from theocity to lovelocity

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 149

2011-07-27T11:30:00.000-06:00

(quote) Pure kingdom-businesses are highly personalized, deeply rooted in prayer, openly interdisciplinary, and skilled in international diplomacy so they can thrive among governments and leaders who are deeply concerned for their national well-being and future hope. There are many hybrid kingdom-business leaders whom God is calling to collaborate more in interdisciplinary conversations. And it’s not like God needs businesslike people to “manage the kingdom,” proclaiming some blue-suit, plastic version of God’s temple paradise. It’s more that the root of dignitary is dignity!

Much of our current business and busyness are sore excuses for moral laziness. Look at the example of King David who gave the blueprints of his dream and his personal fortune to his son Solomon. His treasure followed his heart. What are you doing with what has been entrusted to you? There are reasons why all “God’s stuff” keeps changing human hands. We need cycles like Jubilee (Lv 25) to keep us from turning our ideological ideas into idolatrous disasters. Even Solomon’s temple came down to make room for Zerubbabel’s modest rebuilding. Whenever God is not present in our words, we are spewing ideology. Wherever God is not present in our structures, we are constructing idolatries—mimicking and mocking heaven.

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 133

2011-05-23T10:42:00.000-06:00

(quote) Breathed to life by the wind, drenched in cleansing waters, and salted with fire, the children of God are taking back the earth one broken, yet lovely, person at a time; they are occupying in obedience until he comes. No matter how noble the king’s sacrifice seemed, Samuel retorted Saul’s self-defense with “to obey God is better than sacrifice” (1 Sm 15:22). In Hebrews, we are taught that Jesus, in reverent submission, “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb 5:8). God learned obedience; how much more must we? Like a child undergoing discipline, I must want to learn obedience. I must want to obey.

There is some kind of paradox about obedience to the Father being the focus of the will of Jesus, and Jesus’ sacrifice being the crux of his infinite resignation to the will of his Father.

(end quote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 99

2011-04-11T21:27:00.002-06:00

(quote) Many third-millennial kingdom-ministries struggle like fifth-rate theaters with the world’s multi-million dollar box office. We have perpetually sought out the insights of institutions and organizations endowed with the technical priestliness to heal our inefficiencies and quench our insatiable thirst for reproducible materials. Our generation just might have ignorance as its armor. More and more of what we buy into is less and less creedal. We can no longer hide under the plastic veneer of know-nothingness....

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 181

2011-03-01T11:22:00.003-07:00

(quote) It’s time to abandon the idea that we can avoid suffering. Suffering is the key to authority. Those who suffer well lead others well through it—and well beyond it. Don’t think that you won’t be alone as you suffer. Joseph, Daniel, and Esther suffered well away from home. Mary and Martha suffered well in their home, throughout their brother’s sickness, death, and burial. Then there were Peter, James, and John after the crucifixion. They were in anguish; totally alone.

(unquote)

artisans

2011-01-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

(quote from Clairvaux Manifesto, page 147)

We must set our hearts and minds on things above (Col 3:1-2) so that we may eventually know the unknowable mind of heaven, “. . . having the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). We might be entrusted with the mind of Christ if we at least admit to him, and each other, that we don’t know a bit of his business at all.

Our only security is faith in him.

Our only leverage is hope in him.

Our only currency is in loving him.

The One who promised to lead us is literally making all things new before us, which includes our minds, interpersonal connections, and our ability to communicate well within this growing consortium— this wonderful global guild of pure-hearted kingdom artisans. The righteousness of God gains ground though us, flowing into every nook and cranny of a society created in the image of its creators. The poor in spirit come in all shapes and sizes.

How do the “poor in spirit” act? Do we love bankers and lawyers the same as we do the homeless in the breadline? Do we truly have compassion on the richest ones, many of whom recognize they are the poorest ones, anyway? Can we hold our heads just as high in the financial district as in the slums, realizing Mammon would have all our heads on a silver platter?

With his final heartbeats, God addressed the indebtedness of us all. Psalm 22 seems to encapsulate Jesus’ full experience upon the cross, amidst the grave, and risen from the dead. There is profound sociological progression to the Psalm. David concluded his prophecy,

The POOR will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the Lord will praise him—may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the FAMILIES of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. All the RICH of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future GENERATIONS will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn—for he has done it.

Yes, he has done it and it is finished!

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 185

2010-10-31T22:12:00.002-06:00

(quote) Faith allows God to be God. Faith believes in God’s character, in God’s very Word. Faith trusts and acknowledges the understanding and wisdom of that Holy Other, who is wholly other than us. Faith is not stubborn. Faith is not manipulative. Faith can never tell God what to do. Faith can never anticipate what God will do (though God will, of course, do what is just and right). Faith is the most miniscule, flexible, and vulnerable part of human consciousness. Faith is what God targets in us and draws out of us. Can faith handle all that insurmountable glory funneled into the body, soul, mind, and strength of Jesus Christ?

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 73

2010-08-18T10:36:00.000-06:00

(quote) My children love to dance. Whenever I sketch pictures of heaven on earth, everyone is dancing and everything is spherical. The atmosphere bubbles with joyful enthusiasm. Joy is the surprising destination of hope. I inhale that bloom-scented spring breeze. I can hear that bouncing melody of lively music. In his Revelation, John saw an emerald rainbow encircling the throne of God and the Lamb. I draw circles within circles.

My awareness of God’s sanctuary, creatures, elders, saints, and angels develops through focusing my imagination’s lens on the love emanating from within “all” God is; within all whom God are. Within their eternal friendship, God has always been free to send Godself and free to obey Godself; free to command Godself and free to serve Godself. God continually and willingly submits to the will of another within God’s selves. God is not jealous of Godself. In the truest sense, God loves Godself. And God loves others as God loves Godself. The English language has its limits . . .

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 29

2010-07-19T23:33:00.000-06:00

(quote) Spirit; Geist; Pneuma; Rhuah; Breath. When we seek God like a drowning soul longs for air, we’ll find God. In the beginning, God got down into the dust and breathed the shell of a man to life. Second time around, God himself became dust. When does God breathe life into himself? Who is God that he should need and receive breath from God’s self? God humbled himself in every way. Mary nurtured God. Joseph, his surrogate father, needed to obey an angel to save all their lives. From his first breath, Jesus of Bethlehem was a thirsty little refugee clinging to the edge of the human condition.

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, bottom of page 54

2010-07-02T21:44:00.000-06:00

(quote) Post-moderns are confused moderns with pre-modern longings. There are some things God has never changed and never will. We are all coming out of a season of staging and alignment where many counterfeits have overextended themselves and been exposed as spiritual frauds; liars. In Zechariah’s prophecy, the same God who heals the land in a single day (Zec 3:9) cuts off three shepherds in less than a month (Zec 11:8). Establishing circles of quiet is a serious business and an ancient practice.
(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 183

2010-05-19T08:57:00.000-06:00

(quote) Being a word-bearer for the King is not a slow-mo, ambient-lighted, movie scene of an adventure— not when the word-bearer gets sent, time and again, to struggling leaders in big positions (big by their terms). Often, the messenger gets shot in the back. Most of the time, the messenger is so deep in the web of networks, so far removed from the front office, that the word-bearer is totally forgotten once the dust settles. The wordbearer is often marginalized, mocked, and misunderstood by most people on the “inside”. When dealing with sick and diseased infrastructures, the most authentic kingdom authority is typically found outside the current structures. That’s one reason why Jesus was crucified outside the city of Jerusalem.

Word-bearers pursue God with every ounce of their strength until they are the weakest ones around. That’s the irony of being God’s wordbearers; it means becoming burden-bearers of the weightiest things of heaven. In becoming entrusted with heaven’s words, word-bearers become burden-bearers of things that cannot be picked up and carried in a natural way. It is not easy to speak one word to a church and then watch it close its doors for good. It is not easy to stand with a leader of leaders while they pull the pin from their own grenade. It is not easy to serve a movement from the outside while many on the inside reinforce their walls.

(end quote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, page 114

2010-05-06T13:41:00.000-06:00

(quote) Jesus perpetually desecrated “the religion of intercession” which had been built up around his Law. He ate and healed on the Sabbath. He filled ceremonial washing vessels with wine. He taught his disciples to pray in a simple way. He lobbed all kinds of seemingly rude comments at the temple and worship cult—not to mention how he wrecked the joint once or twice. He even told people to eat him, desecrating everyone’s sacred assumptions about humanity and God in a human body. How awful it must have sounded to those little ears that were the fi rst ones to hear God say, “Eat me!” I’d have been squirming in my seat. They called him a demon-possessed blasphemer; how dare God expose the vacuous dread of their shallow and fallow sacred assumptions?

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, bottom of 103

2010-04-27T14:08:00.001-06:00

(quote) It wasn’t enough that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. While they waited (not-so-patiently) in the desert, in-between Egypt and their Promised Land, Moses ascended 7,500 feet up a stark mountainside to meet face-to-face with God (for forty days), where he received the creed of creeds. Pointing towards Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, those ten commands given to Moses were clear, credible, and creedal statements, written by the very finger of God (Ex 31:18; Dt 9:10).

In circles of quiet and abbeys of prayer and work, we realize doxology leads to orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy: the process of doxopraxy. Doxa means glory; Ortho means straight; Praxis means practice. Whoever gives God glory will be set straight. Beyond clarity, credibility, and creed, Moses was a straightforward worshiper.

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, bottom of 62

2010-03-22T14:54:00.000-06:00

(quote) It's about presence. It's about leaning into the covenant. It's about first things being first. It's about going home. It's about carrying the treasure chest of God, all the way, without touching it (2 Sm 6).

Jesus was the first one to lean in and carry the presence past the temple (Mt 4:5-6), through the cross, all the way home. Jesus Christ, our ever present help in trouble (Ps 46:1), is the only one who knows the way home. His incense guides people, cities, and nations (2 Cor 2:15-17) by the nose, back into heaven's kitchen, the heart of our eternal home.

(unquote)

Clairvaux Manifesto, pp. 187-189.

2010-03-09T14:00:00.002-07:00

(quote) It has to start with Jesus. It has to respond to Jesus. God will provide. Things are changing in how all this is done. I want to be part of the new, fresh way. I don't know the way, exactly. I just think we're a bit too comfortable with our models, so I'm just calling this stuff out. There is stuff that we assume in our half a century of "fund- raising orthodoxy" that sends the wrong message-- and yes, the medium is the message. Whatever happened to honestly believing that we lack nothing? We can still do big things. If God is in it, people will give without even being asked. There is a hairpin trigger here. When Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dreams and suggested what might be done, he was put in charge of building barns, and they had to be built by the time of the first harvest-- and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and that last one.

This isn't about building a warehouse and figuring out how to fill it and distribute the product within. This is about being dropped into a combat zone and assessing strategy and tactics while dodging shrapnel based on the available resources, strength, experience of local personnel, and mounting casualty rates. This is about a circle of friends strengthening the front lines and pushing forward into the gates of hell. We are not defending a Lego castle with plastic swords. Don't impose limitations on yourself. The weapons and medication entrusted to you are eternal things.

dark night of the soul

small naked curled up ball of fear

numbing darkness joints marrow

tears blur stinging

agony

slipping through the cracks

the cry, "Lord, save me!"

light glint swinging rapier

balm

stable heartbeat

breathe

(end quote)

up early today...

2010-02-18T05:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I was up at 4 a.m. after some interesting dreams. I don't typically dream. I usually don't remember most of my dreams if I do dream. I remember these dreams.

Typically, I get "communicated to" through open visions etc. So, when I'm asleep, I'm asleep... and I treasure every bit of peace and quiet while in the shadow of His wings throughout the watches of the night.

If He'd like to spend time with me, and communicate with me, in the night, He awakens me at 3 or 4 a.m. and He's consistent with those times. It never fails, I'll wake up and look at the clock and we'll be right there on the hour together. I don't go planning for it, but it happens regularly enough. So this morning, after dreaming, it was 4 a.m. when I awoke and looked at the clock, no coincidences.

So it's been an hour and a half of getting my heart in order before the day unfolds. Due to all the early morning communications and preparations, I would think today is going to be a significant day in one way or another.

All I can do is be obedient and available through it all.

all hands on deck

2010-01-22T23:24:00.001-07:00

I remember the day I took this picture from a helicopter. I remember crossing the river with a team of friends, just beyond this location, out of view below the first wave of trees. I remember the quad pulling the boat through the grasses, up and down hills. I remember the mud of the Chinchaga riverbed sucking off my boot. I remember walking for miles back and forth, from our compressor to 12 of 11 wellhead. I remember staring at gauges and speaking through radios as needles moved and pressures changed. I remember changing filters and assessing compression; loudest machine I've ever heard.

Hands on, I was learning as I was doing; I was in school with a good teacher. Sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and get at it, and not give up till it's done!

Those who know me well, know I don't do much of anything half-hearted. I run well at a certain RPM, a frequency, a vibration (beyond the coffee induced type)... I get a hum going, and it's like I'm flying; if I can find that groove and stay with it. In that kind of environment, it's hard to get the smile off my face. Making ten decisions with a team in one minute is a lot of fun, especially when you pack all the minutes of the day full of such endeavor. Then, at the end of the day, I crash into bed, exhausted in such a good way.

At the same time, I cherish my alone time. I spend a lot of time on my own... it's what recharges me. To be climbing a mountain, walking a stream.... sitting in a grassy field listening to the breeze blow through.

I was a pastor for a number of years... at least that's what they called me. But, sometimes it was a bit like pulling a heavy train on my back. Things moved at a certain plodding pace... I could barely stand it, so I took everyone with me to the streets and alleys where the action was.

It was the same in factory work, welding at one place, and building trucks in another... there was never a dull moment. My momentum in those environments came from the endless conversations I had with people who were asking loads of questions about Jesus. There's nothing quite like sharing the teachings of Jesus to open ears and hearts.

The enigma bit of me is that I love learning completely new things, speaking with lawyers, raising money, dealing with questioning vendors, developing teams, overseeing budgets and operations... But to be real honest, I'd rather break a sweat preaching about Jesus all day long 'till my voice goes numb. I can talk about Jesus Christ all day long! There's a bit of Wesley and Whitfield in me...

What I really love is preaching the beauty of Jesus. I preach him as he is. I preach him until he shows up for himself, honestly... you should see what happens to everyone when he shows up. I love to preach him so much that I don't have to preach him at all because he's with me whether I speak up for him or not. I really truly believe he is with me. And I can go years between sermons; I've actually done that! It's part of the training...

I think the most active saints among us wear out all the angels... They have to tag team with us sometimes, take shifts.

There is a pace and flow to the Spirit-fueled! It's easy and light... It's not always relentless and bone-jarring. But, if I was burying bodies in Haiti with one hand, and singing with an orphaned child holding the other, it would be both/and, not either/or; a hoping kind of pain.

It's all easy and light and relentless and bone-jarring; I'm getting used to living with it all!

signs and omens

2010-01-11T07:35:00.002-07:00

This picture was taken one January on the island of Gozo, just north-east of Malta in the Med. I can still hear the kids screaming in glee on this merry-go-round. I can still taste the goat-cheese pizza. I can still feel the clay between my fingers tips beneath Calypso's Cave.

Last night I was blogging about boldness at clairvauxmanifesto.com

Today, I'll be back in the office of prayer and work which filled the second half of Clairvaux Manifesto with so many stories... The sequel is already being written in signs and omens.

As CEO of Woodthorpe Petroleum Ltd. I will find a way through. I will find investors of like mind and heart. I will make deals and move mountains. I will do it for the glory of God, who is found in the face of Jesus Christ. I will do it for my wife and children, whom I love. I will do it for Terry Woodthorpe, whose story we'll share. I'll do it for the Church, whose heart is good, whose Master is on the move.

One thing about the energy sector, it involves all other sectors. Yes, oil still makes the world go round and round, and will do so for some time to come; there is another big push coming! A good oil and gas company opens many doors into many nations. Terry and I will meet governments through those doors; we'll meet good leaders; we'll meet the Church and we will rebuild her and the nations she serves and protects!

In the meantime, we need to find good investors to back the global vision I laid it out on page 295 of Clairvaux Manifesto. Woodthorpe Petroleum Ltd. is the cornerstone of a much greater vision, but we need to reestablish Woodthorpe now!

Abbeys and Bankers

2010-01-03T22:43:00.006-07:00

A couple of years ago, I took this picture of my friends in Ye Olde Cock Tavern, London. I mention that day on Fleet Street in Clairvaux Manifesto.

Over the first few days of 2010, I've received a number of fascinating emails:

Since we spoke on the phone New Year's Eve, one friend is quickly rediscovering his family tree. Three generations back, his grandfather planted and built an important landmark church in Upper Canada. Four generation back, his grandfather was a well known Toronto philanthropist, politician, and banker who cared deeply for the poor.

Also over the past few days, another friend, who's grandfather was a banker in England, emailed me the green light to dream and scheme the potential realigning and rebuilding of his global business and philanthropic endeavors.

And just today, as I was praying for that friend, I was emailed by a reader of Clairvaux Manifesto in England (whom I've never met) who works in (of all things) finance.

There's a reason why a Hong Kong banker endorsed Clairvaux Manifesto. It might have something to do with why I wrote the first two paragraphs of page 295 this way:

The vision is this:

Continue to proclaim the Word of God and growing vision of your heart. Work with funders and investors who are like-hearted and innovative. Recruit directors from various fields of discipline who are lovers of God and people and sit them around a common table. Develop a team of friends around values like humility, mutual reciprocity, and interdependence. Establish circles of quiet around 10,000 young kingdom leaders, master cadets; discover them internationally; develop them locally; and deploy them globally, together building abbeys of prayer and work.

Unite public and private companies that will collaborate together in building abbeys of prayer and work. Launch a bank and venture capital group that will treasure the pennies, nickels, and dimes of people who will partner in the building and maintaining of these abbeys. Make this consortium of prayer and work so stable and attractive that financial advisors could offer it as a product.

It's curious to me, that in a few days, Abbey Bank in the UK changes its name to Santander!

I've always liked the name Abbey for a bank...

Avatar

2009-12-22T23:04:00.005-07:00

I saw Avatar and will be blogging about it at clairvauxmanifesto

bridge adventures (more pics)

2009-12-19T12:44:00.003-07:00

I blogged this at Clairvaux Manifesto. Here I've added two more pics.

Though you can't tell from the ice flows in this picture, strong whirlpools form under this bridge. During the few hot days of summer, kids will climb atop the bridge and plunge into the deep flow. During the torrent flood of melting snow caps in Spring, surfers in wetsuits will tie themselves to the bridge and fight their way onto surfboards, challenging the relentless current.

This old train bridge crossing the Bow River, is just a short walk down the trail from our home. Originally built by coal miners, the strong iron structure now hosts pedestrians; a quiet trail system where noisy infrastructure used to be.

Once, as I was crossing the river with a friend, a coyote was crossing from the other side (the bridge also acts as a wildlife corridor). I spoke softly as the coyote passed us by. I could have reached out and touched her; she never broke stride.

Two days ago, we watched four coyotes make their way along the creek outside our home. We have a soft coyote skin draping the back of a couch in our living room. I purchased the skin for Luke two Christmases ago when one coyote in particular was making the local news, approaching and intimidating children.

A visitor once stood with Luke by the water where the coyote drink and commented, "Luke, you must really love your backyard." Luke flung his arms toward the sky, "The whole world is my backyard!" Coyote, deer, ducks, ravens, blue jays, cardinals, chickadees, finches, rabbits, mice, cats, dogs, joggers, bikers, and tourists all agree.

Looking out the window here, I see the little bridge crossing our creek, the bridge our kids play on and under, the bridge I write about in Clairvaux Manifesto,

On Thursday during that week of fasting, we received the answer to our housing. Dar stood on a foot bridge near the bed and breakfast. Overlooking Spring Creek, she pointed to a certain house nestled in the woods, surrounded on three sides by water, and prayed; “God, give us that house.” At the same moment, unknown to Dar, I was making a phone call (answering a generic advertisement in the local newspaper) regarding a four bedroom house with a full nanny suite. The next day I met the new owner of the house to have a look through it. I stood in the dining room mystified.

Looking out one of the fifteen windows at a foot bridge crossing the creek, I said to the owner, “You’ll never believe this, but a couple of years ago my wife and I stayed overnight in this very house with our friends who lived here at that time. Back then, I stood in this very spot—in front of this window—looking over Spring Creek, and said, ‘I could live in a house like this.’”

Bridges teach me people will build anything to get them anywhere.

Advent teaches me the Creator is here now.

friendship over time

2009-12-14T14:47:00.004-07:00

Last summer, I stood with Felix in the Valley of Six Glaciers above Lake Lousie. Last week, Felix showed up a couple times in this Times of Malta video (here). Though I have not seen him face to face in over a year, I love my friend; we share the hesed of YHWH. We'll see each other again soon enough.

Felix is a husband, father, man of prayer, soldier, and artist. His paintings hang in our home. His work with wood and stone is hewn from years of practiced contemplation. His love for his family and friends is tangible. He wages peace. This global leader embodies godly prayer and work.

As we walked through the high alpine valley that afternoon, Felix paused along the way to pick up granite in one hand and marble in the other. Smiling over potential creations he said, "I don't like what money does to people. These stones are God's money!" I wholeheartedly understood and agreed.

Love does not give money, it gives itself. If is gives itself first and a lot of money too, that is all the better. But first it must sacrifice itself.

Thomas Merton

If we don't accept Jesus in one another, we will not be able to give Him to others.

Mother Teresa

Pure, intuitive attention is the only source of perfectly beautiful art, truly original and brilliant scientific discovery, of philosophy which really aspires to wisdom and of true, practical love of one's neighbour. This kind of attention when turned to God is true prayer.

Simone Weil

Clairvaux Manifesto

2009-12-10T16:44:00.001-07:00

Three ways to receive Clairvaux Manifesto
in time for Christmas:

amazon.ca

chapters.ca

clairvauxmanifesto.com

the environment of the kingdom

2009-12-09T15:34:00.001-07:00

https://vr.shapeservices.com/play.php?hash=c4f5c2d1f67247a765285ed7a3b90861a27e0a6fbf69ac2d5

an inadequate response to a brief facebook conversation over Copenhagen. forgive the comment made regarding the use of the word "prophetic"... that is for another conversation entirely.

___
Recorded on iPhone and posted with VR+ Lite.
http://vr.shapeservices.com

Prepping

2009-12-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

Nate has his fifth birthday party today. In an hour, the house will be full of kids; so we're prepping.

Minus 29 today, so the fireplace is going strong, windows frosty.

Last night after dinner, we read a bit of Fox's Book of Martyrs with the kids last night around Advent candles.

