pencils

“Be still and know that I am God”⁣

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I think when you start you’re really particular about all the definitions⁣

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“What are we talking about if we’re not talking about this!”….⁣

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But then it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger than you first imagined….⁣

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“Be still and know that I Am”⁣

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Along the way though there is so much loss. ⁣

People, friendships, beliefs, perspectives…⁣

You really hold onto what’s important.⁣

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“Be still and know”⁣

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So much wisdom is not discovered in adding to⁣

But removing that which has gotten in the way.⁣

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It’s not about getting louder⁣

But quieter.⁣

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“Be still”⁣

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To where you discover that the pilgrims path has led you right back to the mystery of all of this. ⁣

The mystery of just being here.⁣

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“Be”⁣

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got some blank walls that need to be filled?

FILL YOUR WALLS WITH A STORY YOU WANT TO TELL!

hi. it’s me scott.

I’ve been pretty quiet for a month. I was traveling overseas. Had a friend die. Dealing with some severe depression and new health concerns.

Honestly… I haven’t had much to say. Just listening a lot.

I’ll share more later but just wanted to show up in your inbox and say

hi

i’m still alive

Things are happening

Let’s get back into it.

How have you been doing? ( i get all your emails if you’d like to share)

Hi friends.

I just released a limited edition set of wood arch prints with the illustration of Be Not Afraid In These Hands.

I did a run of 100.

Here’s a little video about why I needed to make this image.

These have gone quickly in the past so I wanted to send you an email so you can pick yours up before they’re gone!

Get the Art here!

Consider

Can you see the cloud in the lily? ⁣

It takes clouds to make rain. And it takes rain to fall to make lilies grow... so the cloud and the lily have an inter-being relationship. Can you see the cloud in the lily?⁣

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Can you see the ocean in the lily? ⁣

Because the clouds form off of the evaporation of the ocean.... and that home to so many wonderful creatures... whales, sharks, blowfish, seahorses... now resides in this very plant growing before you. Can you see the ocean in the lily?⁣

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Can you see the Sun in the lily? ⁣

The sun, our closest star, shines on the earth and allows the lily to grow. In fact all things grow because of its light. Can you see the Sun in the lily?⁣

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To consider the lilies is to consider the inter-being it has with all of existence. And by doing this exercise... hopefully... we see that we lovingly belong in the exact same way.⁣

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*To practice interbeing more deeply, read Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh) ⁣

“That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

“And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

Jesus, Sermon on the Mount

The Tiniest Party

I was invited by my friend Travis to share two stories at his latest Tiniest Party, a storytelling night which takes place in backyards around Portland. The second story of the night was to share a story that “you’ve never told before in public. Here’s my story about meeting one of my heroes and it not going the way I hoped it would.

Outline:

Sacred/Crass

“I want to get to the next level”

Meeting Rob Bell

Inner Voice

“Keep Speaking”

Pilgrimage

Next Level is Descent

Love what you’re doing

My family and I spent 16 days in Europe from the end of June to the beginning of July.

I erased social media off my phone.

I was barely on emails. I just wanted to take a break from doing anything with work and just be present to taking our kids overseas for the first time.

Honestly, I’ve been really worn out.

We took them to London, Paris, and Copenhagen. And yes… we nailed being in Paris on the hottest day recorded in France ever.

It was 101 degrees when my oldest Anders and I were making our way back from Musee D’Orsay to our airbnb. We were almost at our metro entrance when we walked by a beautiful church that I’ve never been to before. “Let’s go in” I said and we went in.

The Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Beautiful inside. Heavily painted and wonderfully ornate.

Around the main hall there were a series of paintings about the life of christ but they were all partnered with an old testament story.

This picture of Jonah emerging from the sea was partnered with a picture of Jesus easter morning. (sorry it’s not a great pic. the sun was shining in above and washing everything out. )

The resurrection painting is great… but oh boy… that Jonah painting is epic.

What does it say to you?

For me, besides what an ab routine, this portrayal of Jonah speaks to the humility of getting to start a new. That in order to change your mind, your perspective, the narrative you tell yourself about the world, the divine, your life, a new way only emerges after the path of humiliation completely strips you of your old faculties.

