Celtic Wisdom in Norway...

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”

O'Donohue - Anam Cara
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About 5 years ago, I started kicking a hole in my private universe. Some light got in. It’s brought with it so many new words and feelings that I’m just now accessing a way to talk about it. It has bent my soul in a manner that won’t allow me to forget how life used to be, nor overlook the new mysteries of how life is unfolding.

There is no standing still. No going back. I know that truth. I’ve experienced a lot of communal grace in the last year that has kept me taking those steps forward. To continue the process of healing. And for what? What is the what? Driving along the seaside of Norway helps with that contemplative space. All I see is one beautiful, continuing coastline.

As I take it in, I’m attempting to cast a further vision for my life, past present uncertainties.
I have this moment. This day.
This community of friends, lovers, poets and prophets.
A heart that hungers for creative questioning and life collaborating.
I want to know more love. More beauty. More truth. All more fully.
A language that helps reconcile my brokenness, expresses shared longings, and invites further exploration.
I want to be more free with myself.
And I want to learn how to give it away with humility and grace.

Today I AM knowing love, beauty and truth. And the longing doesn’t appear to stop. That’s the reconciliation in this moment. All the love, beauty, truth, and new language to speak of it will never put it to it’s end. So, a compelling vision today looks like engaging with the newfound ache of joy and pain as a perpetual student and teacher…a wounded healer with an undying passion for the alleluia and the amen.

“Everything alive is in movement. This movement we call growth. The most exciting form of growth is not mere physical growth but the inner growth of one’s soul and life. It is here that the holy longing within the heart brings one’s life into motion. The deepest wish of the heart is that this motion does not remain broken or jagged but develops sufficient fluency to become the rhythm of one’s life.”

O'Donohue - Anam Cara

Results not typical.

I love that phrase - usually accompanying some guaranteed-ground-breaking-change-your-life-patterns-for-the-best-solve-your-problems product. Only subtly. Like a mumble at the end. Oh...by the way....don't get your specific hopes up that this will work for you.

The most groundbreaking thing I've heard in '08 so far, (besides Obama's "yes we can") is that life is difficult. Much of not only surviving life, but enjoying life, seems now pivoting on this truth, the choice to accept what it offers, and then move past it to the beautiful things that await such obedience.

A group of men I meet with every Monday night embody this for me. Tonight we spent a great amount of time trying to figure out how to care for some new additions to the circle. These new additions are men that went on a weekend retreat and encountered some of their most difficult truths, that cut through the old agreements and protections that a broken world has required of them just to survive. Now having seen this truth, there is a new freedom for most. A deeper conversation and a brighter hope in the midst of it all. Some men shake hands with their work and fade from it. Some stand tall in it, and catch a hopeful glimpse of what has always been waiting on the other side.

So. To consider such valiant people, fighting for good things in their lives...how do we care for them? How to shepherd them towards a lasting work, and that peace that truly passes all understanding? This hope can be accessed more easily in small numbers. Small numbers of people that are intimates of one another's stories. This pushes against the model set by most in our culture that growth is a good thing. I'm aware this week as we celebrate Easter, that growth in attendance isn't quite what Jesus was about.

It feels like there are moments I will tally up as my life flies by, where I am with someone and we connect in that cosmic manner of understanding a small bit of it at the same time, together. And in each's own way, we singularly shout back to God and the universe - in the passion of tears, anger, laughter, and love - that I am here and alive, and there's someone else who shares it with me.

The alleluia and the amen.

New Adam.

I've just come off of another fantastic weekend where I got to help some men reckon with their stories. Some of the agreements and compromises they've made from childhood thru adulthood are pushed to the surface and embodied. Not unlike pushing an elephant up the stairs. Only no peanuts are involved. Maybe that would help this go faster. I didn't take photos of the event, but did grab some moments from the preparation and walk through that captured the shared love all the men that have been through the weekend previously. Love for each other, and the process.



The Holy Scott, closer than a brother.



Dan, new friend from a weekend I wasn't on, and Glenn, who is all about freedom and liberty...and has spoken truth to me for years now.



Ray, who should get an Academy Award for the way he embodies things in the work. Such a help.

There's more to say. For now, just a few images of what such work produces. Hope and community.