If my prayer is not answered, I am.
If my petition is not fulfilled, my person, my soul, is;
as the artist comes to himself and his happiness
in the exercise of the talent he was made for, in spite
of the delay and difficulty of turning his work to money.
If the genius is happy who gets scope, the soul is blessed
that truly comes to itself in prayer.
P.T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer

Be generous. Give to the poor.
Get yourselves a bank that can’t go bankrupt,
a bank in heaven far from bank robbers,
safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on.
It’s obvious, isn’t it?
The place where your treasure is,
that’s the place you will most want to be,
and end up being.
Luke 12:33-34 (MSG)

“I’ve come to deeply appreciate French sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-1994). As a Christian leader, he thought and acted wisely amidst the economic meltdowns, political upheavals, and decimating World Wars of the 20th Century. Ellul was a contemporary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer of Germany and Toyohiko Kagawa of Japan, two men who were also Christian scholars and geopolitical activists navigating the Axis Powers.

Ellul’s grandfather was in the shipping business. His father was Italian with a Jewish last name, an English citizen by Maltese birth who was employed by a prestigious wine merchant; his mother was a Portuguese Protestant artist with a Jewish father. Ellul had aspirations to sail the seas, but his father demanded he study law. As a student, Ellul tutored younger students in Latin, Greek, German, and French, later defending his doctoral thesis on ancient Roman law, eventually becoming Professor of History and Sociology of Institutions in the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences at the University of Bordeaux. Ellul read all of Marx and Kierkegaard; he had what he called a violent conversion experience while translating Faust.”

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strategist, negotiator, consultant, advisor, friend

Summary
developing circles of quiet within the clamor of evil (PS 94:12) around 10,000 professionals and global change agents in various disciplines and structural models – deploying abbeys of prayer and work locally, building cities of refuge globally. Of course it will take new governmental and legal structures, innovative software and communications, intuitive applications and practical infrastructures, not to mention a whole new way of banking…

Specialties
listener, encourager, champion of visions, interpreter of dreams, wise catalyst through transitions, wordsmith/word-bearer, collaborative strategist… will take all the time necessary (as far as it depends on his limited abilities, scope and resources) to see that no one falls through the cracks, remains wounded, or gets left behind… leveraging values like: humility, reciprocity, camaraderie, generosity, transparency and authenticity.

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We constantly have to disengage and pray… not disengage because we are uninterested or irresponsible… it’s just, that we are up against some major ideological strongholds and we can’t change anyone’s minds for them, can’t market manipulation.

Ideology crafts idolatry, and it has to be the work of God’s Spirit to demolish such strongholds.

Our strength and hope are built on nothing less than His blood and righteousness. Seek first…  Persecuted? Struck down? Misunderstood? Falsely positioned by whomever? Ambiguity breeds fear… Yet, no amount of paper, no matter how long the legal doc is, the NDA, the PSA, the security, the exit strategy… people are still fearful. Perfect love casts out fear, and allows us to walk with our heads held high, hearts free!!!

I love the metaphor of Clairvaux, thanks to Napoleon it’s still a maximum security prison abbey (even had an active masonic lodge). All kinds of things have tried to suck the life out of that ancient well of prayer and work. I guess I could have chosen an easier, more manageable, symbol… but it’s beautifully and painfully perfect.

Breaking prayer and work out of prison!

(like something out of the book of Acts)

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(notice the money but see the people)

During his second annual address, Abraham Lincoln called his nation to attention, “It is not ‘Can any of us imagine better?’ but ‘Can we all do better?’ Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs, ‘Can we do better?’ The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Seven centuries earlier, Bernard of Clairvaux reflected, “He who has put his hand to a great undertaking feels the need for strong nourishment; those who spend their lives working in clay and brick shall make do with the straw of Egypt: we who must travel far have need of stronger nourishment.”