It can be the belly of a fish, the silence of the tomb, but it can also be a break from the perceived normal that one adopts… a break into something new. or something forgotten. Something found again.

Maybe Jonah is naked letting the waves roll through his fishing tackle shouting “thank god i’m alive!”

But I see one walking from a dark place into the light, whispering…

“I remember. I remember. I forgot… but I remember.”

Thank God… we can remember.

Today, may you remember what you have forgotten is most important to you.

07/18 Upcoming Studio Event

My friend Jess Janz of Dinner with Strangers has a new book coming out next week and she’s having an event in my studio! It’s going to be awesome. There is a limited number of spaces so get your tickets asap!

Tickets and info here

Hope to see you all there!

good to see an old friend….

If you love the form, you have everything to lose.⁣

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If you love WHAT gives it its form,

you’re free to receive whatever It is turning into.⁣

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* I made this image 8 years ago and it’s still banging around on walls, on skin, and in conversations. ⁣

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Of course you feel stuck.⁣

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That’s what happens when you define yourself inaccurately.⁣

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You were made for so much more than the definitions you’ve accepted.⁣

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⁣ “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

What is your “bowl” in this illustration above?

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dive into your body

My body knows the truth…

When I come back from many days of travel and speaking, that day I’m tired. And the next day I’m tired.

But the next day I get low. Mildly depressed. Physically out. Spiritually and mentally depleted.

I have very specific mental health and spiritual practices for that day.

I don’t make any decisions about who I am and where my life is going.

I don’t touch work.

I go on a walk or swim laps.

I hug loved ones and try to see friends.

I eat tasty food - preferably nachos because they are a doorway to Divine love.

The practice summed up is this: I get out of my head and into my body.

When you’re depleted, your mind is a big fat liar about all kinds of things. Especially identity and survival strategy. It’s been calculating non-stop on how to earn love through producing and success… and it just starts sounding like a crazy person with crappy PR strategies. It has lost it’s Knowing through exhaustion. You must connect with another kind of Knowing.

That is found in the wonder of your body.

Your legs and arms know what to do… they carry you to all kinds of wonderful places.

Your heart keeps pumping without your permission… inviting you to the glory of all things.

Your breath whispers the name of the Divine over and over again like a secret charismatic meeting.

Your taste buds know that joy is found in salsa spices and warmed tortilla chips.

There are many different kinds of knowing. Our culture is obsessed with mind knowing.

But your body knows the truth. And today I went on a long walk to get back in touch with the truth:

... that we are unquestionably and unconditionally loved.

May you descend into the wonder of that truth today.

A friend’s book you may need….

My friend Krysta Masciale is a brilliant mind and a big hearted human who spent the last year putting all her start up wisdom into a new book that just released.

“I wrote this book for founders trying to build the future — and for anyone navigating their own version of the in-between. How do we do that? Really. How do we give our ideas a fighting chance when we’re living in the liminal space, when what got us here won’t get us there, but we don’t know exactly where “there” is?

Father Richard Rohr names this pattern: order, disorder, reorder. The work isn’t to skip the disorder. It’s to learn how to build through it. How we build through the disordered chaos matters as much as what we end up building and we’re not going to get there with yesterday’s tropes. Let’s build a future worthy of our dreams, without losing our minds in the process.”

Get the book here

Here’s a little blurb from the end….. it reminds me of this prayer.

“One of the greatest points of resistance in writing this book was that it felt like none of this really mattered. I chipped away at every chapter while the world continued to burn in spectacular fashion. Is this really it? Is helping founders build healthier organizations while the world at large was a giant dumpster fire useful or is it as foolish as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

I mean, we’re watching systems collapse in real time. We have wars, climate disasters, political upheaval, and civic unrest. And I’m here asking you to care about your meeting cadence and whether your team feels seen.

It felt absurd and borderline offensive.

Why should anyone care about making widgets, or selling software, or building businesses when we watch hourly catastrophes on a live feed? Does it even matter?

