I noticed something interesting in my little Bible study this morning. In the story of how the Hebrews came to live in Egypt as it is recounted in the book of Genesis it tells us that it was a time of extreme famine. Through several odd plot twists a jewish boy named Joseph becomes in charge of everything commerce second only to the Pharaoh. Perhaps you remember the favored boy with his coat of many colors who was hated by his jealous brothers.

His ten older brothers sold him as a slave to a caravan passing by on their way to do business in Egypt. The brothers kept his fancy coat, bloodied it with a slain sheep and convinced Jacob their father that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. Then roll the story forward about a dozen years and now not only is Joseph a key figure in managing Egyptian food reserves but a sever famine has hit all the surrounding area that has put everyone outside of Egypt on the very thin edge of survival.

Because of the famine, Josephs entire family comes to Egypt as it’s the one last place anyone has the possibility of finding something to eat. What I found particularly interesting was the fact that the Hebrews were people who worked with livestock. They where shepherds and the Egyptians found these kind of people particularly repugnant. As the story unfolds eventually the Hebrews would be enslaved to Egypt after Joseph was dead and left out of the pages of their history.

I just find this aspect of God fascinating, that his chosen people lived as sojourners in the land doing the work that made them detestable to the sophisticated cultural elites of their time and thus placing them at the margin of Egyptian cultural life. Why does God seem to do this sort of thing over and over? Remember it was the shepherds in Bethlehem who where tipped off by angels to Jesus’s birth and in case you don’t know or never thought of it be fore, shepherds had a very low social rank, think third shift factory workers. Thus the first ones to witness the incarnation, God taking human form as a newborn in an animal stable were a gang of riffraff.

The creator enters His creation as a baby who belongs to a couple who can’t even find a proper place to stay in Bethlehem and have to do with a crude makeshift arrangement in a cave where animals are kept. That is where the king of kings is born. That would be like rather than traveling first class on the train you are riding in a cattle car.

So I cant’t help ask myself what is going on here because this is a clear theme that threads its self throughout the stories of the Bible. What does this say about who God is and what is important to him?

Spending time inside these stories of the Bible is essential because the world that we live in is tuned to a very different scale. What the world exonerates is completely different. It’s all about pedigree, extending youth as far as possible, it’s about being sexy, smart and powerful and getting there is style. A baby born in a stable visited by shepherds seems to be pointing in a very different direction.

The fact that the Hebrews were shepherds and that because of this they were given a piece of property to inhabit that was far from the epicenter of Egyptian culture and commerce. In this way they were cut off also from those cultural influences that could effectively adulterate the uniqueness that God was developing within them so that they would be a light to all nations. That was has been God’s intention from the beginning. He singled out a people that would be like him, what Jesus would describe as the salt of the earth.

“You are the salt of the earth” Matthew 5:13

And you don’t need a lot of salt which is perhaps there are so few of us here?

Maybe that is why these old stories are worth returning to. They slowly retune our ears. They remind us that what looks important from the center of Egypt may look very different from the sheep fields of Goshen, or from a stable in Bethlehem.

I decided to write an article today in spite of the flat feeling that I have nothing to say. If I can just push through this feeling of deadness, I have at least a chance to spark a little fire with my dedication that may throw enough light for the next step.

There have been so many times throughout my life as a working artist that I have struggled with this kind of lethargy.

Lethargy - n. morbid drowsiness; unnatural prolonged slumber; apathy.

The best medicine I know to lift this kind of deadness is to do something creative, even if it is clumsy and second rate. Because when I begin to move forward regardless of this mopey dullness that has for some reason found me and covered me over like a thick fog, following a creative scent no matter how faint is always my way back to myself.

In Anne Lamott’s funny, warmhearted book on writing, Bird by Bird, she refers to what she calls “shitty first drafts” as the path to how real work gets made.

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”

I’m at my work table this morning writing to you, surrounded by a group of paintings all in various states of completion, with a Chicago exhibition looming in a little more than two months. I have no idea where the money will come from in order to both frame them and then ship them from Paris. This is only one of my many current unknowns that I am living with.

This, my friend, is what living a life of faith looks like from ground level. It feels like a radical dependence on God’s grace and mercy, a kind of utter vulnerability in the daily warp and woof of day-to-day existence. Living like this brings Scriptures like this to life:

“Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave or forsake you.’”
Hebrews 13:5

Living inside the tension between life needs and no current visible solution is the very space a relationship with God takes on actual heft and vigor. What does faith actually do when the solution remains invisible? Faith says take the next step regardless. Do what you can with what you have. Guard your heart against worry by remaining grateful, because when you move towards gratitude, worry begins to lose its hold.

“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
James 2:17

Faith requires action, however humble, in order to come alive. This morning it was typing the beginning of this article to you, trusting that even though lethargy was doing its best to engulf me, I could still choose to believe that there might be an article wanting to come to life on the other side.

Creativity and faith both ask us to act before we can see the finished thing. Perhaps struggle is necessary.

Think of Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok wrestling with the angel. Think of Vincent van Gogh waiting for his next letter from his brother Theo with just enough money to get him through the next month. Think of the Wright brothers out on the cold, windy landscape of Kitty Hawk trying to do what nearly everyone thought was crazy or impossible. They were the sons of a Christian minister, living at a time when some even wondered whether human flight trespassed into a realm God had never intended for us.

Beautiful things take labor to get born. Your own birth and mine are testimony to this most basic truth. If we can just remember that this is an essential aspect of our story, then we can accept it not as a sort of necessary evil, but as what living in the spark plug gap of real living is all about.

That specific gap that the mechanic adjusts when he is tuning up your engine under the hood is important. Not too far and not too close. He’s tuning it to a professional perfection. Just remember, the gaps you are living with in your life are all opportunities for ignition.

No gap, no spark. No uncertainty, no need for trust.

