Luke 2:41-on…great glimpse into Jesus’ adolescence.

Love this passage, when Jesus decided to stay in Jerusalem to talk with the teachers, even though his parents were heading back home. When they can’t find him anywhere among his cousins, they return to Jerusalem and find him talking in the temple. He’s in trouble at this point, barely 13 and hanging out with the rabbis already, and astounding them with his understanding.

Why did you have to look for me? Jesus asked his parents when they found him in the temple. You knew i would be here learning in my father’s house.

I like the idea of Jesus being slightly annoyed by his parents lack of vision of his own destiny, as he seemed to be with his mom later at the wedding in Cana, and yet, he went home with them, after talking several days with the teachers there. And He continued to grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and people.

Great glimpse into Jesus early adulthood, and his own personal growth journey. He stayed under his parents, but already knew where His Father’s House was. I imagine also that he had some questions and answers for the rabbis already, even at that young age. Cool thing also, that his mother “treasured these things in her heart.” She could see what he was becoming, and somehow already was. Nice passage filled with cool mysteries about Jesus’ own growth process and training!
Cool that He GREW in wisdom and stature as well. A mystery there.

How study slips into our sleep…making little homilies while we dream!

Had a dream last night about St John’s three L’s: Light, Life and Love. I had been reading his gospel before i went to bed, so made sense. But in the dream, i saw each illuminated. Light meant understanding, Life meant the power to live well, and Love was the atmosphere of God. I love it when dreams interpret what we read during the day.

So, this morning, i tried to combine that with Jesus’ calling himself the way, the truth and life. The way to live, the truth about what life is, and the power to live that out. Some people or cultures would be drawn more to the way part, or the truth part, or the life part, depending on their personalities. I think that will turn out to be today’s little homily! Although, there are lots of L’s in it. Perhaps i should preach to baptists-they like alliteration!

Hawk life:
I love watching hawks flying over cities. What do they see? What are we looking for today. This one today is a Cooper’s hawk, i saw him earlier in the tree. Now he’s miles high over the skyline of the city. I wish i could fly with him today, and see what he sees.
The hummingbird i also caught glimpse of today, darts at such sharp angles towards color, but the hawk just glides above it all, until the instant it swoops to incarnate like a wide scoped lover, falling elegantly toward earth!
So much to learn from each creature’s ways today, and every day.

Sometimes people paint their way into the Kingdom. Sometimes the symbol is where they meet God first. And then they work it down into the other parts of life. Chagal for instance, seems to have met God a time or two, and even old Monet through his enormous water lilies seems to have wrestled his way into the Source of beauty. What artist do once at the gate, is up to them—some come all the way through. But, i’ve seen many encounter what is True directly through their creativity.

Knowledge is one way in, but if He really is at the center of what is Real, Lord over all realms, there are other ways in also. Jesus lives in dream as much as in any other place. Many people have direct encounters through dream or creativity. As my mentor put it. Some people are bent on meeting Him in vision and dream first.

I’ve seen this over and over with artist. We still choose what to do with what or Who we encounter. Whether we want to follow the Polar Star we meet in dream, as Heschel put it.

A life of incarnation isn’t easy, and many decide it’s just too much death to self required-too costly to pursue. Other’s go further in deeper once they meet The Gate. I like watching people meet Him in their art though. It’s direct, sometimes ironic, but always real.

It really is the Rock that all people eventually stumble over, then those who seek will find that Rock even if it breaks them into.

Information is just one way in, so is art. The good news isn’t just information.
I guess i believe in evangelism directly though the creative process. I’ve just seen it happen so many times, that it seems so. What comes after, is up to each of us.

Confess, pray, humble seek, and He will heal. 2 Chron 7:14. That’s how to be healed and to be part of healing our lands. Nothing has changed. We all have sinned and are in need of confession. St John, taught us, but if we are willing to confess our sins, then….everything starts with confession.

Turn and He comes is the spiritual principle. We turn seek confess and He comes and does the healing.

