A contortionist prayer (and somehow mine today):

Lord, make your glory contort to shine through me into my exact diademic dimensions today, make me into Your shape, in the exact contours you’ve created me to be.

I yield to that contortion act, that being aligned, conformed to the exact edges of Your image today. I know You improv daily with us, and form Yourself against and with our resistances to make project images of yourself through us daily.

So come and improv through me-let me be your movie screen, your costume to wear, your disco ball to reflect sheer shine, your body to contort through. Let’s do contact improv together today! I’ll listen to your contact point and follow!

Express Yourself through me! Be my inner Houdini! Make me into the shape of You! Let your Glory shape me today so others may see! Let’s collaborate as contortionist today! Mold my body into its actual shape.

And leave me limp and alive in Thee, a reflexive verb, a participle of your Word! Having been properly shaped today, I am more myself somehow, by being bent! As You shape yourself in me, i am rightfully contorted to make room for You. Make me that flexible today Lord! I trust Your contortions in me.

Observations today…from nature, as I walked and watched…
A helicopter hovers above the sea. The gull, conversely, has no need to pause to see. It watches carefully as its going.
Hawks don’t talk, they circle in silence, and suddenly exactly swoop. Ravens squall make a racket, and battle the wind. Both being what they are, however.
Hummingbirds are in another world. I like that about them, and that they choose to visit us occasionally in little flittering flecks of Love’s hovering colors. They teach us the weight between worlds, and the tiny distance between us all.
Flowers contain the whole metaphor of life, and if observed well, release their teachings in mid air to us over time, as will the whole earth, if loved and listened to well. Watching well is part of stewardship.
For each creature is a specific poem about some aspect of God’s identity, and so ours all worth meditating on forever. Yet, the other creatures seem less interrupted than us, but then, we are the most difficult poem to align. Our lines resist editing!

It’s encourage an artist day! As it should be everyday!

A city is a person with a voice. That voice is her artists. When we listen there, we are hearing the prophetic aspect of her identity, the place where God is whispering, or yelling depending on the city.
That’s the part of the conversation you want to enter, as God is already there, speaking! The artist is the heart mouthpiece of a city.
If you stop her voice, she can’t even call for help! And all cities need help.
What she has to say is located there. When we love there, we are blessing the prophetic aspect of her identity.
The part which is expressing what’s going on with her, and the part which people hear-what gets broadcasted-Love and listen there. To read the pulse of a city, listen to her artists!
If you kill, directly or through neglect, the prophetic dimension (not all artist are prophets, but they do participate the prophetic part of identity!), you silence God, as the old saying goes (which isn’t really possible, the prophets will just move-both the receiver and transmitter!). So let the music play, encourage an artist today!

Sayings…

When young how far and wide you can go; when old, how deeply you Love.

Birds, so fragile, but look what they can do!

To know an atlas of you, not just a map, requires Love. Psychology provides maps, spirituality, Love.

I touched a bird today, and knew, i too, could fly.

Angels in my dreams again last night. We were smuggling art supplies through the tunnels beneath Jerusalem, my wife and I. And providing little underground cafes for artist. Great dream, fills like we have already been on that path for some time.

Friendship is like water for the soul. Brotherhood a balm. Sisterhood a veil. Motherhood a cover. Fatherhood like life itself. Family includes all those types of Love.

I commend you young, for agreeing with the truth; you older for knowing Truth as The Father. St John. (The passage from letter to spirit! From rule to relationship!)

Hawks don’t talk, they circle in silence, and suddenly exactly swoop. Ravens squall make a racket, and battle the wind. Both being what they are, however.

Hummingbirds are another world.

Each creature being what it is, is eventually what it will look like. Each, spoken.
But, we are the hardest to align-ie to be conformed to His and our image. Our imaginations must touch, mingle and fall in Love for it to happen-for our true names to be seen and pronounced. We resist that pronunciation with all our might. So we scatter ourselves like a cubist painting. When we yield, we come back together. We return into focus.

A helicopter hovers above the sea. The gull has no need to pause.

Flowers contain the whole metaphor of life.

We do things to learn to steward in Love.

I’m an identity steward.

The way to grow is to be “in Him”. That blooms our names.

Each person contains all of history. Each person holds worlds within them. Christ is the center of all the worlds, reconciling them back to themselves through Himself. That’s integration.

Each person is a name and a path. Both are found “in Him”.

Thank You Lord, for existence. Thank You for what is. Thank You, we are.

Art as prayer…
Another practice i “do” is to actually photograph as an act of worship or prayer, that is as a place of meeting God. That’s generally how i make art, and even if i don’t love the art afterwards, i have communed, feel loved and seen, and allowed others to overhear that conversation!

Art as an act of prayer is underrated! Or just not practiced often enough!
We usually create to express, but when we create to meet and be transformed, something else happens in the process!

The content is about the meeting as much as the subject! Van Gogh had that. So no need to make overtly religious art, just meet God as you create, and it will be spiritual! Then, the audience gets to overhear your spirituality, which to me, is over half the point! In this sense art is priestly!