I'll blog some thoughts later this afternoon at www.clairvauxmanifesto.com

Time for a spot of tea before it gets louder than words.

breaking the ice

2009-12-02T14:43:00.019-07:00

This pic was taken last winter beneath lake ice buckling over the shore; it's two feet thick. This morning started out a balmy -19C here in Canmore. Won't be long before the kids are exploring ice caves on the lake again. There are so many points of view and access.

I can write a bit about the windswept ice. I can write from within a moment, an experience with a dash of perspective; my kids stepped out onto the ice. I can write with conviction, something profound, which I believe with all my heart, looking for an echo over the barren snows of the lake while my kids crawl fearlessly beneath the ice.

Ice can be viewed and respected, it can also be explored and stewarded.

I can hide the truth between the lines, allowing wisdom to be as elusive as the reader allows it to be. On the other hand, I can prophecy. Those words are the choicest, most measured, most hidden, yet most enlightening words of all. They are God's words, accomplishing God's ends, which have been justified by very certain means! (Jesus' blood, never frozen, flows freely).

In the dead of winter, break the ice, anticipating the full flow of Spring. Water is always flowing somewhere below. Sometimes, we are commanded to help it along a bit on the surface; declare the future with a shattering sound. Icebreakers understand. It's what blood and words are all about!

From an email I just received,

My 'apparently becoming a christian' friend, is on page 110 of your book and she says that what you write about is beyond what she would have thought about. She says that she wants that type of journey and that she is so glad to have the book because she is so hungry for the Word... she listens to a daily radio sermon and this morning shared the message of the day with me: there is no excuse not to pray... her sister 'randomly' bought her a Bible... I mean, isn't that unbelievable and unexpected blessing?

fragmentation of imagination (mirrored)

2009-11-29T23:41:00.001-07:00

I have begun reading Nijinsky. Human beings are such beautiful, yet injured, creators. I've just now been reading Secrets of Nijinsky. Just a few moments ago, I was watching the afternoon of a faun on YouTube, having no idea who Christian Comte was, or what he was up to; fascinating!

My study of Nijinsky began last night, just before our Calgary book launch. A friend (and gifted dancer) lent me Romola Nijinsky's book about her husband. I think I'll purchase a copy.

My reading of Nijinsky has me in more books; Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Augustine's City of God are open.

Over the years, I've prayed for a lot of broken people. To be honest, I've prayed over a lot of people's heads, their brains and minds. In the streets of many cities, I've met and listened to many mentally ill people, damaged wanderers, who seem deranged to most others. Quite often, I've heard the voice of God through these broken pilgrims.

A quote of Marie Curie hangs on the wall of our dining room, "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood." I once quoted the line to a friend, who replied inquisitively, "But what if it can't be understood?" Yes, well, choose your own adventure...

Joseph had been using an interpreter, so they didn't know that Joseph was understanding every word. Joseph turned away from them and cried. When he was able to speak again, he took Simeon and had him tied up, making a prisoner of him while they all watched. (Genesis 42:23, The Message)

Preview upload to Scribd

2009-11-23T11:32:00.004-07:00

Preview

2009-11-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

working on FiledBy presence http://ping.fm/KjNut clairvaux

2009-11-23T09:54:00.001-07:00

"...it's hard to put down..The history and insight is wonderful...how much he loves Dar and his children. What a beautiful book!" clairvaux

2009-11-22T22:28:00.001-07:00

finished blogging at http://ping.fm/KI8Tm clairvaux

2009-11-22T21:00:00.001-07:00

blogging on The Lost Symbol, Rosslyn Chapel, and MTV Temple at http://ping.fm/tmw1g clairvaux

2009-11-22T20:14:00.001-07:00

Amazon.ca review, "At just the right time God used this simple yet profound manifesto to birth in me His plans and purposes." clairvaux

2009-11-22T18:25:00.001-07:00

Clairvaux Manifesto looking good @ Ponder Publishing dot ca http://ping.fm/ripCz clairvaux

2009-11-22T14:45:00.001-07:00

endorsement/review, "Clairvaux Manifesto takes your breath away. It’s a story about living life in moments, seizing memories..." clairvaux

2009-11-21T15:30:00.001-07:00

House party book launch at home in the mountains of Canmore, AB http://ping.fm/E7tEN clairvaux

2009-11-21T13:59:00.001-07:00

"For Christ didn't enter the earthly version of the Holy Place; he entered the Place Itself..." (Heb 9:23, The Message)

2009-11-21T13:46:00.001-07:00

Amazon.ca review, "While reading through the many stories, I felt like I was back to watching Kirk in action." clairvaux

2009-11-20T19:42:00.001-07:00

good review of Clairvaux Manifesto http://ping.fm/FKY0o

Bridging Generations

2009-11-20T12:15:00.002-07:00

We can speak toward generational unity until we have to go about doing it. Then we have to role up our sleeves and get to it, work it out.

A few years ago, God called me to raise up 10,000 master cadets of his kingdom. At that time, I was standing at a bronze plaque under Cascade Mountain, adjacent to an airstrip, celebrating an award camp for 10,000 young master cadets (I have those pics posted in an album on facebook). Standing there in Banff, I was quietly instructed to discover 10,000 master cadets internationally, develop them locally, and deploy them globally.

The last number of years has been a coming to terms with the threshing floor foundation and heavenly scope of such a vision.

Earlier this fall, with the final proof of Clairvaux Manifesto in my hands, I was praying about the funding and release of this armada of 10,000. As I was praying over such things, I was led to discover this plaque at Barrier Lake. As I read the bronze, the number 10,000 was significant again, but this time it was referring to another generation, and their bringing stability to a nation at war, yet again.

Standing there, remembering the history of Veterans Affairs Canada, I wondered about the10,000 young master cadets called to go, and the 10,000 veterans called to cover the home front.

Here and now, I imagine 20,000 kingdom cadets and veterans coming together. The dynamic energy and strength of the young and the wise counsel and leadership of the old, waging peace in the name of Jesus Christ, here and abroad.

I imagine structural, legal and financial structures which will allow both generations to give generously (what will always be theirs), as they establish the unprecedented, together, hand in hand.

It's happened before, and it will happen again!

Soli Deo Gloria

2009-11-09T12:17:00.001-07:00

Great lunch with PR/Marketing and IT systems architect.

2009-11-09T09:20:00.001-07:00

Such amazing friends... I only have a few books left with me. Getting more books shipped to each city ahead of my arrival. Still in KW.

2009-11-08T10:52:00.001-07:00

A great morning at WMB church sharing hearts, vision and the manifesto.

Free PDF Preview of Clairvaux Manifesto

2009-11-03T23:45:00.007-07:00

This pic was taken overlooking the French city of Dijon. Dar and I spent the night there, the same day we visited Clairvaux, Cluny, and Taize.

At that time, I didn't know Bernard was raised in a castle near Dijon. I look forward to walking such historic lands further and deeper in the future...

Here is a free download of the first 20+ pages of Clairvaux Manifesto.

Full Measure of Devotion

2009-10-21T21:25:00.008-06:00

Sitting by the hot fireplace, Bach strings in the background, lights low, Bible open to II Cor. 4-6, empty ice cream bowl, half mug of tea, iPhone 3GS pamphlet, emails from an enterprise architect discussing website design, and A.W. Tozer's "The Set of the Sail" open to,

The truth is, dedication of the life to anything or anyone short of God Himself, is a prostitution of noble powers and must bring a harvest of grief and disappointment at last. Only God is worthy of the soul He has made in His own image. To devote our lives to any cause, however worthy, is to sell ourselves short. Not money, position, fame, can justly claim our devotion. Art, literature, music also fall short. And, if God is forgotten, even the loftiest and most unselfish task is unworthy of the soul's full surrender. Complete dedication unto death in the cause of freedom, for instance, is a touching thing and has given to history many of her greatest heroes, but only the God of freedom should have our 'last and full measure of devotion.'

Writing at least four letters to the Corinthians, Paul wasn't just on some prescriptive task; he was compelled and fueled by Another who was teaching him how to share eternity with his friends... preparing them for all the good works they themselves would accomplished, with the help of that same Other, in their generation, in the Name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God, History Maker, Miracle Maker, king breaker, and friend of sinners becoming fully devoted saints.

Bees, Books, and Bono

2009-10-18T22:03:00.006-06:00

Last night, I went to WordFest at the Banff Centre to hear Douglas Coupland chat about his latest novel Generation A. Later, I meandered to and from a book signing line for nearly an hour. Bored out of my head, I played a piano in a studio down the hall and laughed out loud at the photographs of people hanging there, brilliant work. Finally, I made my way back into the bread line, and stood there for however long.

I bought a copy of Generation A because of the connection with bees in the plot of the book. The bees reminded me of Sue Monk Kidd's Secret Life of Bees and Bernard of Clairvaux being the patron saint of bees (and Gibraltar). Anyway, there I was with my copy of Generation A to be signed.

Finally, eyeball to eyeball with the author, he looked at me inquisitively, "I know you from somewhere don't I? We know each other."

I smiled, "Well, we do now. Maybe we crossed paths in Vancouver. Ten years ago, I did a Masters at Regent College, UBC Campus."

"How'd that go for you."

"Ya, it was good. A season."

I changed the subject, mentioning how I'll be at BC Place to see U2 in Vancouver on the 28th and went on to rehash Coupland's earlier references to Marshall McLuhan. I thought Coupland might like Jacques Ellul on technological society. After a bit of sharing the creative process behind Clairvaux Manifesto, Coupland signed and dated my copy of Generation A,

To Kirk Bartha. Congratulations on the publication of your new book. Douglas Coupland. 10/17/9.

Top shelf. It felt a bit red carpet diplomatic. Yet, I walked away from the book signing with mixed feelings. I wanted to hang out with the guy and hear his thoughts on McLuhan, the power of narrative, personalism, wisdom, history, the future, and Canada. Beyond hearing thoughts or opinion, I wanted to know his mind. I wanted to hear his heart. I didn't want anything in particular. I just wanted to be myself with another thoughtful wordsmith who seems to know himself.

Another wordsmith I'd like to spend time with - to share hearts and minds on all things to do with justice and mobilizing a generation into further global action, is Bono. So here's a shout out to the Vox before the 28th at B.C. Place:

Anamchara (soul friend on the journey), I'm looking forward to seeing the claw in Vancouver. More so, I'm looking forward to celebrating life with you and your friends, and hearing from your heart as you lead us together in magnificent songs.

Sixty years ago (to the day), on October, 28th, 1949, Jim Elliot penned this profound statement into his Wheaton College Journal, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." Until I see you on the 28th, this martyr's line is my sail and rudder.

My closing words in Clairvaux Manifesto:

May grape vines; fruit, nut, coffee, and olive groves; flowers; grains; and multitudes of children burst to life around fortress abbeys of prayer and work. May they be full of faith, hope, and love in the midst of the dust clouds of refugee camps, slums, quiet valleys, mountain tops, river banks, and wide open plains where many streets still have no name.

Positioning easel, prepping canvas, and mixing paint, don’t cast pearls to swine; truth to liars; knowledge to thieves; hospitals to murderers; schools to idiots; or abbeys of prayer and work to emperors entitled to thrones. Stay a hopeless romantic who loves the smell of freshly baked bread and crackling midnight fires under bright stars and crescent moon, while children dance around with full bellies and hopeful futures, joining Bob Marley as he sings, “Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner.”

No line on the horizon; allez en paix.

Page 320 of Clairvaux Manifesto

2009-10-05T21:43:00.006-06:00

Have been in conversations with Friesens, our printer for the manifesto. All the proofs are signed off on. All corrections are made. And one addition was made to the very last page:

Environmental Benefits Statement: Clairvaux Ventures Ltd. is saving the following resources by printing the pages of this book on chlorine free paper made with 100% post-consumer waste: TREES FULLY GROWN 43; WATER GALLONS 19,536; SOLID WASTE POUNDS 1,186; GREENHOUSE GASES POUNDS 4,056

Calculations based on research by Environmental Defense and the Paper Task Force. Manufactured at Friesens Corporation.

Looks like release date is in a couple of weeks...

Clairvaux Manifesto 2

2009-09-12T18:08:00.002-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg72061VE1k

This second video takes viewers higher up and further into the vision the manifesto calls out. The video opens with different cities and flags which are found at the observatory atop Sulphur Mountain. The numbers under the flags indicate how far away each city is from the viewers perspective; each city in their designated compass bearing from the observers point of view.

At 3:54 of this video, the viewer has a gondola ride up, viewing Cascade Mountain in the distance. At the base of Cascade (to the right) the viewer might notice a light green grassy strip (just above tunnel mountain, the small mountain located in the town of Banff). That light green piece of land is the location of the air strip and master cadet camp from the first HD video.

And I just thought of this... Not so coincidentally, Geoff Fifield (the guy singing the tunes in this video) hiked part of Cascade with me and helped me build an altar of 12 stones on the side of the mountain above the air strip and base camp.

And a big shout out to Joe B, who shot all this video with me during his semi-paid short-leave of absence from YWAM adventures.

I just thought I'd share a little bit of the inside story with a few insiders.

Clairvaux Manifesto (HD)

2009-07-25T15:04:00.007-06:00

Clairvaux Manifesto promo in HD (here).

Clairvaux Manifesto Circle, Cross, Compass & Seal

2009-07-23T16:21:00.013-06:00

I wrote the manifesto in four parts: moving from the circle to the cross to the crux of the two, and eventually into an ongoing life well-lived (spiritual cartographers engaging the splendors of God in the ordinary day to day, all over the planet). We want these images to help tell the story. (shout out to Mike Rowe - excellent work bro)

Besides bringing multiple elements together, I also wanted to create an ancient looking seal for the cover of the manifesto, but also potentially use such a seal as the image for Clairvaux Ventures Ltd., which may (or may not) grow, as a result of the manifesto. The complete seal is also a compass. As this unfolding adventure continues, we imagine ending up all over the planet...

The manifesto takes the reader on a journey. Themes of creation permeate Part I. The Creator placed us all on this pale blue green dot of a planet; spherical. We orbit our Sun. We witness eclipses. We experience the laws of gravity, inertia... etc. These concepts are woven into the manifesto's stories.

Part II of the manifesto is about the cross of Jesus Christ. In one poem of this section entitled "The Root" I write that the cross bore roots when our Lord and Savior died, and now he is alive and so is his cross, growing like a strong sapling in hearts redeemed by his blood. This image captures the essentials very well.

In Part III, what happens when the cross is central to our lives and we are called to live well on planet earth? The One who created the sun shines brighter than the sun. All kinds of metaphors surround the Celtic Cross. When the teaching, death, resurrection, and present place of Jesus in heaven influence our every decision of every day, what's that look like?

Part IV is about spiritual cartographers being led all over the planet. Once a rhythm of life (prayer and work) is established in the heart... one might end up anywhere doing anything.

Here we have "enigma"... We wanted to draw into the equation, the idea of the enigma code-breakers and the coin commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Polish scholars victory over the codes.

Endor, Endorphins, and Endorsements

2009-07-14T11:04:00.007-06:00

Reading over various endorsements friends have written for Clairvaux Manifesto, I've been thinking of the word endorse ("En" means "in"... "Dorsum" is Latin for "back").

To endorse a cheque is to sign the back of it. To endorse legal papers is to sign the back end of the document. Endorsing a political candidate one might say, "I for one am backing this woman." Basically, endorsing someone means you've got their back (Is 58:8).

Breaking endorse down further, Endor, is cited in Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary as,

fountain of Dor; i.e., "of the age", a place in the territory of Issachar (Josh. 17:11) near the scene of the great victory which was gained by Deborah and Barak over Sisera and Jabin (comp. Ps. 83:9, 10). To Endor, Saul resorted to consult one reputed to be a witch on the eve of his last engagement with the Philistines (1 Sam. 28:7). It is identified with the modern village of Endur, "a dirty hamlet of some twenty houses, or rather huts, most of them falling to ruin," on the northern slope of Little Hermon, about 7 miles from Jezreel.

From Endor to endorphins... Random House Dictionary cites endorphins as, "any of a group of peptides occurring in the brain and other tissues of vertebrates, and resembling opiates, that react with the brain's opiate receptors to raise the pain threshold." ... which takes me to the definition of morphine as, "a white, bitter, crystalline alkaloid, C₁ ₇H₁ ₉NO₃·H₂O, the most important narcotic and addictive principle of opium, obtained by extraction and crystallization and used chiefly in medicine as a pain reliever and sedative." and ending off the rabbit trail at Morpheus, "... a son of Hypnos and the god of dreams."

This study of morphing endorsements reminds me of Karl Marx forming his dialectical materialism with words like (quoted from here),

The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

The problem with perpetually texting oneself in circles... if one never stops to get one's bearings, one may never discover the center of the very thought one is orbiting at mach velocity.

Reading Hegel and Marx is like watching grumpy old men play philosophical tetherball without knowing the rules. There should be a disclaimer: "Ok, so no matter how you play it boys, the post in the center of the game is not going to move. The ball and rope will move rapidly, but the post will not budge. Go ahead and hit the ball as hard as you like, but keep in mind the ball is secured on a rope, and the rope is tied to an iron pole that (let me say it again) is not going to move. As you hit the ball to the right - force, stability, gravity and interia will bring the ball around (pretty quickly) on your left. If you're not expecting it, the ball will smack you silly in the back of the head (or you'll see it out of the corner of your eye and get plastered in the face). Please keep in mind, that if you have not understood the simplicity of such fundamentals until after you're face down in the dirt with a throbbing headache, you had it coming to you big time!"

Manifestos are all about rewinding Endor, releasing endorphins, and receiving endorsements. It's the synthetically-induced manifestos that end up borg. The writer of a manifesto typically starts out with the right intention - a clear ascent to Truth. If it's not after a Clear Word, it's not a Manifesto. Many manifestos get sidetracked attempting to be inescapable labyrinths of thought. Thomas More mused in Utopia, "Just as I shall take great pains to have nothing incorrect in the book, so, if there is doubt about anything, I shall rather tell an objective falsehood than an intentional lie - for I would rather be honest than wise."

And here is the crux of manifesto; to be honest is to be wise. It is not either/or, it is both/and. When the time is right, the use of clear, direct and simple words will unhinge tyrannies and rediscover every possibility.

Clairvaux Manifesto Cover Options

2009-07-06T16:08:00.016-06:00

Graf-Martin Communications recently posted this:

We’d like your help choosing the cover for a new book that is soon to be published. Clairvaux Manifesto invites readers to discover the pioneering spirit of old world abbeys of prayer and work, issuing a clear call to provide such circles of quiet within the clamor of evil today.

Through detailed accounts of spirituality at work in his life, where he discovers splendor in the ordinary and witnesses the extraordinary things of God, author Kirk Bartha asks questions like, "Were there not other kinds of flights men like this took? Don‘t Canadian conservatives have an Air Force One or something? What was Stephen Harper doing on my plane?

See the five potential covers at Graf-Martin and vote!

Over the next few days I'll walk through the ideas behind each of these covers. A+ to creative team, great work on providing these options! We are getting so close to style-sheets and type-setting. A shout out to our marketing Ninjas and editorial Samurai.

Confessions and Friendships

2009-06-11T11:23:00.008-06:00

Throughout Augustine's conversion narrative in his Confessions, his friend Alypius was with him. At first, Alypius listened silently as Augustine cried out his agony, then followed his friend 'step by step' into the garden. At his time of decision, Augustine confessed that Alypius stood quietly beside him. Augustine separated himself from Alypius momentarily and threw himself down under a fig tree. After hearing a child's voice saying, "Pick up and read..." he went back to where Alypius was sitting and 'seized' the book of Romans and read 13:13-14.

Then Augustine poured out his whole heart to his friend. Alypius noticed that the passage went on further and spoke about those who were weak in faith and applied it to himself. Without any hesitation, Alypius made a clear decision for Christ as well. The two changed men went and told Monica, Augustine's mother, the whole story.

This is an example of intentionally recorded spiritual friendship.

In Leap Over a Wall, Eugene Peterson notes that David and Jonathan's friendship "bracketed and contained the evil..." of Saul's hatred of and plotting against David. True friends push through the hardest of circumstances together, and sometimes, like Alypius and Jonathan, they just sit quietly and listen. Eventually, and inevitably, friends enter into each other's passion, embrace and weep (I Sam. 20:41).

In the introduction to Eelred of Rievaulx's Spiritual Friendship, Douglas Roby notes, "Benedict's Rule says nothing about friendship explicitly... All this hardly encourages the sort of intense personal relationships which Augustine and Anselm occasionally celebrated."

Alered was a good friend of Stephen of Citeaux and Bernard of Clairvaux. Citeaux Abbey, full of reformed Benedictines (wanting to return to a strict observance of Benedict's Rule) birthed the supernova of the Cistercian legacy. Amidst the liturgy of their abbeys, the Cistercians were men and women of intentional and well-documented friendships.

As I ponder words and experiences between spiritual friends I wonder about Dostoevsky's epilepsy; Nietzsche's stroke; Van Gogh's breakdown; and Hemingway's shock therapy.

The more intentional the crafting of spiritual friendships, the less fateful the tragedy of lonely isolation.

Circles of Quiet

2009-06-02T10:50:00.010-06:00

That is a temperate and righteous love which practices self-denial in order to minister to a brother’s necessity. So our selfish love grows truly social, when it includes our neighbors in its circle.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, Chapter VIII

Well, think again, you idiots, fools—how long before you get smart? Do you think Ear-Maker doesn't hear, Eye-Shaper doesn't see? Do you think the trainer of nations doesn't correct, the teacher of Adam doesn't know? God knows, all right— knows your stupidity, sees your shallowness.

How blessed the man you train, God, the woman you instruct in your Word, providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil, while a jail is being built for the wicked. God will never walk away from his people, never desert his precious people. Rest assured that justice is on its way and every good heart put right.
Psalm 94:8:15 (The Message)

This morning I was sharing with Darlene how tired I've been the past three days. It is an unusual kind of tiredness, the kind of fatigue that drags every cell of your being you down into the earth. Dar said it was probably due to all the stress I've been under lately, writing a book, launching a company, pushing through some heavy duty issues for nine solid months. As she spoke, I gazed outside at the sunshine, rising creek, thickening green of the forest floor, watching dozens of finches and sparrows peck at seed in the feeder.

I got thinking of all I had to do today. Preparing a presentation for a broker on Bay Street; studying two executive strategies of two companies needing funding; responding to emails from other executives in other settings; realizing as I respond to those emails it affects everything I'm reading in these strategies and presentations... As we plan our course everything depends on character, humility, integrity, accountability, responsibility, trust, friendship, and the ever plodding will of God (Proverbs 16:9).

Feeling the weight of things I replied to Dar, "It has taken me all this time to learn how to respond to God out of a place of quiet. This home on this creek in this forest is our circle of quiet within the clamor of evil. When I walk this land and clear the forest floor of dead fall and wild Alberta roses (so the kids can run barefoot under the trees), I spend so much intentional time in the quiet of God. It is a discipline to work from this place of quiet, to respond to what's put before us here in this place. Too many leaders work from a place of fear and anxiety. They have to fight to know everything. They are unwilling not to know. Where are the reverent agnostics? If we don't leave the mist in mystery we end up with something eerie... It is all the more important that we cultivate a circle of quiet."

