“What is at stake here is the tendency for human beings to have spirituality without God. That’s most often the present occupation, or what goes by the name spirituality, but it lacks true transformational power. This is why we talk about actual formation of His Life in people, true christian spirituality is a way of union, that leads to incarnation ethics! One cannot self generate spiritual growth, it grows from authentic relationship.” Dallas Willard.

True spirituality from a christ-centered perspective, is Him making us more of who we really are by baptizing us into His Actual Name and Life, as He forms more of Himself into more of who we really are! We become our true selves by losing our false selves, as Merton might put it. We take off the old person and put on the new person actively, as St Paul put it. We find our names by entering more deeply into the Life of the Namer. That’s a way of true identity offered in Christ-ianity. In some sense, He is making us more of who He is, and in that process our own white stone room names get revealed over time, even to ourselves!

I often return to my pet life topics: spiritual growth, integration of identity and creativity, and authentic spirituality, and useful counseling. I like collecting them from all over, whoever moves in wisdom, or the truer spirituality of their own traditions. Love collecting quotes around these topics. I’ve got a whole box full!

Been thinking again about the ministry of true identity this week:

“Can we be so much ourselves, so fully in our real story, that our presence alters the atmosphere and gives permission to others to be. The problem is rarely, do we have the right information, it is usually that we are not being ourselves fully enough, to convince others to live more fully!” Art Monticus.

I would add, can our testimony be so electrically our true selves, so true to what actually is, that we ignite true identity around us! To be living portents or signs, as King David put it. Can we attest that Reality is so. So that God can argue from what actually is, using us as a point, and pointer to what is True!

Can our identities themselves, and our standing and living from our new selves in freedom become the message, teaching the gospel also in silence. Jesus used words and being, His Presence often was the message, and transformative container.

Authentic spirituality is a word and way on earth, as someone must’ve said by now. Can we become ministers of being in this way?! Can we authenticate the planet by having our presence in Presence, would be another way of heading at it!

Jeremiah, Paul, David (some of my heroes; some of the Johnny Cash’s of scriptures! Living parables!) all had ministries of identity. There lives symbolized and participated in their message! Like Paul Tillich pointed out: “True symbols participate the Reality to which they point!”. Who they were, was part of their message in a unique way.

I’ve always aspired to that way. To be living words. We are more than carriers of information, we are part of the information. His living collection of poetry!

We hear King David singing the song of himself from the perspective of God in Psalm 139! This is James Brown without the ego. This is Walt Whitman singing the song of himself from the right angle or angel! Wonderful poems we are! To be pronounced freely out loud!

More soon as I’m warming up for a talk on identity and art, and authentic spirituality. All my favorite topics!

Among other things…

Marriage is teaching me things and people aren’t disposable like I’ve treated my shoes or even lots of stuff. It’s life long and you have to keep tending it.

It’s a good practice in indisposability! No one gets discarded! Also marriage fights consumer mentality-looking at others primarily in terms of my needs and wants, desires. I-it-ing others rather than I-thou-ing them, as Buber would put it.

Marriage helps us overcome the commodification of identity. I cannot treat you as a product to be bought and sold and used if we are married. I have to treat you as a whole person, who, like me, is becoming more themselves daily.

For some seasons, we’re not “worth” much in a business sense anyways! Maybe we are sick, or going through healing, and not much use to others. Then, to still love one another, is something like faith. That each of us is still worth everything, even dying for in our weakest state and moments! Each of us poems forever. Included in the collection of poetry by God.

When you commit to care for someone for life, it shifts something in your orientation. You consider how to steward the other’s whole lifecycle less and less selfishly. There’s many ways to learn that, but marriage is a good one.

A great challenge in a disposable, get the next big thing, as soon as you want it, culture. Moves in the opposite manner, marriage. That’s why it’s a high metaphor, a life long formational teaching. And a form of suffering, or dying to self towards and into more wholeness! Marriage is a great rehearsal for eternal life!

Marriage is also a means to the formation of God in us. It is a high medium of encountering and being transformed by Him, as we offer our lives to one another. It’s an accelerated route to spiritual growth, in other words! It’s easy and necessary to die quickly to self in marriage if you want it to work.

Marriage is a tabernacle to meet God in.

Some people are so controlled-defined by other-so therefore controlling, in basic competition to be. Perhaps never welcomed in. So boxed in by roles, traditions, professions, the perceptions of others. While all the while, our true identity is hovering over our hearts as the Tone of Love-something most familiar and most strange- already whispering our forever names.

Let’s whisper with The Tone of Love into one another our forever names! Join in that holy chorus of the thousand thoughts spoken over each of us hourly! That’s how love listens.

My wife saw me today, as we were talking beneath a local tree….

Today she saw me-
a native american old world singer of words
sitting beneath a Texas tree ironically
The old growth live oak represents what is here forever
(this part of God on this land)
But, me i could sit beneath any type of tree, i like so many aspects of God
( i prefer the ones in scotland)
and still be me, my rainbow feathers unfurling slowly in prairie winds here,
from somewhere Unseen beneath the trees of every nation, in the long wind,
each of us foreigners somehow again, and at home. Each of us also too tall for here.