I’m an amateur priest, but i know that much. Personal confession, then for His church or people, then city or land wide. Things then start healing, and we can see them more as they are meant to be, before the deformity of sin set in. If we confess, pray and seek, humble ourselves, He will heal us and our lands. It still works, and is our part to start the healing process in ourselves and our world. Confess the historical sins of yourself, your family, your neighborhood, your city, and you will begin to usher in healing.

Confess often until new life get’s planted there. Confess all known sins and any shown ones as well; confess for your generational sins, anything from the past where others in your family have willfully sinned, then confess again. Confession is a lifestyle of repentance. And it let’s God in. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others who have trespassed against us. Then your father will also forgive you, Jesus taught.
Confession will give you sight of the new life He is planting in that place in you and others.

Be sure your sins will find you out, so as St John taught, assume you’ve sinned, even in your dreams, i would say, and just start by confessing them, so you can remain in Him, clean and in His Righteousness. We confess, He cleanses and heals.

Confess for whatever you desire to see healed! Confession comes first. Seek out unconfessed areas, if you want to see growth! Especially in praying or priesting for cities. His Eyes and Heart are on His people’s prayers! Confession gives God room to enter and bring new Life!

If you want to help heal a certain domain, start with confession–your own and their sins, and their church’s. Be the church for them. Look at whatever areas are unconfessed start there in healing.

Confess your sins to draw near, to break clear, to see others as dear and nearer.

Often in counseling, i start by looking for unconfessed areas in a person’s life-that area usually gets the healing ball rolling in the right direction! Confession makes room for new life. If we can locate what needs to get confessed, we usually find the main blocks to growth. And as Daniel modeled: confession leads to thanks, praise and new life in that area, for us as individual or for our cities.

Confession is always a good place to start in the healing process. Confess often, it makes room for new life to enter. When God was chatting with Solomon, He told him: If people will humble themselves, pray, confess and seek my Face, i will heal their land. This is still true for individuals and peoples and lands. The Spirit will show us what needs to be confessed, so we can get healing started in each area of our lives.

He is looking for a confessional people right now, so He can break in and heal our lands! Even salvation begins with confession, as does all true healing. Let’s learn to live confessional lifestyles in our own lives and for that of our neighborhoods, cities and nations. Then, as promised, God will come and heal our lands.

The deer last night:

i heard her in the dark forest last night
her hooves were little words caressing earth softly,
gently crushing bark, branches and dry leaves,
the way things get displaced without effort at night,
searching in her type of silence, which only comes across in each cautious step…
with the weightlessness of gliding unseen hooves-
how tenderness walks this earth
must be recalled in our days.
This deer in the dark mulch last night,
taught me that much, with her presence alone.

Talking to a girl last night, who feels like their is no context for her gifts on earth. After locating her central passions, i could see that she was very angry about the world not offering her a space to shine and be herself.

I asked her, what would be your ideal job, and what would you do even if you weren’t paid for it. Can you imagine the space you would most flourish in, outside of the existing structures around you. Can you make a piece of art about your ideal world? Then, try to incarnate that. Often vision comes before action.

We started there, until she decided to make up her own career. “You guys (my generation and the boomers above me) are too caught up in money and success, i just want to live authentically and use my gifts in a valid way, which serves others.” After apologizing on behalf of my own generation for getting too caught up in the rat race (though not all of us have), I told her, I think she’ll find her path prepared beforehand to be her way. As we talked, she started to get a clearer picture of her inner home, and how she might build towards it in the world. Paint me your inner house. Where are you sitting in it? What types of rooms light and colors are in each room.

Can you imagine yourself in a place not caught up by materialism? One, that say, prioritized spiritual or inner growth instead, i asked her. Maybe this real career, begins within.

Sometimes you have to start inside rather than looking for slots already in the world to squeeze into, i said. She liked that. Start with meaning and build outwards. I hope she finds her path, the one she is already on, i think. We ended by talking about her definition of success. Each generation seems to have it’s idea of success. It was a good talk. I learn so much from listening.

When I lived in Cambridge, Mass, I was working mainly with homeless people, and slightly homeless myself, so often looked at Winter’s face to find our own.

For Fall is a flower in the northeast, but winter is inevitable.