Someone asked me, why does art matter in terms of spiritual growth? Here was part of my answer:

From a Christ centered spirituality, i would say….
Symbols are embedded in things around us, and the symbolic/creative is part of who we are as humans!
God made it that way. They are one dimension of His communication with us—both in nature and others. We are symbolic creatures, and that is part of what is being conformed to His Image. And God is constantly communicating in and through the symbolic dimension!
To even say we are “images” of God, is a symbolic statement.
So God is symbolic, and we are symbolizers also. To baptize our imaginations with the rest of us, is part of what is maturing into the fullness of The Head.
Our imaginations are included in sanctification!
This means we will see things more and more as He does. Our perceptions will become more spiritual. Growing in spiritual perception is a very basic part of our spirituality, for it allows us even to see one another more through His Eyes!
So our creative dimension is basic to ethics and interpretation! The art part of us, is also being renewed daily, and brought into better alignment with the creativity of Our Creator. You see that many have trouble interpreting the times or even the news, some of the problem is a poverty of imagination, or an unsanctified or being renewed imagination! It’s been neglected in discipleship, or spiritual formation for way too long, but is an essential part which should be growing spiritually!
To become symbolically literate is part of discipleship. If we really want to be “baptized” and baptize others into all three Names—The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. We must let our seer and symbolic dimensions into the story!
Jesus told Nathaneal when they first met—“I saw you beneath that tree friend”. Jesus could see. And in many other cases revealed that He could SEE into the hearts of men, and judge their motives.
This is another part of spiritual perception. We call discernment.
It is seeing in order to interpret rightly. Again, art or our creative dimension of who we are, is part of interpreting rightly.
Many people see art as superfluous or a leisurely activity. I see it as a fundamental part of being human, and a part which is desperately needed to be being renewed daily in Christ. Let Christ into your imagination, and you will be blown away.
Jesus, as a Jew, used concrete symbols around Him mostly, but He was always getting upset with his students that they were thinking too literally! Do you really think i’m talking about fish fellows? He was guiding them to a more whole or spiritual perception of things. We need to follow His lead. As His Father is a symbolizer and communicates through the creative strata of Reality!

Artist are apostles of beauty, which proves that God still loves the world, despite us! Beauty is a testimony. The fact that we still see a sunset or piece of art as beautiful, proves we are still human, and worth saving or healing. They carry not just blind hope, but hope in clear view of the facts of suffering! And that makes good art, and becomes a sign for the whole. Optimism without hope is idealism; true artist offer something higher than that sort of romanticism, they offer an indicator towards what St Peter calls “living Hope

Roots! Study the roots to discover or uncover the potential fruits!
Good studying the history on all sides this week, as we roam. Reading a book this week on the roots of Zionism! Good helpful study when considering current events!

There were of course two streams in early Zionism: religious and secular. It’s good to understand and distinguish both (Hertlz’s and Kook’s ways) both in deciphering the times now. One represented by someone like Rav Kook, saw a the Jews having a spiritual mandate over the land of Israel, including the West Bank.

The other borrowed more the european idea of nationalism, and Marxist state building, and european ideas of nationalism, which were so popular during de-colonialization period, thinking in wanting a homeland nation for the Jewish people. They converged eventually to form the state of Israel. But for very different reasons.

Rav Kook of course, was known to be kind to all of humanity, and specifically non practicing Jews. Many of the religious Jews didn’t like this. They felt only God should establish the land of Israel, not nationalist.

It’s still a complex set of motivations for statehood. And it never fully dealt with those already living in the land, such as the Arabs—the Jew’s semitic brothers. (Both sons of Shem)

Of course, everything was heightened by persecution in Europe and the holocaust being the worst example. Jews needed a place to go also after Russian polgroms. This was about 20 years before official zionism, but laid its foundations.
These were the first aliyah to come and try to settle the land. They were generally students who decided to make collective farms. They had borrowed ideas of Marx and european nationalism. They failed but made a pattern for future zionist settlements.

It’s interesting to think and consider both the secular and religious root systems in Zionism to more sharply discern core motivations, which are still working themselves out over there.

I’m also reading a book on Arab nationalism. Every rock you turn over, in that area of the world, there are more than one caves beneath it. Good historic excavations this week though…keeps you searching for Love’s Way in the midst of the middle east, as elsewhere!

The frankness of the middle east is refreshing!
Well, at least we got to hear everyone’s opinion about America, Trump, europe, the de-colonial process by england and france- and the rest-from all sides.
Not a bashful region or land on any side! Generous in its opinions and food! People say what they really think. I like that about the middle east in general. “The bullshit factor is low here.” as one friend put it. I find that part of the region strangely refreshing. Although the bitter roots on all sides are hard to sit with. Forgiveness needs to fertilize the whole land!
Still there is humor and everyone has to share the same bathroom at the end of the day. When you travel now, it’s like being a movie screen for everyone’s best and worst projections! If the screen itself is made of Love, the image becomes less distorted! That’s my hope anyway.
I’m getting used to Loving in all directions as I roam. As a counselor, its a deeply lodged anger issue, and lots of confession, forgiveness and grieving to come!
Our guide was sure to point out each blown up vehicle which were still siting around in the wadis of that land. Every story was equally as complex as the one before it.
My internal interpreter, sort of liked that, and felt useful and needed again!
I like complex people. The problem with epic people, is that their wounds are often also operatic! Healing takes time, and lots of listening on all sides!
“If you can heal one family (take those two brothers!), you have mended the world, or headed it towards wholeness.” as one saint put it!