So I can now say that I am still at my work table, and that cold, clammy fog of lethargy has almost entirely dissipated. I have a new article to share with you and, as a result, an even stronger trust that these new paintings will not only arrive at Gallery Victor on time, but will arrive well framed and ready to hang.

I live in Paris, which has been lovingly referred to as the City of Light since the late 19th century, when the installation of gas lighting throughout the city was finally perfected and took its already spectacular beauty to a whole new level. But perhaps the deeper meaning reaches back about one hundred years earlier, to what was happening within the intellectual community during the period historically referred to as the Enlightenment. Through the writings of people like Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, who increasingly challenged the authority of revealed religion and elevated human reason as an independent source of truth, an enduring philosophical shift took place. Its influence spread not only throughout Europe but into the American colonies, where Enlightenment thought would profoundly influence the Founding Fathers and the principles underlying the American Constitution.

Living in Paris off and on for the past six years, I have come to feel the cold darkness of what I would call the long shadow of the Enlightenment, still deeply cast over this city. What I mean by that is that God is very much dead here in the minds and hearts of its citizens. The people that I have come to know here don’t have anything even close to an understanding of the Bible let alone an active relationship with God. It feels Godless here. What Parisians value is money, fashion, elegance, whit and the social standing that come with these attributes. My reading of scripture tells me God’s people are to hold all of these off at arms length. This ironically makes the City of Light in actuality the City of Darkness and it is a darkness done with tremendous flourish and style.

“Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them. For everything in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride that comes from possessions, does not come from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires are passing away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” 1st John 2:15-17

The only problem is that the whole thing is crumbling everywhere you look. Parisian society feels like a house of cards falling as I type. Fractured families and the isolation that follows; a nearly complete distrust of political leadership; understaffed, struggling post-COVID hospitals; police walking their beats in body armor carrying machine guns; the increasingly blurred distinctions between male and female, and the profound confusion around sex and identity that it is creating, particularly among young people; and perhaps most desperate of all, people dug into the basic struggle for survival, trying to pay their bills and hang on to their jobs while rumors of an uncertain future gather in the shadows of AI, automation, and Elon Musk’s robots.

So I would counter that this is precisely the time for the light of Christ to shine through His church in Paris. Darkness is not an argument for retreat. It is the very condition in which light becomes visible. This cannot be a church “having the form of godliness but denying its power.” (2 Timothy 3:5) The only kind of church that can light up this level of darkness is a signs and wonders church, a church flowing in the power of God that is hitting the streets where people are actually living their lives. It will of course remain important for believers to gather on Sundays for worship and in their home groups for reconnection but the meat is still in the streets as John Wimber always like to say.

“Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” Acts 4:29-31

And this from Acts 5:12-16,

“The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. The believers regularly gathered together in Solomon’s Colonnade. Others were hesitant to join them, although the people regarded them highly. Yet more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.

People even carried the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats, hoping that as Peter passed by, even his shadow might fall on some of them. Crowds also came from the towns surrounding Jerusalem, bringing those who were sick and those suffering from unclean spirits, and they were all healed.”

I am curious my readers, how you see the situation in the city where they live.

My last article was titled “Why I Love Being Poor.” This morning I copied down Matthew 6:24 in my little journal that I carry around with me.

“No one can serve two masters, for either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

That’s Jesus speaking, by the way. He is definitely drawing a line in the sand here.

This topic is really hitting home these days as I continue making it through week by week on only a little vapor trail of money that drifts into my bank account back in America. I have had several overdrafts where I end up in the red by between twenty and forty dollars.

I do not serve money. I have come to despise money and possessions.

Just writing those words feels like some kind of murderous confession in a world dominated by filthy-rich celebrities, tech giants, and mammoth corporations completely driven by their bottom line.

Recently I began singing the old gospel song “This World Is Not My Home.” It feels like both an anthem to sever the materialistic tie that binds us to this world and, at the same time, a narrow and steep stairway to heaven.

Jesus said that the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. The donkey he rode into Jerusalem belonged to someone else. After his death, his body was laid in another man’s tomb. The soldiers divided his clothing among themselves and gambled for his garment.

When Jesus was murdered, what exactly was there for an accountant to enter under “assets”?

I recently endured a nine day holiday where my wallet never came out of my pocket simply because there was no money inside it and swiping my card would have availed nothing. We ate in the very best restaurants in the area where we were staying in the South of France. It was a strange and uncomfortable experience that I dd my best to surrender to. Now after a full week has gone by I read scriptures like the one below and they resonate like a tuning fork for the soul.

“Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, - the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride in possessions - is not from the Father but is from the world. And the old is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever?" 1st John 2:15-17

I ask you, why did God enter his creation as Jesus and live so radically poor?

Jesus said-

“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests but the Son of man has no where to lay his head.” Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58

I am really poor, and I have stopped being ashamed of it and have begun to embrace it.

I have come to believe that this is actually the way God has chosen to bless me. What I mean by that is that it forces me daily to depend upon His mercy and grace. By mercy and grace, what I mean is that I must continue to surrender any notion that my ability to provide for myself is sufficient.

I grew up in a splintered and deeply troubled family where I learned at a very early age to take care of myself. I was making my own grilled cheese sandwiches on the stove at five years old while my mother zoned out in her La-Z-Boy chair, smoking her way through a pack of cigarettes.

That fierce independence that became my survival mode has slowly dissolved over the years, as a river cuts its way through rock.

The story of Jesus feeding the multitude with a few small fish and loaves, the story of making wine from water when they ran out at the wedding at Cana, the time when Peter told the lame beggar, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” I live inside these stories on a daily basis.

In James, the brother of Jesus, he tells us that God has chosen the poor to be rich in faith. I love that, and it runs completely counter to the world of Brad Pitt, Andy Warhol and Jeff Bezos. The love of money is still the root of all kinds of evil, regardless of what all those manifestation gurus on the social platforms are telling us.