From Isaiah 33:

^13-14“If you’re far away,
get the reports on what I’ve done,
And if you’re in the neighborhood,
pay attention to my record.
The sinners in Zion are rightly terrified;
the godless are at their wit’s end:
‘Who among us can survive this firestorm?
Who of us can get out of this purge with our lives?’”

^15-16The answer’s simple:
Live right,
speak the truth,
despise exploitation,
refuse bribes,
reject violence,
avoid evil amusements.
This is how you raise your standard of living!
A safe and stable way to live.
A nourishing, satisfying way to live.

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Now, of course, these might only be juxtaposed things sitting pretty for a picture, like my prayers could end up sounding, juxtaposed and pretty… but there may be metaphors resting between these creations, ancient organic compounds, coral and shells all compressed and shaped over time by the pervasive, perpetual and penetrating flow of water. The development of prayer in the human being isn’t much different. I can pray a fragile fibonacci prayer, but I can also be pressed into something profoundly weighty.

If I hold the remains of a snail’s habitation in one hand and a heavy limestone in the other hand, am I aware of the correlation between the two? If there is in fact correlation then there is explaining to do… like ingredients, tectonics, temperatures, pressures, and eons of time… sounds more like a recipe for a cake, or the crafting of a religion.

Getting the picture yet? The deepest teachings are rooted in metaphor, and metaphors always mix ingredients which beg contexts which take a lot of time to become such (condescending Hieroglyphs, Hebrew and the Hellenistic will never be enough).

It’s like (and I realize the word “like” is no longer metaphor) when I broke my leg playing football in high school and the place of the break is now healed, but every time the weather is about to change my leg reminds me that it knows something the rest of me doesn’t know. My leg has memory, but also a bit of a sixth sense… and that’s just my tibia. My hands, eyes and ears can decipher things. The hair on the back of my neck is quite sensitive… Just how willing am I to allow the fullness of my created self to come into the knowledge of God, myself, my environment, and all the others in it, through metaphors and contexts?

I cannot pretend to decipher in ten minutes what took ten thousand years to end up in the palm of my hand? Nor can I take both ends of the Bible and bleach out their metaphors and contexts… it’s all far too beautiful and mysterious for that kind of pontification.

In 2001, when I wrote these words into my journal during a retreat at a Benedictine Abbey, I didn’t know then that I’d entitle Part 1 of Clairvaux Manifesto Wild Good – nor did I know, at that time, the billion dollar saga that the vampire quagmire Twilight would become:

Wild Good, there is a whole generation in my nation suffocating without you. They are anemic vampires, drained hemophiliacs, and exhausted rebels digging their own dusty graves. Wild Good, speak softly and tenderly into this still, dark night. Thank you for the safe places where we may catch some breath and respond to you. Places to rest and wait—rest and wait. In and out—rest and wait.

Basically, the metaphor of blood is the most profound context for love. And it’s getting profoundly more important with each passing day that we who understand the person and power of the cross must proclaim it and HIM, clearly, directly and simply.

Now, in what context do we proclaim the power of His blood? If you answer pulpit you’ve blunted the metaphor. Pulpits are nothing! The context my friend, is eternity. That is the context for the proclamation of the metaphor of the blood of Christ. Granted, eternity is another metaphor, so mix your paints well. We preach from the other side of that veil… and yes, the veil is another metaphor, and if you don’t get it yet, I can’t explain it to you. It’s not about the prose of word studies, but the right lyrics in a song mixed with the metaphor of the stings and beat – all making the hair stand up on the back of my neck for a reason. There is something in eternity, a song, a sound, a terribly beautifully holy Other who I must turn my eyes from, not just out of humility, but for the preservation of my very being. There are thresholds.

Being in that presence, there’s nothing else worth seeing… It’s all under His gaze. Eyes straight and true with singular focus will “see” a lot, but not be swayed by anything, except Him. The eyes of Christ, what do they see?