Dar responded, "That reminds me of what I read last night in Jim Elliot's Journal." Last night, while I was working out some emails on my laptop, Dar was reading. She got the book off the shelf for me and began reading a journal entry dated, November 29, 1949:

I think there is nothing so starling in all the graces of God as His quietness. When men have raged untruths in His Name, when they have used the assumed authority of the Son of God to put to death His real children, when they have with calloused art twisted the Scriptures into fables and lies, when they have explained the order of His creations in unfounded theories while boasting the support of rational science, when they, using powers He grants them, claim universal autonomy and independence, He, this great silent God, says nothing!...

...O God, what shall be the first tones of Your voice again on earth? And what their effect? Wonder and fear, denizens of dust, for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a battle cry, with the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet blast of God Himself - made more terrible, if that could be, by the long suffering of His silence.

On Sunday, I discovered that the still pond to the right of our home (strong flowing creek to the left) is not as still as I assumed. As I was clearing brush to make a place for out kids to play in the pebbles of the pond, I noticed that a spring was flowing from the bank, from beneath two trees and their shoreline mossy roots. I dug away all the obstructions and was overjoyed at the reality of a natural spring gurgling pure life a few steps from our home. The not-so-still pond drains into the stronger currents of spring creek a few hundred feet behind our house (water on three sides of us).

Now, two days later, the water level of the placid pond is high enough that a passerby would never know a spring is flowing, but it feeds the pond beneath the surface none the less. If you sat on the roots on shore and put your bare feet in the chilly waters on those clean pebbles, you'd feel the flow coming from under you, passing by your ankles and between your toes.

This summer, I'll carve the stations of the cross out of stone, and place them in such locations on the land around our home.

The land was quiet for forty years.
Judges 3:11 (The Message)

Hope...

2009-05-31T05:21:00.004-06:00

Of all the quotes inscribed in the Cannongate Wall of Scottish Parliament, I made sure to remember this one:

There is hope in honest error;
None in the icy perfections of the mere stylist.

As the peaks melt, their icy waters are rising in our creeks and rivers.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. Dar worked for a few hours at Encounter Earth.

I helped the kids rope a small boat to a tree overhanging the creek so they could let themselves float down stream and then pull themselves back upstream. They giggled for an hour with that.... While they did that, I got a big bucket and lifted water from the stream to water various trees and plants around our home. Then the three soaking wet gigglers wanted to jump on their big trampoline for an hour. And of course, Dad had to provide frigid buckets of water from the creek to their slippery bouncing glee. Another hour... Then the boys ran to the nearby foot bridge to dangle their feet, toss stones, and watch the waters gurgle by, as my daughter curled up in a towel on my knee, listening to the birds sing. Another hour.

Then we had steaks on a grill over an open fire at a friend's place... The guy has amazing stories. We listened to him talk for an hour. He is a Paris trained chef who, among many other things, opened a famous chain of restaurants all around the world. We laughed as he told us funny stories of all his celebrity babysitting. He's guest chef at a ritzy local golf course all summer.

All smiles he says, "You and me, four free hours of golf this week. Brand new TalyorMades!?"

All smiles back, "Ok, just make sure you have a box of 24 balls. I'd rather play from the forest."

5:54 a.m. now... From my vantage point, sunlight is providing rosy ambiance in the far peaks of Mt. Lawrence Grassi. It'll be a while yet before the Sun appears behind me over Grotto Mountain.

Let's see here, I guess I'll thumb through a bit of Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" and Belden C. Lane's "The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality"

Endings and Beginnings

2009-05-22T16:18:00.005-06:00

This pic was the desktop shot on my laptop for years. It was taken during a spiritual retreat on the West Coast of Vancouver Island during storm season (waters are relatively quiet here).

With Russia and Asia across the sea, it's the edge of the Western world; where everything ends and begins.

Signed a contract with a PR and Marketing agency yesterday. Creatives are on board with cover design and interior layout. Editor already walked through a few initial edits this morning. Publisher contract next in line. Video Joe carving up a bit of promo...

Clairvaux Manifesto now has a life of its own...

Basilicas and Vernaculars

2009-05-20T09:04:00.004-06:00

This pic was taken the day after Ash Wednesday, 2008... which was a Thursday ;) Joe and I sat through Angels & Demons last night... What I'll write in response is two separate paragraphs from my upcoming Clairvaux Manifesto.

I wrote this in a Part III journal entry:

Amidst the liturgy of mass, with ashes on my head, I was filled with peace. I was the last one's out of the Basilica that night, escorted by the Swiss Guard. Actually, I think they were just being polite and I was quite clueless, gawking at everything. I was all alone in the largest church in the world with a dozen security escorts. It was nice to walk out the doors with guardians of the church, viewing the darkening square beyond the steps. It was quite an honor to close out Ash Wednesday with a quiet, unrushed, and solitary walk through those big old doors.

I currently have this in the Appendix:

In the coming days, we must carry on with inter-disciplinary conversations about what it means to be left and right brained, calculative and creative, and even masculine and feminine. For example, if science and religion start arguing between “God” and “no-god” the conversation is already stale, mute, and even gelded. From philosophical forms to earthy tones, we must be careful to avoid over-simplified dualism (faith and reason). We must dialogue from within the primal core of what makes us human, and it doesn’t take science or religion to prove that we all grow through healthy interrelation and procreation. Maybe a male theist and female atheist could begin their conversation there, waxing eloquent about what it means to be a lovesick man and woman, an ecopsychological debate gone romantic. They may not have kids together, but they will adopt a whole new vernacular along the way.

Lost in Translation and Transylvania

2009-05-13T13:50:00.007-06:00

Verum videns me longa satis hujuscemodi exspectatione frustratum, ne jam magis nolle, quam non posse viderer, tandem ego quidem quod potui feci: lector judicet, an satisfeci. Quanquam etsi cui forte aut minime placeat, aut non sufficiat; non tamen interest mea, qui tuae pro meo sapere non defui voluntati.
Bernardi Liber ad Milites Templi: De Laude Novae Militae

Having waited thus for quite some time to no purpose, I have now done what I could, lest my inability should be mistaken for unwillingness. It is for the reader to judge the result. If some perhaps find my work unsatisfactory or short of the mark, I shall be nonetheless content, since I have not failed to give you my best.
Bernard's In Praise of the New Knighthood

Today, I've been researching the history and geography of Hospitaller, Templar and Teutonic Knights in various online and book sources. I keep ending up in Transylvania.

Yesterday morning, I faxed some forms and a printout of my Linked In profile, to the nominating committee of a global organization, asking for my name to stand as a potential member of their Canadian board. We'll know by the end of the month about the nominating committee's decisions. Either way, it was quite an honor to be approached.

Morocco and Kashmir

2009-05-12T23:01:00.002-06:00

Just got in from seeing Star Trek with Paul and Jared - an interesting twist on history, full of emotional character nuances and one liners from the original series, plus a romantic twist, red matter, and a black hole or two...

Last night, Joe (here for two days helping Dar and I put pens to napkins on all things related to Clairvaux Manifesto) asked me to play a tune on my guitar which I've been toying with for two years; he'd never heard the tune. As I played, he said it sounded a bit like Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. We listened to Kashmir together and I was impressed by one similarity in particular.

As we discussed it more, I told Joe, that since he and his wife Nancy were first in our home (in between their work stints to Morocco) I played this particular tune thinking a lot about them in Morocco (there is a bit of an Arabic, Jewish, First Nations correlation growing into the music). That's when Joe told me that Zeppelin's Kashmir was written in Morocco. That was fascinating, and reminded me of U2 recording in Fez. Last night, Joe and I started researching other artists' music that has been influenced by Morocco, especially Essaouira.

Researching Kashmir today, I see they're in the middle of elections.

Spring Marché

2009-05-08T09:39:00.005-06:00

This evening Darlene's Global Friends are hosting a Spring Marché at the kids school. Dar sits on the parent teacher council and earlier this year launched Global Friends, bringing our kids school here in the mountains into relationship with a school in Sierra Leone.

From their website regarding tonight's event:

In addition to the family dance, this year’s event will feature an Art Auction and Marketplace. If dancing isn’t your thing, come and enjoy a cup of coffee with friends from your school community, while your kids whoop it up on the dance floor!! In our Marketplace, fresh baking from Canmore’s best cafes will be on offer, as well as handicrafts from Sierra Leone and bucket draws for locally donated goods. Check out the paintings created by each class in the school and place a bid on your favorite!

From their website about Global Friends:

In November, ERS students voted on how the money raised at the two movie nights and the Spring Dance would be used to help our friends in Kabala. Students were presented with the following five options: purchasing art supplies; oxen to farm school gardens; breakfast lunches and snacks for their students; building a library structure; or school fees. They decided that Oxen, School Fees, and Breakfast, Lunches and Snacks would be the best choices. Well done!

Thank-you to everyone who contributed to the BOOK DRIVE for the schools in Kabala. With your help over 500 books were sent in a shipping container already bound for this region. In February we received a heart-warming letter of thanks from the school in Kabala. Thanks to local NGO, Cause Canada, ERS students watched a video of the students in Sierra Leone receiving the books and got a visual tour of their school, at our assembly in March.

What is this initiative all about?:

This year’s educational plan acknowledges the desire to see “Students model the characteristics of active citizenship”. To engage the students in this process, the question:

“How do we make the world a better place to live?”, is being integrated into curriculum, social events and fundraising activities.

Each year students will chose a local or global topic to explore this fundamental question. This year the students are learning about the lives of children in Kabala, Sierra Leone. Each teacher decides age appropriate ways to incorporate this into her classes learning experiences.

Way to go Dar and Friends!

Winter and Spring

2009-05-07T11:18:00.005-06:00

This family video was taken March 27th in Cougar Creek, which flows between Lady MacDonald and Grotto mountains. Whenever I have a few hours, it's my favorite short hike around here. In this video, where the kids are sliding down the rocks and snacking on m&ms, is their favorite summer water hole. Sometime, I'll have to post a video of the waterfall going full blast into the pool.

It's now May, and the rugged peaks around here are still covered in snow; most likely staying that way well into the summer. It's around this time of year I start ascents. Last year, I was climbing Lady Mac after three feet of snow fell in 24 hours. It was a warm day, and I was trudging up the mountain with a friend. The heavy snow was above my knees and often up to my waist. Plodding along, we came across a number of older adventurers who allowed me to carve the path ahead of them. First one into snow that deep has the hardest work. I'm kind of a workhorse that way, love the challenge and the workout.

Through my boots, my feet were getting wet due to the melting slush at ground level. Due to the cardiovascular workout, my body temperature was high, so I thought my feet would be okay. Yet, over the next hour, it was like my wet feet were in a damp freezer. Then, the inevitable happened. Even though I didn't know it at the time, the corner of my big toe was frozen. The way my body let me know - massive cramping up my calf; excruciating pain. I thought it was dehydration. I wasn't going to make the peak. My buddy helped me hobble back down the mountain. After some medication for infection, my toe pained for months and took a full year to recover.

From my coffee shop vantage point (free wireless for two hours a day) I can see the various peaks I've scrambled. From left to right in 360 panorama: Lady Mac; Grotto; Middle Sister; Ha Ling; East Rundle; and Cascade. So many snow-capped mountains to climb and life-filled valleys to explore.

Stone and Light

2009-05-06T22:25:00.003-06:00

"It is in their aspiring arches, where rock rises as if emptied of weight; in the towers which soar like aerial hymns; in the windows, which are crimsoned as with the Lord's blood, or which glow and shine with violet and gold, as if reflecting his glory; it is in the transepts, which extend like the arms of His cross; in the very crypt, which takes its significance from His very tomb."

Richard Storrs: Bernard of Clairvaux (1892) p. 344

I took this pic at the Louvre, into a mirror. Splashy! Civilizations are fascinating... In the above quote, Storrs is commenting on the cathedrals of 12th Century Europe. There's a lot to ponder amidst what gets left behind.

Manifestos and Adventures

2009-05-05T23:25:00.008-06:00

Well, it's been a while... During the off blogging season I wrote "Clairvaux Manifesto: a personal odyssey of prayer and work" - which may or not be a total disaster. I hope not. The book is now in talks with a publisher, creative team, and agency. So at least there's a glimmer of hope. Each one will have it's own contract and price tag. So, now we go about raising money for something I've written and unwritten many times over. Every time I worked on the Manifesto I thought it was going to end up a total waste of time.

Then some curious things started happening. I was editing a paragraph about a First Nations Chief I havn't seen in ten years, then completely out of the blue, he emailed me saying he was overjoyed to find me again after all this time. Another day, I was editing a paragraph about the Lausanne Covenant of 1974, and that same day got an email recommending me to attend the Lausanne Gathering happening in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. Another day, I was editing a paragraph with a historical figure's name in it, and later that same day got an email from someone asking if I'd put my name forward to potentially sit on the board of an organization named after that very historical figure. Another day, I was editing a paragraph which contained a French explorer, and at the same time a friend from Montreal emailed me in French about that very explorer sitting on a certain mountain near Montreal 400 years ago.

A few days ago, on May 1st, our sixteenth wedding anniversary (three years to the day that Dar and I first built an altar of twelve stones in Three Sisters Mountain Village here in Canmore), I registered our first company Clairvaux Ventures Ltd. One little step at a time...

I thought launching a company was an insane idea as well. Then curious things started happening, like a guy sending me all these boxes in the mail full of an incredible computer he built from scratch with a handmade card attached saying he really believes in this endeavor, and the computer is a gift to Clairvaux and investment in me. I didn't put the computer together for days. I just sat there staring at all the boxes like sacred artifacts. Then, people here and there started telling me they were in on this thing, that they'd work for me. Little gifts have come in from here and there to raise our spirits and keep us afloat. A friend in Asia tapped many paragraphs into his iPhone at 1:30 a.m. about ideas around the crazy dream of a Clairvaux Ventures office half way round the world.

I guess I'll start documenting this journey.

To be honest, I'm afraid I'll fail. But, I'm going for it.

With my God, I can scale one wall in order to rebuild another.

Circles

2008-12-10T12:06:00.005-07:00

That is a temperate and righteous love which practices self-denial in order to minister to a brother’s necessity. So our selfish love grows truly social, when it includes our neighbors in its circle.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, Chapter VIII

One day as they were worshiping God—they were also fasting as they waited for guidance—the Holy Spirit spoke: "Take Barnabas and Saul and commission them for the work I have called them to do." So they commissioned them. In that circle of intensity and obedience, of fasting and praying, they laid hands on their heads and sent them off.

Sent off on their new assignment by the Holy Spirit, Barnabas and Saul went down to Seleucia and caught a ship for Cyprus. The first thing they did when they put in at Salamis was preach God's Word in the Jewish meeting places. They had John along to help out as needed.
Acts 13, The Message

How blessed the man you train, God, the woman you instruct in your Word, Providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil, while a jail is being built for the wicked. God will never walk away from his people, never desert his precious people. Rest assured that justice is on its way and every good heart put right.
Psalm 94:12, The Message

I run to you, God; I run for dear life. Don't let me down! Take me seriously this time! Get down on my level and listen, and please—no procrastination! Your granite cave a hiding place, your high cliff aerie a place of safety. You're my cave to hide in, my cliff to climb. Be my safe leader, be my true mountain guide.
Psalm 31, The Message

I just read this on Brian Heasley's blog:

On further viewing, we discovered that this [farm] is powered by solar energy, has 3 wells that collect rainwater to supply the living and irrigation needs of the farm, contains a bread oven, open fireplace and could have a wood burner fuelled by the plentiful woodland around it.

As we got out of our car for the first viewing, I said to Tracy, Bruce and Helen, 'all we need now is for the agent to say there's a little chapel on the premises...' As we were about to leave, the agent said 'oh, and there is a little chapel - la capellita - just over on the hill there....'!

Two years ago, we visited Honduras twice, regarding such things. Last year. we visited Malta twice, regarding such things. Last year, we also visited here in France, regarding such things. In the future, we will also visit here in France, regarding such things.

Presently, I am writing a book regarding such things....

3000 years ago, under the rule of David and Solomon, Israel was at it's Zenith. 2000 years ago, under the rule of Caesar and the birth of Jesus, Rome was at it's Zenith. 1000 years ago, after Charlemagne and the Kingdom of Aragon, Muslim Spain was at it's Zenith.

We can learn a lot from history...

Silhouettes and Shadows

2008-12-09T06:00:00.003-07:00

The intellectual puzzles are found in the fringes of prayer; prayer at its center is as simple and as profound as friendship. The inevitable effect of this sort of communion is that God becomes real. Only to one who prays can God make himself vivid.... Nothing is real to us except those things with which we habitually deal.

People say that they do not pray because to them God is not real, but a truer statement generally would be that God is not real because they do not pray.
Harry Emerson Fosdick - The Meaning of Prayer

I appreciate this dialogue in "Kingdom of Heaven":

Hospitaler: So, how find you Jerusalem?

Balian: God does not speak to me, not even on the hill where Christ died. I am outside God's grace.

Hospitaler: I have not heard that.

Balian: At any rate, it seems I have lost my religion.

Hospitaler: I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I've seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God.

Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves.

And goodness, what God desires, is here (points to head) and here (points to heart).

And what you decide to do everyday you will be a good man... or not.
___________________________

Balian (to Sibylla after the death of her brother the king and the surrender of Jerusalem): Your brothers kingdom was here (points to head) and here (points to heart). That kingdom can never be surrendered.

Sibylla: What should I do? I am still the queen.

Balian: Decide not to be a queen, and I will come to you.

With unveiled faces we cast down our crowns. Our King expects humility. We are learning to be like Him. He picks us up off our knees and faces and dusts us off and puts us on display before Him. His hands are on our shoulders and a smile is on His face. He is showing all those in His presence His love for and full support of His children. Then He sets us loose to go before Him into the places He is about to be going.

Running little silhouettes before a blasting furnace of light.

What does it means to have the glory of the Lord as our rear guard (Isaiah 52:12, 58:8) - to be back lit by the Lamb? In Revelation, John saw that the city of God did not need any Sun or Moon, because the glory of God was its light and the Lamb was its lamp (Revelation 21:23). And in synonymous parallelism, Psalm 119:105 tells us that the Word is both lamp and light.... everywhere we go the ground is being lit and leveled by that tangible powerful Light.

Those who have the call and faith to stand out front will be back lit by Christ himself. Stand still and watch what He is about to do. It's spine tingling when He is just over our shoulder. Nobody really cares where our meager shadows fall, as if our shadows influence anything! The closer He draws to us the less our shadow. May we not be noticed at all because all those with whom we have to do will be fixed on the life giving Light of the World, on Christ alone who is behind us personally and before us in all His glistening splendor.

Many kingdom proclaimers fail at the moment of introduction: where they must end and He would like to begin, taking the lesson from John the Baptist that He must increase and we must decrease. He is looking for those who will stand before the people in real time and say, "So, Lord Jesus, what are you up to right now? What would you have with us right now? Come be yourself among us our Lord and our God. We wait here for you. We're not going anywhere without you."

He is the One we are welcoming into this space, anticipating His approaching with our simple faith. The stronger and more intense His light, the less anyone will see of anyone other than Him. Stop looking around at everyone else and anticipate the One coming at the speed of Light... like a supernova blasting through clean windows. Do you see that little pin of light on the horizon?

Do you have any idea He's coming straight for you!?

Our scars are just as much silhouettes of his healing touch as the law was a shadow of His first coming (Hebrews 10:1). Listen to His voice, "You've heard it said... Well let me now tell you how it is and how it's going to be from now on!"

And once He deposits those lightning seeds into the fertile soil of our hearts and passes by on His way to be among other saints in other places, our eyes will need time to readjust, and it's then that we will look up and truly see each other... and we will see in each face the glory of our King, and we will love each other as He loves us.

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.

So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him."

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.
Hebrews 10:32-39

Miracle Maker

2008-12-08T11:29:00.010-07:00

Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem.

Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years.

When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?"

The sick man said, "Sir, when the water is stirred, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in."

Jesus said, "Get up, take your bedroll, start walking." The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.
John 5

The crucified God must be the tuning fork of all our words.
The resurrected God might have a few things to say for Himself.

A year ago, I was in a weekend prayer meeting with three friends. I was taken back to the cross. The scent of wine filled the room. I had a vision. I was standing at the broken, pierced and bloody feet of Jesus while he was nailed half-standing there upon that vertical altar suspended between heaven and earth. The resurrected Jesus was standing next to me, to my right, at the foot of his own cross. The present Jesus was taking me back to the event of his own crucifixion and showing me something of Himself there. My eyes were inches away from his pulverized feet. It was a deep moment. I wept and quaked. He was reminding me of his person, at that broken place and time and he won't ever let me forget to proclaim this part of Him. How much more beautiful are the feet of Christ?

All of creation is coming through the body and blood of Jesus Christ into the new creation or will forever be lost as "nothing" - totally void of meaning. For the saints, following after Jesus Christ, with His Holy Spirit flowing through us and between us, everywhere we walk and everything we see, smell, taste, touch, feel, say, and know... we are all witnesses of the eternal God, who was once crucified and is now making all things new.

What was it like for Jesus to walk barefoot after his resurrection?
What was it like for him to not be touched by his friends?

The bodily incarnation of God in Jesus Christ teaches us that God takes being physically present seriously. Touch is important. God did not come to us in a human body just to deal with the sin of the world.

God showed up in human form, and still remains in human form, because it was and is God's intention to walk and talk freely amidst God's people growing into God's new creation. God is really and presently making things new and we are welcomed into that process of redemption and reconciliation of all things into Christ Jesus. His hands and feet are busy and he's employing ours in the process.

Every time we pray for the aborted, broken and marginalized people of the earth, we bring meaning to their thirst for life and dignity. We join in their suffering. We lift a bit of water to their lips and allow them the dignity of living and dying in the arms and prayers of a loving friend, as we would desire for ourselves as well. True witnesses of the kingdom of God never know anything about anyone else from a safe distance.

Authentic prayer narrows the gap between us considerably.

The more we pray the less meaningless our actions become.

A baby being born isn't something out of nothing. She's a whole lot of living being coming out from within another beautiful living being who may be in love with another living being who helped her co-create this lovely little being. All three beings are now filling this holy place with all their new life. There is life in this blood. And when it's time for the little one to arrive no one can put off her birth, not even her mother. Pain one moment is hopefully joy the next. There is something so complete, finished and irreversible about new life! No one can resist the time of fulfillment. It's finished. We can't go back to receiving life through our navels.