What I am saying is that I have come home to my poverty, and when I go to the park today and see all the birds there doing their thing, I will think of St. Francis and remember Jesus telling us to look at the birds of the air.

Dear reader,

I have been away for awhile in order to reassess my reason for writing to you here on subStack. Just over one month ago, it was as if something like scales fell from my eyes. Now I see everything differently. Since then, the singular most important thing in my life is Jesus Christ. I keep asking what it looks like to follow in his footsteps.

I now begin each day by asking God what I might to to give him glory with my life. Thus I will not be writing here unless like this morning, I feel led by his Holy Spirit to do so. I do not want to be the reason for you being on your phone or your computer one more minute of your precious life unless I can be assured that I am sharing something that is worth while, a few words that might bring your comfort and encouragement as you walk the path set before you. As I am sure will agree, our time here must not be wasted on anything that does not have merit.

I realize this is a shift from where this writing journey began for us and that those of you who have subscribed may wish to sign off now. Please feel free to do so but for those of you who choose to continue this writing journey with me, thank you. I promise to do my best to share with you something genuine and heart felt each and every time I open this laptop in order to write to you.

I would like to leave you with this scripture today from First John chapter 2, verses 15-17 where it says this,

“Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, - the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride in possessions - is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away, along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

May the love of Jesus envelope you with both protection and joy as you draw your every breath through out this day. May you be filled with the Holy Spirit to do all the things you were born to do, to the glory of God.

Subscribe now

The last article I shared about my first experience with NYC when I spent a month with a professor and a small group of other art students sharing a Tribeca loft. I described what if was like for a the 22 year old version of me to have that first deep dive into what was at that time still the uncontested epicenter of the art world. I would like to go on to share what would happen two years later when I returned on my own to make the city my home.

In the early summer of 1983 I sold everything I had which wasn’t much and boarded a plan at the Gerald Ford airport on the very edge of Kentwood Michigan with a one way ticket for NYC. I had everything most essential packed into an army surplus duffel bag, a Panasonic boom box and a little collection of my favorite cassette tapes. I had a friend named Gary who came with me. We had planned to make it in NY together. We found a cheap hotel along the Hudson waterfront called the Keller with tiny cabin like rooms that originally housed sailors. The first night someone pulled the fire alarm in the middle of the night and I remember us all sitting outside on the front steps waiting to return to our rooms. It was a rag-tag group of other young ones sprinkled in with mostly what looked old poor people living on social security benefits. There was a woman right across the hall who must have been a long time resident. The walls of her apartment were covered with magazine pictures of movie stars. She carried on long loud conversations with herself. I remember she wore a lot of make up and flower print dresses.

After a week in the Keller I found an apartment on West 75th street and West End which was sandwiched in-between Broadway and Riverside Park. I will never forget sitting in the waiting room before the interview with a rep from the small management company called CARE with the tag line, “We care about you”. In the waiting room I took my glasses off to clean them and the frames broke in my hands. It was at this time Gary told me he had bought a ticket to go to Boston where he thought he would have a better go of it. The next thing I was sitting in the office and the man pushed a few 9x10 glossies of handsome young people who would presumably be my neighbors in the building. I remember thinking this strange and something that would never happen in a real estate office back in Grand Rapids.

I ended up signing a rental agreement for a one room apartment for $150 per month. It would have been about 8 by 10 feet of floor space with a built in wardrobe at one end and on the other a window that opened up to a fairly small courtyard space that was not accessible. The ground was sparkled with trash and a couple old mattresses. The building had 8 floors and I was on the 7th. There was one bath room on our floor and a shared kitchen space.

There was an elderly jewish woman who lived at the end of the hall who had a couple cats. She liked to come and talk to me while I painted. I had bought a few canvases, paint and drawing supplies and started making work. There was a middle aged man right next to my room who repaired television sets. His room was no bigger than mine and he had the old TVs stacked like bricks along the walls. Not unlike the noisy woman across the hall at the Keller, he had covered his walls with faded pictures torn from magazines too. In his case the ladies where naked. There was another older man who called himself ‘Soldier’. He was always very cool with me. He liked to walk around in a silk bath robe left open, bedroom slippers and black or purple briefs. And then there was ‘The Ghost’

The Ghost I only saw a couple times. He would go for long times refusing to use or bathroom and instead using a bucket in his room. In time the stench coming from his room would be awful and eventually it would be Soldier who would pound on his door clamoring something to the effect of, “Come on man, that’s disgusting. We gotta live here too. Empty that damn thing man!”

The first time a got a good look at Ghost was a sunny afternoon when our paths crossed as I was coming back from work. What I saw was a middle aged thickly built black man about six feet tall, slightly hunched over wearing a long black overcoat regardless of it being a warm summer day. His hair was only just showing grey and long which he had coiled into symmetrical right and left buns. It made me think of princess Leah from Star Wars. He had a curled Dali mustache that when I looked closer I realize was only penciled in with something like eye liner. He was pushing a grocery cart that was filled with all kinds of junk food, boxes of cookies, potato chips, Hostess DingDongs, Twinkies, soda - it was as if a six year old had done the grocery shopping. I realized then that he probably only came out one a month to cash his social security check and stock up on supplies.

My neighbors looked nothing like the beautiful people in those head shots I was shown before I signed my contract and wrote the check.

This is a painting I began this winter. It’s a self portrait as a writer. I let it rest for a couple of months while I took my portable easel and sketchbooks to the park most days beginning back in early April. Recently I’ve returned to it.

The painting is a kind of declaration. I’ve decided to take writing as seriously as painting by submitting myself to a daily practice. Like painting, writing demands patience, discipline, and a willingness to remain with difficult questions long enough for something true to emerge.

Although making pictures and writing both involve creativity, I’m discovering that they serve different purposes. Every essay makes that clearer. Painting allows me to investigate through form, color, and observation. Writing allows me to step away from the easel and unpack ideas that would otherwise remain unspoken. It gives me space to ask how I position myself within the larger cultural conversation. What kind of world am I inviting others to see? To answer that question, I need to begin at the beginning.