The answer is, yes. But damn if it didn’t take some real letting go to arrive at that.

What happens in your business carries out into the community at large.

The same patterns that show up in your organization—clinging to control, resenting the people who challenge you, sabotaging growth because you can’t sit with discomfort, performing instead of leading—these are the same patterns playing out on the global stage.

The difference is scale and stakes.

But the root is the same: leaders who haven’t done their own inner work, manufacture chaos externally because they can’t hold the discomfort internally. You can either function as the immune system of your organization, or you can contribute to its disease.

Right now, we need better immune systems. We need leaders who can hold complexity and be honest about reality. We need organizations that are rehearsal spaces for the world we’re trying to build—not microcosms of the dysfunction we’re trying to escape. We need systems that protect the soul of our organizations and our people.

This is where we begin to reorder our world. It’s more than just your bottom line. We need stronger communities, deeper connection, and people who know how to lead through chaos without creating more of it.

And if you’re a founder trying something new at a time when the old systems are crumbling, we really, really need you to win. We don’t need more unicorn valuations (although kudos if you reached that milestone). We need people to build something that makes people more human.”

Thanks for making it this far. I’m going out of the country with my family for two weeks and I plan to be off social media and even here for that time. But I’ll have a few shorties scheduled.

So much love. We got this. Let’s figure it out together.

Be Not Afraid In These Hands

Question….

If you didn’t go to a religious gathering.

If you didn’t read a sacred text.

If you didn’t listen to any podcasts or audiobooks about spiritual stuff.

If you cut out all the outside narratives about life is and about what you should think about all this is…

If you just walked through your day….

The grocery store….

School pick ups…

Bird song…

Garbage can pick up…

Interaction with people…

Sunsets….

Weeds growing through cement tracks…

Animal personalities…

The colors in the world…

The depth in human eyes…

The thing behind the thing….

Would you conclude that there is something deeper?

Would you conclude a Giver to all this?

If you did, would you call it God? Or would you call it a different name?

What intimate personal names would you give to what you are witnessing about what’s going on?

This is your weekend task.

It works by Hafiz

I am a part of this impossible mystery

It’s not absurd
for members of the first species
who are aware of the scope of terrors in the universe
 to have an “off day.”

The miracle of existence is 
a sacred humiliation, 
a holy terror,
a paradoxical blessing,
a benevolent fluke,
and an impossible mystery.

I am a part of this impossible mystery.

May this “off day”
be an unexpected invitation to feel, 
in my body,
the miracle of
my mysterious existence.

image and words from IN THE LOW.

OPEN STUDIO EVENT

Hi friends.

I was in a documentary called Dust and Color and director Filipe Amado is going to be showing his doc IN MY STUDIO next Thursday. I’ll be hosting a small group in my studio to watch the film and then have a Q&A about all things creativity. There will be some snacks and drinks as well.

If you live in the Portland/Vancouver area you won’t want to miss this.

get your tickets here

Dust & Color is a documentary that follows artists as they navigate the beautiful, messy intersection of art, culture, and meaning. We witness their struggles and triumphs as they tackle life’s biggest questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going?

To find out more about the film, go to https://filipeamado.com/dust-color

NOTES I GET

Every week I get some kind reminder that my work is helping others.

Here’s one that is humbling.

Who knew a mug would be so helpful?

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

-Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Hi everyone….

I hope you enjoyed the poem above. I’ve been reading this one daily this week.

I hope you’re well. If you’re not… take some time to slow down and let yourself not be well.

Our grief can only emerge when we slow down… when we let it come forth. And then we give that grief hospitality. We welcome its presence. We see if for what it is. And then we give it to the Divine… we let it go… on in another way… we forgive reality for not being what we wished it would be.

This week has been a big one. I’ve had to do a lot of discerning. I’ve been dropping kids off at school and just going to the Columbia River waterfront in Vancouver, WA and just walking, praying, reading, writing, and listening for what to do next. I’ve made a decision and I look forward to telling you about it next week when what I’ve committed to doing really washes over me.

I’ll see you then. Have a stellar weekend.

