The only way to explain some things is to share transparently from life, the subjective. To me, truth is not just some objective reality out there somewhere, truth finds a resting place in my heart, and primarily truth is embodied in a person, and the person who help me make sense of embodying truth is Jesus Christ, the first one to fully walk in Spirit and Truth, so much so, he was and is the Truth full of Spirit, not objectively, he can be touched, he is embodied… truth in a human body, not a technology, not a mechanized extrapolation, not a scope, probe, satellite or chip… not way far away to be measured by a needle on a meter, rather, the pure embodiment of wisdom, here with us more closely and readily than we often realize.

I have not found, or have ever heard from, a better teacher and code-breaker than Him. He gets all my attention, the only one in all of creation who makes everything make sense for me, He brings it all together, the writer of the purest code. The words and deeds of Jesus Christ as recorded and passed down, they are a healthy and vibrant context for me; none of which robs me of anything of myself, if anything it puts me in place. Nothing of the life and times of Jesus diminishes, misleads or manipulates me; His words and deeds as recorded and shared with me, they teach me, they even convict me, even change me, there is a power, a Spirit who is at work.

In fact, to be as clear as possible, personally, I believe He leads me. I know His voice. I believe He died to save us. I believe He rose from the grave to lead us. I believe He is the commander of Angel armies, in charge of an armada hell hates. None of what I “experience”, makes me trust myself more, or Him less. I know I am never more myself than when I am most in Christ. I just want to perpetually make it clear, my premise, my mantra: that Jesus Christ is my Lord and my God, and I believe with all my heart that God raised Him from the dead, gave Him all the authority and crowns that matter, and with justice He judges and He makes war on all His enemies, for the sake of all His people, His friends, whom He entrusted with the power and presence of His Spirit, until He comes, once, and literally, for all.

Three weeks ago, a friend in Northern California wanted to fly me down for a visit, it seemed to be time for us to be together again. So, Darlene and I prayerfully considered the invitation, it seemed good, right, a generous and tangible expression of friendship… but I couldn’t get excited about going. I kept watch over my heart. I did do a little prayerful research on Google Earth, to get the lay of the land, so I explored Northern California, all the elemental things, various alignments, anticipating being with a friend, there with his family, on the land. I could hear the faint song of ancient peoples.

After some research and prayer I walked outside our home to stand in the Sun and listen. A bird was sitting there on the ground in front of me pecking away. I watched him. Then, I walked up behind him and picked him up. He looked at me quite inquisitively with a, “You just picked me up, right? I mean who does that, just walks up behind a bird who’s eating and picks him up?” So, he hopped out of my hand and went back to pecking away… I smiled and picked him up again, same looks, same banter, and it all happened while I was praying for Northern California… something precious going on. I was listening to what the Spirit was saying.

Those who know me well, know I end up in the middle of these kinds of things. I share the stories like this afterward, but they’re so bizarre, like they’ve been scripted somehow. Now, I am going to keep certain things confidential here (you may or may not hear more later), and at the same time, try to share the reality. I often try to document what I can in hindsight, like I’m attempting to now, but it’s as difficult to record in direct proportion to how precious and pure the revelations are at the time of receiving them. And these revelations are tangible, not ethereal, this stuff is real, it’s authentic people, important places and deep things… not the harping opinions of an amusing oracle lodged between a misunderstood heaven and mismanaged earth. If you have an ear, then hear! We never leverage grace at the expense of truth.

There I was on privately owned land in California, hosted there by a friend. One hot sunny afternoon, my friend and I were hacking through some thick vines down by the stream where he pointed out bubbles coming up out of the creek, stuff he’d seen there before. For decades, there was this assumption by the land owner that something was there, but until I arrived, I’m not sure they’d ever done what my friend and I were about to do… I told him point blank that what was bubbling up out of the creek was natural gas, yet there was no oily residue in the water of the creek, no scent (in it’s natural state gas has no odor). My friend got a glass mason jar, put it down in the waters over the bubbles until the gas pushed all the water out of the jar, put the lid on the jar while still under the water, brought up the jar, carefully opened the lid, put a lit flame to something invisible, instantly transforming what could not be seen into long blue flames wafting and licking their way out of the jar.