After graduating from high school, I enrolled at Calvin College, a Christian liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The year was 1978. After a false start in architecture I found my way into the fine art program. The three art professors I studied with were all young, working artists, who were alongside their full time teaching were also actively exhibiting their own work. Because the program was grounded in the liberal arts, I would study literature, philosophy, theology, art history, and Greco Roman civilization.

One of my favorite classes met around a seminar table to discuss current art journals and VHS interviews with artists such as David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, and Joseph Beuys. Our professor mostly listened, occasionally interrupting with a question that forced us to think more deeply. More than any other class, it taught me that making art also meant learning how to discuss ideas.

This was long before the internet. If you wanted to understand what was happening in the art world in those days you had persistently seek it out. This was especially true in Grand Rapids, famously a conservative Midwestern city. the kind place where new cultural movements arrived late and considerably watered down.

My last year at Calvin I was fortunate to spend the entire month of January 1982 in NYC. With elven other students and one brave professor, Ron Pederson, as our chaperon, sleeping on the floor of a rented artist loft in Tribeca lower Manhattan, I was set to have my life forever changed.

We saw the first Keith Haring subway chalk drawings when he was still just a local curiosity. I remember seeing an installation at alternative space Franklin Furnace titled God is a Dog Spelled Backwards. We visited the OK Harris Gallery and met Ivan Karp who talked Leo Castelli into giving Andy Warhol one of his first exhibitions. Karp had us all take a seat on the floor of his office as he held court sitting on his desk with a cigar tell us some of his best glory day stories. We visited several artist studio live/work lofts in SOHO. One I remember was Pat Lasch who at that time was making bazaar, large elaborate pastry sculptures out acrylic paint, wood, foam. She shared with us how her father had been a pastry chef which is why she knew all the special tricks to do with icing that she was using to make her ‘cakes’ no meant to eat.

Another memory of that time was going to Pearl Paint on Canal street for the first time. . This was an art supply store like none other I had ever seen, four floors of a old narrow 19th century building with creaky wooden floors and stocked with everything one could ever need with its patrons being both art students and famous or soon to be famous artists like Basquiat stocking up on paint sticks and cans of spray paint. I pulled the phone number tag from a xeroxed new wave styled poster on the main floor by the entrance. It advertised a life model session open to all. When I got back to our loft and called the number I was introduced to my first phone message machine. I was startled to hear a recording of a flock of sheep bleating for a good 30 seconds until finally a woman’s voice came on to greet me and invite me to leave my message.

By the time we piled onto that big yellow school bus for the ride back to Grand Rapids, none of us would ever be quite the same again. Looking back, I realize that my first immersion in New York's downtown art scene during the winter of 1982 was an initiation. I had seen and felt something far larger than the small, familiar world of my hometown. Much of what I encountered was beyond my understanding, yet I had been given a glimpse of a world that would become an increasingly important part of my life. Only now can I see that I had been brought to the very edge of the framework I had inherited, into a landscape I didn't yet have the language to describe. If I was going to continue exploring, I would need a larger vocabulary, a deeper imagination, and a more expansive way of seeing. It felt like brushing up against the immensity and mystery of God. The Apostle Paul expresses something similar:

“What no eye has seen; nor ear heard, not the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

The Station Agent tells the story of Fin, a young dwarf man who works in a small store that sells everything needed by people who build and collect model railroads. His life is upended when his boss, who is also his best and perhaps only friend, suddenly drops dead on the job.

In the next scene, Fin is sitting across from a lawyer who informs him that he has inherited an old station agent’s building in a small town in New Jersey. As the story unfolds, we witness someone who has been ostracized from society his entire life simply because of his appearance. He does his best to hide himself away in his humble new abode out in the middle of nowhere, absorbed in his fascination with everything having to do with trains.

Fortunately, his self-imposed isolation is undone by Joe, who has recently taken over his ailing father’s snack and coffee truck, parked just a stone’s throw from Fin’s new place. Joe is bored and relentlessly friendly, and eventually wears down Fin’s defenses.

Next enters Olivia, who is both recently divorced and still deeply grieving the accidental death of her young son. These three lonely people fall into a kind of ragtag surrogate family together. It is funny and sad, weird and refreshingly offbeat every step of the way.

When I did a Google search, I discovered that this little gem of an independent film was shot on 16mm film in twenty days with a budget of half a million dollars.

Last night, Vero and I went to the Max Linder cinema to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I had my ears covered and my eyes closed during several scenes that were either too violent or too devilish to witness without feeling violated.

Yes, this is an important story that formed itself through an ancient oral tradition going back perhaps more than three thousand years. You can hardly miss when you enter into this kind of tried-and-true cultural history.

There were also things I genuinely liked about the movie. One in particular was the way Odysseus returns home disguised as a beggar. Under this disguise, he is mistreated by the rude guests who have taken over his home.

The device of a king clothed as a beggar in order to test the hearts of those he encounters is something I find particularly interesting. I also recognize that the development we see in Odysseus, as he becomes a man of deep character and conviction, has come about through what he has suffered during his long journey home.

Here is where I see the parallel between these two completely different films.

Fin has suffered all his life because he has been set apart on account of his unusual body. As a result, he has developed a winsomeness that draws people toward him despite his best efforts to remain alone.

Odysseus has suffered because he was a man singled out to lead others at the cost of nearly everything dear to him. His long and difficult journey shapes him, in the end, into a true king: a man who remains faithful and strong, scarred but good.

One final observation, you don’t need to spend 250 million to make a great movie. A great movie lifts the viewer up into that beautiful story telling place and then sets them back down feeling reconnected to what they know is true.

I am in a weird space right now. Everything feels so different inside me. I just returned to my christian faith a couple weeks ago and now the gurus I used to follow all look like the blind leading the blind.

