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Following the breadcrumbs of heaven, I recognize codes, patterns and alignments. I discover stuff all the time, those thresholds where the old becomes new again, seeing ancient things brought forward for real live people here and now. I recognize various ciphers to all such things in peoples words and postures, the revelations of past generations and current ideologies pointing to open (and shut) doors and windows. I also track with the more elemental stuff around, above and below us, picking up on frequencies, tones, historical-geographical lingerings, what the passing of time and death can’t hide, what stones and skies have always been saying, the groans of creation; what I’ve come to call spiritual cartography. It’s our dwelling with Christ in eternity that is often hard to explain without the hearer exercising their faith presently.

Yesterday morning, the church of Canmore gathered to hear Greg Musselman of The Voice of the Martyrs Canada. When Greg finished, I went looking for the Bible he’d held up as a witness — stained in the blood of a Nigerian Christian shot dead during a prayer meeting in a church.

There was the book, just sitting there on a table. I picked up the leather bound King James Bible, noticing the margins of most pages knit together in blood. I sat down with it, and one by one slowly and carefully began to free up passages of scripture. I held the Bible open here and there, read verses aloud, looked over the red margins, imagining I could preach with it, it felt right in my hand, like I could wield it, a beautiful sword.

Humility, humus, earth, on the ground… To the serpent this was judgment, to the Son it was the Way. From the garden to the crucifixion, this was and is the first line of battle.

Remember that Jesus spent only a few hours raised up there, jammed into the gateway of eternity, where they bled, suffocated, and killed him; God murdered on a tree, nailed into place. It wasn’t suicide, wasn’t about an absentee Father, or cowardly disciples, or even demonically empowered bloodlust. In obedience, He willingly passed through them all in silence and weakness, actually doing something about everything, the Godhead on assignment! He had nothing more to say. What was done would prove, yet again, that which was from the beginning.

One of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation was the Latin phrase sola fide, faith alone. To confide, literally means to commingle faith with another, which leads to a posture and praxis of personal confidence, and together with others the keeping of such confidences leads to faithfulness.

How does one become confident? Where does faith even start? Many over-qualify “hearing” the ῥῆμα found in Romans 10:17, at the expense of all the other Old Testament references in the rest of the chapter. Faith gets leveraged all over the map, becomes secretive, code-based, exclusive, branded, and insider– which is the antithesis of a shining beacon of light on a hill. Who bottles and sells sunlight? You might tinker with a small solar grid, but won’t harness a cosmic storm.

When I first sit down by the fireplace, all the shopping carts of my mind crash about every which way. Eventually, one by one, they find their place, quiet down. As the busy stuff dissipates, the memories come. A lot of our family time is spent right here in this space, playing games, reading books, shooting nerf guns, lots of laughs, wrestling, tickling, occasional disputes, kids snacking after dinner, then snacking again before bed. Then one last chat on pillows, prayers from mom and dad, and the drifting away into dreams worth sharing over breakfast.

This may come across like community 101, but as I ponder various charters and creeds, challenges to character and conduct must have a context among the people; then accountability rightfully leads to responsibility, which hopefully results in right action, where proofs of righteousness are witnessed in the words and actions of all parties involved — justice being first and foremost restorative and reconciling — leading to clear, direct and simple declarations about God, people, and redemption.

My mother recently sent me this picture of her father’s parents, Annie and Arthur Giles. Up until three weeks ago, I’d never seen Arthur ~ I look a lot like my great-grandfather.

Then there’s Annie looking off camera, focused, determined as the Scottish Enlightenment. Curiously enough she’s wearing a Star of David on her blouse; no idea what that means, it’s just there with her, spiritual cartography.

My dad has been researching as well, just yesterday discovering for the first time (from a ship manifest) that his dad first came over from Hungary when he was an infant. My dad always assumed his father first came over in 1925, as a young man.

“If something ends up declared as the Word of God, it must already be written. It is already written. We must not go beyond what is already written. We must not be sidetracked by one word of one prophet at the expense of all the other words of all the other prophets.

Morning in the atrium of Regent College, Vancouver, reflecting… pondering, often gazing up at the Celtic cross, vaulting windows, framing steel grey skies, molten silver shores in the East.

Yesterday, had a few minutes with James Houston, such a refreshing smile… Then, over the course of the afternoon, alongside my friends David and Julia Jones, sat with Mark Mayhew, Paul Stevens, and Paul Williams… discussing among many things, the Marketplace Institute.

The night before, it was David, Julia, Craig Harris, and Bentley Grigg at Sandbar restaurant on Granville Island, federal territory, a bit of Canada, in the heart of Vancouver.

There’s tourists who drive through this valley and climbers who live here; each view the valley differently. Tourists see whole mountain ranges, gawk at various peaks, gasp at a mythical wonderland as they zip on by at 110 km/h.  Then there’s climbers who know every nook and cranny of every slab of rock, because they’ve clawed up and down these crags for decades.

There are more than 1600 bolted sport climbing routes here, each one named (let alone the hundreds of other routes crafted by various freelancers).