Talking to some local Jewish friends (I love conversations with my many Jewish friends–always a blessing within!) today about the Shema, their twice daily prayer; and one friend asked me, what was Jesus’ hardest question… i love questions like that! Plus, these friends are very special to me, as we share the same Spirit. Well…from within His own religion, i think….

The teachers asked Him, what are the most important commands of God from a jewish perspective? He answered, The Shema, which He quoted in full;, and then- love your neighbor as yourself, in that order, He answered (Matthew 12)—i.e. Love God with your entire being, and then, as a result love others as more important than yourself.

That’s about as clear as it gets to at least what those following Christ would try to live out! Love God intensely, love others—pretty simple spiritual map, but of course, hard to live out well!

Simple clear crystallization of 613 commandments. I think it’s still a good answer to a hard question-what matters most to God, what is the essential ground of all Being, in terms of how we should actually live? Can you reduce our religion into two commands—why yes He can! And did.

By extension, can we at least live those two mitzphahs (laws, rules..)?! There’s only One God, love Him with all your might and being (soul, spirit and physical body!); then you will find yourselves loving others more than yourself! Still love that path, and His answer to the best teachers of His day! Jesus is stunning!

Jesus is still impressive even just as a teacher, much less as Friend who is God breaking in, as they say! “He is writing those laws inside of us!” as a friend put Jeremiah 33 about the law being written on our hearts! Is it not!

What are the most important commandments in your religion? Love God, then from there, love others, even extending to loving your enemies! Still not a bad answer! Great talking spirituality with these friends today! Always thankful to be in the long conversation!

How we read matters!

“We read scriptures selfishly instead of in prayerfully meeting God there. We want our pills from it, but not the medicine of true transformational encounter, which comes by prayerful reading.
Reading as encounter with God, not just information gathering. We read for us, not to encounter Him. True reading is prayer.” Eugene Peterson.
“But the Bible is not primarily a source of information; it is one of the primary ways God uses to speak to us! Bible reading is prayed reading.”
Are we reading well?! Nice thoughts from this wise elder today, on how to read in a living way!
Read less for information, and more for spiritual formation! That is, meet The Word through the word! Read as a tabernacle of meeting, and so being transformed! Prayerful reading, you might call it!

The late friend of humanity, and fellow saint Henri Nouwen taught us that to move towards wholeness we need to be meeting God in three areas: internally (in our private hearts), through His written Word (meeting The Word through His revealed words), and with His People (fellowship with the saints-both living and not- and their journeys).

These three directions, or meeting places with The Divine, are all vital to spiritual health.

Meeting God inside, through encountering Him through the scriptures, and with others who are also in living relational journey or pilgrimage with and into more of Him. Nothing’s changed about that.
But Henri had a way of putting the spiritual life in simple categories and stories which still hold true. We meet God in the heart, in His Word, and in His People!

Each of us tends to be more healthy in one of these three areas than others. Good to know which we each need more of to continue to grow in a healthy way! Pretty simple but clarion reminder today from my devotional readings today.

fun, translating a desert monk’s raw Pearl power (from the parable of the Pearl of great cost) prayer today:

I come again to this cave in the desert
where my father’s hid
this room inside where i write from.
the walls are made of Pearl
the whole Cave is The Pearl(
i want to stay here forever
everything here is white stone
including my bones
which only reflect The Son now.
at least, while i’m in this room-
The one I’m writing from
and being written from-
where all our names are etched on the walls
like spiritual graffiti.
Happy to find so many names
in the hall of saints
which seems to go on
forever. There is noone
but Jesus and all that is in Him
here now. Everything is illuminated.
Everything a Holy of Holies
with no veil. Thanks Jesus
for bringing me here again.
Your home is mine.
Who others see
is just coming from
the me I am from this place.
Nothing else is Real, but You
and now me.

A personal prayer after reading the parable of The Pearl today:

Show me Yourself through my marriage, finances, getting rid of cars, walking my dog, my sexuality, my time management, my talks with others Lord. Keep meeting me in every area of my life. Make everything The Pearl. Let Your Kingdom come in all of my life Lord. Make all my friendships sacred Lord. Make our lands sacred to, and all we do.
Help me to meet my wife where she is at in You, and she where I am at in You Lord! Be our intimacy Lord. Let that extend to all friends Lord. Let it be so. Enter in, as I enter into You. Make everything that Pearl Lord, You sowed in my heart. Even these words.
May Your Word enter these words Lord. Embody my writings, impregnate these words with Your Word. And help me to savor listening, as much as talking Lord—the breath space between the lines. Receiving as much as giving, in and out of time. Let me give from that treasure you bought the whole field for! The treasure i am to You Lord. You are my pearl, and I am yours Lord.