I went to church for the second time with my girlfriend Vero yesterday. I haven’t been in a church service in I can’t remember how long. It was nice to be in a room with a crowd of other people to sing worship songs and hear a sermon from the Bible. But it also felt a bit like an hors d’oeuvre with out the entrée.

We walked there and back, about 30 minutes both ways. I know this is a good next step. I remember it takes awhile to get woven into a fellowship community. I know this hunger for more I feel is ultimately a good thing. To want more is in itself a sort of driving force to seek God’s face is it not? Perhaps it never goes away this side of glory.

I apologize to those readers who might get bored with this stumbling around I am doing as my life to re-arrange itself. If you wanna check out for awhile I completely understand.

Everything looks so different under the shadow of the cross. I feel like to keep writing is helpful for both of us. Maybe some of you find yourself in a similar place. Maybe some of you are reconsidering who you are in relation to God. Is it really true that all religions can be joined together into a basic love yourself and love others common denominator? Is it true that Jesus really is the only way to know God and if so how then do you live your life?

And what about the signs and wonders? Why don’t we see christians doing the stuff Jesus did anymore? Healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding the poor? Where did all that go? Why did it stop and how can we get back to that being normal?

As always, I appreciate your insights, your own reflections and ideas. You are an important part of this conversation. I wanna hear some of your own experiences. What was it like when your thinking suddenly changed and where are you now?

“My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness.”

2 Corinthians 12:9

This is what God spoke to Paul after he had repeatedly asked Him to fix something in his life that made him feel screwed. Paul called it a “thorn in the flesh.”

I find this really interesting because we live in a world that is so much about power. Think about celebrity culture. People who live in giant mansions, dress in the most expensive clothing, and get invited to all the VIP events. They are on the covers of our magazines, stretched across billboards, and staring back at us from our favorite movies. What the heck is going on here?

The Bible is so weirdly different from the world we live in, a world that celebrates youth, beauty, wealth, and fame. Take a look at Madonna, then read about the life of the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the church in Corinth.

“Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as one beside himself.) I am more so: in labors more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in beatings without number, often in danger of death.

Five times from the Jews I received forty stripes minus one.

Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. I have spent a night and a day in the deep.

I have been in travels often, dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers;

in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, and in cold and nakedness.

Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily: anxiety for all the assemblies.”

2 Corinthians 11:23 to 28

When I read this, I see something remarkably different from what the algorithm feeds my TikTok account.

I am beginning to wonder if the financial challenges that have stubbornly dogged my tracks are not a problem for me to fix at all.

What if this is exactly where God wants me?

What if this is where I finally learn that His grace really is sufficient, and that His power is made perfect in my weakness?

Let’s talk about reading the Bible.

I just started reading mine again. Not casually, but with a hunger and a passion to know the truth.

This morning, before I opened it up, I said a little prayer:

“Holy Spirit, please lead me to something special, something that I need right now.”

This is what I got:

“We walk by faith, not by sight.”
2 Corinthians 5:7

Like a piece of hard candy that you don’t bite down on but simply let roll around in your mouth to savor, I just sat with those words for a while in the early morning hour as Paris slowly transitioned from the noisy late-night drunkards finding their way home to the pastry and coffee shops setting out their tables and getting ready for the new day.

Walking by faith is something I know about from personal experience.

I can tell you that, first of all, it’s the opposite of seeing is believing. Walking by faith says we trust that God will be faithful to us, whatever comes, and that He will provide exactly what we truly need when we need it. It doesn’t mean we’ll always understand His ways, or that life will suddenly become easy. It means we’re learning, day by day, to trust the One who does.

You see, this is all about developing a real and personal relationship with the living God.

This kind of posture creates a daily dependence upon Him for everything essential. Think back to when we were little children. We were utterly dependent upon our parents for all our needs. When my dad got behind the wheel of our ‘59 Buick Electra on a Sunday afternoon to drive us over to my grandparents’ house, I never once doubted that we’d arrive safely.

That is exactly the kind of dependence Paul is describing, the kind he and the early Christians were cultivating in their relationship with the living God.

Dear reader, I want to be clear with you. To know this God, the Holy Spirit must open your heart and your mind to the truth of who He really is. You cannot know Him in a real and palpable way until He opens you to it. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, everything I am writing here is going to sound like complete rubbish.

I have lived most of my life below what would be considered the poverty line. I know what it feels like to face hard financial facts like mortgage payments and utility bills coming due and not have the means to pay them. I know that feeling of powerlessness, and the temptation that comes with it to panic and be devoured by an anxiety that feels like a claw in your chest.

I also know the feeling of awe and wonder when the miracle breaks through and the money needed falls into place just in the nick of time.

I have lived this for most of my life.

As a result, walking by faith and not by sight has gradually become my natural way of being in the world.

I’m giving you an example from my own life because I want to be real with you. I know you’re facing your own impossibilities. Whether it’s your finances, something in your marriage that isn’t working, something that has gone seriously haywire with your children, or concerns about your health, whatever it may be, I want to encourage you to give that situation over to God.

Perhaps you could write it down in your journal. Or write it on a piece of paper and slip it into an envelope with Jesus written across the front. Whatever helps make it real for you. Then get on with your life and let Him work it out on your behalf.

Here is a simple prayer. Use it if it helps, or write one of your own.

Dear Jesus, I am giving You this situation that feels impossible. You said that all things are possible for those who believe. I believe You can fix this. I give it to You now because I can’t carry it anymore. Thank You for hearing my prayer. I trust You, and I trust Your timing. Amen.

I recently watched At Eternity’s Gate, a fresh telling of the troubled life of Vincent van Gogh. The film was directed by Julian Schnabel, the same painter turned filmmaker whose gave us Basquiat back in 1996.

This was actually my second time seeing the film, and both times I have been left wondering about van Gogh’s tremendous sensitivity. On the one hand, he seemed to feel a profound connection to nature and to those he painted, a connection that gave his work its unusual power and beauty. But on the other hand, that same hypersensitivity brought into his life a level of drama and awkwardness that further isolated him, compounding his sorrow and hardship.

