Into the Unknown

"Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown. ~ Claude Bernard

"Learning is moving from moment to moment." J. Krishnamurti

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." ~ Andre Gide

Coming into View

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void; and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

"Then God said, 'Let there be light.' . . ."

~ Genesis 1:1-3

"Each painting has its own way of evolving. . . When the painting is finished, the subject reveals itself."

~ William Baziotes

"... it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding."

~ Job 32:8

The sun had already gone down as we ended our small group.

Worship Circle

Up high on a roof, overlooking Crystal City...

Colors meet canvas...

journey finds song...

Communion entered in...

...A glimpse of our gathering yesterday evening.

The Poetry of Expression

. . . telling our stories . . . our individual journeys with God. . . not just telling/showing the finished product. . . or rattling off a "canned testimony" while witnessing, but sharing the process we have walked that has brought us to those times of victory and God's provision. . . Could that perhaps be an art form?. . . an expression of worship? . . . that impacts even the spiritual realm? whether in speech, writing, painting, song, or dance, etc.?? "...in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places." ~ Ephesians 3:10

"It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels... had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible. " ~ C.S. Lewis in Reflection on the Psalms


"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us..."
John 1:14 is our theme verse as a small group, and I love how C.S. Lewis so eloquently articulates some of his thoughts on poetry and the Psalms...

Come ready to explore writing, poetry, and worship as some writers from Steve's small group join us, as Kimberlee and Peter express "poetry" in forms other than writing, and as all of us together share in discussion and fellowship! Bring your thoughts and maybe even a story or writing that you might like to share during our time together!

"A Little Incarnation" ~C.S. Lewis

"The Psalms were written by many poets and at many different dates. . . The Psalms are poems, and poems are intended to be sung: not doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons. Those who talk of reading the Bible 'as literature' sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main thing it is about; like reading Burke with no interest in politics, or reading the Aeneid with no interest in Rome. That seems to me to be nonsense. Most emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles... which are proper to lyric poetry.
"Their chief formal characteristic, the most obvious element of pattern, is fortunately one that survives translation. ...'parallelism' the practice of saying the same thing twice in different words... The principle of art has been defined by someone as 'the same in the other.' Thus in a country dance you take three steps... to the right... and then three steps to the left.
Our Lord, soaked in the poetic tradition of His country, delighted to use it. 'Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you.' The advice is given in the first phrase, then twice repeated with different images.
We may if we like, see in this an exclusively practical and didactic purpose; by giving to truths this rythmic and incantatory expression, He made them almost impossible to forget.

"It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels... had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible."

~ C.S. Lewis Reflection on the Psalms