My friend got an old round can and put a few holes in the flat bottom. He turned over the can in the middle of the creek over top of some bubbles, with enough of the top of the can above the water line to capture escaping gas that would just go to atmosphere on its own. He surrounded the can with 12 large rocks, and put pebbles on the can to hide it completely from view, it looked like an altar in the middle of the creek. Then he lit the top of the pebbles, and a six inch flame sat there suspended in mid air, like this little fireplace had always been there in the middle of the flowing creek, quite surreal. If that flame were never blown out it would burn there for a thousand years just like that. In garlic and onions, my friend cooked a large rattlesnake in a pot over that very natural gas fire; as wild and free as west can be.

Those who remember me as an executive in an oil and gas company, might think this is serendipitous enough, that I inadvertently discover proved and probable natural gas reserves in California. But there’s more…

I’ll go back to California in a moment, but sometime today, this afternoon, my good friend Sara Hildebrand of Millennium Kids (MK) is presenting her vision for MK at the Joint Religious Leadership Coordination for the G8 and G20 Summits at Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs in Washington, DC. Just yesterday, I was helping her edit her emails into the Prime Ministers Office as she prepped for travel to Washington.

Back to California, just like I didn’t know I’d discover natural gas there, I didn’t know I would be in the U.S. during their National Day of Prayer, so my friend and I went to an evening event at a local church. Walking in, I heard them praying into the marketplace, how Christian leaders in the marketplace get access to places religious leaders on their own may not get access to… I was in agreement with that, I had seen that very reality at work in my oil company, doors opened up into many nations… those holding the doors open knew we were Christians, but it was the combination of prayer and work that kept those invitations coming… We were praying Christians rolling up our sleeves and helping solve problems as well as set goals, among real people in real time needing real answers, real tangible provision, the cool sips of water and taste of warm bread. Not long after that National Day of Prayer event, a new friend set me up a few hours with the kingdom business leader who prayed that prayer… We talked a lot about the global vision I laid out in Clairvaux Manifesto.

The next day, I got dropped off at New Clairvaux Abbey for the day and overnight. There are far too many details, so I’ll just put it as concisely as possible. I ended up with the monks at New Clairvaux the very day they were dedicating their newly erected Chapter House made from 800+ year old stones from a Cistercian Abbey in Spain. (it’s an incredible journey of sacred stones you can read online at New Clairvaux). I had no idea going in, that I’d be a guest around the tables with donors, architects, stone masons, monks. I didn’t know I’d be there when the monks chanted under those newly erected stones, stones that had not sung with Cistercian chant in 187 years. I had no idea that same night was the super moon, the brightest most spectacular full moon of the year.

Before the donor event, I helped all the caterers set up. I helped the organizers of the event with whatever they needed. I helped tear down after the event. Everyone thought I worked for the monks, or the caterers, they even thought I was a stone mason who’d worked on the building… it was like I was at home and had always been there. The next day I spent a few hours walking and talking with the abbot, a budding friendship.

Late in the evening after the donor event, I stood in a quiet field all alone. A nearby sentry, the largest and oldest walnut tree I have ever seen, mingled with the breeze. I stood there under the full moon and something in me was complete. I bowed my face to the ground in prayer.

There in the moonlight, God and I spoke about Clairvaux Manifesto, how I had no idea when I wrote it that New Clairvaux even existed as an abbey, God kept it from me for a season. There at the abbey, I put my whole life back into the hands of my Father in Heaven, yet again… the unforced rhythms of grace.

