Our Names…

Slowly, we are becoming our eternal names…

Been thinking lots lately about the continuum of identity—how we are slowly walking into or towards our forever names. The process of becoming who we really are. Fun playing around with this theme, of walking into our true contours! Or, the poetry we already are, and are becoming. Finding our true narratives. “I knit you, therefore, i gave you a pathway…” Identity implies calling, so to speak.
Good meditation in times of collective amnesia about identity! Or as St Paul put more simply: “You are his poems, meant to walk on the pathway prepared beforehand to be your unique way…” Identity implies a meaningful pathway. Raise a child in their way…So many great passages about the journey into true identity. Fun playing my way into this theme today anyway!

What keeps us from wearing our true names? Being unaffirmed to exist by parents, or others. Then what keeps us? Living to please others or for their approval, or even seeing identity in collecting stuff…there may be many reasons. But how do we find our true names. We have to find The Namer, and enter there. To be hidden in Him so He can reveal our names over time. Then we will see face to Face. And know even as we are known. He who knit us, and searches us know us. Our Creator knows knows us. And can reveal our names to us.

The role of art in direction…

The role of art in directing us…
Perhaps i’m too esoteric to be useful today, still i saw a key today: creativity is a window into identity. It’s also tells our deeper self where it is heading.

In the same way that art leads by symbolizing society, that is that the priest cross the Jordan first, and symbolize it for everyone, so they can see it and can wear the clothes of the next season; so in ourselves, our creativity shows us where we are heading. Our dreams and art indicate our direction. Where He wants to take us next. What part of Himself He desires to form. Our creative parts inform our deeper identity where to head next! Art informs and in that sense directs identity! Art, or our creativity, in that sense is a Diving rod!

Our creativity leads our identity forwards….

Perhaps i’m too esoteric to be useful tonight, still i saw a key today: creativity is a window into identity. It’s also tells our deeper self where it is heading. In the same way that art leads by symbolizing society, that is that the priest cross the Jordan first, and symbolize it for everyone, so they can see it and can wear the clothes of the next season; so in ourselves, our creativity shows us where we are heading. Our dreams indicate our direction. Where He wants to take us next. What part of Himself He desires to form. Our creative parts inform our deeper identity where to head next! Art informs and in that sense directs identity!

More on the beatitudes!

Going old school, studying the beatitudes today! Great to re-visit them afresh! They’ve been seen as ethical ideals, but they are something more than that. Little practical keyholes into what is available! Little invitations to the party. Little koans on the Kingdom. Puzzles which require us to enter in order to solve! That way of teaching, which calls forth transformation in order to find the answer!

People have been astounded by them from all religions and in art history, and in some ways they were just an introduction to the longer sermon…(important how we use our introductions, especially if they are into a spiritual kingdom!) They really are remarkable art.

The beatitudes are like blessings from the other side into exactly where we are now. Enjoying studying them again today. They are truths breaking into being, invitations, challenges…like warm rain cracking ice.

Enjoying them today as a warm up to the holy homily on the hill! Little keyholes poked or impressed into our doors these little blessings Jesus was already offering and living from…fun and challenging hovering in them today! So much to learn and become through them.

The beatitudes…

The beatitudes are like blessings from the other side into exactly where we are now. Enjoying studying them again today. They are truths breaking into being, invitations, challenges…like warm rain cracking ice. Enjoying them today as a warm up to the holy homily on the hill! Little keyholes poked or impressed into our doors these little blessings Jesus was already offering and living from…

What Marriage is

The photo on our mantel. There are all sort of mysteries to plunge into. Glad I’m in one like this!
Still love this metaphor of marriage, being submerged in a mutual becoming of the mystery of ourselves together! Of protecting one another’s becoming who we are!
Supporting one another from and in the unseen; loving one another below and above water! Marriage is a mystery of mutual transformation. It is still one of the highest and best ways to be conformed to Glory, as they say.
And it is a difficult covenantal path-a watery ladder-to the stars!
This photo always keeps me motivated. Been reading Tim Keller’s “The Meaning of Marriage” lately. Helpful. Nice theology of marriage. Necessary to have one for it to work through seasons. A theology of marriage is useful along the way. So is an image of it! Each is unique of course.
I think lots of folks get into it, without really thinking about the grander narrative they are submerged in, or their real motivations. How to meet God through marriage is one! Nice to have reminders.
Plus, since we are both artist and a certain types of mystics, i like the idea of trusting the unseen in marriage, to keep you buoyed up. To see one another as also floating in the same waters of becoming.
To treat one another as poems in one another care. As gifts to tend in love. To place their growth above your own is a rehearsal for loving your neighbor as yourself. Marriage is a conscious act of willing mutual transformation. It is a high symbol we participate in. This is true whether married or not! We rest in mystery, and live already in an enormous aquatic spiritual room worth inhabiting forever.
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What Fog really brings by evening…