When a seed germinates or a child is conceived there is something new and beautiful growing into a very personal time and space - nine months of becoming within a warm quiet place - a thousand years of becoming a cedar giant - a few years of becoming known as the Messiah in what appeared to be a spiritual leadership vacuum.

When someone is miraculously healed, is it more that something happened to them "out" of nothing, or that God's holy presence fully embodied in Christ entered and deposited life "into" the person needing healing?

Revival (life into no life) has always been about the presence of God amidst God's people - the creator and completer, the witness at the beginning and end of life, who is present amidst and throughout the entire process of the masterpiece coming through.

Some preach sin into a substance, a "thing" to be purged out of a body for the sake of a soul. We don't have a body, we are a body. We don’t have a soul, we are souls. Sin is not a "thing" within an isolated individual. Sin is the empty hypnotic gap, the "distance between" the three divine persons of heaven and the self-mesmerizing isolated individual's distrust of it's Creator. That individual was originally created to be a person hungry for God's presence and companionship! It was God's original intent to make friends out of us.

Sin attempts to destroy God's original intent.
Sinners burn garbage rather than incense.

Maybe an "individual" is an isolated self and a "person" is only given identity and value in God’s new humanity. Maybe sin is nothing (no substance no value) and the fear of that very nothing (lack of substance lack of value). There is nothing worse than solitary confinement over a long period of time. Maybe there are those who think they are people and are not. Maybe there are those who think they are managing the kingdom of God and they are "nothing" but lonely isolated individuals.

Sin thrives on confusion and manipulation which are the manifestations of stubborn rebellion and pride. Sin is the peace breaker, sucking at life and reaping death like some relationship dementor: a passive aggressive, self-induced, destructively delusional, poisonously manipulative, dangerously independent “nothing” where lonely isolated individuals have no-time and no-space for God or anyone else.

Bottom line: Sin is non-intimate with and non-proximate to God? God’s first question in Genesis: “Where are you?” Planet is the Greek word for “wanderer”. The spiritual inertia of the wanderer minus the glorious gravitational pull of God's holiness and peace equals nothing.

If availability and vulnerability don’t
lead into accountability and authenticity
individuals end up in shallow co-dependent affairs.

If willingness and openness don't
lead into holiness and peace
people will die.

Psalm 94:8-15
Well, think again, you idiots, fools—how long before you get smart?
Do you think Ear-Maker doesn't hear, Eye-Shaper doesn't see?
Do you think the trainer of nations doesn't correct,
the teacher of Adam doesn't know?
God knows, all right— knows your stupidity,
sees your shallowness.

How blessed the man you train, God,
the woman you instruct in your Word,
Providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil,
while a jail is being built for the wicked.

God will never walk away from his people,
never desert his precious people.
Rest assured that justice is on its way
and every good heart put right.

World AIDS Day

2008-12-01T09:56:00.009-07:00

(RED)
DATA
ONE
Make Poverty History

To those waging war, listen to Isaiah,

"So God will start over with the simple basics and address them in baby talk, one syllable at a time— "Da, da, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's a good little girl, that's a good little boy." And like toddlers, they will get up and fall down, get bruised and confused and lost. Now listen to God's Message, you scoffers, you who rule this people in Jerusalem. You say, "We've taken out good life insurance. We've hedged all our bets, covered all our bases. No disaster can touch us. We've thought of everything. We're advised by the experts. We're set."

But the Master, God, has something to say to this: "Watch closely. I'm laying a foundation in Zion, a solid granite foundation, squared and true. And this is the meaning of the stone: a trusting life won't topple. I'll make justice the measuring stick and righteousness the plumb line for the building. A hailstorm will knock down the shantytown of lies, and a flash flood will wash out the rubble. Then you'll see that your precious life insurance policy wasn't worth the paper it was written on."
Isaiah 28

To those waging peace, listen to Jesus,

"This, in a nutshell, is that will: that everything handed over to me by the Father be completed—not a single detail missed—and at the wrap-up of time I have everything and everyone put together, upright and whole. This is what my Father wants: that anyone who sees the Son and trusts who he is and what he does and then aligns with him will enter real life, eternal life. My part is to put them on their feet alive and whole at the completion of time."
John 6

Healing and Proximity

2008-11-30T20:09:00.003-07:00

In Mark 8:22-26 Jesus had a conversation with a blind man in Bethsaida about the man's blepo. It is interesting how Jesus healed the man. Jesus reached out and took the man's hand; led him out of the village; spit on his eyes; placed his hands on him again before asking, "Do you see anything?" Jesus took him by the hand and intentionally led him out of town, where his healing took place. Anywhere and anytime during that personal encounter Jesus could have fully healed the man. In this healing story, there is something about the man's proximity to town which seems to matter.

Jesus told him to go home, but not into the village. Why? Bethsaida was an interesting place. Philip, Andrew and Peter were from that town (Jn.1:44). Jesus had strong words of rebuke for that town (Mt.11:21). What is it about geography that can keep people under a dark cloud? Mark seems to have a thing for geography, families and houses. Chapter six begins with Jesus confessing a prophet isn't welcome in his home town, among his relatives, or even in his own house!? In the next chapter, Jesus is far away in Tyre hiding out in someone else's house.

Back to Bethsaida. Bethsaida was just north of the Gerasenes. Earlier in Mark 5 Jesus healed a man living in tombs and possessed with demons naming themselves, "Legion". Legion reminds the reader of mighty Roman armies passing through that region, along those well-built roads. Possibly, the people of the area made a lot of money (a killing) selling pigs to all those Roman soldiers... blood money! Jews and pigs never really got along. In the remote shadows of the area lived a creature/man roaming among the tombs under the control of warrior demons.

Not only did the Legion know who Jesus was, they ran and submitted to him, spirits to Spirit. Jesus had an interesting conversation with them, healed the man of their presence, and subsequently crippled the economic stability of the entire region by giving permission for the Legion to enter into a large herd of 2000 pigs (maybe a demon a pig) who ran demon possessed down a steep embankment to be drowned in the lake - a collision of metaphors.

And the most incredible part of the whole story is that the people of the region who had witnessed and heard of the miracle of a healed man gathered around Jesus and pleaded with him to leave their region - their territory - their money-making scheme. They could not have cared less about the man who was healed. There is no record of Jesus' response to them. Jesus just got in a boat with his friends and prepared to leave the region!

The man who was healed begged to go with Jesus. Jesus didn't let him! Rather, the man was sent to tell his family what had happened. He not only went to tell his family, he went into the Decapolis (ten cities) and told everyone who would listen what Jesus had just done for him.

These two men were healed outside of their villages. Two regions were seemingly judged in the midst of the healings. Also, Jesus sent both men home (oikos) to their families. In one way, Jesus was tearing social structures apart. Deep in the tearing the original social structure was being restored - family.

"Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don't drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need firsthand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it. I hope the test won't show that we have failed. But if it comes to that, we'd rather the test showed our failure than yours. We're rooting for the truth to win out in you. We couldn't possibly do otherwise.

We don't just put up with our limitations; we celebrate them, and then go on to celebrate every strength, every triumph of the truth in you. We pray hard that it will all come together in your lives.

I'm writing this to you now so that when I come I won't have to say another word on the subject. The authority the Master gave me is for putting people together, not taking them apart. I want to get on with it, and not have to spend time on reprimands.

And that's about it, friends. Be cheerful. Keep things in good repair. Keep your spirits up. Think in harmony. Be agreeable. Do all that, and the God of love and peace will be with you for sure. Greet one another with a holy embrace. All the brothers and sisters here say hello."
2 Corinthians 13:9-11 (The Message)

Water, Words and Wielding

2008-11-18T14:15:00.023-07:00

The Christians still stand up and assert their faith, or else the faith of their fathers, and already God's revelation has become for them a world of ghosts full of worthy truths and high moral laws, with which they themselves basically no longer know how to begin, with which they therefore only dare bother the world in a half-hearted way, wearily stifling their own yawns.
Karl Barth in 1948

Reading Nietzsche and Orr I have been soberly impressed with the strength of the forces in the human mind…. I have just now prayed for God’s new revelation – this generation’s real laying hold of the Old Revelation. The old is become so undefined, so “accepted,” so followed in blindness, that when the truth of it is brought to light, it shall be a new revelation.

I have prayed for new men, fiery, reckless men, possessed of uncontrollably youthful passion – these lit by the Spirit of God. I have prayed for new miracles. Explaining old miracles will not do. If God is to be known as the God who does wonders in heaven and on earth, then God must produce for this generation.
Jim Elliot in 1949

Our home is surrounded on three sides by quiet waters. Giant pines and aspens all around. Just now, I'm looking at it all from here. For a couple of months now, just a few hundred feet from our home, I've noticed a Bible laying underwater in the stream. Today I went in after it, picked it up, noticed it had been torn in half (one half missing) and my eyes fell on Micah 4:1, "In the last days the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and peoples will stream to it."

Well there I was standing in a stream and I happen to live in Canmore, which literally means Big Head or Chief. But, this verse starts with, "In the last days..." When I picked up this wet Bible, Micah 4:1 was not giving me some big head about Canmore or the stream I was standing in. I will not be so quick to wield the Word of God for my profit.

All power is in Christ. A big reason why so many attempt to preach the power of the cross and fail miserably is precisely because they attempt to wield the power of the cross rather than submit to the Conqueror of it. The greatest mistake followers of Christ can make is to mistake themselves for Christ. All power is in Christ. The one who hears and understands will preach the cross of Jesus in the powerful presence of the resurrected Christ himself.

Just a few moments ago (after placing the wet Bible out to dry), in a random odd ball way, I stumbled across a four year old blog entry of a musician I've only met once. Here's what he wrote four years ago,

..we were supposed to have our sound check... but instead Kirk Bartha wanted us to form a circle and pray with him...it was actually pretty powerful... as we were up on the stage and that was were we felt the Holy Spirit starting to descend into the room... and saying that He will shake the building and bring down all the flesh of the people and break them down... then that got to me... as i started crying as I was touched by the Holy Spirit... we just ended up praying through the whole sound check... right before we started... we had another team prayer this time...lead by _____.. and God spoke through him again... this time leaving the whole team (except for _____) bawling as the Spirit once again came to us (Hos 6:1)... the worship was actually AMAZING and so was the altar call... Kirk had us do a chant which practically did shake the whole building! You could so feel the presence of God in the room. God really played through us...

So here's how that unfolded. There were hundreds of students about to descend on a venue. I was about to preach. I invited three students to pray through the entire venue with me. I sent them out for 15 minutes to pray around the place asking God, "So what's going on in here, Lord?" We came together into a little circle and they each had a negative word.. three bad things. I sent them out for 15 minutes again to hear from God about what would overcome those three nasty things. We got back in our little circle and each of them had a different passage of scripture and three distinct (yet interdependent) ideas about what God was about to do that night.

One of the three said, "I think God wants to shake this place tonight. He's going to shake the very foundations of the building." Just then, two teenage girls wandered into the venue and sat on the sound stage. Our little circle just paused there for a moment. One of the girls turned to the other and said, "Let's get out of here, I'm shaking!" And they ran out.

Then the band came in to do their sound check for their evening set. I approached the band members and asked them if we might pray for them. The leader of the band said they were in need of prayer and openly and humbly named the exact same three ugly things the recon unit of three had heard just a half hour before.

My three young friends were grinning from ear to ear. They were beginning to understand the magnitude of this little adventure. Immediately all three of them opened their Bibles and started reading out the passages of scripture they were given and started praying over the band members.

A bit later, when the venue was full of students... It was electric. The place was packed full of life and freshly cleaned in prayer. I didn't feel the need to preach. I just got up and read a portion of scripture and then asked a section of them to yell JESUS, another section to yell HOLY HOLY HOLY and another section to yell HALLELUJAH. We practiced it three times. Then I set them lose to do it all on their own... And you know what those hundreds of kids did. They jumped to their feet and roared. They pounded their seats with their fists and the floor with their feet. It sounded like a train was going through us.

I don't care what I said next, it doesn't really matter. I just got them ready for the approaching Spirit of God, and then everything got decentralized and they all seemed to get humble and low to the ground. People were hitting the floor, falling on their faces, collapsing into little groups, furnaces of prayer... and then out of the blue, a big guy with a movie camera showed up and started filming everyone around the place, filming prayers and tears and explosions of worship. I asked the team leading the whole thing who that guy was and none of them had a clue. He was documenting a move of the Holy Spirit.

All power is in Christ. He is the embodied Word of heaven. It's about His presence amidst His people at the time of His choosing. If I am not waiting for Him I'm not sure what else I'm doing! I'd much rather follow His lead.

Ignorantia, Schlosskirche, 400 years and November

2008-11-12T08:43:00.016-07:00

Codex Cusanus 218 De Docta Ignorantia

We will not "forget" so as to be able to rejoice; we will rejoice and therefore let those memories slip out of our minds! The reason for our non-remembrance of wrongs will be the same as its cause: Our minds will be rapt in the goodness of God and in the goodness of God's new world, and the memories of wrongs will wither away like plants without water.
Miroslav Volf: The End of Memory

Last week I intentionally burned a dozen books. Over the last two years, for various reasons, I was studying esoteric gnosticism and it's impact on European and North American history. It wasn't all I was studying. It was just one study desk amidst a dozen others littering my bookshelves and floating around in my head. I was following certain nudges and hunches of history while uncovering the fallacies of so much kindergarten spirituality. I was allowed to explore to a point, and there were lines I did not cross.

As I tore books apart, ripping out one chapter after the other after the other and as the fireplace in my office grew hotter and hotter and hotter and my eyes fell on this and that word, image and so called secret knowledge, I prayed for certain people in certain circles surrounded by such empty and meaningless doctrine.

I was praying for the Church.

When did we stop allowing ourselves to be willingly ignorant? Where are all the reverent agnostics willing not to know? Where are those who walk the via negativa - the negative way - not confessing what God is not?

Before Moses, God had been silent for 400 years! Before those shepherds were blitzed by angel armies, God had been silent for 400 years! 400 years into church history, Patrick and Augustine were exploring some fresh coordinates. 400 years later the Book of Kells was taking shape on the island of Iona.

400 years after Bernard of Clairvaux (800+ years ago) helped the Cistercians and Templars write their rules, fight various heresies and schisms while preaching the second crusade, Martin Luther nailed some fresh coordinates into the Western Church.

From Wikipedia,

In 1858, at the order of Frederick William IV of Prussia, commemorative bronze doors were mounted where the original wooden ones had been located. On the doors the 95 Theses appear in their original Latin form. The doors themselves weigh 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg).

On November 10, 1858, exactly 375 years after the day of birth of Martin Luther, the new doors were commemorated at a formal ceremony.

400 years after Luther nailed his convictions to the fortified institution of the Schlosskirche castle church (1517), WWI was demolishing Europe. Easter Monday 1917, the young men of my nation were scattered across the swampy dregs of the thin red line of little Vimy, France. There were 25, 000 Canadian casualties that one day, a quarter of whom would never come home.

On November 10, 1917, the second battle over little Passchendaele concluded, counting 4 000 more Canadian dead.

God may at times leave the wicked to their own agendas, for a set time. But, amidst those godless agendas and times between times, God will fill and move a person like Abraham or Moses or Stephen any way God chooses, according to God's set purpose and foreknowledge:

Stephen replied, "Friends, fathers, and brothers, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was still in Mesopotamia, before the move to Haran, and told him, 'Leave your country and family and go to the land I'll show you.'" So he left the country of the Chaldees and moved to Haran. After the death of his father, he immigrated to this country where you now live, but God gave him nothing, not so much as a foothold. He did promise to give the country to him and his son later on, even though Abraham had no son at the time. God let him know that his offspring would move to an alien country where they would be enslaved and brutalized for four hundred years. 'But,' God said, 'I will step in and take care of those slaveholders and bring my people out so they can worship me in this place.'

Hoping the Best for America Today

2008-11-06T09:34:00.005-07:00

I am not saying that we should be without affection, and that with an arid heart we move only our hands to work. Among the many great and grievous evils that the apostle ascribes to men I have read this one is reckoned: to be without affection...

How long shall we smell and not taste, gazing toward the fatherland and not taking possession, sighing for it and saluting from afar?
Bernard of Clairvaux, early 12th Century

Watching as a Canadian, it seemed to me that Barack Obama's President Elect speech reintroduced the American people to their good hearts. As I found myself saying "Yes, we can!" I heard a whole nation resurfacing from beneath a decade of rubble which divided nations and broke the bank.

Barack Obama reminds me again, that the great orators of history are remembered more than the policies and battles which engulfed their world. Barack Obama is a tuning fork and a drum for America, and today, for me. I appreciate the power of an authentic word spoken at just the right time in history.

And any good American will tell you that it's about the whole people (we the people), not just Obama. That they are all in line behind him and know how to follow a good leader into a bright hopeful future, no matter what the obstacles ahead.

Today, I know what I'm praying when I say, "God, bless America."

U.S.A., it's time to resurface, dust yourself off and walk in a good way... or not.

I'll conclude with a bit more of my Bernard of Clairvaux reading from this morning, "But there is one thing you must attend to with total vigilance: that you always open the windows and lattices of your confessions. Through them his kindly gaze may penetrate to your inward life, because his discerning is your learning."

Barack Obama

2008-11-05T08:29:00.009-07:00

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when they help us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn to grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
Martin Luther King Jr.: The Trumpet of Conscience broadcast on CBC, Dec. 1967

We all might learn a lesson from Cyrus, King of Persia (and Babylon), who coincidentally happened to be the chosen shepherd and servant of Israel's God. How could the ancient King of Baghdad be YHWH's servant? Is it so hard to conceptualize a post-everything Democrat being a good shepherd? Throughout this election process, I was perplexed by all the "God of our nation" rhetoric streaming from various "right-church" conduits.

I understand a bit more now, why Billy Graham (90 years old in two days), during one of his last public preaching appearances in New York City, said of Bill and Hillary Clinton, whom he had sitting with him on the platform, "They're a great couple. ... He should be an evangelist because he has all the gifts and he could leave his wife to run the country." It was not about endorsing a presidential candidate. It was about being a wise old spiritual friend on the journey and all things being possible with God. Wise leaders can be at peace in the corridors of power because they truly believe the future of Kings and Queens and nations rests in the will of God alone.

Joseph, Daniel and Esther are just three Old Testament examples of hidden, yet chosen, geopolitical leaders handpicked by God for such times. And the reason I pick those three examples is that they honored their God, their callings and their captor Kings. And there are so many examples of martyrs, radicals and saints who have honored God and all others under the regimes of blood thirsty tyrants. In God's good time, God again moves good people toward higher laws.

Last night, seeing Oprah Winfrey and Rev. Jesse Jackson in tears while Barack Obama drew out the strength of a whole people, I understood again, that God's love moves freely amidst such leaders, peoples and Presidents.

It's the end of the world as we know it; and I feel fine.

Repugnant King

2008-11-04T16:59:00.005-07:00

Last year at this time, while praying the Royal Mile of Edinburgh something inside me said I'd find an arrow at Edinburgh Castle. And there I found and purchased this insignia of the Reconnaissance Corps.

From Glyn Evans' "Daily With the King":

"I see now why God becomes so heated when His people get chummy with the world or idols or with the mammon of unrighteousness. To accept them is to reject Him. Friendship by its very nature denies a universal, all-inclusive embrace. Friendship is selective. It thrives on exclusive choices...

Jesus Christ is constantly looking for friends. When He called Judas "friend" in the moment of his betrayal, He was revealing an intimate yearning... Judas was a friend by invitation only. I must go beyond... The honour of being His friend is to talk to Him "face to face" in sublime intimacy (Ex. 33:11)."

Leaders are people of strong, sometimes hidden, friendships.

There have been a lot of awful decisions made by a lot of bad leaders spurring post-modern Luddites to burn any and every super-structural spinning wheel. There's nothing worse than following a misguided leader into meaningless battles to defend some drawn in the sand "bottom line". There's also nothing worse than embracing structural and organizational anarchy with no plan of safety for the future.

The visions and promises of every leader are often tested amidst the hollow ideals and misaligned expectations of others. The visions and promises of every leader are often most protected by the leaders closest friends... and it's always in the leader's best interest to be a friend of God.

David was an anointed leader behind enemy lines who honored every friendship, waiting patiently for deliverance. Imagine the young man who had cut off the head of a Philistine giant in the name of the Lord, who eventually spent years in caves hiding from the headhunter Israelite King he delivered from that now headless giant, only to spend more than a year living openly and deeply with the head of those very Philistines. David sat at the table of king Ackish who "...came to trust David completely. He thought, 'He's made himself so repugnant to his people that he'll be in my camp forever.'"

Fascinating! How does a godly King make himself so repugnant to his own people that his own enemies trust him? And when and how does that same friendly King return to his own people?

II Samuel 22

David prayed to God the words of this song after God saved him from all his enemies and from Saul.

God is bedrock under my feet, the castle in which I live, my rescuing knight. My God—the high crag where I run for dear life, hiding behind the boulders, safe in the granite hideout; My mountaintop refuge, he saves me from ruthless men.

Circle of Quiet

2008-11-04T07:48:00.001-07:00

How blessed the man you train, God,
the woman you instruct in your Word,
providing a circle of quiet
within the clamor of evil;
Psalm 94:12

Justin Trudeau elected in Quebec

2008-10-15T07:35:00.005-06:00

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
Albert Camus

If at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.
Albert Einstein

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.
Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Once upon a time they had gone to war to win for their king another kingdom to which he claimed to be the rightful heir by virtue of an old tie by marriage.
Thomas More

The ways of God are those most simple and uniform: for he chooses rules that least restrict one another. They are also the most productive in proportion to the simplicity of ways and means.
Leibniz

Trudeau lived out his inward story before the media's eyes and ears. Part of his charisma surely came in his ability to reinvent himself, and then open himself to where the reinventions might lead. He became a soul who lived on the screens of our projections.
B.W. Powe

[A church] would be an impostor if it stayed forever in the catacombs. Similarly, in politics, you cannot stay below ground too long.
Pierre Trudeau

Ecclesiastes reminds us there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. Wittgenstein reminds us that where and what one can't speak, one must remain silent. Absurd literally means the inability to hear, speechless, totally out of tune and appearing ridiculous.

But, I would also translate absurd another way. In many cases, the absurd is actually the tuning fork. Sometimes the idea is so far off the charts, such a high frequency or crystal clear tone that no one can hear it. Something can be so clear, direct, simple and pure - that everyone misses it. And if they did see or hear it they would label it other than them, outside them, exiled from their thoughts.

Declaring the absurd is like standing on an East West railroad line pointing one's arms out perpendicular to the ties and iron declaring the rails have to go this way now... and sooner the better. That is absurd. It's not absurd if people actually realize the declaration is correct. Yet, it remains absurd if the people who've heard the declaration do nothing. But it may actually be the very best thing to do... and yet may remain an absurd unheard idea. It can't be heard. It is intolerable. It makes no sense. It is irrational, beyond the status-quo or threshold of common reasonable sense.