When I wrote these first five paragraphs into the afterword of Clairvaux Manifesto, I had no idea then, that I was actually going to one day stand in a tangible expression of this reality, at the dedication of sacred stones at New Clairvaux in Vina, California. Standing there in the full moon washing over the Chapter House, my soul again found rest in God alone. I was not dusting off museum antiquities when I wrote:

(quote) Continue to proclaim the Word of God and growing vision of your heart. Work with funders and investors who are like-hearted and innovative. Recruit directors from various fields of discipline who are lovers of God and people and sit them around a common table. Develop a team of friends around values like humility, mutual reciprocity, and interdependence. Establish circles of quiet around 10,000 young kingdom leaders, master cadets; discover them internationally; develop them locally; and deploy them globally, together building abbeys of prayer and work.

Unite public and private companies that will collaborate together in building abbeys of prayer and work. Launch a bank and venture capital group that will treasure the pennies, nickels, and dimes of people who will partner in the building and maintaining of these abbeys. Make this consortium of prayer and work so stable and attractive that financial advisors could offer it as a product.

Create guilds of professionals, artists, and praying saints from various disciplines. Among others, invite the translator, intercessor, theologian, intellectual, politician, administrator, doctor, surgeon, nurse, athlete, musician, dancer, artisan, jeweler, engineer, software developer, textile manufacturer, fair trade advocate, financial officer, lawyer, oil and gas executive, bio-diesel entrepreneur, green-house developer, gardener, architect, photographer, journalist, actor, and film director to speak into the development of these abbeys of prayer and work.

Make sure these well-designed abbeys employ refugees and the poorest of the poor, who will have their own fresh water wells, power grids, waste management systems, communications hubs, financial institutions, lush farms, clean factories, bio-diesel facilities, well-supplied hospitals, schools, orphanages, and homes for the elderly.

Establish an international abbey headquarters. Develop a number of sister abbeys internationally. From these foundations, plant as many abbeys as possible. Work with governments, international agencies, and various organizations. (unquote)

In the meantime, I’ll be praying for my friends in California and Washington, saints mobilizing generations. Yes, there is much work to do, in all humility, mutual reciprocity, and interdependence. We can do better. They deserve better. Don’t tell us it can’t be done, that only means you’ve never seen it before.

As I conclude writing this diatribe, a robin is outside the window. Inside, there is a yellow stained-glass flower hanging there, as it has for years, and this poor robin is knocking herself senseless trying time after time to get at that flower, flying, pecking, falling, over and over again… relentlessly going at something she doesn’t need and can’t have, but wants. I’m going outside to chat with Robin; she’ll figure it out eventually.

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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.

Someone sat next to me saying they wouldn’t be able to handle the book, the blood was too much for them. I responded, “We’re priests, we handle blood every day, it’s what we do, it’s an honor and privilege, yes?” The individual smiled, reached out a finger and touched the blood.

Then I turned to the bloodiest section, the place in the book where the saint may have been reading, or the page where the book fell open to receive the blood of the dying believer, maybe both. Either way, many pages were welded together in blood, but I could still make out the text, so through the deep red I pondered the final words of Moses in Deuteronomy 31.

I had to bow my head closer to the page to make out the last word of verse 27, but I couldn’t read it– it was the only word in the whole book covered in such thick blood that I couldn’t make out what Moses was saying. Based on the context of the sentence, and from memory, I thought I knew what it said… but it was too ironic, it couldn’t be that word could it? So, I picked up a nearby New International Version and opened it up to the same verse.

Here is Deuteronomy 31:26-27 in the blood soaked King James: “Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and how much more after my death?”

The last word of verse 27 is “death”– and not just a random reference to death, it’s the author of the very words questioning the people before his own imminent departure. The word death is completely blotted over by the blood of a Nigerian saint; not just a metaphor, not just a coincidence, a sign, an omen, a WORD beneath the blood!

If you’d like to see it for yourself, at 7:21 of this PersecutionTV April 2012 Persecution Report, you will see this very Bible open to this passage of scripture. That crimson blotch you see on the right page, that’s the last word of Deuteronomy 31:27.