“There is a blessing that only the broken can hear, and K.J. Ramsey guides us to that blessing with sacred wit, beautiful grief, and surprising joy. . . . A literary oasis in our desert of despair.”

—Scott Erickson, co-author of In the Low and author of Honest Advent

“A Memoir of what Joy can survive…”

My friend KJ has a new and important book out today about finding, holding onto, discovery of Joy in the midst of her chronic illness.

Don’t miss this release!

(excerpt from book)

MAYBE THE MIRACLE | page 190

Ryan and I sit across from each other in a booth. Crimson, white, and gold paper snowflakes glitter between twinkle lights from every foot of the restaurant’s ceiling. Fake snow-­ covered Christmas trees line the windows. A black cane rests beside me in the booth next to our thick coats. Outside, the wind howls in the dark of a cold Minnesota night. I fidget with my fork.

“What if being here isn’t worth it?

What if we leave with no answers?”

Ryan looks up from his spaghetti. His eyes are always a

bright ocean. Tonight, they brim with tears.

For fifteen years, we have said that if things ever got ­really bad—­ if we ever got to a place with my health where there was no way forward—­ we would come here. This is where you come when your sickness is so strange, your specialists need specialists.

This is where you come when your matter is a mystery and

your life a misery.

This is where I never wanted to be.

My rheumatologist referred me to the Mayo Clinic just one

month ago. “I’ve never had success getting a patient in,” he

said, cautioning against too much hope, “but I think it’s the

best next step for you.”

That day, we had gone through a list of lupus diagnostic criteria, checking off more boxes than not. I remember mindlessly raking a hand through my hair as we spoke, then holding out my full palm to him. “I’ve already lost my face, my work, and my appetite. Now I’m losing my hair. Send the referral.”

We woke before the sun this morning and shuffled through a basement tunnel to a lab appointment where a phlebotomist took fifteen tubes of my blood. Once those tests come in, we’ll discuss the results with Dr. Perkins, who happens to be the same world-­class rheumatologist my sister saw last year. When we met her earlier, I pushed hard to explore a diagnosis for the pain in my leg.

Across the restaurant, a large table of diners are laughing and toasting, probably a company holiday party. I take another bite of my dinner. I ordered gluten-­ free ravioli in a mushroom tomato cream sauce, thinking the mushrooms might make me smile. It’s the best food I’ve tasted in nearly six months, but eating is too exhausting to get more than a few bites down. These days, I’m too sick to eat. Even though my stomach is never full, my face still is. Under my thick black sweater, stretch marks zag like an albino zebra’s hide. Instead of swelling with new life this fall like I had hoped, I got stretch marks from steroids. Ryan looks at me tenderly across the table.

“Do you want to go back to the hotel?”

I shake my head no. I want to sit here a little longer. I want the twinkle lights above us to transform this dinner into the celebration today was supposed to be. Instead, I think of mothers in Gaza, wailing for their dead children. I think of Mary, fleeing with a bundled Christ to Egypt to escape genocide, waiting in an unfamiliar land until it was safe to go home. I think of the unnamed woman in the gospels who bled for twelve years straight, who so dared to dream that she was worthy of wellness that even after spending all she had on doctors, she stood in a crowd she wasn’t welcome in to reach a hand ­ toward the hem of Jesus’s clothes to be healed. Maybe the biggest miracle wasn’t that she was healed, but that she never gave up on herself.

My phone buzzes. It’s a Mayo Clinic notification. “New test results.”

I turn my phone ­ toward Ryan. We both know what I’m not

saying. Should I dare to hope? Two more results have returned from this morning’s pile of tubes. Both indicate I likely have lupus or mixed connective tissue disease. It’s not a diagnosis, but it’s likely the beginning of one.

I show Ryan the results. We wipe back tears and clasp our

hands together across the table in hope.

“I think it’s ­ really courageous of you to come here. It means

you are saying your life still matters.”

I nod. It does.

The waiter comes to box my food and brings a container of

chocolate mousse for us to take back to the hotel. It’s my birthday. I turned thirty-­five today at the Mayo Clinic. It’s the last place I would have chosen to be to celebrate. And this was not a celebration. It was a choice to find a way to live for many more birthdays to come.