Keep an eye on Justin Trudeau.

RESPONSIBILITY

2008-09-03T20:37:00.007-06:00

There's this and then there's that!?

This morning, I sipped coffee with my buddy on main street Banff. I watched Paul tap into his iPhone the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas which is being held in Banff all this week. We scrolled through articles and strolled main street ending up on a grassy knoll in a beautiful gardens. We decided to go looking for the Conference and drove by the Banff Springs Hotel. And there were soldiers and black sedans and policy makers and high security and ear pieces and uniformed suits everywhere. As lunch was being served to hundreds of soldiers and delegates from North, Central and South American nations, Paul and I walked freely through their halls. I felt at home. I wanted to help. As if I have a clue what they're up to!?

It was earlier this summer I stood there in Banff Springs Hotel with my elite Maltese soldier friend and asked him, "If we held a conference for world leaders here at the hotel should we host them during summer or winter?" He smiled, "Summer!" I agreed.

Just now, I remember that he and I and our wives danced with our children and our friends in the very halls the Defense Ministers are wading through all this week. And Dar and I would love to host a lavish ball one day in the ballroom - to celebrate our 20th anniversary, Lord willing we are here five years from now, and we can personally afford to host the party.

Until then, there's a lot of dreams to test and a lot of life to live. Where our treasure is, there our hearts will also be!

Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull to write such a story as I should wish to write.... I will write when I get ready. How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!

I saw you smile when I spoke about the possibility of my being too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter prove of value to some among you.

When one of us, who has been led by native vanity and senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed of talent, arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind.

All our failures, our shortcomings, our strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence - with which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere of being.
Oliver Wendell Holmes - The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

What's God going to say to my questions? I'm braced for the worst. I'll climb to the lookout tower and scan the horizon. I'll wait to see what God says, how he'll answer my complaint. Full of Self, but Soul-Empty.

And then God answered: "Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what's coming. It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time.

Look at that man, bloated by self-importance — full of himself but soul-empty. But the person in right standing before God through loyal and steady believing is fully alive, really alive.

Note well: Money deceives."
Habakkuk 2

Dealing with Dunamis

2008-08-22T15:54:00.017-06:00

Watching this video I ponder Uriah the Hittite, Jonah son of Amittai of Gathhepher and a "motivational speaker" from Canada whose "fire" isn't so "fresh" these days.

18 years ago, three buddies and I blew up a VW Bug with a pipe bomb and garbage bags full of oxyacetylene gas. I was cinematographer.

BAM! Raining whale blubber remind me of raining frogs in Magnolia.

Eclipse and Alignment of 8

2008-08-01T08:38:00.002-06:00

NASA picture of the solar eclipse just completed:

Jan. 8th, 2008 I drew this line from Tokyo to Kilimanjaro, over Xi'an, Lhasa, and Everest:

During the last quarter of 2007, because some close friends were moving to China in July '08, I began studying a few places I wanted to travel to in and around China. I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be fun to land in Hong Kong and visit my friends, see their new homes and offices, then we could take the train together from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet." It was just an idea and I began researching.

It was in my research of the Chinese train lines etc. that I first came across the city of Xi'an, the first Emporers city and the resting place of his Terracotta Army. So I marked Xi'an with a pin in early December 2007. Then a friend emailed me about the August 1, 2008 solar eclipse. I checked with NASA maps of the eclipse... and noticed that the path of the eclipse was passing right over the Terracotta Army... at sunset in China (under an hour ago here).

So, all this to say... that for the last eight months I have been thinking a lot about this eclipse (and past ones) in China. I wanted to be there today. I wanted to witness this eclipse while standing over that Terracotta army. I was driving into the office this morning during the whole eclipse. It was a bright beaming Sun into the Jeep... but my heart was in China the whole drive.

What I find ironic today is that the same day as this solar eclipse over a dead emporer and his terracotta army this movie would be released today, "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer"... I read recently that the ancient Chinese believed a solar eclipse was a dragon trying to eat the Sun. The plot of the movie from Wikipedia:

Explorer Rick O'Connell, his wife Evelyn and brother-in-law Jonathan are now retired. But with their son Alex, they must stop the resurrected tyrannical Han, the Dragon Emperor, a mummy awoken from a 2,000-year-old curse, and whose army was found by 18-year old Alex. The Emperor now wishes to rebuild his empire, and threatens to plunge the world into his merciless, unending service with his Terracotta Army.

The O'Connel family's hope now lies with a mysterious century old sorceress Zijuan, who has an old rivalry with the Emperor, for two thousand years ago the Emperor summoned her to his court, for she possesses the secrets of immortality. Instead of blessing him though, she cursed him, sending him and his army into a 'permanent' suspended animation.

She now is back to help the family, by raising up a smaller, undead army made of the Dragon Emperor's enemies, who were buried under the Great Wall of China.

From the first news article I read in the office this morning:

Darkness fell over the last outpost of the Great Wall of China on Friday, where a rare total solar eclipse ended its journey across the earth, delighting skywatchers one week before the Olympics open in Beijing.

So the Chinese consider 8 a lucky number. An eclipse on 01.08.08 and the olympics launch 08.08.08. I'm not a numerologist or an astrologer but I'll jump in just this once (for fun). On August 28, 2007 or 28.08.07 I turned 37 years old while taking pictures of a full lunar eclipse (on my birthday)... It was 3 am till 6 am... there I was all alone with God on top of Scott Lake Hill, on the border of the Stoney Indian Reserve, the highest point on the TransCanada Highway. There I was in the still dark night taking pictures above the fog of a lunar eclipse... It was like God's birthday present to me... Well here we are nearly a year later... I'll be 38 years old on 28.08.08.

Lots of 8's to go around... and I now have China fully in my sights.

CAST YOUR bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, yes, even [divide it] to eight, for you know not what evil may come upon the earth. If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth; and if a tree falls toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.
Ecclesiastes 11:1-3 (Amplified Bible)

Coldplay - Violet Hill

2008-07-31T10:10:00.006-06:00

Why does Chris Martin holds a magnifying glass to his mouth in this video? There are no printed lyrics inside my copy of Viva La Vida!? You have to listen and watch. There is more to a word than a word... and words can change and morph and mean more or less.

A typical lyrics website will spit out the words of Violet Hill:

Was a long and dark December from the rooftops I remember there was snow white snow. Clearly I remember from the windows they were watching while we froze down below. When the future's architectured by a carnival of idiots on show you'd better lie low. If you love me won't you let me know?
Was a long and dark December when the banks became cathedrals and the fog became God. Priests clutched onto bibles hollowed out to fit their rifles and the cross was held aloft. Bury me in honor when I'm dead and hit the ground. A love back home unfolds. If you love me won't you let me know?
I don't want to be a soldier who the captain of some sinking ship would stow, far below. So if you love me Why'd you let me go?
I took my love down to Violet Hill. There we sat in snow. All that time she was silent still. So if you love me won't you let me know? If you love me, won't you let me know?

When I first heard this tune (and when I look at this album through historical lenses) I wonder if Chris may be singing, "Bury me in armour" not "Bury me in honor" - But hey, that's the double meaning anyway isn't it!? Or is it!? I could just be hearing it through my own filters... thus the art of one amidst the heart and soul of another.

The historical narrative and revolutionary French motif of Viva La Vida speaks deeply to me these days in light of my last two years of studying: England; France; Italy; Cistercians; Templars; Hospitallers (Knights of Malta, Knights of St. John);Teutonic Knights; Napoleonic Wars; and Malta.

Interesting that the video for Violet Hill was shot in Sicily, due north of Malta in the Med. Also interesting that my friend from Malta who just spent three weeks with us, loved this tune. Also interesting that my Maltese friend has a Jerusalem cross tattooed on his arm. He's a soldier in an elite guard. He's an artist. He's an archeologist. He's a historian. Above all, he's a man of love and peace. His wife is a tower of joy and wise authority. There is a kingdom protected and defended by such men and women.

You desire to see, then listen: hearing is a step towards vision....

More things are learnt in the woods than from books; trees and rocks will teach you things not to be heard elsewhere. You will see for yourselves that honey may be gathered from stones and oil from the hardest rock.
Bernard of Clairvaux

The roughness of regular observances and the stone of discipline frequently bring forth abundant streams of oil, and the rigidity of our order like that of stone makes the soul to feel the sweetness of prayer.
Gilbert of Swineshead

When the High God gave the nations their stake,
gave them their place on Earth,
He put each of the peoples within boundaries
under the care of divine guardians.
But God himself took charge of his people,
took Jacob on as his personal concern.

He found him out in the wilderness,
in an empty, windswept wasteland.
He threw his arms around him, lavished attention on him,
guarding him as the apple of his eye.
He was like an eagle hovering over its nest,
overshadowing its young,
Then spreading its wings, lifting them into the air,
teaching them to fly.
God alone led him;
there was not a foreign god in sight.
God lifted him onto the hilltops,
so he could feast on the crops in the fields.
He fed him honey from the rock,
oil from granite crags,
Curds of cattle and the milk of sheep,
the choice cuts of lambs and goats,
Fine Bashan rams, high-quality wheat,
and the blood of grapes: you drank good wine!
Deuteronomy 32

Circle of Quiet - Clamor of Evil

2008-07-29T12:15:00.007-06:00

When the future's architectured

by a carnival of idiots on show

you'd better lie low.
Coldplay: Violet Hill

Well, think again, you idiots, fools — how long before you get smart?

Do you think Ear-Maker doesn't hear, Eye-Shaper doesn't see?

Do you think the trainer of nations doesn't correct,

the teacher of Adam doesn't know?

God knows, all right — knows your stupidity, sees your shallowness.

How blessed the man you train, God,

the woman you instruct in your Word,

providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil...
Psalm 94: The Message

We love to "hear" about Isaiah's call. We love what he "saw"... we love all the POWER and the GLORY. That one liner, "Here I am, send me!" ends up sounding like a bumper sticker. Wanting to be the sent one preaches so good, "O! O! (arm straight up and hand flapping frantically) Pick me Lord! Pick me! I'll go! Of course I'll go!"

Of course we never seem to preach it right. We preach it as if Isaiah was clamoring after God. He says simply, "I saw the Master sitting on a thone..." and yes he sees angels and hears them crying out something profound about a HOLY God. And in the next stanza he is totally rocked to the core about what? - his sin and the sin of his people. And then that blistering hot coal from the altar put to his lips of all places... why not his hands... the tingling sensation in the hands... because it has everything to do with what needs to be said (from the mouth of God) before anything at all gets done (by the Word of God)!

We want the lightning bolt action of the word "Go" without the thundering exclamation point of "No",

"Go and tell this people: 'Listen hard, but you aren't going to get it; look hard, but you won't catch on.' Make these people blockheads, with fingers in their ears and blindfolds on their eyes, so they won't see a thing, won't hear a word, so they won't have a clue about what's going on and, yes, so they won't turn around and be made whole."

I'm sure that message didn't go down so well with "this people"...

These very words from Isaiah six are quoted in each of the four Gospels and Luke closes the book of Acts with this exact passage... After all that revelation they still didn't get it. They didn't want to understand what they were hearing or discern clearly what they were seeing. Why are Jesus' "words" recorded? Why did Jesus heal the blind and deaf and demon possessed and dead? His miracles and parables were amazing displays of, among other things, shrouded judgement.

There are a lot of God's own people shocked senseless who need the smelling salts of the cross. If we claim we can see, maybe our guilt still remains (John 9:41). If we have not seen and yet believe, maybe we are truly blessed (John 20:29).

The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written,

I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.
I Corinthians 1:18-25 (The Message)

Jesus, I long to see you and hear from you in the circle of quiet.

I've heard it sung, "Hey Jesus, are you still on the cross or are you feeling better?" I love that song. I've also heard it said, "For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate...."

I keep company with Moses and the Prophets and Jesus and the Twelve and the Church,

Oh yes, I've had it with the prophets who preach the lies they dream up, spreading them all over the country, ruining the lives of my people with their cheap and reckless lies. I never sent those prophets, never authorized a single one of them. They do nothing for this people - nothing!

And anyone, including prophets and priests, who ask, 'What's GOD got to say about all this, what's troubling him?' tell him, 'You, you're the trouble, and I'm getting rid of you.'"

GOD's Decree through Jeremiah.

A Flight of Fiery Arrows

2008-07-13T16:10:00.004-06:00

For I will stir up and bring against Babylon an alliance of great nations from the land of the north. They will take up their positions against her, and from the north she will be captured. Their arrows will be like skilled warriors who do not return empty-handed.
Jeremiah 50

Son of man, prophesy against Gog and say: ―This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. I will turn you around and drag you along. I will bring you from the far north and send you against the mountains of Israel. Then I will strike your bow from your left hand and make your arrows drop from your right hand.
Ezekiel 39

You uncovered your bow, you called for many arrows… Sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear.
Habakkuk 3

This is about a true bodily alignment beneath the Head Himself.

He is the plumb line of righteousness and the measuring line of justice (Isaiah 28). Psalm 118 and Zechariah 4 are just as important. The capstone is preceded by a complete leveling and refooting under the governing witness of Zerubbabel, the diligent teams of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the revelations of Haggai and Zechariah. Who despises the day of small revolutionaries amidst such catalytic moments.

We remember a plumb line which reached down and touched the earth for a moment… that one moment was and is like the end of time, where all of humanity and their history funnel back up through the cross into the eternal remembering of God. The righteousness of God upon the cross of Jesus Christ is the plumb line of the eternal which came down from above and has never been polluted and formed into manifest destiny or supreme Utopian agenda here below.

Eternity has been placed delicately into the hearts of humanity. But, God is Other. God is up there. God is righteous. God is embodied in Jesus Christ. God is enthroned in heaven. And everyone and everything in heaven, on earth and under the earth is either in or out of line with God in the midst of God’s own creation, sacrifice, resurrection and bodily reconciliation of all things to Himself – as He is completely authentically Himself upon His throne and within His universal body - the Church.

The outworking of the measuring line of justice goes out into all creation covered and protected under the supernova proclamation of this once plumbed and now enthroned Lamb of God who is personally straightening the misaligned from above - making all things new here below.

Once the righteousness of God established that plumb line, who could ever measure the outgoing supernova of the full flowing justice of the One who had touched down - straight as an Arrow - to dig that deep well (Isa. 12:3, John 4:14) showing us the straight and narrow way back up and into the heart of our Father in heaven!?

The spear piercing Jesus’ heart deepens the flow even more: God's blood pouring through more gaps over the hourglass of history: We are born down and out of water and blood to come up and into the heart of the Father through the blood and water of the Son who is going back down and out into His world in the kinetic hydraulic flow of His Spirit celebrating amidst a fountain of drinkable cleansing waters, adopting every tiny grain of sand into heaven’s family and inviting every individual back up and into the feast.

Circular and telescopic synergy. Arrows and plumb lines are straight!

Orthodoxy literally means ―straight glory. Without the straight glory of God revealed to us in the face of Christ there is no hope for kingdom alignment… and no outworking of justice locally or globally. Without straight strong tracks before and a fire in the belly within, the mercy train will never leave the station. Without Zechariah’s promise of the glory of God in Jerusalem, Nehemiah’s city would have been an empty form without substance.

As this substantial movement continues in the present undercurrents, the topography of the river is changing and straightening. As the hydraulic flow intensifies, the meandering river becomes a torrent flow. Earth has no choice but to move into alignment with the water.

When the underground becomes the ground, there is nothing stable left to stand on! It’s time for many to stand before the people again… knowing full well that those positions are mirages of things long swept away by a God who has never needed a microphone to be heard or a camera to be seen or a crowd to convince…

It’s also time to be free from all debts. To build up an armory AND a treasury. It’s not enough to tell them to go under this and that banner. It’s time to become more responsible for them. To send medics into battle equipped with everything they need. To pay the student debts of faithful ones called to go and to pave the future for the poorest ones to receive a world-class education.

Jacob, Joseph, Jubilee, Gideon, and David had seven year cycles.

Regarding the fall of Gog in Ezekiel 39:9-10, "Then those who live in the towns of Israel will go out and use the weapons [of Gog] for fuel and burn them up—the small and large shields, the bows and arrows, the war clubs and spears. For seven years they will use them for fuel. They will not need to gather wood from the fields or cut it from the forests, because they will use the weapons for fuel. And they will plunder those who plundered them and loot those who looted them, declares the Sovereign LORD."

It's time to purchase property, put it in the name and hands of young nationals, get along side them as they build beautiful abbeys of prayer, managed by strong local and global teams: amidst refugee camps, orphanages, trade-schools, farms, banks, and the much needed infrastructure of sewage treatment, clean water, and adequate power!?

The World Bank’s 2007 Prospectus was about the youth of the nations. The average age of many developing nations is under 20 years old... and they are humble and needy and willing. It’s about your treasure being where your heart is. We must stop banging our heads against the empty promises of men. Align yourself with those who will keep you from being drawn off course by mammon.

You must be willing to have absolutely nothing before becoming faithful with everything about to be placed into your hands (II Cor. 6:10).

Happy Canada Day

2008-07-01T09:49:00.004-06:00

The Canadian Heritage website says,

This year, as we celebrate the 141^st anniversary of Confederation, we also celebrate the 400th anniversary of Québec City, which also marks the founding of Canada. Let's Celebrate Canada!

This morning, sitting here in the fresh mountain air listening to songbirds, ravens, chattering chipmunks and squirrels amidst thousands of blooming wild roses in the thick green forest around our home (and sipping coffee in between bacon and eggs) I'm celebrating 400 years of Canada.

After the kids finish their breakfast I'll take them for a drive through the mountains around Spray Lakes in their mom's new Jeep Renegade Sahara. Dar's always wanted a Jeep and no one can get the smile off her face. It's a lot of fun getting the hard top off... driving over bumpy roads and splashing through the shallows with hair free in the wind... snapping on the soft top... wiping down after all the dust... Jeep's are a blast in the mountains. Hold on for the ride of your life.

Sitting here at breakfast with three books. You won't find me without a book or three or ten. So I'm sitting here reading a very cool old map book, Donald Wigal's "Historic Maritime Maps" - It's fascinating to watch the process of global discovery over 800 years. Also reading through "The Knights Templar: Discovering the Myth and Reality of a Legendary Brotherhood" - nothing really new learned here... but full of great colours and laid out well... an excellent introduction. The third document is "Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan" which states,

Between October 12 and December 14, 2007, Panel members held face-to-face discussions in Ottawa, New York, Brussels and Washington, in addition to their trip to Afghanistan. They also met with individuals from elsewhere in Canada, the United States and Europe via video-conference.

While in Afghanistan, the panel traveled across four provinces - Kabul, Balkh, Bamiyan and Kandahar. They held meetings in Kabul, Bamiyan, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar Airfield, Panjwai, Zhari, and Kandahar City. While in Kandahar province, the panel met with the Provincial Reconstruction Team at Camp Nathan Smith, and personnel at two forward bases, a police sub-station, and other military facilities.

Pilgrimage is always part of sound judgment.

Yesterday afternoon I bought the kids a bamboo xylophone (made in Indonesia) at Ten Thousand Villages. I bought it with Luke in mind after Dar and I watched War Dance with him about the children of Northern Uganda - and one particular boy in the documentary who played the xylophone.

So last night, all three kids went nuts on their new instrument...
and then they surprised me. Luke (eight years old)
sat the new instrument down in front of me
and tapped out a song while singing lyrics he had just made up.
I had to write the words down:

On the top of the Earth
Praise the One and Only God
There's only One Lord
Sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Praise to the Lord
Praise to the Lord

Bree (six years old) wanted to give song writing a try,
so she tapped away and this came out:

When the gates open
You'll know where to go
Where God's Jesus Christ
comes down to the Earth
You'll know where to go
When you see the angels come
down the ladder
down the mountain
the ladder comes from the mountain
down to the Earth
Then you'll know where to go
You'll know where to go

Then we invited Nate (three years old) to give it a try
and he tapped away and sang:

Jesus, I love you (8 times)

Then Samuel said,
Do you think all God wants are sacrifices—
empty rituals just for show?
He wants you to listen to him!
Plain listening is the thing,
not staging a lavish religious production.
Not doing what God tells you
is far worse than fooling around in the occult.
Getting self-important around God
is far worse than making deals with your dead ancestors.
Because you said No to God command,
he says No to your kingship.
I Samuel 15:22-23

Heading out to the Canada Day Parade before our big Jeep ride...

Heavy Artillery Above Our Shoulders

2008-06-26T12:57:00.007-06:00

No I don't wanna battle from beginning to end
I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge
I don't wanna follow death and all of his friends
and in the end we lie awake, and we dream of making our escape
Coldplay: Death and All His Friends

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night

and left...
Matthew 2:14

As a woman with child and about to give birth
writhes and cries out in her pain, so were we
in your presence, O LORD.
Isaiah 26:17

"For a long time I have kept silent,
I have been quiet and held myself back.
But now, like a woman in childbirth,
I cry out, I gasp and pant.
Isaiah 42:14

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come;
but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy
that a child is born into the world.
John 16:21

When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth,

he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.

The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle,

so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert,

where she would be taken care of...
Revelation 12:13-14

But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Psalm 131:2

When the city came into view, he wept over it.

"If you had only recognized this day,

and everything that was good for you!

But now it's too late. In the days ahead your enemies

are going to bring up their heavy artillery and surround you,

pressing in from every side. They'll smash you...

Not one stone will be left intact.

All this because you didn't recognize

and welcome God's personal visit."
Luke 19:41

didn't sleep

heavy artillery all night

saw them falling from the skies

coal soot lightning - foxholes are no cover

concussion - too close to the skin of that drum

take the eastern gates

terracotta over caspian to the iron

100 ton gun to northern frontier

from the rift to the dome

nowhere near done

beneath searing molten heavens
what have you been training for
move! move! move!
Shaddai's shadow

Limping Pilgrims

2008-06-02T13:39:00.002-06:00

God is so other that we can never pretend to predict what God will do, or get God under our control in any way whatever.
Eugene Peterson

The fundamental thought of the Bible is not creation, but God's care for His creation. The sense of wonder for His creation is common to all men. The sense of care for His care is the personal prerequisite for being a prophet. All men care for the world; the prophet cares for God's care. In the process of such redirection, he may be driven to be careless about everything else.
Abraham Joshua Heschel

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

A young man ran and told Moses, "Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp." Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses' aide since youth, spoke up and said, "Moses, my lord, stop them!"

But Moses replied, "Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!"
Numbers 11:27-29

What if, in attempting to be relevant we have become irreverent? What is this emerging - a better tone or a bitter tumor?

When David was chosen to be king, God immidiately placed him in Saul's service. Before he ran out to the battle line to take out Goliath, the young annointed humbly served his tormented King. For years to come, no matter what the circumstances between them, David had nothing but mercy and grace for Saul. And like Joseph and Jesus, do we realize that we were never fatherless in the pit?

