Heart's capacity

I continue to be struck by the awesomeness of God.

I've been meditating on Psalm 103 for a few days now. The poetic paraphrase I've been using began "My soul is for your blessing". I struggled for a long while because it effectively states I exist or am made to be blessed, my purpose is to be blessed. Personally I find this is extremely difficult to accept! I fought with this idea for sometime and especially when the normal translations say "Bless the Lord, O my soul!"

But David Dickson in his commentary (published in the 1650s - yes 350 years ago) wrote:

In the prophet's stirring up of himself to praise God, learn[ed] 1. The sense of God's goodness to a believer is very blessedness felt, flowing from God, the fountain and cause of blessedness. 2. When a believer is satisfied with God's goodness, he cannot satisfy himself in the expression of his sense of it, or of his discharge of thankfulness for it; but stirreth up his own dull spirit to the work of praise. 3. In praising God special care is to be had of the sincerity of our heart and affections.

As I sat in silence this morning I felt the need to really draw a response and the image comes from this time. Words don't really express things sufficiently for me, this picture is closer. Yesterday I expressed this another way in my spiritual directors together meeting. It's like a analogy but similar to the feeling when you inflate a balloon with one breath, except its going in rather than coming out. All I can say is thank you God.

in the spirit

This morning in my prayer time I was reminded of this image I drew in my journal on July 28 2005. I was meditating on Is 57:15, and this drawing came in response to Isaiah. I wrote then "Reaching out but not noticing the closer, nearer one. God with me in the moment, not looking for the movement."

This morning I remembered this image while I read from Psalm 103, a very poetic interpretation speaking of God:

Who awakens the spirit So that time's refreshed And grows back like an eagle's feather ... And acts in the lives of strugglers

The last 30 hours I have had a huge sense of the awesomeness of God. Instead of even searching for God it has been a personal learning about openness and being willing to receive the presence of God. It is about lingering and savoring the moment. These lessons need to return again and again. God in the moment is enough. God can change the very nature of time that it can grow back like a eagle's feather, for time itself to soar.

For this is what the high and lofty One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15

Read the Primary Text

In Academia it is frowned upon when you work from secondary texts and not the original. When you reads another's writing about the first piece you get an interpretation and sometimes I wonder where it came from. This video, which I made in 2004, is about our dominant culture's secondary text about Christmas. What is Christmas all about?

The Pain of God

In May 2003 I was feeling pretty broken, feeling the effects of rejected love and dealing with a lot of unfinished business in my life. I was also reading profusely and had been thinking a lot about The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen. On Monday May 12th I read the whole of Theology of the Pain of God by Kazoh Kitamori, a Japanese theologian. In my journal notes I recorded :-

"The fact of Jesus Christ becomes the fact of the Gospel only when seen as the fact of the love of God enfolding us. Only when the birth and death of Jesus Christ as seen as the "pain of God' and his resurrection as the "love rooted in the pain of God" do these facts become the fact of the gospel." ... "The love of God which loves only those who love, fear and obey God may be called simply "God's Love." But the love which loves sinners who become his enemies is called "God's love rooted in the pain of God." And the "pain of God" means this coexistence of the wrath of God with the love of God in tension."

Kitamori wrote further :-

"To forgive is to forget... However the pain, if real, penetrates the one who forgives and issues forth in the intent love. ...Forgiveness exhibits its true nature and pain proves to be real, only when intent love enfolds others, forgetting its pain."

Through my life I have the awesome experience of being aware of people's inner lives and frequently their pain and tears have become a part of my journey in life. Yesterday a student told me that when younger she learned that despair leads people to death and now years on she knows it is true both physically and mentally. All I can do is watch, care, monitor for I feel all I can do is to extend an intentional love and bring the God of hope to them. It is important to me that people should never cry alone.

On Tuesday morning May 13th 2003, the day after reading about the pain of God, I drew the image of the heart being held together by the hair which was growing buds. (As I write now I remember the woman who came to Jesus and washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.) Later that Tuesday night I dreamt I was in the garden clearing up and it was getting more and more muddy and more and more water was coming from inside the house. Everything was becoming waterlogged even though there was a slope for runoff. I went inside and could see the water was coming from a pipe in the lounge. There was no wrench to be found and the tool I found wouldn't do the job of switching off the water. I wasn't worried or distressed by this.

Kitamori asserted towards the end of his book, "Only by the sustaining hand of transcendental grace at this moment can the study of pain be pursued." I, in writing now, am also a recipient and continuing receiver of that grace.

Film and Spirituality

Film I think is another form of visual journalling.