Every place is an ironic setting for you, she said
I agreed, but added, yet, each is a poem which goes on, forever.
And each tree is uniquely sacred
worth seeing home, back to itself that is. But, anyway
Thanks for seeing me beneath a particular tree somewhere today my Love.

For incarnation is the only option for us now,
and is the one my Master choose somehow,
and He hides in every garden and sits beneath each type of tree.
And just enjoys me being me. And you my love are a shining Gem
within His Tender Palms. And this moment has become sacred now again
to Him who is always with us when we see Him in one another through love.

You don’t live in world boxes of men, she continued,
all the world is an open stage, a tabernacle of potential meeting
…you live from another place by meeting Him through everything
life is ironic immersion to you, so you stay alive and playful while here
What was the other option, i asked…being seated above while walking on earth was the given map for us. We exist in a bigger context than here
is my testimony, i suppose.

But the proof is sitting well beneath
particular trees on a Sunday afternoon in Texas light.

Sometimes, Sundays for us is just about us seeing one another spiritually again! It is good to be reminded of the poems we each are, and keeps us going as we work on the daily scars of life down here. To be reminded, by sight, of who one another really is, helps us motivate to steward one another home, to our true selves through night. Nice to see one another from time to time. And today my wife saw me beneath a particular Texas tree! Keep marriage alive to stop and see one another as poems again, and sigh!

People are epic poems! My wife often says you see people as big as they really are, so it comes across as hyperbole!

I really do see and read people, and try to live as a parable. I’ve never met someone who was not an epic poem! Each of us an endless song worth be-holding and singing, learning from, forever! And tragic comedies us all as well!

People really are words and parables if you read them deeply enough! People are great art and I’m an art appreciator! And each is unique and worth stopping the universe to behold or encounter in Love. To read the Tone of God through, that is!

Obviously part of my motivation in life is seeing and hearing people deeply and in thanks, and meeting God in that depth dialogue. To have depth to depth dialogue with one another, transforms us both towards our better selves.

People and cities become part of your spirituality when you read them as tabernacle (places of meeting) poems! We’re His poems after all. So I’m just reading a poetry collection by God down here. And, i love poetry!! No matter whether its free verse or has broken lines! Healing people, is like healing language itself! Restoring Word to word, breath to syllable…

I love it when people have both architecture and fluidity (order and freedom) in their art and lives—are comfortable with the void and the order, and let both interplay.

To find the inner story of things requires the hovering over darkness, shedding light in pleasure, delineating/naming, finding the elements and narrative and their relationship with one another, and sharing it with others—just as it did for God on the seven days of creation. Then resting. Each phase of creativity has its goodness! Its, it is good spoken over it! Each phase has unique aesthetic joys.

Nothing has changed in the creative process! All the stages together make great art, or living. If we miss the watery darkness, we miss potential; if we miss the shedding light, we miss the glory; if we miss the naming and delineating, we miss the pleasure of distinctions and narrative (which is underrated in our days), and then if we don’t share it, we miss the pleasure of giving and collaboration. Lastly, without rest, none of it works. In this sense, the creative process itself shows us how to live well!

Prayer changes the atmosphere that the problems occur within.

About listening through images…or letting symbols talk to you. These two have been talking to me this season. One from nature, the other urban life (or at least mine-disco balls are important to me!) Integrating different types of glory!

I often wake up with images, and try to see what they are trying to say…sort of like doing art therapy on yourself! Or tuning in to where your at through symbols, and that level and type of communication.

Feeling like working these two symbols into a poem today. Let you know when i get there. The inner life of disco revealing itself-its inner, rather than reflected glory; and the green clean sheen sheerness of mountain stream (this one up in Colorado)-just seeing it is refreshing. Let’s see how these two symbols converse with one another…as i keep being drawn to them.

(finally the disco ball stops just reflecting other’s light, and reveals it’s own inner light, while the nearby mountain stream cuts Silence leanly through the pathways of forest-how do the two types of glory meet?….something in me is related to these two images today; perhaps it’s where i’m at, to reveal more of my inner light, and to move in clear swift refreshing glistening communication down the mountain….that’s assuming the two images want to speak about now, and to me!)

i like the art challenge of putting two very different symbols into the same narrative. I often feel like that myself. Hum…I’ll keep listening to their conversation! Maybe it’s time to let my light shine and jump in a river! We’ll see!

What images are speaking to you this season friends? It’s good to locate the images of each season of life, and let them converse in and to us! In order to see where we’re at.

Some of my images are life long ones which just change nuance over time. Others feel newly introduced each season. Fun thinking about what each person’s images are each season, and reading what they need from them. It’s an art practice i like for myself and with others!

These seem to speaking of integrating different types of glory, and letting them both shine from within outwards. They also speak of integrating natural glory with urban types in myself, and finding God in both! Also, perhaps that He wants my disco part to erupt from the inner self, and my communication to rush like a clear mighty stream. Natural wonder and urban wonder both conversing. Or, let out the Light and let it flow like a stream… They will keep speaking I’m sure!

After a long summer of heat and floods and overexposure to life’s traumas, looking towards and forward to some fall in europe again—that soft cool inner reflective mood…autumn gives room for memory, it’s the beginning of a type of necessary introversion for us all to interpret our lives properly. Maybe that’s the gift of autumn! Missing that mood of being today. After the extroverted blare of Summer here! Time to notice nuances again. Somehow, all four seasons are within.