If there is an emerging urgency in the Church it is in the absence of her relevant and emerging sons and daughters.

25 + 14 (39) + 15 = 54

2008-05-01T13:51:00.013-06:00

Isaiah, Hezekiah, Sennacherib and Merodach-Baladan.

Here's God adding 15 years to sick Hezekiah's life (II Kings 20)... and I ask myself the question, "Why, in the midst of being given a 15 year extension on his life (and a sundance) does Hezekiah show off everything he owns to messengers from Babylon?"

A second question, "Why is Hezekiah sick in the first place?" Seems show-offs give the wrong things away.

Some read Old Testament stories and wonder what an iron-age God eats for breakfast to put "Ole Rusty" in such a cranky mood. Others read II Kings 18 to 20 and see tons of grace, faithfulness, obedience, personal faith, fear and pride. God becomes concerned with the affairs of humanity for good reasons.

I wonder what Isaiah thinks amidst all the good, bad and ugly. For one thing, I think Isaiah is totally consumed by the presence, voice and will of God. For prophets like Isaiah it's all about God's grace. Isaiah doesn't have a "condemnation fix." He's not pointing some boney finger at some king pin of the status quo who should be overwhelmed with "guilt"... who should be soooo "ashamed" of themselves. It's not Isaiah's job to guilt and shame all these awful people into cages.

Isaiah is standing in the free-flowing pathos of God concerned only with the words (actions) of God and how God might be "gracefully, yet completely" and "emotionally, yet truthfully" engaging the leaders of God's own people, or any other rich or poor individual God chooses to engage personally ... through the straight-forward human voice of God's servant (and sometimes there's no human voice physically available so a dream here or angel there, or even the Messenger of the Lord Himself in all His glory).

During the entire process of God engagements, anyone "feeling" ashamed or guilty, or "recognizing" themselves and their stuff - that's their own crap to deal with before that One Holy Almighty God - and if they don't humble themselves before God in that moment, there is nothing worse than shame and guilt to eat a person away from the inside out. Self-hatred is a deadly poison. Self-mutilation has many faces.

Isaiah is never caught in between. He is only a witness. Isaiah knows what Paul later writes in Romans 2,

3-4 You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he's such a nice God, he'd let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he's not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.

5-8 You're not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it's going to blaze hot and high, God's fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what's coming to you—Real Life for those who work on God's side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!

Fun and Games

2008-04-28T14:55:00.007-06:00

I thought of this picture after all the research I've been doing today... Here we are earlier in the year on Gozo, a small island off the coast of Malta. I'm chewing on some fresh baked goat cheeze pizza in one hand while keeping the kids perpetually squealing with the other.

I started the workday researching everything I could find on Trinidad and Tobago: 25 windows open reading up on the President, Prime Minister, and Cabinet; discovering they just unveiled their brand new Hyatt Regency; are planning $25 billion worth of simultaneous projects including water projects of $10 billion towards 5 or 6 new desalination plants (after recently finishing Jeffrey Sachs' "Common Wealth" I saw that coming); and of course all kinds of past and present stuff in the energy sector.

The more I play with my kids... the more I play with my kids the more I pray... the more I pray the more I travel around and around and around...

Delirious? - Break the Silence

Citizens with a secret in our hands
That could ignite our shadowlands
Light it up and let it go
Let it shine with love and grace and a redesign
A ray of hope for the common man
Light it up and let it go

Oh, oh, oh,
We’ve got to give it away
And there’s a price to pay
When we give it away

Break the silence, break the silence,
Cross ever boundary that divides us, divides us
Break the silence, break the silence,
Cross ever border that divides us, oh, unite us

We turn the page, to a future just begun
If heaven is real then let our heaven become
Peace on earth, let it flow.
We raise our voice where the colours all but gone
Paint the world with redemption songs
Stir it up, let it flow.

Stu G of Delirious? is recorded as saying of this tune, "We met Rabbi Joseph Edelheidt in India and, in conversation, he was encouraging us to write songs that cross divides. It’s much better if we find what unites us rather than concentrate on what divides us. We have to work together to get the job done!"

And if I sit here and Google another name I'll be here all night... I gotta get home to my family. I put the world in bigger hands tonight.

One Heart Revolution

2008-04-18T07:43:00.008-06:00

Listening to Hillsong United: One Heart Revolution.

Like Bree's picture in the previous post, Luke and Nate on Gozo capture a bit of my heart for our kids amidst the nations. Luke is a singer, songwriter, dancer... seven year old triple threat... when he moves under the leadership of the Spirit I hold my breath... just beautiful to witness. And Nate is the strongest little juggernaut I've ever tried to pin down and tickle... little warrior adventurer - full of strength and justice. Nate has this Buzz Lightyear sword... and when he goes for it I have to run to get my Balian defender of Jerusalem sword... cause if I don't have my sword that kid will cut me down. We swing swords for an hour until Nate is nearly exhausted... sweaty and smiling, but he will not ever let go of that sword, and it's in my best interest to always be aware... WHACK!

Our kids will be free to be anywhere in the world and do anything with and for Jesus Christ - led by Him; leading more like Him; leading more to Him. They will learn this now. Pilgrimage is one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids. Besides our absolute devotion to they're becoming truly human and fully alive in Christ, we want our kids to grow up amidst the nations... here, there and everywhere in Jesus' name.

And what Dar and I are noticing is that we don't have to be in the nations for the nations to find us. It's like breathing. Our home is a place of peace... a place connected with the contemplation of heaven on earth... a portal of sorts... and they find us, those who are with him end up with us - the one's that he directs our way... and may that continue Jesus... may that continue to happen for the sake of all that you are in our home, and out there in the nations. It's a bit tiring following you, but I'm tired in such a good way... and a few moments by that quiet stream recharges my heart, soul, mind, spirit, joints and marrow... and it's not long before I'm ready to follow you into deeper water.

May we be examples for our kids, and all our friends - that we will continue to walk, run and dance fearlessly in the powerful loving name of Jesus Christ amidst every tower and gutter as our kids bike, run, wrestle and play on every street with no name with all their new friends - all over the world. Somewhere in the spiritual realm that unnamed street full of smiling kids will be paved with gold... even if it's in the middle of a dust bowl in Central Africa or the jungle of East Asia or stretched across the Himalayan mountain peaks. As long as it depends on us, maybe - just maybe, that street will be filled with tangible expressions of the love of God as well... so that nobody gets left behind... and every kid, all of humanity, actually has the opportunity to live and be loved all together... happy, healthy and whole before God who is the pure embodiment of love.

Joel Houston from inside the CD jacket of One Heart Revolution:

"In November 2005, we stood in a stadium in Bogota, Columbia, with thousands upon thousands of people we'd never seen nor met before. We were about to hit the first note of the night when the power went out completely - no lights, no amplification, nothing but a whole lot of people together in the darkness. For a few awkward seconds I didn't know what to do as my heart skipped and I looked frantically for someone to sort it out. But before I had the chance to worry, I found myself caught up in one of the most incredible worship moments of my life: the people began to roar. It was a shout of praise that defied the present circumstances. It was more than hype, it went beyond a cheer, this was something else altogether. The people took over and we got swept up in it, the whole band joining in the shout, at one with the people. Nobody gave a second thought to anything other that the reason we were all there - to simply encounter God and bring glory to His Name."

I remember meeting Joel a couple of years ago in Calgary. We were in a green room and I was chatting with Phil Dooley regarding some Billy Graham stuff (at the invitation of Paul Kelly of Unite Productions). Joel was sitting across the room with his swollen ankle elevated, laughing with his buds about something. I got up, crossed the room and asked Joel what happened to his ankle. A surfing thing... I asked him if I could pray over his ankle... and as I sat next to Joel with my hands on his foot and ankle I saw a snapshot of my boy Luke surfing one day in Australia... and I thought how huge Joel's father's heart is for him... and the peace in that moment was like a thick warm blanket.

In the ninth grade, for a project in anthropology, I built an aboriginal village. I don't know why I chose to do a project on Australian Aborigines.. maybe it was partly because my parents took me to see Indian villages in Ontario... where I sat amidst the pow-wow's as a kid... all that music and chants, and drums, marveling wide-eyed at hearts minds and languages open wide to the Creator... amidst their traditions. Maybe, in building that Australian village in the ninth-grade I wanted to know how people all over the world lived and worshiped God.

On the Aborigine theme, few years back I was preaching to hundreds of youth at a week long camp... I challenged them to keep unbroken prayer in their chapel for 24 hours... and they did it. And at the end of that unbroken prayer meeting they held a spontaneous three hour worship session... It was after midnight in the midst of worship.. and I was sitting at the back of that large room... listening to all those kids full throttle into the throne room of their Father in heaven... and the Spirit just burst upon the place... and there I was sitting quietly at the back, a bit tired... but expectant... I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. And in a flash of a vision I was standing beside an old Aborigine man standing beside a rack of white robes and he said in a thick accent... "You must change your clothes!"

I was so startled I opened my eyes real wide and said to myself, "Wow, that was intense! What a vivid imagination I have." Just then, independently of one another, and all during the music and singing and dance... a young man came and stood over one shoulder and a young woman came and stood over the other shoulder and both laid one of their hands on one of my shoulders and the other hands they lifted before the Father. Ok, that was no coincidence... now there were three of us in that portal... So I closed my eyes again and there was the old man again, "You must change your clothes!"

I opened my eyes again, this time getting a bit more emotional... and the girl leading worship at the front of that place... right in the middle of whatever she was singing, led the band into a transition and then looked right at me, right through that whole sea of kids, and she said, "You know, Solomon in all his splendor wasn't dressed like a lily in a field - sometimes you just have to change your clothes."

And even as I type this now I'm crying... It's snowing in the mountains here today, right outside my window is a blanket of newly falling snow... "There is nothing like" is playing in the background... augh, I'm just bursting... so much fire coming up out of this cold dark night... I'm rocking a bit now... back to the vision...

So I took off my clothes and I put on one of those robes... and immediately I started to ascend the mountain city of God... whole mountain ranges full of a massive city of glorious light and love... so many levels... so many beautiful things... so many gorgeous people from every nation... and then I was out over the nations... cities... locations... and I would be taken to one, and then another... and you know what... I've been to many of those places since that vision... I've stood in many places globally and many more to come... and I saw them in that vision... and you know what I'm doing in those places amidst the people of God in those places... I'm proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ over the city, and the people of God, and the people who are yet to realize they belong to God already.

And I'll tell you this much... when United plays and sings I am in the very flow that first called me... something so very familiar about the DNA of this stuff, the flow that captivated my heart as a kid as I walked and prayed all those miles alone with God in my hometown of London, Ontario.

I didn't learn to walk all over cities and pray into every layer - by accident. I didn't pastor and shepherd and preach to youth in Churches and out on streets for ten years - by accident. I didn't work for Billy Graham for ten years - by accident. I wasn't discipled by Leighton Ford's (Billy's brother in law) Arrow Leadership Program - by accident. I didn't drink up all that spiritual theology James Houston taught me at Regent College - by accident. I didn't join forces with a 65 year old Canadian orphan who's father was an RAF pilot shot down over Normandy waters and who's grandfather was Chairman of the Trustee Savings Bank in the City of London - by accident. We are not going to raise up 10, 000 choice master cadets of the kingdom of God - by accident. Those 10, 000 won't lead hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands themselves into the wide open gates of heaven - by accident.

And as I share snippets of our growing story with you... please know, there is nothing accidental about these mounting kingdom waves for any of us. We can't slow down following Jesus Christ. We can't leave anyone behind. We are all in this together and we are anamchara - soul friends on the journey... everywhere in the name of our Father, through His Son, in His Spirit... dressed in His armor of Light. We already have everything we need in Him!

Strike the Tent

2008-04-16T14:30:00.006-06:00

I just love this recent picture of Bree in Malta within the canvas backdrop of a refugee camp. Her knowing adventurous little look takes some of the sting out of the phrase "refugee camp". This picture reminds me of the God of all refugees showing up to Samuel in a little tent at Shiloh. God tented all over the map with Moses and Joshua... and then of course David and Solomon had their plans for more than a tent... and then there was a modest rebuilding of a second structure and Herod's tinkering with that one (and now, for some reason the feverish pitch over a third)... and after a number of centuries of silence God came and tented among an occupied depression in the incarnational embodiment of Jesus Chirst... and then he was a baby refugee in Egypt... and for most of his ministry had no pillow to lay his head upon... camping out most nights I guess... the embodied word of heaven a meandering canvas of sorts... and sure, we can stretch that metaphor out a bit... pun intended.

You might stretch God out and nail him down for a moment, just long enough to paint something... he'll even provide the finger paint. But, poor Thomas, you'll barely get close to God's original intent with your finger in that paint... Then again, you may want to keep your fingers to yourself... He'll invite you to put those fingers into his side... but I'm not sure you'll get too far before falling on your face crying out, "My Lord and my God" which, coincidentally was a confession no other disciple was ever recorded as saying while Jesus was on earth.

Now that I think about it: if Thomas had put his fingers in Jesus' side I don't think he'd have come out with any red paint... all Jesus' blood was spilled down upon the ground at the foot of the cross. Besides, Jesus spoke about being touched and not touched after his resurrection... I don't know, I guess it's a touchy subject... a resurrected holy God in between two kingdoms :)

Certain renaissance painters, when they painted the crucifixion, painted a squatting crapping dog in the foreground of their paintings... It seems it was their way of putting themselves on the canvas... Amidst that kind of eternal moment before the cross, the artist was nothing more than a dog... an old school route to humility. That wouldn't work in today's psychology... naw, you're a god... dog is too derogatory, unless you're dyslexic.. then - well, choose your own adventure.

This god dog stuff reminds me of a story in Matthew 15:21-31,

From there Jesus took a trip to Tyre and Sidon. They had hardly arrived when a Canaanite woman came down from the hills and pleaded, "Mercy, Master, Son of David! My daughter is cruelly afflicted by an evil spirit." Jesus ignored her. The disciples came and complained, "Now she's bothering us. Would you please take care of her? She's driving us crazy." Jesus refused, telling them, "I've got my hands full dealing with the lost sheep of Israel."

Then the woman came back to Jesus, went to her knees, and begged. "Master, help me." He said, "It's not right to take bread out of children's mouths and throw it to dogs." She was quick: "You're right, Master, but beggar dogs do get scraps from the master's table." Jesus gave in. "Oh, woman, your faith is something else. What you want is what you get!" Right then her daughter became well.

After Jesus returned, he walked along Lake Galilee and then climbed a mountain and took his place, ready to receive visitors. They came, tons of them, bringing along the paraplegic, the blind, the maimed, the mute—all sorts of people in need—and more or less threw them down at Jesus' feet to see what he would do with them. He healed them. When the people saw the mutes speaking, the maimed healthy, the paraplegics walking around, the blind looking around, they were astonished and let everyone know that God was blazingly alive among them.

Bread to dogs. Pearls to swine. I think it's interesting that at first Jesus ignored her, and that she drove his disciples nuts trying to get to him... and who was schooling who and surprising who with faith? He, the embodiment of God uses the word "dogs" and she doesn't even bat an eye... she responds humbly... And then to top the story off, Matthew records the immediate miraculous feeding of the 4000... I guess all those healed people had an appetite. Lots of puppy chow all around. And they'll always come back for more... though God may not feed them the same way twice. But with this woman... it's amazing how Jesus brings up bread and she'll settle for just a few crumbs... scraps!

I hope I never lose touch with the beggar puppy in me.... I'll take that crumb of manna. I'll feed off that living bread come down from heaven. I want that food that some know little or nothing about. Last thing I need to become is an existential gnostic phenomenon!

I'm sitting here in the office... We seem to have so much head spinning activity around here. Numbers and deals and pins all over maps and whiteboarding. Now, in between the office waves, I'm sitting amidst tons of books with another oddball book open in a window online; another online window open to Oprah and Eckhart Tolle; world bank publications here and a confidential executive summary of a friend there; and Time magazine open to an article entitled: "The Clean Energy Myth".

The books stacked around me today: Marsden's "Stupid to the last drop: how Alberta is bringing environmental armageddon to Canada (and doesn't seem to care)"; Stutchbury's "The silence of the songbirds": how we are losing the world's songbirds and what we can do to save them"; Houston's "Joyful exiles: life in Christ on the dangerous edge of things"; Gilmore and Pine's Harvard Press "Authenticity"; Taleb's "Black Swan"; Mason's "The pirate's dilemma: how youth culture is reinventing capitalism"; "The Cambridge companion to Kierkegaard"; Clairborne and Haw's "Jesus for president"; Barlow's "Blue covenant: the global water crisis and the coming battle for the right to water"; Fletcher's "Breaking news: NBC news bureau chief, Tel Aviv"; Diamond's "Collapse"; Krupp and Horn's "Earth: the sequal, the race to reinvent energy and stop global warming"; Khanna's "The second world: empires and influence in the new global order"; Bernstein's "A splendid exchange: how trade shaped the world"; Sachs' "Common wealth: economics for a crowded planet"; Palin's "Himalaya"; Tolle's "A new earth: awakening to your life's purpose"; Kenner's "The elsewhere community"; Broad's "The oracle: the lost secrets and hidden message of ancient delphi"; Baker's "The heart of the world: a journey to the last secret place"; McCullough's "John Adams"; Kinnaman's "unchristian"; Aikman's "Billy Graham: his life and influence"; Peterson's "A long obedience in the same direction"; Kolini & Holmes' "Christ walks where evil reigned: responding to the Rwandan genocide"; Rosenberg's "Dead Heat"; Jabbour's "The crescent through the eyes of the cross: insights from an arab christian"; and Brother Andrew & Janssen's "Secret believers: what happens when muslims believe in Christ"....

I'm on the hunt for the living Jesus Christ who is on the move in between all these lines, and some of these lines are just pure static, junky connections obtusely angled toward the transcendent, like gum that loses its taste too quickly ... But, I'm going after that golden crimson thread of heaven... and loving that still small voice weaving every step of this Way!

I think Jesus Christ has a few things to say for Himself... on His own behalf... and believe it or not, He has our best interests in mind. And oddly enough, if "The Secret" really works!!!! then Jesus must be really really real... cause so many people are going so hard after Him in every way, praying and singing and carrying on and on and on 24/7 365 - all going after Him, being found by Him ... I don't think there's another person getting so much focussed attention anywhere on the face of the earth... or above the earth, or under the earth... you just never know where Jesus Christ might allow himself to be found.

I'm listening to delirious? "Kingdom of Comfort" and I love Eagle Rider:

I feel the spirits breath moving down my neck
Closer than a summers day
You’re a lion on my back
I hear the spirit speak whispering my name
Gentle as a butterfly
In a violent hurricane

I feel the spirits breath free me from the net
Flying from captivity
And the life I called a wreck
I hear the spirit speak a voice behind my eyes
It’s time for a brand new song to sing
Now I’m saying my goodbyes

If you want to chat then come and find me. But, please don't patronize me and don't assume anything. Some days, the escapist in me feels a bit like Jason Bourne. Other days, the discoverer in me feels a bit like Horton hears a Who.

So much life blowing around every tent, word, seed, crumb... and speck!

Adventures in Parousia

2008-04-14T21:33:00.005-06:00

I'll never forget reading Bonhoeffer's "uncompromising allegiance to a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount" on a flight between Calgary and Toronto. It was a couple of years ago, and the future leader of Canada was sitting in executive class. God spoke to me while reading Bonhoeffer's teachings on the Sermon on the Mount, "This book belongs in the hands of Stephen Harper..." Anyway, it's a long story... and I gave him the book and he thanked me on the plane and later in a note emblazoned with the arms of Canada... (you might think I'm waving my little flag... but there's a stronger point coming).

Recently, while traveling internationally, I was in conversation with a government minister of a certain nation and we were chatting about potential components of our soon to be global company (not a subject in this blog... protecting that for now)... While sitting there discussing strategic international business developments our conversation turned to the topic of prayer... and a particular prayer room in the area hosting two weeks of 24/7 prayer... a kingdom business meeting in a government office.

We must keep in mind that some of us are not being called into those rooms to spout half-baked views of "end games" or lobby for a few dimes towards a few good causes. Some of us will actually be there to pray. We are there to discern and serve. We are there listening to God amidst others... and in that listening, we may bear in confidence the wisdom and peace of our eternal God amidst certain swirling temporal decisions. For the saints, it's about presence, in all places, salt and light at every level... Simple martyrs with no reputation in every gutter and ivory tower who carry a simple vow that no one gets left behind.

Jesus is not a republican conservative singing, "God bless America (and those who don't mind tolerating our agendas)!" Jesus is also not a neo-liberal democrat who preaches environmental ecopsychology in a godlike tone with all of humanity's best interests in mind.

God blessing America (and Canada) is a good thing on certain days. A holistic view of ecopsychology is a good thing on more days. What I'm getting at is, the god of our particular nations and the god of our best intentions may not be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... and sooner or later, we may, or may not, want to ask Him a thing or two about the smoggy story we find ourselves in. Keep in mind, He's not really into sales...

Jesus answered, My kingdom (kingship, royal power) belongs not to this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My followers would have been fighting to keep Me from being handed over... But as it is, My kingdom is not from here (this world); [it has no such origin or source]. Pilate said to Him, Then You are a King? Jesus answered, You say it! [You speak correctly!] For I am a King. [Certainly I am a King!] This is why I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the Truth. Everyone who is of the Truth [who is a friend of the Truth, who belongs to the Truth] hears and listens to My voice. Pilate said to Him, What is Truth?
John 18:36-38 (Amplified)

May all our elemental stuff be purified by the advent of Truth....

Body, Blood and Bare Wood

2008-03-19T14:47:00.012-06:00

Sitting here anticipating Maundy Thursday. The final upper room discourse. The body and blood of Jesus. I am captivated again by the passion of Jesus... the struggle... the determination. March 22, 2005 I posted this little poem. I first wrote it in 1999 while studying in the atrium at Regent in Vancouver:

:: contemplation on the brink of two kingdoms ::

::::

dark night of the soul
small naked curled up ball of fear
numbing darkness joints marrow
tears blur stinging
agony
slipping through the cracks
the cry, “Lord, save me!”
light glint swinging rapier
balm
stable heartbeat
breathe

Back to Holy Week 2008: there is something about hearing a voice... something about the word from the throat, the gestures and tones - the conviction - that just goes missing in text form. In this regard, the red letters in the Gospels are so fascinating. Captivating texts. Yet, there is nothing like revelation coming from a whole human being... nothing like being plugged into heaven amidst the people of God coming to terms with the word of God embodied in Jesus Christ.