Anyone who has ever sat next to me in a cinema can tell you that, for me, it’s never just a movie. Whatever is happening on the screen becomes completely real. For some reason I seem to have been born without that part of the brain everyone else possesses that says, “This is just a movie, so relax and enjoy the ride.” I don’t have that.

I cry often. Dancing with my girlfriend to one of my favorite songs. Standing in front of a painting that strikes me. Yesterday, on a video call with my daughter, overwhelmed by love, I wept. And then again at the movies. I remember leaving the cinema after the recent Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere while the credits rolled, my face wet with tears. I understand this is not normal, and as a result I’ve had to take certain precautions.

I’ve riveted into my daily life a series of repeating routines and rituals to keep me anchored to something resembling normal. I get up at 5:00. If I wake earlier, which I often do, I simply lie quietly until it’s time. I say my prayers. I make two cups of coffee and journal for exactly an hour. And on it goes throughout the day. Living almost as though I’m in a monastery helps buffer those radical shifts of temperament and the wild ideas that sometimes hit me like a wave of helter-skelter without warning.

Most recently it’s been my return to an orthodox understanding of Jesus and his death and resurrection. It arrived last week and effectively rearranged most of the furniture in my brain. God help me.

Yesterday I was drawing a little pond tucked into a corner of my park. It’s almost invisible unless you’re looking for it. People walked past as I sat there with my shoes off on the dusty, extra dry ground, completely absorbed in what was before me. I imagine I looked a little odd to the mothers and fathers pushing strollers along the path.

For me, though, it felt as if Monet’s ghost, smoking a cigarette, and a one-eared Vincent were standing quietly beside me, approvingly watching as I sketched at the threshold of eternity’s gate.

One of the blessings of fatherhood was reading bedtime stories. We had many, many of the best children’s books in our home. One reason for this was my sister in-law Julie Moulds. She was a writer and worked at a local children’s book store called Pooh’s Corner. She was very generous towards us with her special in-store discount and thus we built an amazing library of some of the best of the best. One book in particular that became precious was a beautifully bound and annotated copy of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (We would eventually loose Julie after her long battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.) It stands out as a definite favorite.

I say that bedtime reading was a blessing because reading out-loud, with the little ones tucked into their beds, became an enduring ritual. For years we shared some of the most powerful stories together. When you read a book quietly to yourself, we know it can be a transformative experience. When you read out-loud to children in their beds, it bumps up to a whole other level. Some of these stories shared then continue to linger with me to this day. This morning I am thinking again of Snow White.

This girl was both unusually beautiful and very good - inside and out. Her step mother, also a queen, became jealous of her beauty and her purity made the Queen’s dark heart even darker. The young woman, driven from her home, finds shelter in the forest with a company of dwarves. These little men take her in and do their best to protect and provide for her. Then one day the queen, disguised as a poor, kindly old woman selling apples, tricks Snow White into eating one especially poisoned. This sends the unsuspecting girl into a death like sleep. Her protectors return home to find their charge strangely lifeless but some how not quite dead either.

In they're grief, sensing that their is something evil afoot, they use their special skills to build her a special tomb with glass lid coffin where they can continue to have a way to visit with her. Then one day a prince comes along who is captivated by her beauty and senses her unusual goodness, lifting the lid of her coffin offers a kiss and a tear that breaks the enchantment. It is the death to life drama, the all of a suddenness and the unlikeliness that the right man comes at the right moment, its all these aspects that make me not only love this story but I see myself in its narrative moving pieces.

I myself feel as tho I have just been brought out of an enchantment, with an all of a sudden swiftness.

“Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:14

Besides those cool showers and our little fan, it’s helped to keep leaning in, to dig a little deeper into the resolve to just keep working anyway. Above is a new block print I made yesterday. It’s the culmination of a bunch of different studies - sketches done on location in the park. This print includes an old book page. If you look closely you can see the print showing through underneath the image as if to tell a story that refuses an easy and quick understanding. A story that wants to be carefully considered over time, perhaps years

.This is a small study about the size of a note book. Like most it’s painted with oils on stretched linen canvas. This was done on location. It is often the case that children will come over and watch me sometimes it’s one or two shy little ones, waiting for permission to come closer. Sometimes they will come in a group and jostle each other for a better look. What’s this strange man doing?

Some of the elements that keep showing up in these artworks - the fencing, the light posts, the buildings seen through the tree canopy, the birds- mostly pigeons- they are beginning to feel almost like individual characters in a play. It’s as if they all have their place and something unique to say.

I am confident that the longer I remain in this little park to make myself available to these new friends, the random passerby, to be still inside this verdant postage stamp of nature as it exists surrounded by ancient limestone buildings from a mostly forgotten time, the longer I can linger here and record what I feel with charcoal and oil paint, with ink and these carved blocks, I will make something beautiful and true like the faithful artists that have come before me.

And now I want to invite you to take a tour of my Etsy shop I have purposely chosen to keep the prices with in range of normal people. I want to serve you by creating something beautiful and true that you can live with. It’s my desire to inspire you to look a little longer into the beauty that surrounds you.

Thank you for being here :)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit for their”s is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus from Matthew 5:3

This is basically the very first thing that comes out of Jesus’ mouth as he begins his public ministry. I’m sitting with this today and I would like to share some thoughts that come to mind and heart that I pray will be helpful to you.

Let’s talk about being poor for starters. This is something a happen to know a lot about. Being poor is definitely not cool. It’s not about self-sufficiency. It’s not about power and feeling like “I’ve got this!” It’s not about eating out, being able to buy what you want when you want it. Poor is not lifted up in our world, it’s shameful, embarrassing, it looks a whole lot like failure. Being poor looks like weakness and something or someone to be avoided at all costs.