One other context I’ll mention here… and it’s of critical importance to God. This context is everything, and without it, there is no redemption, and no it’s not the throne (no matter how important that throne is – it’s funny how terribly important the throne of God is to some). The critical context is “the people” — God did not make himself nothing and shed His blood to keep his throne. He left his throne to redeem the people.

No question, He’s enthroned… but I wonder if He’s ever on it. I can at least say this much, there is no one else on it, or stewarding it on His behalf, except for this one little broken lamb… pick your metaphor, context, and time… but bloody well tell it as it is!

Or you could leave it to all the vampires and shape-shifters to teach them what love is…

Like the blind we grope along the wall,
feeling our way like men without eyes.
At midday we stumble as if it were twilight;
among the strong, we are like the dead.
Isaiah 59:10

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This morning, @kirkbartha responded, “@markpetersen economic crisis put zeitgeists into overdrive non-profits can’t manage, creative & collaborative coalitions of interdependence”

Now I’ve yet to meet Mark, but today I unloaded these fluid, cryptic and convoluted comments on his blog regarding this tweet about the culture of nonprofits:

“(quote) Take this fire hose with a grain of salt, a drop of olive oil, a nibble of bread and a splash of wine.

I’ve been caught by two words in recent leadership readings: In Linchpin, Seth Godin gets uses a cipher like “artists”, and I’m at the point in Charlene Li’s Open Leadership where she speaks of “covenants” … both words are huge for the potential of future global change agents.. they are artists crafting covenants, or they are fearful maintainers of a crumbling status quo… We must craft new words (explosive, direct, simple, anarchistic, beautiful, and godly)… and the word “godliness” is eusebia literally translated “good spirituality” – there is a good spirit to be rediscovered, a zeitgeist for every era, every curve in the road ahead.

Over the past two years, in both profit and non, in governmental and socio-philanthropic, in Church and military industrial complex… there is a dialectic gaining critical mass, a thesis and antithesis with no synthesis… the UN will tell you dialogue does not equal compromise, there are non-negotiables we call values, precisely because they speak out something of great “value”… and what exactly are our values speaking out, fortifying, protecting? Most “values” (which end up wedged obtusely into marketing platforms) come off plastic and tinsel precisely because of the medium of marketing, which is basically propaganda used to leverage the attention of others… leveraging trust so people give… leveraging pennies in our directions… it’s a hairpin trigger, but eventually it all comes down to the money, or nothing gets done, no one gets paid… no missions get mandated, on and on (Ask someone out of the blue to show you their books and they look at you like you’ve just walked in on them naked in the shower). Transparency? Authenticity? case studies of Harvard Business School, or the bare essentials of kingdom come?

What if the only way forward is unprecedented humility, mutual reciprocity and interdependence? What if marketing doesn’t matter half as much as it used to? What if everyone is getting sick of our numbers never matching our words? What if we’ve actually been writing a lot of cheques our businesses and organizations have not been able to cash for various reasons? What if we’ve been forced to say one thing and gone on to do another, for a little too long, a little too independently? Oh, our year end reports tell the whole story!? No, sorry, they never do… we wax and gloss very well, covering cracks.

Before the economic crisis, businesses and orgs alike grew lax in the wrong places… they relaxed in places they were allowed to relax in, and they leveraged scaffolding, accidentally created babel…. competed for investors and donors like tuna fleets clearing the sea. If one had the right exec summary and exit strategy, then voila, a nibble now and possibly a nugget later. Great visionaries turned inside out by “practical” structures

Well, what happens when critical mass goes the wrong way, and a star implodes into a potentially dangerous black hole, and the critical mass is no longer out there, but in here… that boundary, that threshold where even light can’t escape gravity is called the event horizon… the scriptures are prophetically circular, telescopic, retrograde and full of imagination on these very event horizons of history… we’re on the verge of something, but what? If we cross the event horizon we don’t bother asking any more… in the meantime, fight with all our might to get clear… how?