Excerpted from The Place Between Our Pains by K.J. Ramsey Copyright © 2026 by K.J. Ramsey. Excerpted by permission of Convergent Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Join us live on instagram!

You are not your breakdown.⁣

You are not your fire.⁣

You are not even the vehicle which has been forced to a complete stop.⁣

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You are the very Roadtrip in which all kind of fantastical experiences occur.⁣

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One day, you will treasure them all.⁣

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This Thursday! Tacoma!

tickets and info

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it changes with time

If you love the form, you have everything to lose.⁣

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If you love WHAT gives it its form,

you’re free to receive whatever It is turning into.⁣

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* I made this image 8 years ago and it’s still banging around on walls, on skin, and in conversations. ⁣

This Week! Tacoma, WA!

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info and tickets here

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Nobody wants to die with their song still in them.⁣

But few are willing to let what needs to die in order for that song to be born.⁣

All spiritual work is less about adding more…. and more about removing that which is in the way of what is already here.

What’s in the way to hear/see/love that which is already here?

What in you is wanting to come forth into the world?

I met Tyler in March and he told me when he saw this bird death image it confirmed his deep intuition that he needed to quit his current job and set off into the next new thing that was emerging in his life. He told me this story in person… and I was humbled and honored to receive it. I asked him if he’d write it my personal notebook.

Visual art has an interesting way to excavate that which is already inside of us.

I wonder when you spend time with the bird image…. what does it exhume in you?

This Thursday! TACOMA!

GET TICKETS HERE

This is my second time doing this new work in a solo format. Tacoma gives me lots of love so I hope to all I see you there. …

And in the next year… I’ll start getting around everyone too…..

cheers

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Spring Sale is on til Monday at midnight!

Use promo code SPRING26 at checkout to get 20% off your entire order!

GET SOME ART!

Not sure what to get? Here are some of my favs….

IT’S OK TO FEEL COMPLICATED MUG

MARY - THE FIRST RESURRECTION PREACHER

COMMUNION UNITY

MARY & EVE

OR BE NOT AFRAID

FEELINGS… modeled by my friend Brian Recker.

VISUAL PRAYERS

I have a whole section of visual prayers… words and images working together.

Anywho… remember that promo code SPRING26 at check out!

I completely understand the feeling like you’re walking away from what you’ve always known.

Before you label yourself a deserter, remember that the early followers in this story were Jews who believed that they were a part of a reformed movement within Judaism. They believed that Jesus was the one who was going to restore the glory of Israel, mostly by kicking out the Romans and restoring the majesty of a King lead Israel. But then, to the follower’s horror, they witnessed the religious leaders of Israel torture and execute their hope for change.

Jerusalem, which was once a symbol of a safe place for them, has now become a haunted place. An unsafe place. And they find themselves devastated and walking away from something they used to trust.

I can’t help but see the connection to many of us who find themselves walking away from spaces which at one point felt safe, but now have become de-sacralized.

As I have conversations with people all over, I find that there are many daughters and sons of the church who are deeply disillusioned by what they discovered in their sacred spaces.

The argument of some is that it is essential to stay in the fold no matter what, because it is essential to hand down the faith to the next generation. But if the faith that we are handing down to our daughters and sons reveals to be racist, misogynistic, obsessed with power, unconcerned with creation and the poor, people are not wrong to leave it. They are, in fact, on the right path in walking away.

But I don’t think this is any kind of strategized walk out. I don’t think this is any kind of revolution to usurp the powers that be. I think this is simply a reluctant response to deeply felt heartbreak. This is the painful walk of disillusionment. This is the despairing stroll of deconstruction. This is the necessary pilgrimage from that which has died and is being placed in a tomb.

We, of course, thousands of years on the other side of this story, see that the illusion of the disillusionment is that though they are walking away from Jerusalem, they are actually on a collision course with the Risen One. It’s in the process of moving away from that they find themselves in the midst of. Which begs us to ask the question, “Is walking away from that which is has shown itself to have failed possibly a work of the Spirit?”

