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Symbolic Unfoldment: Why Kids Need Bible Stories
The term symbolic unfoldment refers to how stories and symbols can bring revelation about ourselves, God, and others. For example, Genesis begins with two trees in a garden. One brings life, and the other, death. Later, we find Jesus executed on a tree. That tree, which spells his death, is our path to life. Finally, the Bible ends with a tree whose leaves heal the nations. Other references to trees lie scattered throughout the Bible, offering touchpoints of metaphor. The righteous man planted like a tree by the water in Psalm 1 comes to mind. So what do all these trees have to do with us? Trees show us the…
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How to Move Mountains
I live in full sight of Highland Mountain. Just one of the many in the Chugach range, it sits at 3360 feet according to the internet. While not a particularly tall as mountains go, nevertheless the Alaskan sun can barely peek over it in winter. To me, it looks primitive and wild, like the old black and white pictures of Alaska that I used to look at as a child. Squat and rugged, Highland Mountain, as minor as it is in the realm of mountains, seems immovable to me. And yet it has been moved several thousand times in the last couple of months. Each aftershock shimmies up the mountain,…
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The Axis Mundi: Why Christians are Revolutionaries
The term, axis mundi, isn’t used much in common parlance. Just so we are on the same page, I include the Wikipedia definition which is accurate enough for my purposes: The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, the center of the world, world tree), in certain beliefs and philosophies, is the world center, or the connection between Heaven and Earth. Nearly every major religion has such an intersection. The Old Testament has Mount Zion where Moses saw God. Jacob’s ladder is also such an intersection. Mount Kailash is sacred to the Hindu, the Innuit create totem poles, and even Feng Shui attempts to orient the home towards the sky in a practice called geomancy. Christianity…
Healing Through Art & Words