I want to be clear that when Jesus says, “poor in spirit it” he’s not necessarily talking about a bank balance but something much deeper. He’s referring to our spirit, that most essential part of us. That part of us eternal. And I have to say that experiencing a tiny bank balance for years and years in a world of no free lunches really drives home the nitty gritty of powerlessness. So when you feel powerless and broken financially its just a hop and a skip to know poverty of spirit. An empty wallet is right next door to physical sickness as too feeling real a back breaking poverty. And Jesus is calling this vulnerable state blessed. This place of feeling an utter lack of power to effect change in your life is the very place where I turn to God for help. Just like a little child

To feel the truth that you are not God. You are his creation. You are his child and you need Him more than your net breath. Jesus is telling us this is where we must begin. This is how things roll in his kingdom.

the Bible tells us we come to God only through Jesus.

“Jesus said to him, I am the way and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known the father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

This is definitely not Eckhart Tolle who reframes “Christ” as a universal presence you awaken to, not a crucified risen Lord who reconciles sinners to God. Eckhart’s current net worth comes in around 70-80 million dollars. If you want him as your keynote speaker you need to pay out between 50 to 100 thousand. It’s obvious that this way of reinterpreting the message of Jesus sell very well and yet it is something completely different than what Jesus was describing on the side of the mountain that day when he began with “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.

I mention Tolle because he is one of innumerable quasi spiritual pundits who like to sprinkle in a little Jesus here and there that is completely misleading millions of people on a daily basis. Until very recently, I was one of those people lapping it up. It was so nice to know that I could have my cake and eat it too. I didn't need to reject Christ. No, I just needed to reframe his entire personhood to be something I could toss into my spiritual smoothy along with a little yoga, meditation, Dispenza styled neuroscience and a sprinkle of baby boomer give peace a chance.

This kingdom Jesus spoke of and lived out is our current world inside out and upside down. You can only enter as a helpless hungry child.

“Things That I Used to Do (And I Don’t Do No More)”

I completely relate to this song these days. In fact, I think I will be learning there lyrics by heart and add it to my repertoire.

When God gets ahold of your life, He’s gonna definitely rearrange your furniture. Some of the things that used to give your life meaning will completely fall flat. The will have lost all their appeal.

A recent example for me is yoga. I was living next door to a Kurdish yogi for six months while living in Mallorca before returning to Paris last year. I was in his yoga classes several days of each week directly under his tutelage. I chanted the mantras (I didn't understand) and basically just gave my self completely over to the program. I even paid €500 to meet a toothless shaman from Peru who threw down coca leaves to divine and share special insights for each of us attendees. As it turned out, we were all told the exact same thing. It was a kind of one size fits all prophecy about our ancestral spirits. The was a ritual around the fire pit latter that night that thankfully I skipped out on. Not showing up caused the beginning of a rift between me and this yogi that would eventually lead to my permanent expulsion from their fledgling community. (God was obviously protecting me all along.)

So I had been continuing practicing yoga for about 30 minutes every day for the past year. Yesterday I decided to quit and I will never return. I am not going to go into the specific reasons why except to say it’s one of those things I used to do and I don’t do no more.

It was Sunday yesterday and my girlfriend and I attended a church service about a 30 minute walk from our apartment. The church is called la cite . It felt like a homecoming. I found myself in tears through the first half of the worship set. The people were friendly and welcoming. The sermon was directly from the Bible. The pastor taught about the early beginning of church as recorded in the first two chapters of Acts. We both left for home feeling fed and strengthened inside. We had spent time with other believers worshiping God.

Another thing I have noticed as a change inside is more sensitivity to films. It’s become more challenging to find a movie that I can watch for more than ten minutes with out wanting to shut it off. So many of these movies feel like either my intelligence is being insulted or I am being exposed to content that is completely toxic. It leaves me wondering how other people can watch these movies with a clear conscious and, where the heck have all the good film makers disappeared too?

(This is where you can share the movies that you love and want to recommend.)

A movie I’m happy to recommend in case you're looking for something to watch Is A Little Prayer, directed by Angus MacLachlan. It tells the story of a father who discovers his son is having an affair. The son and daughter in-law live with him and his wife in a little house out back on their property. The father and son also work together in the family business as does the paramour. This movie is a beautiful character study of how this older man played by David Strathairn, struggles to know how to respond to his son’s obvious poor life choices. He sees his son hard heartedness and the devastating effects on these two women and what can he do? This is the story of one family’s struggle to be there for each other in a world falling apart around them.

Thank you for following along with me as my story unfolds. Thank you also for those of you who are regularly leaving comments. It helps me so much to hear what you are thinking, to hear how these themes are playing out in your life as well.

Subscribe now

When you wake up to discover that you did wrong and that you hurt people, the weight of that knowledge crushes the heart. I think of a cook bruising a fresh basil leaf between his thumb and forefinger to release its fuller fragrance.

I remember being at my dad and mom’s wedding back in 1972. My birth mother had died two years earlier, and now I was standing on the threshold of a whole new story. I was wearing a powder-blue polyester tuxedo with a ruffled shirt and a big clip-on bow tie. My older brother, the best man, and the other groomsmen were all wearing the same rented seventies formal wear.

It was rehearsal day at the church. I remember a late June afternoon, stifling heat, and no air conditioning, just slow-moving fans high above doing their best to circulate the warm air. As I stood there, a little too rigid in the lineup at the front of the church, I began to sway. Just before I crumpled to the floor, I was escorted to one of the pews to sit next to my Aunt Ann. Being a nurse, she knew just what to do. She had me put my head between my knees and then, taking a smelling salt from her purse, she cracked it under my nose and... POW! I was back in full stride, ready to return to my post among the other groomsmen.

When I ask myself where compassion comes from, I think one answer is that it begins when you wake up to your own wrongdoing. There is a moment when the scales fall from your eyes and suddenly you see what you couldn’t see before. You also begin to understand compassion when, rather than receiving what you deserve, you receive grace.