Tonight I went to the first of eight movies shown under the theme of "The Love of God". This is not a conventional Christian series as the opener was The Motorcycle Diaries under the title of Kingdom meditation. This is the story of young Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado who began a journey by motorcycle across South America in 1952. Their encounters bring changes to their worldview and values and in a sense they are transformed by the poverty, by their encounters, by the generosity and hospitality they meet.

This film series seeks to address the Love of God by asking:-

• What is love?
• How do I love?
• What stops me from loving? What happens when I love in an authentic manner?

For me, I am struck by a particular point where Guevara and Alberto end up at the San Paolo Leper colony in Peru. The low-contagious patients live on one bank of this wide deep river and the staff and doctors etc live on the opposite bank. I could see this incongruity being considered by the 24 year old trainee doctor Ernesto (the later revolutionary). At the conclusion of his birthday party with the staff, he exits and looks across the river to where the patients are and declares 'I want to celebrate my birthday with them.' An asthmatic he almost foolhardily jumps into the river and begins his long swim. The staff and friend call for him to come back, the lepers come out hearing the shouting and realize who is coming to them and encourage him... helping him out of the water as he completes the almost impossible.

For me, love and solidarity have a strong association. How can you love the leper when you place them on the other side of a wide river? Guevara responded with a solidarity noticing the presence of the river and the separation it caused, You can see the beginnings of a solidarity right at the start shaking the hands of the lepers without gloves. I notice love includes a refusal to conform, based on love as communion and love as robust concern and love as valuing. (see my earlier post) Furthermore I am constantly struck by those claiming to have concern for a given group, live somewhere else, or they erect either physical, conceptual, or programatic barriers.

Tonight's reflection notes were prepared within the tradition of Ignatian spirituality and one paragraph sticks out to me.

"Many projects and enterprises claim to be from God; many leaders use spiritual, religious, moral and ethical arguments to validate their ways of proceeding. Ignatius [in his Spiritual Exercises], instead, insists that it is God who does the choosing, not humans. They might try to conscript God into their own projects and dramas. But God's ways are not human ways, and the Spirit blows where it wills. The things and qualities we consider important .... in service to God do not matter to God ... [What matters is being] human with all the flaws and glories of being human, when being human asks us always to go beyond ourselves, and to move from sincerity to authenticity."

Let the world change you ... and you can change the world declares The Motorcycle Diaries. Our mass media and charity fund raising is generating compassion fatigue and we are in danger of not feeling anything anymore. But an authentic Christian spirituality, which includes wonder, declares "Let the world touch me. I will not avoid the feelings whether good or painful I will accept them and set my face towards God. " Guevara ultimately cannot set his face towards God rather sets it against injustices and the evils he sees.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Cor 1:3-4

The embrace

I found an image on the internet and felt a desire to copy it. My copy is a simple sketch drawing but reminds me of one of my cello teachers who told me about caressing and embracing my cello or literally thinking more in terms of hugging it when playing.

I've already posted about the anime and drama Nodame Cantabile which has reminded me of many things I had forgotten over the years. But for me its fundamental impact was about our attitude to music and our love for its own sake and its relationship to technique. Mediocrity is unworthy of music and in fact any aspect of our lives. We need to embrace our lives.

Many years ago a cello coach on a music holiday said to me It's such a shame that someone with such musical ability is handicapped by their own technique. That comment really rocked me very hard and I went back to having cello lessons soon after.

I'm very interested that cellist Paul Tortelier in his book with David Blum noted that "when some of my students succeed in correcting poor technical habits, there is a change in their interpretation. They become aware that their interpretation has been mediocre as well as their technique." Tortelier, who was a great teacher of technique, said the proof of a good technique is that you don't have to practice long and that you can play when you become old. In fact I seem to remember him also writing that 30 minutes of good practice was equivalent to running 5 miles. I seem to be in a loop saying again that good technique and soul touching music are linked.

I remain saddened that so much in church seems mediocre 1/ lacking technique i.e. proficiency on the instrument, 2/ lacking practice i.e. absence of ensemble playing , and 3/ lacking inspiration i.e. the music fails to touch the soul. A few weeks ago, my good friend Evy was visiting and she shared frustrations about 3/ and I about 1/ and we didn't even get to 2/. As I write this blog, I have discovered the deep spiritual symbolic link that the music/cello and life have for me.

Tortelier noted that the father's hands in Rembrant's painting The Return of the Prodigal Son resemble the hands of a cellist. (see my earlier post)

"... they are not identical. The left hand is larger and more tense, while the right has a calm, almost spiritual quality. Now although I am righthanded, my left hand is in fact larger; it is in immediate contact with the strings, and is more tense and energetic ... My right hand is less developed physically because the fingers have less individual effort to make... [being the pivotal link between bow and arm] One hand is that of a workman, while the other is that of a priest."