So often the story God is telling with our lives is not the story we are telling about ourselves.

Sometimes the story of disillusionment and despair, a story of walking away, becomes a story of resurrection.

These two on the road to Emmaus are simply having a candid and honest conversation about their vulnerable sorrow. What they hoped for. What they believed in. What they witnessed died. What stopped working for them. It was in the midst of this conversation that the Risen One shows up and asks to join their conversation. “What are you talking about?” The Risen One walks with us in our vulnerable and sorrowful conversations. God is available everywhere, but God is especially present when people get vulnerable… whether it be in a temple, a roadside tavern, or simply walking down a street discussing their pain.

These two eventually end up walking back to Jerusalem with a renewed vision. They are awakened to the presence of the Risen One on that journey and it reframes everything they think that is happening. I can’t help but wonder if that may be our experience as well. That it is the necessary walk of disillusionment, the necessary vulnerable conversations about our sorrow, that allows us the renewed pilgrimage of resurrection back to what had been our hope. That it is only in leaving the old that we can return to the resurrecting new.

May you SEE your disillusionment as the road to a whole new way of understanding.

* This post inspired by Jonathan Martin’s musings in The Road Away from God

Stations of the Resurrection is a visual series contemplating what the resurrection of Jesus could even mean for us in the world today. The premise for these station meditations is that resurrection changes the way we see everything.

UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS: TACOMA!!!!

info and tickets here…

Starting to do my next solo show….

Tacoma… you show me so much love… hope to see you there!

“Take your hand and put it into my side.” Jn20:27

If I’m honest, a scene with actor Jim Carrey is the image I keep bringing up every time I encounter the experience of doubt.

It’s found at the end of the movie The Truman Show. Most of you already know the scene I’m going to reference. The Truman Show is a movie about a man who’s entire life has happened on a television sound stage without him knowing it. Since he was a baby, his life is being filmed 24/7 and everything is part of an elaborate script. Work, love, friendship, hobbies… it’s all part of the script. But Truman, played by Jim Carrey, eventually begins to see the fakery in the highly polished script. And at the end of the movie he makes his escape by boat. He sails the unknown ocean not knowing what he’ll find… but hoping he’ll find something… real.

The scene that I keep thinking of is when the sail boat he’s in runs into the massive wall of the television set.

His boat crashes into the wall of his understanding.

He gets out of the boat and begins walking the length of the wall until he reaches a staircase and a door. He walks the stairs and opens the door… into who knows… well, that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s walking through the door of the unknown that really calls us forward versus staying in the perfectly curated reality of what we can grasp. That scene is so poignant to me because I think it perfectly depicts what it is to experience doubt.

Dr. Curt Thompson in his book Soul of Shame says that doubt is a relational feeling. It’s the feeling when a relationship has taken a turn into the unknown, usually a turn where you don’t know if you can trust the other person anymore.

I think this is fascinating. Think about your feeling of doubt. I would suggest that the core emotion of doubt is not necessarily about facts, doctrines, or dogmas… but is instead a conversation of “can I trust this anymore?”

Thomas in this passage had the same question. He knew Jesus. Had walked with Him for years. Saw him get killed. Knew he was buried. And then days later all his friends tell him “Hey, He’s alive! We’re ready to start doing this thing again!” But Thomas didn’t witness this, and He was like “Nope. I want to see it for myself.”

I can’t blame Thomas. It’s a lot to earn trust again under the shadow of heartbreak. When was the last time you were heartbroken? Was it easy to get over? Did you immediately jump right back in? Or did you need a minute. A minute to take stock of the risk of Love. A minute to wonder if it’s worth the risk to open your heart again?

What we can see with the Risen One and Thomas is that the Risen One isn’t offering knowing every mystery to Thomas, but a small starting place in knowing a larger mystery unfolding in their midst.

“Place your finger here…”

Put your finger into the mystery.

Crash your boat into the wall of understanding.

Walk the length of your knowing until you find the door of unknowing.

It’s only until you bump the end of your knowing that you’re open to entering a larger world of knowing.