What Fog brings in evening!
I love evenings here, a third character always rolls in—the fog! Our evening last night involved fog, walking, eating amazing pizza and beholding daily wonders…it was a sunset fog-set yesterday here! Fun just being apart of the daily poetry…
This is from the fog-set sunset yesterday evening in San Fran! Love how the fog is its own character here, and equalizes and calls forth the city even as it obscures each evening, like prayer rolls in and hovers over cities, calling people into unseen…here, a ribbon of wonder rolls in each evening, leaving us without excuse…
Fog has its own way of beckoning into hiddenness what was glaringly obvious during the days! Love evening’s clearings here. A fresh poem each day.
And, adding in the line of fog, makes the day’s poem complete. Replete with meaning, each day. Like a cloud of unknowing, the dense pastel ribbon of fog holds the bay again until the next day. A shared city drama in evening, which opens and closes in hidden smoky blue hued conversation.
Evening knows itself, as someone once said! And calls us to re-call ourselves as well!
Evenings remember our names! That alone is worth sitting with them forever. Evenings gather our memories into a hidden narrative. Fog always reminds me of this. Fog implies the word trust to me! Trust our stories to be held til morning…
Clarity is birthed in fog. And faith is hatched in the unseen, as many have said and seen! Blindness is a gift if we imagine sight coming out of it! Each part of day has something to teach us about living! Evening pauses to consider what was, and what will be, by morning. Good place to pause! A fog garden in between!

What Fog Brings…

What Fog brings!
fog sets here!
I love evenings here, a third character always rolls in—the fog! Our evening last night involved fog, walking, eating amazing pizza and beholding daily wonders…it was a sunset fog-set yesterday here! Fun just being apart of the daily poetry…

Fog set yesterday evening in San Fran! Love how the fog is its own character here, and equalizes and calls forth the city even as it obscures each evening, like prayer rolls in and hovers over cities, calling people into unseen…here, a
ribbon of wonder rolls in each evening, leaving us without excuse.

Fog has its own way of beckoning into hiddenness what was glaringly obvious during the days! Love evenings here. A fresh poem each day. Adding in the line of fog makes the day’s poem complete. Like a cloud of unknowing, the dense pastel ribbon holds the bay again until the next day. A shared city drama each day, which opens and closes in conversation. Evening knows itself, as someone once said!

Evenings remember our names! That alone is worth sitting with them. Evenings gather our memories into a hidden narrative. Fog always reminds me of this. Clarity is birthed in fog. And faith is hatched in the unseen, as many have said, and Seen! Blindness is a gift if we imagine sight coming out of it!

From counseling this week…

Out of counseling this week…how to inhabit the whole house of who we really are!

Sometimes we have to imagine ourselves outside of our wounds and others who have wounded us, and amplify the part of ourselves which is free from those external relations. Who are we outside our wounds and those who have wounded us. Can we let God see us there, and amplify our healed or more whole selves, to the point where we can forgive yes, but also to not work all our inner issues out on others. Can we reel in our projections enough to experience, own and forgive? This is one of the process of healing.

Displacing our false selves with our true selves (as God sees us, and created us to be!) is a starting point for many.

If my father wasn’t present, if my mother was controlling for instance. Can I imagine myself as someone adored, seen, validated and not controlled but rather nurtured in kindness. Can we see ourselves with true spiritual parenting. Can we start to live that out? Can we amplify our true or best self. Can we take the unvalidated or unloved parts of self and let them come into the light, in all their anger, grief and hope to become? Can we take that internal risk, rather than acting it all out through our external relationships.

This was the challenge i gave a friend this week, and am still trying to live out myself. Forgiveness is not denial of others sins, it is getting free within, so we can live more in Him, and from His Perspective of who we really are.

There is sadness and lament when we have been hurt or neglected in certain areas, but there is also new life to come in those exact areas! First we must all ourselves to be there with them, these wounded parts of self, then to imagine with and in Him what was meant to shine there. What did He intend this part to be in the whole? And then we grieve through into forgiveness of the many others who hurt us there. Forgiveness plows the soil for new growth there. Then once new growth starts we can tend how it integrates and gives life to the fuller self.

As we are grieving the unmet parts which are immature still, we can be expanding and imagining what was meant to be growing in that neglected area. This is coming at growth from the other side. What did God want me to be in that area. And if it was attacked or hurt, perhaps that could be an area of my greatest strength in the end. Paint and make art from the already healed self, to see what is meant to grow in the places of deepest neglect in life.

Eventually, the whole house of ourselves, must be inhabited by Christ. He renovates each room in order, and lets us paint and decorate them with Him. Deliverance is a process, so is renovating the whole house. Some rooms we have neglected for years, or ignored. But each is coming into the Kingdom, through inviting the Friend King in! The door to each barred room is often anger, and there is pain and grief to pass through, but each room is meant to shine as part of the whole house of who you really are!

what beauty and trauma both do well

Interesting that the last two unifying events on this continent have been natural phenomena rather than political. Something trans-political which gets our focus on a common wonder (in the case of the eclipse) or vulnerability (in case of storms) as humans. Just a note I’m taking as I go!
As the ancients used to say: “Famine makes all people hungry and cooperative.” Harsh but true. And so does a gorgeous sunset. There are different ways to come home to one another. We are all in the same boat on so many levels friends.
Both trauma and beauty can guide us home to love one another and work together as family! One or the other will eventually, it seems. And sometimes both do.