Parousia:
I know all my friend’s gaits
(how each uniquely walk and hold themselves)
but perhaps my wife’s best on earth
i can pick her out of a crowd without seeing her!
So it is with us and God
And Our friend is always walking towards us
we down here just wait, looking up and out and in, for Him…
for His gait! We wait at the gate to hear His gait!
We lean in
sensing, again
for Him each day.
Every conversation then turns towards Him.
Sheep know
their Master’s Presence.
Kids their parent’s tone.
We, Our Friend’s approaching….
we listen for His singular gait.
Wait until you hear, His Gait!

Each of us, have different saints cheering us on! Here are a few of my circle “in the Spirit”. The communion of the saints becomes more comforting and collaborative as we grow older!

Each master apprentice teacher usually has a central core teaching, if they have become humble enough, they usually offer it towards the end of their lives! Here’s a few of my mostly 20th C (or last 300 years) favorites….fun trying to raw note crystallize some of my favorites essential teachings today…

Nouwen—learn to be in the beloved, adored, dearly cared for space between the Father and His Son.

Willard: allow Him to enter into your entire being, including your unconscious, so that even your motivations are transformed.

Eugene Peterson: pray your way into scriptures into a transformational encounter with God. Pray as reading the Bible! Pray to meet and be transformed by God! Read the bible as a method of meeting and being changed by Him. Then life has meaning and is a long pilgrimage into, to and with God.

Victor Frankl—man’s most basic need is meaning! And God, offers us a purposeful suffering! And, people endure suffering, when it’s meaningful–is at least one of this great teacher’s earned wisdom spiritual notes.

Merton: bring your inner being into His Being, let them commune constantly. Find your true self by resting in His True Self! Learn your name, but losing it in His Name! Learn true contemplation which is most basically bringing your inner person, or inmost being to His!

Many other saintly sinners: serve others into meeting Him, and His Heart for them and you.

All of them, knew how to meet Him in their own personal sufferings!

CS Lewis, for instance, met Him through imagination. He invited folks into a baptism of the imagination, as he called it! Yes, that we can meet Him directly through vision, dream and art making, seems obvious from scriptures–Daniel, Joseph and all the prophets come to mind! Why not us! God is willing to meet us in all realms of Reality!

His Mentor, George MacDonald, a dear friend of mine historically, who i met spiritually in his home in Scotland—know Him as Father of ALL Reality. Consider all of life from the perspective of The Father God, and from there, interpret family, life, nations, cities and nature….

Francis Shaeffer, who i studied under in Switzerland, and other theologians—Jesus is Lord over all of Reality, so you are free to meet Him in whatever realms you are drawn to, and bring His Kingdom there.

A friend of mine: live as if, it were just you and The Father in the universe. This will transform you firstly, and then you will see all people as family in the same situation—as neighbors in need of that essential encounter. God is One and so each emphases through His students is included in His expression!

So many saints before us….why not continue to walk on!

Each master apprentice teacher usually has a central core teaching, if they have become humble enough, they usually offer it towards the end of their lives! Here’s a few of my mostly 20th C (or last 300 years) favorites….fun trying to raw note crystallize some of my favorites essential teachings today…

Nouwen—learn to be in the beloved, adored, dearly cared for space between the Father and His Son.

Willard: allow Him to enter into your entire being, including your unconscious, so that even your motivations are transformed.

Eugene Peterson: pray your way into scriptures into a transformational encounter with God. Pray as reading the Bible! Pray to meet and be transformed by God! Read the bible as a method of meeting and being changed by Him. Then life has meaning and is a long pilgrimage into, to and with God.

Victor Frankl—man’s most basic need is meaning! And God, offers us a purposeful suffering! And, people endure suffering, when it’s meaningful–is at least one of this great teacher’s earned wisdom spiritual notes.

Merton: bring your inner being into His Being, let them commune constantly. Find your true self by resting in His True Self! Learn your name, but losing it in His Name! Learn true contemplation which is most basically bringing your inner person, or inmost being to His!

Many other saintly sinners: serve others into meeting Him, and His Heart for them and you.

All of them, knew how to meet Him in their own personal sufferings!

CS Lewis, for instance, met Him through imagination. He invited folks into a baptism of the imagination, as he called it! Yes, that we can meet Him directly through vision, dream and art making, seems obvious from scriptures–Daniel, Joseph and all the prophets come to mind! Why not us! God is willing to meet us in all realms of Reality!