I'm so glad Jesus Christ spoke up... Up until that point in history there was already so much editing and rewriting. I'm not saying the Old Testament scriptures were not inspired or whatever your word may be for it... I'm just saying, writing is a certain craft... and there was so much to be revealed - and then Jesus showed up and started making beautiful oragami of all those pages... yes, fulfilling everything written along the way. Jesus kept saying, "It is written." And then, after his death and departure, everyone started writing again... While he was around I wonder if all the feather pens just stood still in their inkwells... maybe Peter, James and John kept journals. I don't know.

I love the Gospels, and all those incredible layers of words and symbols and cyphers. Just to pick four authors, I look at Luke, Peter, Paul and John and wonder.. Peter especially! Like the guy had any idea when he first dropped his nets that he'd craft such incredible stuff... "inexpressible and glorious joy" ...that stuff sings! And the creed of Philippians 2 and the poetry of John 17... and the Revelation of John... I mean those guys mastered and distilled texts in a Spirit way... "It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you..."

I've been hunting to find documentable words for all these revelations and experiences... so many without words... uninterpretable in text... It's like trying to imagine Ezekiel or Daniel or Zechariah or John seeing and hearing all that stuff and then trying to get it all down on parchments. Must have scratched their heads a lot... sitting by a river for days speechless... I guess I'm after sound these days. The rumble of the heavens. Tone. The heartbeat of the words...

I guess I really miss preaching... proclaiming the King. And when I go looking for tone and sound - God always brings it, through the skies, from beneath the earth... I'm after that stuff again... not to increase my faith or as a demand to show me something... It's God's smile my way... all of creation groaning along with me anticipating the revelation of the Son of Man coming in the clouds.

And it's not that being a word-bearer is some nice cute glossy eye-ball slow-mo great-lighting movie scene of an adventure. Not when the word-bearer gets sent (time and time again) to struggling leaders in big positions... well, big by their terms. Most of the time, the messenger ends up shot in the back. Most of the time, the messenger is so deep amidst the web of networks, so far removed from the front office that once the dust settles, the word-bearer is totally forgotten... the word-bearer is often marginalized, mocked and misunderstood by most people "on the inside". When dealing with sick and diseased infrastructures, the most authentic kingdom authority is typically always outside in ... that's one reason why Jesus was crucified outside the city.

The word-bearer worth their salt knows before they ever utter a word that they might die right after that word is spoken... death is filling the room as that word is uttered... and yet they still speak it out. Yet, the word-bearer survives, they live what they are speaking... they choose life... until the world is no longer worthy of them. They are the embodiment of their own words... because their words are becoming more and more the very words of God. In that way, they are Christ-like. In that way, they are humble. In that way, they are perpetual repenters. Cause there is nothing like an ivory tower full of sin to bring a stairclimbing word-bearer to their knees. God is on the move and some sinner is sent somewhere with a message... sons and daughters of God, sure... just wait until that moment when the conviction of your own fallenness and minititude (smallness) overwhelms you... small naked curled up ball of fear... and there is a fear that is the beginning of wisdom... dread is a good thing at times.

Do you think it's easy to speak one word to a church and then watch it close its doors? Is it easy to stand with a leader of leaders while they pull the pin from their own grenade? Is it easy to serve a movement from the outside while many on the inside reinforce their walls?

I'm so thankful for Jesus Christ and his leadership and his understanding and his cross. May his people continue to follow him into every gutter and high place on this planet as His kingdom comes... His waves of revival proclamation are coming... bones are shaking... wake up o sleeper!

It's time to witness Jesus bring His Church (in certain places and nations) down to bare wood... shaving curls down onto the threshing floor. Yes, it's all about grace... and maybe grace has been training a few fighters to go a few rounds with non-grace and un-grace.

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear babble that we think we mean. How can they meet us face to face until we have faces?
C.S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces

"You've been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don't understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, 'Where is the Father?' Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren't mere words. I don't just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.

"Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can't believe that, believe what you see—these works. The person who trusts me will not only do what I'm doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I've been doing. You can count on it. From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I'll do it. That's how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I'll do.
John 14:9-14

Faith in God

2008-03-18T10:10:00.020-06:00

Last year, I studied the word "perhaps/maybe" in the Old Testament. It started with my reading of the chat between Jonathan and his armor-bearer in I Sam 14:

Jonathan said, "Come on now, let's go across to these uncircumcised pagans. Maybe GOD will work for us. There's no rule that says God can only deliver by using a big army. No one can stop GOD from saving when he sets his mind to it."

His armor bearer said, "Go ahead. Do what you think best. I'm with you all the way."

The word "maybe" engages our faith. Faith engages God in the sacrament of the present moment. Hope is like an arrow shot out into the future... drawing the future back through the neck of the hourglass into the faith of the present. Love warms up the vacuous space in-between faith and hope. Another way I put it: Faith believes Him; Hope expects Him; Love embraces Him... all encircling while on this journey, pilgrimage... always on the move. We are moving towards Him as He is moving toward us. When he says he's coming soon... he is always coming... and there are ways that he is always with us and ways that he is coming. I'm not concerned about that final coming... My hope is set on Him in eternity... I've set my mind and heart on things above. Through this kind of hourglass my eschatological hope is shaped.

The bottom line is that faith allows God to be Godself. Faith believes in God's character... God's word. Faith trusts and acknowledges the understanding and wisdom of another. Faith is not stubborn. Faith is not manipulative. Faith can never tell God what to do. Faith can never anticipate what God will do... accept that God will do what is just and right. Faith is the most flexible trusting part of human consciousness... and it's what God targets in us and draws out of us, on the way to making us truly human and fully alive in "their" image... so many layers to God. Can my faith handle all that insurmountable glory funneled into the body, soul, mind and strength of Jesus Christ!? Will I walk obediently with Him over this His earth? Will I love Him as I believe Him? Not to mention will He and I "enjoy" each others presence?? Joy is the relational destination of hope...

The bottom line for me... If He is not leading this armada we're not going anywhere and we're not going to "enjoy" sitting around.

Remember Thomas' words to the disciples when Jesus sets his face on going to Jerusalem (via Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead) in John 11. The conversation unfolds:

Then he said to his disciples, "Let us go back to Judea."

"But Rabbi," they said, "a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there?"

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world's light. It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light."

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up."

His disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better." Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Jesus face was set like flint towards Jerusalem. May our faces be set like flint towards our crosses... the bearing in our bodies the marks of Christ. May we already be crucified with Christ. We are already martyrs. Our lives are already hidden with Christ in God. In every way, we take Jesus at his word. We on our way to the same destination. The righteous are as bold as lions.

Jesus and Thomas were fearless. Jonathan and his armor-bearer were fearless. Every Moses has their Joshua. Every Elijah their Elisha. Every Peter their John Mark. Every Paul their Silas... Actually, Paul had a few armor-bearers. I love Band of Brothers.

We Give You Praise

2008-02-19T20:27:00.015-07:00

I'm in our dining room sipping Mebmer's Rosehip Hibiscus tea listening repeatedly to Delirious? free download of "We Give You Praise" from their forthcoming album "King of Comfort". The lyrics as I hear them:

When the road is rough and steep, and it leads our heart to weep, there's an ocean of tears that you've held through the years, but we're not stoppin' here. On this long and winding street, will you guide these willing feet, every step that we take with our hearts full of faith, and were not stoppin' here. Together we are stronger, so put your hand in mine... We give you praise! We give you praise! And the King of all the Earth has saved us from ourselves. We give you praise! We give you praise!

As I listen, I'm looking out into our backyard... the snow, the trees, the creek... a long way from Malta, Rome and London. Home sweet home. Two nights ago at 2 am, I watched three coyotes (a mom and her two gorgeous cubs) from this window as they adventured through the snow. It's good to be at home in the Rockies. The kids are in bed. Nate and Bree still down with fever since being home. Luke was back to school today.

Where do I start? This picture of "Snaily" climbing the prayer room wall is a good a place as any... especially since the little lightning bolt is risking it all for love :) I found this little snail while walking through lower Valetta after a strong winter storm had blown through. Bree and Luke took it upon themselves to care for this little snail for the full two weeks of the prayer room. Little Snaily was front and center all the time. I discovered Snaily all over the prayer room. Not long after this pic I had to pull the quick little racer off the ceiling.

Luke, Bree and I kept three full night shifts in the prayer room. This painting in the corner was created over four different sessions. Luke, Bree and my painted hands are all in there somewhere. The three of us created it over the two weeks:

The prayer room. A lot went down in one room over two weeks. I remember great music. I remember Bree laying her hands on people praying for healing. I remember Luke reading whole chapters of scripture over people. I remember a young Maltese kingdom leader getting on his knees in front of Luke asking the seven year old to pray over him. A little child shall lead them. I remember Nate, the three year old, painting on the papered walls of the kids prayer room across the hall. I remember many smiles on Dar's face as she witnessed her kids blooming in prayer. I remember some profound moments during prayer I can't put into words yet.

Malta was quite the adventure. From the honey bees to the scent of millions of spring flowers in full bloom. From citrus trees hanging full of fruit to the budding almond and fig trees. From the giant clay rivers below Calypso's cave and beached jellyfish on Gozo (where Luke got soaked) to the little power geyser in St. Paul's Bay (where Luke got soaked again). From praying through the streets of Valetta to our hosts home in Se-gee-wee. From the private tour of the Grand Masters Palace to rabbit dinner in a loving soldiers home. From the refugee camp to the government official's office. From the downtown nightclub to Catholic mass at the Mosta dome. From a three day winter storm power failure internet meltdown to ancient temple ruins and warm sun-drenched excavations digging for treasures.

Then we headed to Rome for a few days...

Lisa Pippus took this pic from the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. Our apartment is somewhere in the top right of this pic. Dar found us a gorgeous three bedroom two bathroom apartment in old Rome... just amazing. 15 minute walk to the Basilica. Same to the Spanish Steps.

Shelley, Lisa and I made it to the last mass on Ash Wednesday at St. Peter's. It was Shelley's idea for months that we be there for mass on Ash Wednesday... It was quite a profound experience. We were late for Mass and got in anyway. And we were the last one's out of the Basilica that night. Got escorted by the Swiss Guard and all... Actually, I think they were just being polite and I was quite clueless gawking at everything. I looked around and I was all alone in the largest church in the world with a dozen Swiss Guard... It was cool to walk out the door with them onto the steps and hear that big door closing behind me and the guard dispersing. Felt like an honor to close out Ash Wednesday that way... ashes on my head, and a quiet unrushed walk through those big doors.

We covered a lot of ground in Rome. I hung with Nate in the sun while Dar took Luke and Bree through the Vatican Museum. Rome was huge for me. Shelley knew it would be. The ruins spoke so much to me. I can't explain it yet, other than God unlocked something in me amidst three days of hiking around Rome. When we were in the Colosseum I told Lisa and Shelley that I had been there before in a vision. It was five years ago... I might have blogged on it before, not sure. But, in the vision, amidst a virtual tour of the mountain ranges of God's city, I was led to many places globally and I had yet to ever leave North American soil. Since that vision I have been in many locations revealed in that vision. Where we were standing that day in Rome in the Colosseum was one of those locations.

There's the visions and dreams and then there's the practical pieces. The freeze frame moments full of love along the way. This pic of Bree with a woman at the refugee camp fills my heart...

It's time to abandon the idea that you can avoid suffering. Suffering is the key to authority. Those who suffer well, lead others well through it and well away from it. And don't think that you won't be alone as you suffer. Joseph, Daniel, Esther... even Mary and Martha when their brother died, or Peter, James and John moments after the crucifixion. Totally alone amidst the relentlessly long transitional times. It's part of the holiness process.

Here's Nate alone in his little limestone cave in the Valley of Honey. If Joseph had not been alone in prison... his brothers or Potiphar might have ruined the next 14 years of Egyptian history. No one could take credit for Joseph's leadership or Solomon's wisdom or Daniel's prophecies or Esther's words on behalf of her people.... those leaders were alone with God in the crucible of contemplation amidst the meta shifts of history in their generations.

Pray with your eyes and ears and mind and heart and hands wide open. You'll be amazed at what God will put into your faithful hands. Yes, you will suffer. Yes, you will unbearably alone for long stretches of time. Yes, you will be accountable for the lives of many. Yes, you will be a good and faithful servant.

Psalm 72 (of Solomon)

1-8 Give the gift of wise rule to the king, O God, the gift of just rule to the crown prince.
May he judge your people rightly,
be honorable to your meek and lowly.
Let the mountains give exuberant witness;
shape the hills with the contours of right living.
Please stand up for the poor,
help the children of the needy,
come down hard on the cruel tyrants.
Outlast the sun, outlive the moon—
age after age after age.
Be rainfall on cut grass,
earth-refreshing rain showers.
Let righteousness burst into blossom
and peace abound until the moon fades to nothing.
Rule from sea to sea,
from the River to the Rim.

So much in there. Solomon got it right with his praises outlasting his requests. Well, enough for one night. I should go check on Bree... Tomorrow night is a full lunar eclipse.

communications back up

2008-01-30T14:15:00.001-07:00

So here's Lisa in Bethany's glasses. We've been off communications for five days. Just online now. Matt has taken more than 1500 pictures. So we've documented a lot of activity over the last week. Two highlights from the last few days. One, being invited to tour the President's summer palace... the grandmasters palace. And two, touring the valley of honey in the midst of full bloom, thousands of wild flowers, almond trees, fig trees, all kinds of life... and then, in that valley a chapel bell started ringing in a cave... a cave with a chapel in it, that hosts a catholic mass twice a year, and it just so happened to be calling folks from Mosta to mass while we were there in the valley.... amazing... we went to mass at the Mosta dome later that evening... third largerst dome in Europe. Tommorow at 5 pm I have a meeting with a government official regarding Woodthorpe International.

Our family is having a blast. Kids are enjoying every little bit of this adventure....

Nate and I during high seas on the med at the base of Fort St. Elmo....

24/7 Malta Going Strong...

2008-01-21T13:25:00.002-07:00

I'm not sure what Dar was cheering here (Lisa's camera again) but Nate wasn't buying it... I think this is just after the noon day cannon was fired over the port of Valetta. This garden is high upon the limestone walls of the upper city.

Dar, Lisa, Kari, and Marty just went to the airport to pick up Shelley. Our team of Canada will be 12 in total when Pete and Bethany arrive from Newfoundland on the 23rd. Just before leaving for the airport Dar came up from putting Luke and Bree to bed downstairs and she was just glowing... seems the kids were praying pretty deep after hearing Dar read the story of Paul's first century shipwreck on Malta from the book of Acts.

Earlier today, Marty and I were in St. Paul's Shipwreck Church in Valetta. Relics include Paul's right wrist bone and a portion of the pillar upon which Paul was beheaded. Curious.

Praying the streets today I spoke with Nigerian and Somali refugees. Marty, while taking Andy to the airport had the chance to speak with three Somali refugees as well. They wanted a picture with him after the conversation.

Tomorrow the prayer room is full of Maltese saints... so we Canadians get a break for a bit. Tomorrow night, Luke and I get to spend the night together in the prayer room. Should be a big adventure...

Lisa and Bree a few days ago in the early stages of prayer room development cutting and pasting headlines... Now there's wall to wall carpet and cushy comfy stuff everywhere... quite the creative space... and full of prayer.

Bhutto and Trudeau and Houses

2008-01-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

During my commute into the office I got wondering about Justin Trudeau. Having been busy over Christmas break I didn't read any of this until just now. Before Christmas, I picked up two biographies of Pierre Trudeau which I havn't read yet. However, I have been reading a bit more about the history of Cape Breton Island and Montreal. Earlier in December, I read John A. MacDonald's latest biography. Among many revelations, I found it interesting he started as a defence attourney whose first case was a bit bizzarre.

It seems the Benazir Bhutto story is getting more interesting (in a who shot JFK kind of way).

I'd like to see Charlie Wilson's War, and not yet sure what all that has to do with Michael Vickers or Canada's present roles in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Two books on my desk for reading today: Eric D. Beinhocker's "The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What It Means for Business and Society" and Terry Morrison & Wayne Conaway's "Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: The Bestselling Guide to Doing Business in More Than 60 Countries, 2nd Edition"

There's reading about this stuff and then there's the "What happens if I end up in the middle of this stuff?" gut check. There is a certain knowledge by extension (through the looking glass perspective) that we all have. Then there is the surgically getting past the media-based vanilla-politicized agendas where we willingly place ourselves in the middle of the smelly mess nobody's sure how to clean up. The reason we end up there is to bring hope, spread the love and put our two hands to the work of helping heal the broken stuff. A healer can't manipulate anyone into being healed!

Local politicians and international dipolmats are not as much goal setters, as they are problem solvers. If the ones governing can't heal what's broken, the ones who hope to "govern" need better advisors. More advisors with PhD's may or may not be a liability. You can trust the specialists if you like. But, what about the people... Then it becomes about which people. Who do we trust? Who do we allow to speak into our agenda?

And here's the real crux of leadership. People know character when they see it. All good people gravitate to someone worth following who listens and guides and inspires and encourages. Anybody with a good heart is willing to follow and learn from someone else's lead. Nobody can lead a swarm of bad people... It's good that there are a lot of good people in the world.

If I wanted to build a house... I could just contract it out to the lowest bidder. Or, I could give a contractor work because I like the five different blueprints I can choose from. Or, I can build the house myself. And building it myself means different things as well. I could literally build it myself which may or may not be a disaster. Or, I could build it myself in a way that puts me in the midst of the entire building project from the ground up... where there are no pre-assumptions ahead of time other than "I want to build a house."

So, I want to build a house. I have an idea on what kind of land I want to build this place on. I have some ideas of what I'd like to see architecturally. I know who I want my home to bless and inspire. So what do I do next? Well, I might read architectural journals. I might introduce myself to various architects... maybe even have a few of them meet each other and we all share our ideas for what community might look like under my new roof.

If I know the potential location of my home I might introduce myself to the owner of the land.. and if it's in a municipality then I get to know the area... where the hydro and water come from, the infrastructure of the whole grid. Location is important, but knowing everything about the location is even more important.

On and on it goes with building a house. It's going to take time. It's going to take money. It's going to have a final result. If the original intent of the vision is just to have a place to put stuff and keep my family warm and dry ... then I'll end up with a box. If the original intent of the vision is to build an inspirational international destination for young global leaders coming and going from the nations of the world... If the original vision is to have a massive circular study / oratory for the whole family to learn and grow together ... If the original vision takes in the stone and light of the Cistercians and the rugged wooden beams of the high alpine mountains of Canmore, Alberta... if it's a house of prayer and study and hosting international leadership... then it will look and feel like more than just a house.

And this isn't just about building a house... Before one ever steps out to build or rebuild a business or a nation, one has to ask and answer a lot of questions. And whatever questions you can't answer better have an adequate advisor. And whatever questions you don't even know you should ask yet, better have an adequate advisor. Basically, if you are going to step out in any way to build any thing into any one... then you need more and more excellent people around you.

Guaranteed, every refugee in the history of the world asked and answered a lot of heart level questions before they ever inherited that land and started building upon their family dreams.

Global Velocity

2007-11-16T10:13:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I was watching a Wild Chronicles dvd series with my kids. I was amazed at the falcon in a 240 mile an hour dive. I just discovered on Wikipedia, "The word comes from their Latin name falco, related to Latin falx ("sickle") because of the shape of these birds' wings."

Ever since I was a kid God called me to be his falcon. To learn stealth, speed, agility from a high panoramic view, seamlessly in and out of places and situations like lightning. Always my favorite bird. Always an inspiration.

Two years ago, the day I carried in my resignation letter to BGEAC / Samaritan's Purse, I walked over two hours to the office, praying the whole way. It was a big decision. And for one solid hour of that walking journey, from the airport toward the office, a falcon stayed with me... swooped over my head time and again... back and forth, diving down just over my shoulders... calling to me. I could hear the whoosh of those feathers as the bird whipped by every time. Brought tears to my eyes. It was God's reminder to me... to be like that falcon.

When I put my letter of resignation down on that particular desk and spoke simply and clearly to that particular individual about my reasons for resigning, I walked out of the office and looked up into the clear blue sky and from right to left a silver bullet of a little learjet came whipping into the airport for a landing. And in that moment, standing there on the sidewalk outside the Canadian offices of an international family of evangelists I'd been serving in various capacities for 10 years, I heard a voice say, "I have a thousand ways of getting you where I want you to go."

And as I type out this brief blog post, in comes our office mail for the day and along with the mail a courier carries in my order from The World Bank. I crack open the 2008 world development report entitled "Agriculture for Development" to the first two lines of the overview:

An African woman bent under the sun, weeding sorghum in an arid field with a hoe, a child strapped to her back - a vivid image of rural poverty. For her large family and millions like her, the meager bounty of subsistence farming is the only chance to survive.

Yesterday I was on a conference call with three friends regarding refugees, children, education and poverty and the fertile earth of Uganda. The past two weeks have been full of conversations about all different nations in Africa and Central America with young leaders scattered all over. Then there is the whole Asia piece... and the Middle East, and more connections growing in Europe.

I am just as committed to prayer as I am to building an international business model that will make a difference in the most broken places of the earth. I am just as committed to the proclamation of righteousness as I am to building up this new infrastructure... whatever it looks like. In this outworking of justice I must remain willing to weep with those who weep... and dance with those who can dance again. It's about engaging the whole world with my whole heart... about beautiful faces and real names and strong stories about overcoming obstacles in order to cherish the lives on the other side of those obstacles. We can do this!

It's getting time to re:engage my friends in various Non-Government Organizations and student movements. I'm having conversations with bankers and buisiness leaders and former government leaders and the ideas are building and I'm feeling like maybe it's time to fly again.

Last night, Dar and I watched Amazing Grace. It's an honour to walk amidst an international generation of global Wilberforces wrestling with the real issues at every level seeking peace and justice.

Wealth amidst Powers

2007-11-15T10:36:00.003-07:00

In organizational systems, people tend to put the gas and brake peddles under the wrong feet. Give the dreamers (Inc. and Ltd.) a blank cheque without accountability and they'll most likely blow it all out the tailpipe at top speed. And there are countless examples of the bizarre lack of accountability for those pushing barrel loads of cash into one another's muskets. Put all the remaining pennies in the vice-grip of controllers (intelectual property banks) without a way forward and they'll scowl at every gas station, refusing to put a drop in the tank until they figure it out for themselves, or make you recreate yourself to be just like them anyway, so you're really an extension of them for free. The geek with the most IT wins. "We" say tribal knowledge rules as long as "we're" the chief...

It's amazing to watch people who don't have money get money. It's also just as amazing to watch people with money lose it. Neither group really knows what to do with or without money. Yes, I'm generalizing. It's like money and wealth systems have the power to turn most people inside out. "It", whatever it is, controls them. And poor decisions get made all over that matrix cause there's nothing like anxiety to drive fear to distraction. Oh, but we train and prepare ourselves past the fear... we're pretty much stable psychopathic iconoclasts of the common sense revolution.