Of course music and cello together with life and the spiritual life are symbolically linked for me and the insights are important. We need to put some work into our spiritual lives, in attitude embracing life itself, in developing technique/skill, in order that we may truly live lives to the full.

Command them to do good ... as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. 1Tim 6;18-19

Loss as necessary to life

In September 2003, I was working through Margaret Silf's book The Inner Compass. I wrote that I was disturbed by the following reading.

"Each breath [is] a stepping stone to God. ... As time passes I learn to recognize God's ways and to trust when I stand in the middle of the fast-moving water, that he will always bring me one more stone ... he is a little late today, still there on the river bank searching out the right stone. And only now I see how he is doing it. He is taking the stones away, one by one, from my cottage on the riverbank. Already it is half demolished. He is dismantling my kingdom [my home], bit by bit, to provide me with ways to discover his."

Days later I added a second quotation "as we have noticed in our painful experience, getting unhooked can be devastating. It feels like losing so much of what we must value. Freedom is costly - we pay with the currency of our hearts."

This sequence of images constitutes my adult spiritual journey and thematically records transitions and losses. During September I recorded that I dreamt I was trying to chew up fried pieces of Tofu with discomfort and difficulty. Furthermore I kept finding more pieces I must eat and they were too big to swallow. Things happening in my life were difficult to understand and digest.

Necessary Losses, by Judith Viorst, is one of those books that made clear that loss is essentially part of what it is to be human. I find that this is countercultural to our consumer capitalist worldview which suggests to be human is to have, to want, to collect, to accumulate.

I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle: be patient, bearing with one another in love. Eph 4:1

With Open Hands

Henri Nouwen's With Open Hands was an important catalyst to integrating visual journalling into my spiritual life. Before I started I had not really drawn since I was 11 years old and these images come from January 2003 many many years later.

My spiritual director suggested that the activity of journalling itself focuses and therefore concentrates the drawing itself. Around the same time I was reading The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. A monk who worked in the kitchens and yet over 17 years learnt to find God there. The book records "It was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times ... prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of God." For drawing the hands and reflecting about what I was reading was to discover something I already knew well which was "Letting go and letting God" but to transfer it. This was, in the words of my old pastor Patrick Brock, the 18 inch drop, namely from head to heart.

Dreams, cyberspace and reality

Paprika (パプリカ, Papurika) is a Japanese full length anime based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel, about a research psychologist involved in developing a device that will permit therapists to help patients by entering their dreams. However somehow the world of dreams and physical reality becomes blurred and a bizarre parade of symbols, which we might attribute to the Japanese collective unconsciousness, takes over. What happens is that people are drawn into and immersed in this parade. The device was created for good ends, in fact healing, but the human condition creates problems. This anime is not for the faint hearted the imagery is strong and effective, and it exposes fundamental human urges.

Joseph and Daniel were important ancient figures who took note of dreams, and Peter and Paul were early church figures who found importance in recognizing the divine presence in them. They are important but care is needed in their interpretation and discernment in the origin or source of the dream. Over the years, I have had very few dreams that I could remember on waking up. But since starting journaling the number has increased and I have kept a record of the dreams, and sought to understand them and their purpose and perhaps message. I believe dreaming is a sort of visual journalling and can contribute to the knowledge of self and therefore knowledge of God.

Recent scientific work has studied the ability of humans to project themselves into cyber identities whether in games or facebook, chat rooms or forums or even blogs. My fragments are consolidated here in this blog but I am not here. It is important to not live in our dreams, nor cyberspace. I would like to think that reality is where God is with us. An old confession was that God is the creator and sustainer of all things. It has been years since I heard the second spoken or discussed yet if God as sustainer defines what is real then all of life is lived in the presence of God. If we define what is real then perhaps Paprika's nightmare is closer than we imagine.

Correcting corrupted images

A key moment in my formation was the realisation that an understanding of God as father is frequently shaped by childhood. My divine image was marred by earthly experience. Henri Nouwen's book The Return of the Prodigal brought my own personal exploration and study of Rembrant's painting. The father has one hand of strength and power strongly holding and other of gentleness almost consoling.

Furthermore one of my personal struggles is that sincerity is not enough, and proficiency is required. Recently Nodame Cantibile which exists as a Japanese manga, anime, and live drama has opened me to myself, bringing old experiences of making music and loving music for music's sake. I find myself in so much of it. Set in a music college it says much not just about music but it begins with music and moves off into life. Music is a metaphor for life and living. It raises old questions about conflicting loves and what is a deeper love, it asks questions such as what is important whether to play music as I like it rather than first taking music seriously for music's sake in order to bring pleasure and joy. It brings to the front the links between technique and inspiration. The Nodame story is more than a romantic love story but also one where the love of music is a key and this is paralleled in a love of life and love in life. Even then the childhood experiences hamper and limit development and opportunity until dealt with. In my experience of parents it was a father who pushed and demanded and a mother who persuaded and consoled. Yet God as divine parent is both. Nodame Cantabile reminded me of the importance of striving for technique is as important as the ability to sing i.e. the expression of the soul of music. All art has its techne and psyche sides. (technical and soul) The spiritual disciplines present one side and movements of the spirit the other.