Three very important values for the future: humility, mutual reciprocity, interdependence… Governmentally, we see it in England… we’re hearing repeated rumblings of future coalition in Canada… the fear-based knee-jerking of “we can’t let someone else lead us so we have to get our heads together and get to the jeweled crown first!”…. the point is, everything has already changed and blue and red don’t matter when the crisis outweighs party distinctive. Like how the war measures act supersedes the parks act… If Canada goes to war, national parks are secondary… just an example, other examples in the forms of questions: what do carbon credits and eco-psychological profiles have to do with a volcano in Iceland? will a hurricane in the gulf wash away BPs embarrassment? On and on it goes with the dialectic of pain and healing, the DNA of emergency response “culture”

I once handed Stephen Harper a book full of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s teachings. Why? Because I know we need to fulfill the UN Millennium Development Goals, but not at the expense of the Sermon on the Mount… and the HOW? is a dialectical tension, the painful contemplation of a cross suspended between two kinds of kingdoms. Joseph went through the pain and led Egypt. Jeremiah went through the pain and prayed for the blessing of Babylon. Jesus went through the pain and saw greater faith in the Centurion.

We can’t bank together until we lay our books before each other… with strong legal and financial models we can do it together… and if the org’s can’t do it, the younger generation will do it for them, because they don’t need bureaucracy, they need the right app… and they’ll get it done, each one pooling in their pennies and dreams… it’s already happening right before our eyes.

enough for now…(unquote)”

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As U2 stands down while Bono recovers from back surgery I sit here reading The DATA Report 2010 remembering Bono’s Ted Prize wish which helped catalyze ONE and DATA. When the G20 spend a billion on security; when BP loses a billion in value and spends a billion in recovery; when billions of people don’t get access to what a billion have… it’s time for a surgery of ideologies!

If Bono ever ended up in a wheelchair, I’d listen to him all the more. I’d even walk beside him and wash his feet if need be. These days, as his body mends, I’ll continue praying for him. As the world continues to turn, we stand guard together on certain lines — on the verge of slippery slopes where mountains of propaganda predicate massive agendas controlling, coercing, and dehumanizing billions of people.

Laws and boundaries don’t make people free. Laws and boundaries don’t quell corruption either. It’s a choice to be free. It’s a choice to be righteous. Can you be free to do what is right in a refugee camp? Can you be free in a prison? Can you be free without a penny? Can you be free to run the World Bank while obliterating disease and disequilibrium?

From Clairvaux Manifesto (page 302),

May abbeys of prayer and work become warm and nurturing environments; even beautiful. These places will be homes full of love and tranquility; the earth and its inhabitants will soak up every drop. As we continue to dream about building abbeys of prayer and work full of stone, wood, light, and curves, may people’s hearts, souls, and minds be lifted toward greater expectations of what could be prayed over, built upon, and loved into this good earth. Why do you think so many weddings still take place on abbey grounds?

May grape vines; fruit, nut, coffee, and olive groves; flowers; grains; and multitudes of children burst to life around fortress abbeys of prayer and work. May they be full of faith, hope, and love in the midst of the dust clouds of refugee camps, slums, quiet valleys, mountain tops, river banks, and wide open plains where many streets still have no name.

Positioning easel, prepping canvas, and mixing paint, don’t cast pearls to swine; truth to liars; knowledge to thieves; hospitals to murderers; schools to idiots; or abbeys of prayer and work to emperors entitled to thrones. Stay a hopeless romantic who loves the smell of freshly baked bread and crackling midnight fires under bright stars and crescent moon, while children dance around with full bellies and hopeful futures, joining Bob Marley as he sings, “Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner.”

No line on the horizon; allez en paix.