This is why, after forty years, Moses wouldn’t let them off any easier, there was too much at stake. The prophets wouldn’t let them off either, so why would Jesus? We preach His precious person until He comes and sings for Himself in His own Spirit over His own people.

After Deuteronomy 31 is Moses Song, he made them all memorize and sing it, just like he made them drink their own golden calf, very tangible, harder than nails, orthodoxy. You like it so much, here, drink all this down to the last drop. Jesus gave them another even stranger option, to drink his blood… Yes, the choice is that stark, always has been, and in the witness of such precious martyrs, we are reminded, yet again, to choose His blood over fools gold.

His blood changes our focus, perception, our spiritual DNA, puts the double helix of our words and actions on a whole new frequency and trajectory. We begin to value each word more than anything else. Every little thing we do matters. The war over people becomes so much more stark. Our passion for His Name and Renown consumes all our time and efforts. What will we say? What will we do? What of our blood? What of His? By the foolishness of preaching…

It took Augustine more than a decade to chisel The City of God. It took Bernard of Clairvaux more than a decade to perfect his works on the Song of Songs, right up until he died. Those doctors of the Church, like Peter and Paul before them, penned their way through lives of martyrdom, dying daily, page by page in the scriptorium, with adversaries to combat and expose, word by word, because of precious people they pointed to God, word by blood-soaked word.

The scriptures, prophets and martyrs? The world has never been worthy of them.

Jesus told them straight up in Matthew 23: “Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.”

As those days approached, the writer of Hebrews 12, in the power of the same Holy Spirit, clarified it even more for those with ears to hear:

“You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.^‘ The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, ‘I am trembling with fear.’

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ The words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’”

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!

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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.

Without a perpetual commitment to preaching the incarnation of Jesus and cross of Christ, the most lofty voices in the Church become the least practical. Pride will skew a year end report, it will flat out lie to donors and investors, it will preach your favor and profit at the expense of your interdependence and transparency. The Church does not exist within a non-profit model, that model is not the blueprint of heaven, neither is the free market.

Your own process blinds you. Go ahead, set up shop between heaven and earth, entitled and enthroned, make promises the people can’t keep, create margins the  people are called upon to fund, leverage what you call grace at the expense of what you call faith — I am not interested in your brand. I am just one sheep among many who catches the scent of burnt wool wafting around the pasture. Some of you have actually become pretty good at it, you shave them first, sell off their wool, then brand them, but nothing grows back the same way does it? Your searing them does not go unnoticed. Your deception and manipulation is well noted. And they will heal, eventually, if they are delivered from you, and they will be!

You want vindication and stability? Then preach Christ alone, using scripture alone, which can only be done by faith alone, to the glory of God alone, because of His grace alone. Return to what is written, do not go beyond it. Be committed to it, disciplined into it, harnessed by it… And do you know what will happen at first, you’ll be powerless, humiliated, you will fail miserably before you’ll be allowed back into the rhythm and flow of His authority.

All power is in Christ, who alone is responsible for His own Word. If you are in His house, before His throne, and have access to His armory, treasury and vineyards, then please tell me all about the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, the Bright Morning Star Himself, who is Faithful and True, the torrent of Justice!

Teach me what he loves! Teach me what He hates! Teach me, rebuke me, correct me, and train me in His righteousness! Speak to me from that edge of eternity, where His Spirit fills a body and empowers a human voice, where many voices are heard in chorus saying the same thing at the same time in that same place, around the throne of the One!

Yes, they who have ears do hear what the Spirit is saying… And along with believing His blessings come the warnings of His wisdom. He will speak on His own behalf over His own people. The tables are always turning. Long enough we have wanted to know, wanted to hear something fresh and for right now. Well, now, yet again, we are being shown what was already written, what has already been known, hearing what has already been heard, what has already been revealed to the entire Church and her manifold history… Oh, it’s downright humbling that it’s already written! It’s humbling not to go beyond what He said in His own blood!