Sometimes we need the power of God and other times we need the shelter of the wings of God. We need a transcendent relationship if we are to live in this world, but we also need to love the experiences or at least find the experiences of the love of God here in the world. We need to take life seriously (the father's left hand) to enjoy life (the father's right hand) , otherwise we're stuck in hedonism or stoicism.

Drawing and spirtuality

A study from The Incredulity of Thomas by Peter Paul Rubens. In my journalling I became fascinated by hands and their ability to express feelings, emotions and sentiments. The earliest influence was Henri Nouwen's With Open Hands, but later the works of Van Gogh from his Brabant period. This was a time in the Borinage where he found himself with the poor.

Van Gogh wrote "And in my picture I want to say something consoling, as music does. I want to paint men and women with a touch of the eternal, whose symbol was once the halo, which we try to convey by the very radiance and vibrancy of our coloring . . . . Ah, portraiture, portraiture, with the mind, the soul of the model --that is what really come, it seems to me. (September 3, 1888)

As I draw hands and contemplate the original or the drawn that I find within myself echoes and resonances, the possibilities of the creator.

Is the talking head the only way?

Why do sermons or homilies have to be preached, or spoken? After all the spoken word is not necessarily as key as it once was. We became written cultures after aural cultures and since then we have moved on again to become visual cultures. Our worlds are massively full of conscious and unconscious symbols. The symbol that this video was shot, without conscious thought, riding the King streetcar down and onto King Street is not lost on me. I made it over 4 years ago and the soundtrack calls to mind the chorus of the people crying out "his love endures for ever". The phone tones are yhwh - the dialing code for God. This seeks to have the same intents that a conventional (whatever that means) sermon, i.e. to move people to seek change.

drawing number 6

The text "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives so also through Christ our comfort overflows". 2 Cor 15

This picture contains the clock tower of my church at the bottom of my garden as I grew up. There is a bowl of food sitting in the back of the picture (actually rice and 2 fish) and the heart is in the shade for the tree sheltering. The shadow on the ground seems to be 1 2 4, the values doubling.

drawing number 5

As I gave thanks for my time of rest I felt that God had written me to this point in my life. This was drawing number five.

The text was "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so thta you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit". ( Rm 15:13)

The lower section represents fossil beds near where I was staying and the causeway alludes to another set of images I drew pointing towards my spiritual journey.

drawing number 4

The fourth in the series I had been reading Isaiah 41:9-10 and 49:9a-12b.

The texts are "I will uphold you" and "I will turn my mountains into roads". This was drawn as I rested away for the city during the first days of September 2004.

drawing number 3

This was the third image from August 2004. The texts are "he held out to her the gold sceptre that was in his hand" and "when he cries out to me. I will hear for I am compassionate".

Drawn from the story of Esther 5:2 and Ex 22:27 ... I believe the dark cloud of unknowing fills the top of the picture and the hands of blessing come from ancient near Eastern images from Egypt. The boat setting off is a symbol of new beginnings for me.

drawing number 1

This image comes from August 2004 the texts are clockwise, "see I have engraved you on the palms of my hands", "I am the vine, you are the branches", and "leaves for the healing of the nations."

This was an intense time for me and in the space of 3 weeks I drew 6 of these of which this is the first.

Living in the presence

Discernment is a matter of following the Spirit and it involved the feminine side initially. Somehow the role of the Holy Spirit becomes more and more important. Henry Blackaby basically tells us if we want to know what to do, then we should go and find where God is at work. Somehow I find the importance of tears is greater than the importance of feeling good. In spirituality we make a significant difference between emotion's highs and lows and spiritual highs and lows. The dark night is not a spiritual low but it is found within an emotionally charged emotional low. The vice versa applies the emotional high may be in fact be a spiritual low . The danger is we live in our emotions rather than the presence of God.

Paradise or just hope?

I have been journaling intensely as for over 5 years and have so far filled 10 journals with prayers , reflections, and drawings. much of the stuff in this blog comes from my journals. What are the drawings you'll find? What do they mean? Sometimes a prayer that cannot be expressed initially with words. Sometimes a drawing expressing the inexpressible. Sometimes a drawing as response to life or something read....

I'm going to post some of the images of the last five years.