His Mentor, George MacDonald, a dear friend of mine historically, who i met spiritually in his home in Scotland—know Him as Father of ALL Reality. Consider all of life from the perspective of The Father God, and from there, interpret family, life, nations, cities and nature….

Francis Shaeffer, who i studied under in Switzerland, and other theologians—Jesus is Lord over all of Reality, so you are free to meet Him in whatever realms you are drawn to, and bring His Kingdom there.

A friend of mine: live as if, it were just you and The Father in the universe. This will transform you firstly, and then you will see all people as family in the same situation—as neighbors in need of that essential encounter. God is One and so each emphases through His students is included in His expression!

Forming His Nature in us, is always however, how we are formed through our suffering by His Ongoing suffering for us! And then giving from that space.
This is a key to spiritual discernment. When reading, ask—where is He in this text? Where are His Thought and Spirit being expressed. Read and amplify there.

It’s easy to get lost in the peripheral thoughts, or more pet peeves, or hurts of great teachers. Mature ones are no longer bitter! Try to go for the core thoughts, and see how deeply they are embedded in Christ. What of their best thoughts is “in Him”! As St Paul put it. Enter and amplify there! Enter the spiritual room they are speaking from! THAT’s the Key! Find where the writer or thinker is thinking FROM! Find that room, and you’ll get which parts are “of the Spiritual Kingdom”–that’s the quickest way to read between the lines!

That’s where you’ll get truth, in art, literature or even church thinkers and spiritual leaders. Discernment is lots about just gazing at Him through the thought system or art. Keep meeting Him, and you’ll be fine, and able to see what it true in this. Search for God as you behold! That’s the way. Then even a sunset, or art, or sacred literature, can become a place of meeting and transformation–a living tabernacle!

This is specifically tough in cloudy diffused conversations as in current media situations. But it’s still possible. It requires a discipline of staying with and in Him as you read!

Discernment is as simple and complex as staring at, and staying with your Friend Jesus as you read or behold art, literature and thought. And as your suffering becomes in communion with more of His, as you do!

Try to meet Him through whatever you are encountering, so you don’t get drawn into what is not of His Nature. Look for God in what your looking at, until you find Him. Suffering is a way to discern the saints! How we suffer reveals our true selves in Him!

Application in terms of quest-ions:

What’s your core teaching–ie the aspect of Christ’s Life that you most reflect, or express. How true of an image is it! What level is the central teaching and expression of your life “in Christ”? As He is The Truth, The Way and The Life to live it out!

What is the essential core doctrine your own life emphasizes, and how pure is that doctrinal poetic statement of being, channeling through your life?! If you are a living parable, how deeply are you baptized into His, so that you know your own? Also, what’s your parable about? Can you teach and be it?! What are you teaching us about God? What is He trying to say through your life?

That will determine the truth of the statement and poem you are and were on earth. What part of His Story are you? And are you being told well?! Are you allowing Him to edit your life into His Story of Himself through you–His Autobiography through your biography! For, we are His autobiographies! His expressions and poems about Himself!

Each of us, have different saints cheering us on! Here are a few of my circle “in the Spirit”. The communion of the saints becomes more comforting and collaborative as we grow older!

In Christian spirituality, we follow a Suffering Servant, one acquainted with all our sorrows, who wants to meet us in ours!

What spiritually mature people all have in common is how they experienced their suffering as a place of meeting and being transformed by God. All were broken, but their unique brokenness became a place of meeting, being loved, and loving from. Their personal healing, became a place for others to heal.
It is never escaping suffering, but meeting God in it, and sharing from it. It’s St Paul’s, “I’m not perfected yet, but i press on and into…”
This way of meeting in our pain, necessitates humility and perforce creates the fruits of the spirit in us.
Like John the Baptist, “We must decrease that He may increase!” This is one of the ways of spiritual maturity!
Each elder has unique highlights of God! But they have this in common: they found Him in and through their sufferings, and then ministered from that meeting place, to others in and from His Love.
All the wise people i know, have used their wildernesses as places of revelation, and then given from that place of knowing they are loved in their unique pains.
Also, no mature person is bitter angry or not in Love. And they tend to have fallen in Love with things God is in Love with, rather than just their own preferences.
Trees are known by their fruit. Wanting to serve from your own suffering is one.
Some emphasize, being in the beloved. Acceptance and belonging.
Others, being on a long journey of discipleship and pilgrimage.
Others still, how when we reverse the world’s equation, we see that God actually really desires to know and be with us, and our meaning comes from saying yes. This alone, aligns us with what is Real.
If we want to know what is Real, turn and align with Him, and we will find our own names. Identity is paradoxically in losing our own names into His Name, to find our true names.
Regardless, all the saints understood how to meet God, the Ultimate Real, through their personal sufferings! How to meet The Suffering Servant, through their own sufferings. That’s a universal requirement for spiritual maturity. And a shared trait of spiritual masters.