There are more rooms in His interior castle, more steps up His ladder of faith, greater degrees of His school– higher, longer, wider, and deeper thresholds of His love; as He leads us back through all forms and substances, all spaces and times, which inevitably, is the end of all means.

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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.

First off, faith in the self, or the system, is a bit of an oxymoron, its unfinished, not near enough. Fidelity is exercised in community, the foundation of confederations, where covenants, treaties and truces are signed. The word treaty is based on foedus, which leads to bread crumb building blocks like Foedus Cassianum, which is more than just a historical reference, it’s a cypher.

Confidence does not start with the “trust me, believe in me, follow me, sign up” kind of atmosphere that supposedly germinates faithfulness in others. It’s not “I have the power, the hammer, the forge, the fire”. We all have witnessed many fall on the sword of “just trust me, I know what I’m doing, my motivation is pure”. No, that is not where the flame is first lit, it’s not the coal bed, it’s not nearly elemental enough. It’s actually dangerous, erroneous, even porous, a hairsbreadth from a major breakdown, a posture already full of hairline fractures, mix all the metaphors you want. Put a number of  building blocks on top of those self-aggrandizing statements and eventually, but inevitably, as Shakespeare put it in Henry IV, “Prophetically do forethink thy fall.”

The threshing floor of confidence, is humility. The benchmark teaching on humility is the kenotic (see link) self-emptying of Jesus Christ in Philippians 2 (notice how the word κενός is translated in various New Testament contexts). Words like kenosis informed Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, that anxiety and dread are nothing and the fear of nothing– again it’s all circular, sympathetic antipathies and antipathetic sympathies. Danish, Latin, Greek, English, even Hebrew all have their limits. Music is a sacramental liaison of words, but to get up on the stage to hit that note, one had better have confidence, but I digress, or do I?

This is why we have to open our lives to one another, we can’t hide… we actually do live on display whether we like it or not, it’s part of being embodied. There on display before others, can I be confidently wrong? Based on the pure definition of confidence, no I cannot. I can be brazenly stupid. I can put what I call self-confidence in the wrong people, places and things. But, I can’t be confident in the wrong, that is not confidence, it is nothing, it is nothing put into nothing! Those who prop up invisible scaffolding around the wrong things, the wrong postures, the wrong praxis, they may appear confident, they may look like they have faith, but in fact, I’ll tell you right now, what they have and are literally full of, is fear. They are deluded, deceived, and dense, which reminds me of P.T. Forsyth teaching about hell being ceaseless, passionate, unending prayer, addressed to nothing and obtaining nothing.

Every one of us has to be willing to identify with the deluded, deceived and dense within ourselves, which means we cannot strive toward being confident enough. Once we lay it all down, and get as low as it all, for however long it takes to be made worthy of whatever gift and calling, we actually learn to become confident in the glory of God alone, another pillar of the Reformation, the great transference of all allegiances.

Is my confidence in God? Does my confidence come from God? Have I truly heard God? It all comes down to humility… I humble myself, or I do not. What is the foundation of obedience?

Maybe someone disagrees, “No, without exercising faith I cannot discover humility!” Well, that’s your mountain to climb. And that action, that exercise, that momentum, isn’t faith… it’s something else. Your brain can wrestle with the process all it wants. I’m not going to convince you, that’s not my job. And then you say, “Why, why should I trust you anyway? What makes you so confident?” It’s not me in your face at all, pilgrim. Yes, I’ve become confident in God’s grace and mercy, and am presently here with you as a witness of his glory, majesty and power…. because of a process God began.

Trip over all kinds of teaching on faith… it’s abstract, an exercise, it’s personal, and then a lot of people come together with the same faith, and they listen for God in one another, and that’s corporate fun, and everyone is standing up and sitting down at the same time, and all of that… it can also be a very shallow hiding place.