Never forget that “God” is the humble pronoun we’ve given to the Holy and Unfathomable Mystery we’ve bumped up against in this existence. As Father Richard Rohr says, “Mystery is not something you can’t know. Mystery is endless knowability.”

Doubt will be your constant companion on this journey. Doubt will be the consistent wall of understanding that you bump up against as you pursue the Endless Mystery. Doubt is the doorway to each new way of knowing, each new perspective.

Doubt is the feeling of your heart expanding for a larger capacity of Love.

May you SEE your doubt as the invitation to endless knowability.

Stations of the Resurrection is a visual series contemplating what the resurrection of Jesus could even mean for us in the world today. The premise for these station meditations is that resurrection changes the way we see everything.

LAST WEEK:

THE FESTIVAL OF FAITH AND WRITING

CALVIN UNIVERSITY, GRAND RAPIDS, MI

Last week I presented twice at the Festival of Faith and Writing… basically pendleton and patagonia version of comic con for spiritual writers.

Friends… I had the best time.

I went in trying to win the “best speech of the festival” award ( I made up that event) …. and then I listened to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s speech at the main session just after mine… and I was necessarily humbled by the mastery of this indigenous elder.

Still… I had great slides….

I met so many wonderful people at this conference that I’m seriously thinking of attending as a participant in two years. Who’s with me? Let’s make it an event within an event…..

My first gallery show

tis true! look… a gallery show is not my goal. It takes a lot of work to make a gallery show. That is not what I am focused on.

But the Center Arts Gallery wanted to put a show of my work up. We ended up deciding to do a show based on my latest work In The Low.

Brent and Gabby of the gallery asked me if I would trust them to execute a show… and I’m so glad I did. The show turned out amazingly.

I had multiple people tell me that they teared up multiple times walking through the show. I couldn’t be happier that this was my first art gallery show.

Resurrection - Woundedness

“Just as the Father has sent Me, I also send you” Jn 20:21

I think a great misconception is that resurrection is the same thing as perfection.

Without blemish. That’s what perfection means. The very definition of a blemish is something that destroys perfection… something like a social status ending pimple in middle school… or a scar, like all of us have. I think it’s fairly impossible to live a life without picking up some kind of scar. We’ve all slipped, skidded, crashed, nicked, banged into some immovable object whether it be heightened acceleration or just the inescapable rules of gravity. We’ve also, at some time in the healing process, been told not to pick the scab because “it’ll leave a scar!” meaning once it’s set you can’t do anything about that physical reminder that something can happen to you. Because something did happen to you,’ and it left a permanent mark. That mark will always speak to the reality that you’re not impenetrable. That you’re vulnerable. That you bleed. That you can be wounded. I guess it really comes down to if you think a scar is a blemish not?

This may be an easier conversation with the scraped knees of adolescence when you fell off your bike, but we’ve all been unsettled by the scars that speak to the potential horrors of a human life. Bullet wounds. Knife cuts. Animal mauling’s. Industrial accidents. Complicated surgeries. And those are just the physical scars. What about the scars we can’t see? The trauma, abuse, and tragedies that can befall a human heart and psyche? What do we do with those blemishes?

In a locked room one night, The Risen One suddenly appears on the inside to the Followers and shows them his scars. Not easy scars mind you. Violent ones. Products of an imperial public execution. Scars attained from betrayal, arrest, and a hodge podge sentencing from his own blood tribe.

He died innocent. And yet his resurrection had blemishes. He was not perfect in the perfect sense of the word. Are we ok with that? Because if the Risen One thought those scars to be blemishes, I don’t think he’d be so quick to invite us into the same calling.

I guess asking why we get wounded is like asking why is a porcupine prickly. It’s the only version of ourselves we know. We are vulnerable. We are fragile. We are finite. We get scars. And if that’s the way we are in the world, then that must be the way in which God will work in the world. Because God works through human lives. Not around. Not despite. But in… like as incarnate.

