redaction, editing towards fullness. It is enjoying completing the symbols you will leave on earth.

If Jesus had not completed His story, we would all be in trouble. He instead was able to say, “It is finished.” Let us be similar in completing our tales, completing our symbols.

We are no longer just inventing ourselves-which is really discovering who we are. Now, we know, and can refine and offer this piece of art out to others, as a sign of love and thanks to God for making us, and telling His Story through ours.