And it’s not that faith isn’t the thing… it is, but at the expense of other things we cheapen it, and thus erode our confidence in God and one another. We proof text things like, without faith it’s impossible to please God… Fine, then qualify it this way, without humility, finding faith is impossible, because God stands over-against the proud. And if God opposes the proud, guess what, they are not the least bit confident, are not the least bit full of God’s power– His dunamis, His dynamic Spirit energy that cannot be controlled or manipulated, His Word. No matter how loud they are, or how big their unopened Bibles wave around, they are gatekeepers of nothing, and the fear of nothing!

We are welcome to be humble participators in spiritual environments like the acts of repentance and forgiveness, the eating and drinking of the bread and wine, the washing of feet, the waters of baptism, the receiving of the teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. We say these are corporate expressions and personal exercises of our faith, and yes they are… but we grow into such confidence because of a much deeper fundamental.

Jesus told them, commanded them to put their faith in him. And they did, and yet at the same time, didn’t do it– it was a wrestling, a mind-numbing difficulty… years of it, back and forth, and he was relentless, calling them slow, wondering how long he had to put up with them… he put it a lot of ways, put them in positions where all the ugly came out, all the childish, all the preconceived and misconstrued exposed right out in the open… He left them ideologically naked all the time… What was he after? What was he doing?

He was showing them the way, and it all started with him emptying himself, and if he had never done that very thing, the most faithful and confident one of all, if he hadn’t become nothing…. hadn’t clothed himself in our nothingness, then we could never see or hear any of God… He, God, humbled Himself. period. full stop.

He was and is the embodied Faithful Confidant, full of the Holy Spirit, who’s fruit is faithfulness. The Faithful One was born to be believed, and is trustworthy. And when he was conceived, why was Mary chosen, favored? As God breathed within her, then in her arms, then took his last breath upon the cross, and then his next one– Mary remained humble, and as her family grew, so did her confidence, the outworking of His Spirit’s power in what was to quickly become the Church.

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It’s not about what I feel. It’s not about what I know. It’s not about who I am. It’s not about what I can grasp. It’s not about needing or wanting. It’s not about leading or deferring. It is patience, which is learned from God’s Spirit. It is obedience and availability, the tests of faithfulness. It is the symphony, tapestry, and feast. The Word approaches. I am at rest. I am not alone. I am surrounded and filled. I want nothing. I lack nothing. The weight. The depth.

Just breathe. Don’t leave.

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Sometimes we take risks and hits, partly because loved, welcomed, educated, and skilled people invited into the core of our prayer and work have not been accountable, having walked away from responsibility for their words and actions, exposed at the character level when the pressure was on corporately — freely disqualifying themselves, not by their own rules of engagement, but by the deeper kingdom thresholds they have not yet been allowed to cross.

On the wrong side of such thresholds some say, “Basing everything on relationship for me means that you can’t expect anything at all from me, while I decide what you being in relationship with me means for me.” Relationship becomes a smooth word placed mid-sentence, people nodding agreement en route, willingly overlooking context and destination.

A slam poet might preach, “Anarchy minus justice is a purgatory pulverizing the heartbeat out of intimacy. Anarchy plus justice? Just ask the Great Revolutionary to reveal the holes and scars of his neo uno decorum; which leads to fumbling if it ain’t humbling.”

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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.

A few years back, while helping my business partner Terry Woodthorpe prepare for a trip to the City of London, to research his own family tree in the UK, I sat at my desk in the office thinking to myself, “I know a bit about Terry’s back story, but what about my own?” Terry was raised an orphan in Western Canada. His father was an RAF pilot who trained in Western Canada with 130,000 other British airmen. Lost at sea near the end of the war, Terry’s father’s name is rightfully high on the wall of the Runnymede memorial. At one time, Terry’s grandfather was Chairman of the Trustee Savings Bank in the City of London.

As I walked with Terry through his own story, I began researching my own surname. When I did a search on Bartha, it came up that Justin Bartha was a Jewish actor, and I was like, okay so what is that about exactly. I did a search for Jewish surnames etc, and came across JewishGen website, put our surname in and watched a few hits come up in various places, curious enough a number of years ago; I put it aside.