And how that long season effects personality development has always caught my inner eye.

We were all equal in that struggle to become ourselves. Still are. I recall each of our names, often.

Like I told my homeless friend tonight again, we’re all in the same place friend.

When I lived in Cambridge, Mass, I was working mainly with homeless people, and slightly homeless myself, so often looked at Winter’s face to find our own.

For Fall is a flower in the northeast, but winter is inevitable.

And how that long season effects personality development has always caught my inner eye.

We were all equal in that struggle to become ourselves. Still are. I recall each of our names, often.

Like I told my homeless friend tonight again, we’re all in the same place friend.

Love thinking about this stuff, and pondering out loud with brothers-thanks guys!

It’s worthy meditation, whether cities themselves were a redemptive idea, or part of the original plan. Many of the prophets, saw a city at the end (both nations relating through a city, and a future type of city descending etc)—Augustine sort of simplified it into the City of God, but folks like Zachariah, Isaiah and others got more specific. There were angels measuring it etc in Ezekiel’s visions. At first it has a temple, then when Father and Son come back fully onto earth to dwell with humans, they are the temple, and the Day shines constantly in that city.

Then, i think you have to look at all the nations streaming to Jerusalem itself at the end, which in all those words of prophecy is still a place etc. Then comes, the new city with the twelve gates (Rev 21)—that’s the new heaven and earth type city. So maybe it’s good to look at it as what happens beforehand, and what happens later. And what part is already in God’s imagination!

If we are in collaboration with Him and we invent an airplane, that was probably already somewhere in His dream life! Yet, i think He likes watching us come up with it on our own so to speak. Maybe it’s like that with cities. But also it seems from early on, that to go out and make collective culture was not intrinsically bad, but part of our creative collaboration with God! Peter Bos the dutch theologian wrote on that well i think.

Regardless, His Dream, seems to involve cities, nations, kings etc…He still seems to want to think collectively like that. And the garden metaphor is there all along! The first task is to tend the garden, to kratos it, that is to complete or cause it to be fruitful! That was Adam’s commission before he fell.

Since, God is One, His garden and city metaphors would be integrated in a way that maybe ours isn’t yet!

But this new city in the new heaven and earth (sort of St John’s sight of what came after Daniel’s vision)…so it seems like it is still part of His imagination to have it imaged as a city—to be a King over a kingdom with cities and nations, but perhaps on another scale. So perhaps that wasn’t just part of human fallenness, but in His original imagination. Just a thought from my perspective an studies on the relationship between city and nature, thus far!

Lastly, he often, as at the beginning of Isaiah, talks to the earth itself as a character. “Listen, heavens and pay attention, earth, for the Lord has spoken…” etc. So there is something of a relationship directly between God and the earth—as we see in Noah’s times, when He makes a covenant with the earth itself—so that would factor in, i think to the garden part of Him. And then you see all the mighty judgments coming down in the seas and waters in most of the end times prophecies, so again it comes through the earth itself and humans have to adjust to that judgement etc.

We make collective representations of ourselves as well, but the prophets seemed to see both a streaming of the nations to a particular city, and a future city of glory where His Throne and Presence were the light. I like thinking about this stuff, thanks guys for considering it!

One of the question goes back to early on—is the fact that Cain became the builder of the first cities, mean that they are intrinsically not of God. I often talk to my “get back to nature” friends about this—to dialogue with that Rousseau philosophy or Thoreau (Walden Pond) or Emerson here in America-both had that dualism between nature and urban, and idealized nature. Same ideas of getting back to nature as the place of peace, rather than working in the cities and helping them shine towards an integrated garden.

SO one of the questions implied here is whether cities were in God’s original imagination before rebellion. It’s a worthy question. I think so, i think He wanted to image Himself through human collectivity, but maybe in a way we have not yet realized. Just some thoughts, since Sam asked me to expand a bit.

Of course, i think and fall in love with cities a lot! And feel that’s part of discipling the nations into all three Names. But it’s cool to think about how nature integrates with city from His Perspective! I’ll keep learnings and considering it, nice that you two wise men are also considering it also! To there’s my brief response, just to expand the discussion!