The Risen One shows his wounds glorified, meaning they are honored and revered, meaning all our wounds will one day be honored and revered, meaning they can become something more than just scars. My guess is it’s because the process of healing, the process of resurrection, transforms our woundedness into something useful. Humbling. Empathizing. Surprising. Forgiving. Avenues for connection and healing. Doesn’t this already happen?

Is it not the healed wounds of abuse of a son that transforms them into the father that ends the generational abuse?

Is it not a suicide survivor that brings the words of hope and life to those in self-destructive conversations?

Is it not the tired mommy blogger who turns their exhaustion into invigorating solidarity to the great cloud of witnessing worn out moms?

We all have wounds we carry. I guess the question we must all ask is what do they become when we carry them forward? Do they become embarrassing blemishes or honored scars? Can they either become avenues of bitterness or avenues for reconciliation? We seek to understand how the Risen One invites us to be wounded healers, ones whose wounds can become avenues for reconciliation, healing, solidarity, resurrection.

It’s in this offering that the concept of resurrection moves from over theologized seminar fodder to grace-filled pedestrian practicality. Healing your reality is something wonderfully practical. And holy. And freeing.

Sometimes I think what we think we want is a God who will answer all of our questions. Sorry to ruin your cake by the ocean, but we don’t get that. Surprisingly, what we do get is a God who’s willing to go through all of the questions. And on the other side of those questions are the resurrected scars that will heal the nations.

May you SEE our woundedness as the surprising avenue of holy transformation.

Stations of the Resurrection is a visual series contemplating what the resurrection of Jesus could even mean for us in the world today. The premise for these station meditations is that resurrection changes the way we see everything.

PORTLAND! NEXT WEEK!

Next week I’ll be attending a film screening of a documentary THAT I AM IN! I’ve never seen it…. but I’ve been told by friends that it’s good… so come and watch it with me for the first time together.

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE

I’ll be there… and there will be a Q&A conversation afterward that will be a magic time together. Come on out!

(it’s a modest ticket price… and 100% goes to paying for the directors flight fees. )

resurrection - authority

“Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” - Jn 20:15

My guess is that all of us, even though it can be frighteningly vulnerable, want to be seen for who we truly are.

More than our accomplishments. Much more than our failures. A hundred times more than our most embarrassing actions, thoughts, or statements. We want to be seen as our true identity - made in the image of the Divine.

Admittedly, we might not know ourselves what that is.

Identity is much more malleable than we imagined. We’ve all been bruised and battered by the storms on the great sea that we lost sight of where we were going. We’ve all had things said to us that chipped away at the granite of self-worth, diminishing the glorious sculpture of who we hoped we were. We’ve all had our hearts broken so deeply that we believed we couldn’t be Humpty Dumptied back together again.

Mary Magdalen is said to have been one who had seven demons cast out of her, which is to say, for an extended amount of time, she was not herself. She did not have the faculty to take control. She did not have the where with all to curb the lies, gossip, and labeling of her name in the community she found herself. She became one who was put on hold from her innate dignity.

It is no accident that she was the first one at the tomb that morning.

She deeply missed The One who dignified who she really was. The One who released her of a destructive possession. The One who called her back to herself. The one who knew her name.

Maybe this is why when the men looked into the tomb they only saw dirty laundry, but when Mary looked into the tomb she saw angels, because she was not unfamiliar with being able to see in the dark*.

Mary was chosen to see the Risen One first because she had the courage to look for life in the grave, for light in the dark. It is only one who understands that the darkness cannot overcome the light who is willing to look for light in the darkest of dark human experiences.

Authority never comes through what you are adjacent to. Authority is rooted in what you have gone through.

Mary is known as the Apostle to the Apostles. The first resurrection preacher. The first to proclaim that the grave is not the end. She was the one chosen to preach this resurrection message because the authority to proclaim light in the midst of our ultimate dark must come from one who has gone through the transforming love of god.

May you SEE that you have been given authority in what you have gone through.

* This post was inspired by Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon at Rachel Held Evans funeral.

Stations of the Resurrection is a visual series contemplating what the resurrection of Jesus could even mean for us in the world today. The premise for these station meditations is that resurrection changes the way we see everything.