For some reason, two weeks ago, I searched Yad Vashem website for the first time, and there are over 800 Barth’s and Bartha’s (Barth is German and Polish, Bartha is Hungarian) who are chronicled as having perished in the Holocaust one way or another.

My dad has recently been documenting his family names at an ancestry website, uncovering more documentation back through the generations. So, I’ve been putting all these surnames through JewishGen and Yad Vashem, and they are all in there, dozens of one, hundreds of another, etc. Then yesterday, I saw a document saying my grandmother’s brother-in-law was buried in a graveyard in Budapest where 300,000 Jews are buried, bit by bit, piecing together a silent narrative.

Someone with my grandfather’s full name survived one concentration camp, while someone with my father’s full name perished at another. Having prayed through so many names on so many lists, I’m not sure if there is any further connection to all of this other than the coincidence of a lot of people having the same names. Yet, from Lord Shaftesbury to Benjamin Netenyahu my ongoing studies raise many ancient and modern questions about names, peoples, and lands.

Last weekend, I spoke at a camp full of Indonesians. As we came together, we all had name tags pinned to us. When I got up to speak the first time, I asked them all to take off their name tags and put them in a big pile in the middle of the floor. Then, I invited them all to pick up a name that wasn’t their own. I asked them to pray for that person even if they didn’t know them. Then, after a few quiet minutes, I asked them to go find each other. It was a wonderful chaordic atmosphere, the tears were already flowing, and I hadn’t said anything profound, the Spirit of Adoption was already there between them.

Once they got their name tags back, I asked them if they knew what their names meant. One guy with a unique Indonesian name had no idea what his name meant. Someone did an online search discovering his name meant Sword. Then I asked my Indonesian friends, “What’s in a name? Well, my name is Kirk Bartha. Do you know what Kirk means?” (None of them knew, they’re not Scottish on their mother’s side).

In Scotland, one Kirk is a church. In Canmore, one Bartha waits.

“But look! A king will rule in the right way, and his leaders will carry out justice. Each one will stand as a shelter from high winds, provide safe cover in stormy weather. Each will be cool running water in parched land, a huge granite outcrop giving shade in the desert. Anyone who looks will see, anyone who listens will hear. The impulsive will make sound decisions, the tongue-tied will speak with eloquence. No more will fools become celebrities, nor crooks be rewarded with fame.” Isaiah 32 (The Message)

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There has got to come the inevitable moment when we disengage from having to know, from thinking we know, from believing we know. It’s humbling, but when it comes to eschatological ebb and flow, we don’t know. We know certain things about Jesus Christ, and yet must be willing not to know anything at all. Someone may tell me that they know his Word, they’ve cracked the code, and they’ve travelled through space and time; but they may not know anything at all. We must be infinitely resigned to not knowing the future plan of God.”

(quote from page 289, Clairvaux Manifesto)

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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.

It takes years to craft infrastructure, especially when the building blocks are people.

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

A tourist points up and wants to know the name of Rundle. A climber points beneath that peak into Sea of Vapours… and whoever asks what that is, realizes how little they know about that mountain (Sea of Vapours is an ice climbing route accessible in certain conditions).

Five years ago, when we first moved into this valley, I hiked up Ha Ling… When I finally reached the view, standing there with vertigo above the town of Canmore below, a climber popped up next to me. I was totally stunned… This guy just came up the north face of the mountain, to stand where I was standing. We both arrived at the same place taking different routes.

Sure, my approach might have been safer. A climber has to abide by much stricter guidelines, undergo training, be in peak physical condition, and travel with a skilled companion who has his life in his hands.

There are many ways up the same mountain; some paths seem counter-intuitive. It’s no different with spiritual leadership; a skilled climber teaches from personal experience and with authority.

If you’re ever in over your head with a proven mountaineer, do what you’re told!

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