Listening to teachers today, and letting them converse and dialogue:(here’s a collage of excerpts of some of my favorites this week….) I like putting wisdom notes in the same room, and see how they converse!

Song of ascents as a metaphor of the spiritual journey. Starting with being fed up with the world entirely. Then setting out on a pilgrimage into God. You start in “trouble” (Ps 120), but necessary trouble to want to thirst and hunger and go on a pilgrimage.
Help me Lord who is the Author and The Finisher. I do not know You well as a Finisher. I have known you as Vision and Creator, but not as Finisher. Help me to learn to know You also as a Finisher. I start so many things, and rarely finish—even my sentences. Help me to walk farther into You as One who both Visions and Finishes. If You were not a Finisher, the entire universe would be a great peril! Thank You for attracting me to these parts of You Father, through Your Son Jesus and His Finished work, and the works, even in me, which He is still finishing.

Also help me not to live by the world’s pressures and anxieties, but to bring my inner being to Your Gentle Being more hourly, so I can stay resonating in and with You. Just to practice being with and in You Lord. Help me often to return to You, and place my being in Your Being. I want that. It is the only safe house, and home. You are my home, help me to live in You.

Meaning is “going towards God”—it is knowing you are going some place—heading deeper into His Character and Nature. That journey never ends, so life is entirely meaningful. We are all getting to know God once we turn towards Him. He is in every direction. And life is worth living, because He lives, as the old song goes. Life is meaningful, because we have met and are getting to know God daily and through all our sufferings and trials and joys. If meaning is man’s central need. God meets that need, as soon as we turn to Him, and try even to follow Him. Life becomes meaningful. It has a purpose. Namely, to know and love God more and more.

Thank You Father for meaning!

Pray scriptures-ie enter, reading as actually listening to God through them—that ignites their living word aspect. We come expectantly listening, and He meets us. So we are transformed. Approach them to meet God, not just to use and find information. We are a user culture-we use one another, we use and brand our gifts and we do the same the sacred text-we use it for our own enlightenment or self help—when the reverse is true. Encountering the Sacred through scriptures is more about God reaching out to us, than us reaching out to Him. The Holy scriptures are an invitation to encounter, be loved, and therefore start loving

Nouwen taught us to be frank and vulnerable with God and one another, but also that we really are each included in The Father’s Love towards His Son—we are actually Loved, so we have to live through our particular struggles through that lens of Love. Since we are beloved…..we are included, adored, poetic wonders, and pleasures to Him; live accordingly!

The songs of Ascent (Psalm 120-134) are a model for the whole spiritual journey. Starting with turning from the world’s systems, and towards God. Saying no, then yes; and then going out on a pilgrimage to God, and continuing to go…as we go, we are discipled by Him. That’s the spiritual journey in a nutshell.

Actually listening to God, not just talking at Him. Christianity is a listening spirituality! It’s relational. A loving relationship is what Jesus made available.

Crisis of meaning. What God does is give you a purpose. The purpose is spiritual growth with Him through life’s circumstances.

An argument for turning towards, because God is turned towards us…

How Desire is meant to work!
“We are God’s desire. And He becomes more and more ours, once we realize His. God actually desires us! Both to know and love us, and therefore guide and comfort us. That is a mystery—the fact that He actually desires to know us, and be with us! God’s search for man! The Hound of Heaven. This is why the prophet’s response is: here I am Lord! It is what Adam and Eve could not say, after the fall. Here I am Lord. Dwell here, with and in me! We most often think of our thwarted desire for God; but rarely risk, thinking about it more from His perspective-more empathetically. If God wants to know and love us, who are we not to say yes! If we realize that God desires us, and we are willing to empathize with that, we attain another motivation for turning towards, and, once we do, find ourselves desiring Him! This is the true nature of how desire is meant to work.”

I let go of ALL my plans, and seek to rest in Yours Father.

Good teachers teach you the architecture of the house before they take you into the house. So you remain oriented throughout the rooms to the whole. This requires humility, but also the gift of teaching.

You have to appreciate teachers who are humble enough and still not too bitter, even after having dealt with the church and many many people through the years, to share what they’ve learned at the end of their lives. Thanks Eugene Peterson. Love endures! And wisdom is actually helpful from those no longer in competition with others. Just trying to help other along the long obedience in the same direction.

Nice letting a few of mine converse here today in a collage form!