As One, Make Poverty History
As One, Build Abbeys of Prayer and Work
As One, Proclaim Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
As One, Meet the Millennium Development Goals
As One, Provide Circles of Quiet within the clamor of evil

An African Prayer for Peace
Lead us from death to Life, from falsehood to Truth
Lead us from despair to Love, from war to Peace
Lead us from hate to Hope, from fear to Trust
Let Peace fill our hearts, our land, our world

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Kingdom of Heaven ends with Richard the Lionheart embarking on crusade; Robin Hood begins ten years later, with the consequences.

From blacksmiths to stonemasons, France to England, feudal skirmishes to draft charters.

In Robin Hood, I find it fascinating that Friar Tuck is depicted as a bee keeper. Bernard of Clairvaux is the patron saint of bees, and certain legends suggest that Tuck was once a Benedictine/Cistercian.

From Fiat Lux in Clairvaux Manifesto,

As Holy War developed into a continental corporation, the Germanic Teutonic Knights became an official Order in 1198, operating under the wing of the Hospitallers. Without the aid of Scripture translated for the sake of all people, a frustrated Roman Church leadership launched the Albigensian Crusade in an attempt to quell the Gnostic teachings of the Cathars of France. By 1215, in an age of kings’ ransoms, troubadours’ songs, knightly orders, praying saints, clashing civilizations, and mountains of debt, the Magna Carta was crafted by barons in England and presented to King John at Runnymede. As intellectuals made pilgrimage to the Greco-Arabic philosophies of Spain, a continent covered with Cistercians, Hospitallers (who became more than just keepers of the Hospital of St. John), and Templars (who became more than just keepers of the Temple) got more organized on a number of fronts.

I’d love to see Ridley Scott envision a character around Bernard of Clairvaux: a polymath iconoclast, a seeker of mystical union, a preacher of ideals, a miracle worker, a peace keeper of a continent under siege, a scholar who understood and respected the significance of Jewish, Christian, and Arabic schools, a teacher who saw how ideology could end up idolatry – a leader of leaders who didn’t escape the 12th Century fully unscathed… he was, after all, human.

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It took patience and a steady hand to hollow the eye out of the stone, which when filled with olive oil lights, heals and nourishes the stone beautifully.

[Hagar] gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. Genesis 16:13

My God sees everything. My God has angels everywhere, some with eyes all over themselves – so they can see what God sees. God sees the motives of hearts. God sees the child in the garbage dump. God sees the fresh water spring. God sees injustice and hates it. God sees kindness and encourages it.

Through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God said to humanity, “I see you with human eyes. Watch me in my humanity! Do as I do. Come on.” While he hung on the cross, he asked the world, “Do you see me yet? I’m right here. I know you don’t understand right now. But, do you see me yet? For just a moment, don’t look beyond my piercing eyes and twisting bones. Tell me what you think you see… Now, as I take my last breath (for a little while), let me tell you what I see in you!”

When you step behind your pulpit, what do you see? I’ll tell you what I see….

I see what they saw when they painted their cathedrals. I walk in those places and say, “I’ve seen this! I’ve seen heaven opened and this is what it looks like… It’s paint on a ceiling, but it’s so close.”

I see what they saw when they crafted their letters, epistles, and prophecies. I study those scriptures and say, “I’ve seen this! I’ve seen heaven opened up and this is what it looks like… They are words on a page, but they breathe ever so close.”

But, more than anything, I want to see Him and I want to see what He sees.

Since my childhood, the one question I’ve doodled down onto paper more than any other question I’ve ever written, it haunts me nearly every day… it must be an angel whispering in my ear, so relentlessly, yet so quietly:  “The eyes of Christ, what do they see?”

And my response is typically something like, “forgive me Lord, i cannot see. You are the God who sees me. if it pleases the King, give me eyes to see – that i would be seeing and perceiving and hearing and coming to a knowledge of the truth You are, all that You embody as Lord and God. show me the way, that i may walk in it. reveal Your heart to me. teach me. rebuke me. correct me. train me. i am in your school. i am under your command. i am a trained dog at rest under Your banqueting table. just move slightly and i’ll know. every fiber of my being is trained to Your slightest expression, the glance of Your eye, the openness of Your hand… yes, i see You and love You. even if You never feed me again. even if i die at Your side in battle. even if we are free to run and hunt together. even if You sit me at Your side and scratch behind my ears. heaven. to have my ears rattled by the God of heaven and earth.  yes, there are frequencies i detect, and You know i know, and You smile… and then You say those words, “Go get ‘em boy! I’ll meet you there.”