Grace seems like an old-fashioned word now, one we don’t hear very often, so I looked it up. Among its definitions I found this:

Grace: The unmerited favor and love of God toward man in Christ; divine, sanctifying, regenerating, and preserving influence.
Webster’s New Century Dictionary (1915)

I remember when my children were little and those times I would put them up on my shoulders as we walked somewhere, or when we were in a crowd and they needed a better view. Grace can feel like that. A sudden lifting up. A ride on His shoulders.

One last thought. You can’t give what you’ve never received. To become a gracious person, you must first have found yourself on the receiving end of grace. We are all broken in one way or another. To be human is to find yourself in the place of receiving grace, and then, in turn, extending it to someone else.

This is the prayer on my lips these days:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me”. Psalm 29/23?24

I’m thinking about the role of the artist this morning. What have I been doing for these past forty plus years?

Perhaps I’ve been looking for beauty. Maybe I’ve been seeking for order and looking for meaning. When I set up my easel in the the park these days I wonder what does this park mean? What’s happening to the people who come here under this ancient canopy of trees? What sort of refuge is this and what else wants to happen here?

The role of the artist is to simply love through a steadfast gaze until something important is revealed. To look long enough, with enough focused attention, to go beyond the superficial. To look deeply and sense something is wanting to be seen.

There are times when I sit down with an empty sheet of paper and begin to draw images that slowly evolve on the page. I am not looking out at a scene with my physical eyes. Rather, I am allowing the Holy Spirit to bring me something from beyond the veil of ordinary perception, something more like a vision or a prophecy.

Subscribe now

I remember years ago attending a church that invited Mark Dupont to lead a prophecy workshop. Mark had a prophetic ministry in Toronto, Canada, at the time. He came to help us learn how to hear the voice of God.

One of the stories Mark told was about Joan of Arc. When she was on trial and asked how she received the messages that guided her, she replied that God spoke to her. Those judging her insisted it was only her imagination, to which she answered, “Yes, that is how God speaks to me, through my imagination.”

Mark went on to explain that hearing the voice of God is akin to the way artists follow their inspiration to create things they may not yet fully understand. He said that when we receive a message from God, it may only make sense to the person with whom we share it. It is something like a postman delivering a letter. The one who delivers it doesn’t know what is written inside. He is simply there to drop it off.

I remember how encouraged I was by that story because it made immediate sense to me on a deeply personal level. It felt like finding the last missing piece of the sky or the mill wheel in a large jigsaw puzzle. Ah, there it is. Now the rest of the picture can come together.

An artist is someone who learns to become comfortable with the unknown. They must have the steadfastness to remain with what they are patiently bringing into the world, especially when it doesn’t seem to make sense and when there is no guarantee it will ever be embraced by the market.

It is this vulnerable place that the artist is called to inhabit. It is also a place that can suddenly flood with tremendous glory in the most unexpected ways. And when those rays of glory stream in, it is my prayer that the artist will remain both humble and grounded, remembering that every good gift comes from above.

Yesterday I wrote about coming back to my faith as a follower of Jesus. I went on to explain the kind of Jesus I returned to is not the one sprinkled through social media snippets, a Jesus — just one of many beautiful enlightened souls — ones who showed up through history like the Buddha, Confucius, Mohamed, Martin Luther King, and the Dali Lama... no, the Jesus I’ve come back to is not like any other. He’s the one who hung on a cross and shed his blood so save those who believe in him. The one I came back to is the Jesus who can’t be blended into the universal spiritual smoothie of what’s currently popular. We’ve marked history as — Before Christ and after Christ, BC and AD. That’s the Jesus I came back to.

I am struck how relative everything has become out there and how confused people are as a result. I had a video come into my feed the other day with a beautiful woman looking directly at me with eyes like two clear-blue spotlights. She was holding a pair of dosing rods and asking questions regarding the “truth” about Jesus. She was coming up with all kinds of things about him dying in France, being married with children, living to be 49. Suddenly she has authority? Because why? Where is her information channeled from? She spoke with utter authority.

I am someone who wants to believe in people, just in general. I love people and I am inclined to give everyone space to speak their truth. I wanna listen and hold back judgement. I have been told that I am naive more than once.

Living the life of an artist I intentionally cultivate the innocence of a child. I have taught myself to look out into the world about me as if seeing it for the first time, in wonder and amazement.

If you have been following my story you know that one year and eight days ago, I was pulled out of my bed in the middle of the night and nearly beaten to death. I ended up on the street, homeless, with nothing but my pajama bottoms and covered in my own blood. I live with this history now and how as a result my life was rearranged. I must ask myself how and why did this happen? Who can I trust? Who is telling the truth? How do I live now?

I found this scripture in the letter of James comforting this morning.

“Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life. Which God has promised to those who love him.”

Just a word about James in case you don’t know. James was the brother of Jesus and he did not believe his brother was the Christ until after his death and resurrection. He was late to the party we could say but even so, James would become the leading figure in the church in Jerusalem and one of the pillars of the early church. In AD 62 he was beaten and stoned to death.

By the way if you look at how all of these various men who were functioning as leaders of the church Jesus left in place after he left, nearly every one of them met a brutal and violent end. They did not end up sharing the deck of their yachts with bikini clad admirers or going from podcast to podcast sharing the secrets of success to their faithful followers. They all lived hard scrapple lives.

Suffering as it is spoken of in the Bible has the expressed purpose of testing the heart. So then, “remaining steadfast under trial” is like a refiner who uses fire to draw off the dross. You could say that God allows trials to expose and burn off what doesn’t belong, not to destroy us, but to make us whole.

When I look back on my own personal trials with the perspective offered by James, I can see the steadfastness that’s been worked into my life as a result. I also see how valuable that quality is in the world today that seems progressively lost in a quagmire of a continual splintering of truth to be what ever you want it to be.

I hope you find this helpful to you today. It was for me/