But, really... the issues we're facing in our local communities and global relationships amidst surging storms, collapsing bridges and smoggy olympic games are not about money. Ask someone with a dream what they would do with a million bucks. The immediate response will tell you a lot about their hearts. Because having something makes you accountable before those who don't have anything at all.

Ask someone what they're going to do with the billion they already have and they'll look at you like you just slapped them, like you have no right asking, like you've just walked in on them bucknaked in a shower... The look on that face is priceless ... They snear, "Read my year end report!" Right, like that year end isn't the biggest gong show pie chart in the world. Reveals just enough to make you look credible... but make sure to sweep away the carnage. If you want the real story, you have to have someone open their books.

Amazing what money does to people. Billion is the new million and there's lots of "opportunities" to take "advantage" of. Non-disclosure confidentiality agreements all around if you please... bring in the fleet of lawyers and put a vice-grip on this thing. We're all equals at the table, right!? ... Well, we'll see.

People are either givers or takers. Get enough givers together and the pressure starts to lessen a bit, the ties loosen ... and the vision starts to clear, and a way forward might just be found... as long as everyone of those givers stays a giver... one greedy taker on a team is like a venturi of suction in the wrong direction.

When you look at the headlines, at marketing, at elections, at causes, it's all typically about winning, controlling and leveraging the attention of others... or keeping them on the line once you have the little card carriers toting your brand. Some personalities are masters at holding attention, at gaining trust. They know when to grab it, massage it and release it... mezmerizing. They know what strings to pull when and how in order to get pavlov's dogs drooling for more. They even know how to shock our socks off and clear our plates for more. They teach us what to remember and what to forget.

If you can master the system of media, technology and have the right story... and the next gen product... you can rule the day and rewrite everything. The bad side: Win people's attention and you can leverage them into a place where you can control them, manipulate them, suck the pennies right out of them. That's the kind of heavy handed dominance that used to birth countless bloody revolutions... but now we have pro sports, night clubs, neo-pharm, online poker, sexy phones, a million looping tunes and porn to dull anarchy's edge.

Where is the real fruit of all this globally everywhere, depersonalized and distant, tacitly voyeuristic interface? Is "tacitly voyeuristic" even allowed to be put together in english? Is it spelled right... Can I make up my own language? Taci-euristic sounds like something Tigger would say or a new way of doing business in Tibet.

Live Aid to Live 8 "awareness" bubbles.... what's next? Who knows, but we'll all know more about it when that wave comes... but it'll be cool dished out in a cool way and there will be ring tone downloads... no wait, that's way too 2002 ... we will download whole tunes playing in the background of every activists conversation... our own satelite news channel just for us, the activists... phones that get reception in the jungle, in the desert, and it's ours, on all our phones... only our phones are in... activists of the world unite... Hey, every conversation on every mobile phone could sound like you're always in the back of a night club amidst that revolutionary conversation ... I guess there's a downside, "What's that Bill, can't hear you, wow this party is in orbit ... sorry, what? I'm losing you in the swell of lights, emotions and endless chugs of bottled water from the bar."

You can't "entertain" a voluntary army into serving the people living in the gutters of the two- third's developing world. The arts paint a certain picture and extrapolate a certain history longing forward, leaning toward a certain hope. It takes guts to be a martyr muse... to be one that gets painted long after you're long gone. Cause you didn't step into that space to have someone put you on a canvas. So get off the bloody easel and just start living your life.

Ahhh, get viral with marketing and crowd source... do the ME to WE and well, now "you" have a wave of Wii ... and you can just hear that tide coming in ... brand heaven... when you have "consumer confidence" on your side you're King or Queen for a day and you can give everyone what YOU want, not what THEY want... cause nobody really knows what they want, right? Confuse them into trusting you. And what you want is cheaper for you to produce and more for them to pay... perfect. So it's up to you to pave paradise and put up your parking lot, or someone else will take advantage of the cheap real estate. You won't stay there long anyways. Sell it to the losers. There's other sweeter deals.

Most of our western knowledge is derived from extension, a manipulated, edited and overly- pasturized "mediated" extension of the republic ... until I'm eyeball to eyeball with a person and see how they live day to day I won't really know ... which is why we have to get less polished and get off our thrones and sacred bloodlines and more into each others faces ... there is a new way forward and it cuts through a lot of this successful hero shit, where the sexiest named coffee (grown by an exotic out of contact with the real world, well paid family of ten) gets sipped by activists who know what's really going on in the real world while they sniff that overpriced swirling shakra scented wonderland waft of enlightenment (coffee, sugar, chocolate, spices, textiles, oil, diamonds... does it matter).

Then the reality hits, the day to day grind of the ordinary average "citizen" ... the smelling salts of cubicle 16 hour work day abuse. Like you know you're brothers when you've had a smoke together right after a battle with that VP. And your hands are still shaking from that bullet grazing your temple and you're both listening to one another quietly, and it's real simple and monotone, nearly whispering, about how you want to see your families and lovers again, cause you were just on the edge of your own lives together and everything boils down to who you want to hold and love. You know you can go to war with a guy when you just saw him shit himself in the trench beside you and he looks at you embarassingly, holding his helmut on his head with one hand and holding up his pants with the other. That's the soundbite of film that always ends up on the editing room floor ... doesn't sell ... Editor Tom calls Director Steve, "Umm, Steve, in this scene here the guy shit himself right ... should we cut that out? I think so. Right. Ya ... I guess we can't put dead bodies on the front of the New York Times every day now can we." And this Dilbert moment happens all the time in office cubicles everywhere. Cut 'em lose and let 'em drift.

Look at the macro, where companies and banks and international trade unions are buying and selling influence and the sea of leverage and sanctions and free trade and fair trade and aid and fade to black from the anchor desk ... when you start peeling it all back and taking a hard look in... you might just start recognizing patterns and structures that are diametrically opposed to any good intent any simple "individual" with half a brain might have (Lion: If I only had a brain).

Put a gorgeous refugee on the runway who causes us to remember that there's still millions of refugees struggling to survive every day. Heaven breathes into the dust... and we end up polishing all the dust into glass bubbles ... breathing into the fishbowl with our own version of the story of how it's all going to be. How we're going to swim each other in circles 'till we're all belly up. Don't ever let us out of the bowl to swim free. It's dangerous out there. We're poor little goldfish tickling the underbelly of a shark... enjoying the slip stream - about to get consumed, plancton breathed into the gape of that bottomless whale. It's a scary world.... where's my next coffee.

Yes, there's never been this many people on the planet before. Yes, we've all ended up here and are not sure how to get there from here. Yes, the first world is terribly and stupidly dependent on 110 year old technologies of oil and gas and now coal... again, and nuclear, again. You think smog is bad in Europe or North America... don't visit India or China... you'll come home to your bubble hacking up your lungs for six months.

And then you take it down to the micro, into personal hopes and dreams. And you want to build something simple and honourable, and yet not corny or packaged or stale dated like an awkward tinsel crowned shine Jesus shine down main street. And you want to "build it" into your field of dreams to help others, to change the world... You have a dream. And you start saturating yourself with all the information available from the truest sources you can find ... and it all incubates over time... and a storyboard of concepts starts to resurface in your consciousness and you start mapping it out privately and then sharing your lyric and tune here and there with friends and a corporate expression of your original intent starts to manifest itself amidst others and you sure hope people understand it ... and you're getting ready to take off.

And you scribble on a napkin hoping to reach the lift of the thermals:

U2 - Wave of Sorrow

2007-11-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

The constellation of meaning in this short interview and song is staggering. This is the very passage of scripture we've been chewing on for a year and a half and launched all of my research into Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians, Templars and Hospitalars (Knights of St. John/Malta). I'll write out more of my heart on this soon....

From I Kings 10 (The Message),

"The queen of Sheba heard about Solomon and his connection with the Name of God. She came to put his reputation to the test by asking tough questions. She made a grand and showy entrance into Jerusalem—camels loaded with spices, a huge amount of gold, and precious gems. She came to Solomon and talked about all the things that she cared about, emptying her heart to him. Solomon answered everything she put to him—nothing stumped him. When the queen of Sheba experienced for herself.... it took her breath away.

...She then gave the king four and a half tons of gold, and also sack after sack of spices and expensive gems. There hasn't been a cargo of spices like that since that shipload the queen of Sheba brought to King Solomon.

...King Solomon for his part gave the queen of Sheba all her heart's desire— everything she asked for, on top of what he had already so generously given her. Satisfied, she returned home..."

You Don't Need Anyone's Permission To Be Yourself

2007-11-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite pics of me because it's showing anyone who sees it that I care more about the viewer seeing the mountain and the sky. I'm in my place, I thrive on the mountain and I'm looking out over the valley at a view the viewer can't see. Looking somewhere else... somewhere further and deeper than my present place and the perspective of the viewer. This picture tells the viewer I'm present with them but begs the questions, "What on earth are you looking at? Why aren't you facing me? Why do you spend so much time up there in the clouds?"

These are questions I ask myself about me. Can I ask myself, "Why aren't you facing me?" Sure, there are all kinds of me's becoming me within me... There are many selves within the self, what mystics call the shattered selves coming into alignment. Authenticity is about all these selves coming into the true self through Christ. The selves that surface through dreams, the subconscious layers, triggered by emotions and circumstances, etc. I used to want to see all the shattered pieces become one new greater piece in a stainglass window. These days I see it more like having all that shattered glass swept together in a pile, heated molten hot by a supernatural source, melted down and beautifully reconstituted into something heavenly under the skilled eye and delicate hand of the Artist.

One mystic sees a seven story mountain and another sees seven concentric circles of the city of God within the inner self. I don't know how many layers or pieces there are to me ... I won't settle for someone else's historical religious model of enlightenment. I'm on my journey.

I took my family to see Jason Upton last weekend. I knew my kids would just thrive there. Jason is a wonderful artist who writes songs with his own children. There was a moment when my soon-to-be three-year-old son Nate got up on the stage with Jason while he was singing. Jason walked right over to Nate in the middle of his song and put out his hand for Nate to take ... and Nate just stared at him and then out at the crowd ... cause I think Nate thought Jason wanted the Spiderman book Nate had ... Priceless ... One of my favorite moments of the weekend. And then there was the next evening where my three kids dragged me up to the front of the auditorium to sit down and listen to Jason sing again ... and we all sat on the floor, one on my lap and one under each arm ... and we rocked back and forth to Upton tunes. "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, give us your medicine..." was Bree's favorite song of the weekend... she still sings it around the house.

The week before seeing Jason live, I was listening to his album Beautiful People during my daily commute in and out of the mountains... and these lyrics nailed me between the eyes... literally took my breath away... The song starts, "Do you know, you're a word from heaven ?" .... and I thought to myself, "No, not today I don't".... "Do you know you're a child of God?" And I've been singing along to Sons and Daughters of the Living God for a week now. It's just hitting me so fresh. And I'm meeting these Sons and Daughters more frequently these days.

My chats in Google mail are going into overload. Usually six or more conversations will pop up all at once.. at the office (where I'm the VP of an oil and gas company who chats internationally all day about kingdom). The other day it was buddies in St. John's, Halifax, and Montreal; a girl crying in a grad lounge of York University in Toronto; a new friend in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and another friend currently leading an exposure trip in Nicaragua. Just a few minutes ago, up popped another friend who's back from Brazil and heading to Zimbabwe right after the 24-7 Prayer National Leadership Gathering in Montreal at the end of the month.

Yesterday, I spent three hours in a coffee shop with a college student who once spent time with YWAM in Brazil. He's ready to dive into something God-sized. This morning, I got an email from a young woman in Indonesia asking for prayer and guidance as her work spans from the Middle East to Taiwan, China, and Indonesia. Last week, I was praying over a young couple in our office who have since headed to North Africa to pray. They need guidance and care.

They are coming out of the woodwork. They are strong and free and they have little or no structural support. Well I've got to do everything I can to help the young leaders of this emerging army. I will be their interpreter as I'm allowed to be. I know the language and protocols of other generations. And as I carry all these wonderful ones in my heart ... I'll continue being crucified with Christ in the midst of all those things that seek to steal kill and destroy. I don't have a Messiah complex. It's just that I am crucified with Christ and I know my place ... period ... and it's hard work sometimes ... to be misunderstood by so many, to be undervalued and marginalized ... but I don't really care ... I know where the current is and I am finding that flow ... and I understand a thing or two about how it's all shaping up ... and if I could say something to you as one who wants to move with you in the flow of the Spirit:

You are processing all these things very well... You are articulate. You have an ability to see the keys of your own life... I think that Jesus has given you this ability to see your heart... Many kingdom leaders can't see their own hearts. You can, and I bless you for it. You are also very honest, which is refreshing... God honours truthful people.

Just be yourself. Be free to be dissapointed. Free to grieve. Free to weep. You don't need anyone's permission to weep and pound the table as you wrestle through this. You are a beautiful butterfly emerging from your coccoon... wrestling to get your wings free... and there is that waiting period for the butterfly.. where they stretch out their new wings in the sun... and their wings warm up and dry out under the graceful majestic sun... You are in that season, where your wings are getting ready, drying out... you are nearly ready to fly... and I mean fly, really fly.. for the glory of God.

Your work in business is an opportunity. It's like there are two tracks under the train... one track is business, the other is proclamation ... and I think you should be free to do both... you'll find a good balance... and there may be ways for you to be an
evangelist in your work and see the army of God grow in the midst of your suppliers and workers from other nations. You are Christ's ambassador in every way... Your business is your church.

You are a kingdom leader. Jesus has handpicked you for some specific things. You are a word from heaven, a child of the living God ... a peacemaker who inherits the earth. It's just the way it is. It's what God put in you. You are God's...and God wants certain things done... so get doing it. Be yourself with God. Nothing can move you other than God. Nothing can intimidate you. No one can get in your way.

Don't look for the approval of men and women or those in some kind of leadership... Jesus is your leader. Love everyone. Make sure you do your best to live at peace with everyone. But follow after Jesus with a relentless fervor. And as you follow hard after Him, others will follow after you. And you may turn around and say to them, "Don't follow me!" And they'll smile and say, "But, you're following Jesus... now get going, we're tired of sitting around hearing you saying 'Don't follow me!'" And you lead and they come along... and there will be days when others will lead where you cannot, where you are tired or worn down or whatever... and someone else will jump in... not to take over, just to help... We're all God's workmanship.

The bottom line: You're perfectly fine. You're normal. You are well on the way to becoming a leader of leaders... You know how I know? Because you're humble. You ask for prayer from a stranger who has been given a little piece of what you need. You know everything must come from your heart for you to succeed finding the heart of Christ. You my friend are a rare jewel, precious. Frankly, I don't think church leaders will know what to do with you. You're bigger than their churches and ministries and budget constraints because the God you serve is bigger... Not that you're proud of being a giant...

Just typing the word "giant" reminds me of a friend of mine I was with a while back who had just returned from at trip to Laos... I was praying over him as a young apostle... and his wife is a fresh prophet... they are in a similar situation as many of you as you wrestle with your family and businesses and churches... Well, he and I went to a church to pray with some guys in a church basement ... These guys wanted to pray down fire from heaven ... But they weren't really praying (and prayer isn't in the words you use or how you use them) ... they were saying stuff like, "God we want to see your fire... blah blah blah"... it was all hitting the ceiling, no real faith simply engaging God (again it's not about the words or the process... It's about simple spiritual attention) ... They were just blabbing these words about a dangerous thing at the walls ...

So this is what I prayed in the midst of that moment, and ya it could seem like a slap in the face. I prayed, "God, why do we go looking for fire to fall from heaven when all that is falling from the sky is rain!?" And you could hear a pin drop in that room. And this girl walked in right then, she was a young worship leader, and she noticed she was standing in a room of guys, and she looked like she felt a bit awkward walking into that environment with all those religious guys ... and here's this circle of guys really trying hard, in a constipated way, to pray...

I looked at the girl and asked her to pray over these powerless guys ... and she prayed very meekly and simply, but the power of God just blanketed the place ... after she prayed her simple prayer she smiled at me and quietly left the room ... I got up from my place and left the guys sitting there ... nothing else to say really. My apostle friend fresh back from Laos followed me out of the room and said, "Hey, when you prayed that thing, about all that is falling from the sky is rain thing, I looked behind you and there was an angel so big behind you he was sitting on the floor with his head tucked down and his knees were all the way up to the ceiling... How did a giant angel fit into the basement of the church? He was huge." And we both laughed and wondered what that angel would ever do if he stood up amidst that circle of guys and started moving furniture around.

Augh, I don't know. GOSH (in a napoleon dynamite kind of way)! It gets tiring trying to explain to people with hands over their eyes and ears how a raven can lead one in prayer, or how a falcon can travel with someone for four solid hours swooping down over one's head crying out over and over messages from God, or how an eagle three feet away lifts off above one's head and stretches its six foot wing span to shadow one's whole body from the Sun and make one's hair blow in the force of wind from it's wings... and how that's a work of God. Or, deep in the forest, how a wolf can appear on a burial mound one minute and disappear in the next blink.

Or, how the sky can open up horizontally at noon and release a horizontal rainbow of gleaming light and release an angel so big over a valley it fills the sky, and it's bones can all be seen, and it has four heads and huge massive wings that nearly fill the whole valley .... and it's looking down on one who sees and is communicating so much truth as that sky stays open and that horizontal rainbow stays in that place through the whole 20 minute show ... and then it all vanishes like smoke ... Or, how the night sky can open up like a twinkling curtain beind drawn back to reveal a certain river visible and felt as it flows down from the heavens right down through one's body, soul, mind and strength.

Or, how one can speak amidst the winds about Jesus to a group of friends and all witness the winds listening and stilling themselves to silence only to be roused back to full force by one calling back to those same winds with an inviting, "Come on!" Or how lightning streaks the sky when one's prayerful pointing finger sweeps East to West over an entire nation. Or how the earth literally groans loudly and deeply under one's feet as one stands in moss ten inches deep so far from anywhere man made speaking into the earth about the sons and daughters of God about to be revealed to it.

As I unpack this, let me encourage you not to go beyond what is written. Because it's all there, in what is already recorded and compiled. It's all there. And what is written authenticates so much of what we experience. And if we have experiences that can't be confirmed by what is written we have to leave those experiences behind ... we'll have those kinds of experiences as well ... because there is so much going on in the war above our shoulders. So much miscommunication and over communication and enemy reconnaissance amidst heavens reconnaissance, that the true test is in how our character and conduct has been shaped by the red letters of scripture.. the things Jesus Christ is recorded as saying and doing and clarifying.

Because frankly, so far, I have not found anything in all of creation that Jesus has to submit to. Everything must submit to Jesus Christ. He understands the Hindu and the Muslim and the Jew and the Cree. But, they all must submit to Christ... He's not a colonial tyrannt. He doesn't need anything. He understands what people worship and why they worship it. You know what I say to spiritual stuff anymore, "Hey, I'm just a witness of Jesus Christ. I'm just here seeing what He's showing me... I'm not here to take anything or move anything... That's his job... I'm just a witness of his glory and majesty dominion and power... all power is in Christ. Hey, Jesus... could I speak with you a minute about this!?" I'm telling you everything changes from that moment on! Instant respect ... All power is in Chirst!

Jesus Christ doesn't need anyone's permission to be Himself. I learned this lesson from Him... the first One to get it right... and He still holds all the keys.

Curtain Call

2007-11-01T11:46:00.000-06:00

This morning I poured my first coffee of the day and sat down at my desk in my role as VP of an oil and gas company here in Alberta and remembered a Russian poet once saying something about imagination forming the world into a homeland, a prison, or a place of battle - about how nobody lives in the objective world; only in a world filtered through the imagination.

With my large Starbucks "Calgary mug" full of hot Nabob from our faithful and true Tim Horton's coffee maker I glanced out the window at the traffic on Crowchild heading into the downtown core and sat down to 12 open web pages of news and three books: Maude Barlow's "Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water", William Marsden's "Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn't Seem to Care)" and Matthew R. Simmons classic "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy"...

I first read Twilight in the Desert a year ago, at the suggestion of one of our engineers, during my first head-spinning industry-language-learning month in this industry. I had no idea what a BOE was or the 7 to 1 ratio between natural gas and oil? This morning, I took Simmons off the shelf again because a former head of strategy for a huge international was in our office the other day, saw the book on our shelves and said it was right on the mark. This former strategist then proceeded to lay out some general facts about his former work in the Middle East and some presently unfolding situations to keep and eye on which I ponder today as I prepare for a strategy dinner meeting tonight with some international oil and gas men.

I'm an eco-sensitive inter-disciplinary stategist in the midst of a volitile industry who understands the importance of good reconnaissance. So here's what I wonder about as I sip my coffee:

I pray for a friend who was just invited to join the team at J.P. Morgan. Then, I wonder about Magnolia Oil Bonds going to Rockefeller in 1912. I wonder about the historical opening of the Federal Reserve in 1914. I wonder what 62 Cedar has to do with 26 Broadway.

I wonder why Abu Dhabi doubles profits as its latest Canadian energy sector purchase of nearly 5 billion cash leads into selling bonds in Canadian dollars. I wonder why two Canadian Trusts are merging under the leadership of a Canadian government tax specialist. I wonder what European inflation has to do with Iraqi Euro-oil currency. I wonder how quickly the Canadian dollar became a petro-dollar...

I'm wondering about security and curtain calls.

Toronto, Calgary over Rome, Valetta

2007-10-17T00:06:00.000-06:00

So this morning at 5 a.m. I had a choice to make at the airport... and I prayed on it... home or deeper into Europe to pray amidst God's people. I had a half hour to decide... Dar called my mobile/cell and I told her about a great deal on a flight back to Toronto for £120. Done :)

So the books I'm reading on the flight are James Holland's "Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege 1940-1943" and Christopher Tyerman's "God's War: A New History of the Crusades".

I'm studying more and more of the Cistercian, Templar, Hospitallar, Euro-feudal family drama... I need true sources... For some reason I think I need Dr. James Houston on this one, to point me in the right direction toward the right sources... which means I'll probably need to study Spanish and better French.

I first studied Bernard of Clairvaux in 1999 and Jacques Ellul (French activist sociologist juggernaut professor whose father was Maltese) in 2000. Bernard and Jacques have me tracking on some things.... the kind of research that could end up a PhD... not for the sake of the letters, but for the sake of authority. To actually have something worthwhile to say about more than 1500 years of world history.

This study of the Cistercians is the history of fuedal families of Europe, Eastern and Western prayer and contemplation, monastic and military orders, the sacred feminine, domestic and international policy, infrastructure and banking... finding a way through the bloody rubble.

It's funny... Until I started reading Bernard again (about eight months ago) I had no idea how fascinated everyone was with the Crusades. The novels, the movies... some old wells are being redug, I'm just going to make sure the good water doesn't get polluted by all the poison.

Gotta catch my flight.