… feet eventually catch up with the rest, an unbridled hurricane, down the corridor, left, through the ballroom, my pace echoing off the cavernous expanse, gain speed, pass the guards, under the arch, down the steps, out the gate, blast of sunlight, scent of spring, paws on grass, increase speed, eyes on the forest, tongue hanging out… three hills, a stream, splash, don’t shake – run, a wide open plain of flowers, hawk overhead, and there is the special tree by the quiet pool… it’s special because He will meet me hear soon. He’s on His way. shake. a little drink. face the palace. lay down under the tree. nose on the ground. triangulate ears. keep eyes on those hills… He’s coming soon!

sola scriptura. His word alone.

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Last year, on our wedding anniversary, Darlene and I launched Clairvaux Ventures Ltd. while putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of Clairvaux Manifesto. At that time, we had four different Canadian companies in four different sectors (energy, professional sports, fairly-made fairly-traded clothing, and high-end software) provide us with executive summaries, and we shopped them before potential funding brokers in Toronto and the United States. Then, we had to dive into getting the manifesto edited and to press, and the idea of Clairvaux Ventures had to wait.

Now a year later, Clairvaux 3D is unfolding and we want to put our friends ideas and exec summaries into a working document we’ll shop out to potential funders together… even potentially spice it up into an e-book format so that everyone everywhere can get in on what we are doing in real time (keeping in mind of course, anything that is proprietary needing to remain undisclosed for a season will not be revealed to the world quite yet)… raising funds together; openness and transparency and authenticity will bear fruit.

What we, and some others, can presently help with is providing some of the scaffolding, a bit of structural architecture for this vision (leaders from Hong Kong to UK speaking into it). The vision unfolding is discovering, developing and deploying 10,000 master cadets, global change agents, young professionals (young being interpreted as adventurous and young at heart, also targeting a market).

Vision: Discover them internationally; Develop them locally; Deploy them globally.

Praxis: Circles of Quiet; Abbeys of Prayer and Work; Cities of Refuge

United: Discover Circles of Quiet; Develop Abbeys of Prayer and Work; Deploy Cities of Refuge

Write: Clairvaux Manifesto; Clairvaux Ventures Ltd.; The Clairvaux Group

The snapshot of Clairvaux 3D

So, as we work on the documentation, I’m going to ask some friends to provide exec like summaries of vision and dreams, so we can show potential investors the scope of this growing international group. We’re going to show them economic equations and breakthrough technologies; how they can raise equity in existing oil and gas fields out there to be “rediscovered” and appropriately stewarded as flowing wells of energy.. a self-sustaining economic engine in oil and gas… prices are rising (we can rebrand this industry).

Your words are your words, your ideas yours, your technology yours, your companies yours… but even in our willingness to entertain the idea of a unified front, we are already more (core values of humility, mutual reciprocity and interdependence). From business towers to gutters… and back, and forth, teaching humanity to breathe again. Thankfully, there are many good examples of this…by grace alone, we will be another.

And to fully disclose, to be personally vulnerable, authentic, and transparent… (at the risk of looking foolish)… I have not had a salary or any form of structured pay for over 21 months. Personally, my family is on fumes. Many friends have supported us these past two years, as this vision has been born down, tested and refined. But, we don’t have any more debt we can bare… So, this thing is either real, or I go chop down trees for a living. Either way, I’m coming out swinging!!!

I’m not asking anyone for anything, I’m just stating how it is.

Tearing big things down; digging deep wells and foundations; rebuilding good things up; ancient things!

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