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River Wind Fire is like a rubric for the spirit of my life and work. 

The logo integrates Biblical images from the deep past, pointing to the incoming future, providing meaning for our everyday now.

These images point to God’s visible intrusion from the unseen world into the world we experience through our senses:  places, times and events of visible union of the spiritual world and the world we see. We’re accustomed to thinking of the distance, the thick wall between heaven and earth. But these images point us to God’s closeness: “thin” times, “thin” places, “thin” events – as discovered in “thin” relationships.

The River brings God’s wildly abundant nourishment to the hitherto hopeless desert, enabling extraordinary new life to grow in places where it never could before – in places and times no one could possibly have imagined. 

The Wind is God’s unseen power whose effects we feel, the “breath” of life from the spiritual world experienced in our own lives, animating us and reminding us that we are not alone.  In the old stories it blows death away so that life can flourish – it cuts through absolutely impassable obstacles to open the way to freedom never known before! 

In the ancient stories God’s Fire shows up in times of deepest darkness, confusion, brutality, hopelessness – but not primarily to destroy.  It’s a spiritual “sign” of the most profound, life-and-world-changing hope breaking in on our lives with new freedom, new possibilities.  It speaks of deep promises, covenants, Spiritual initiatives to which we can respond with confidence, even when our own world is darkened beyond our vision.

These three Biblical images speak of how God brings what is “invisible” into our range of perception and living. They point to the ultimate union of the “spiritual” world and the world we see.  “As in heaven, so on earth.”

But more than this, they speak of God’s invitation to us to begin receiving these deepest, most powerful realities now – to new life, new flourishing, previously unknown freedom, and vast hope that changes not only us, but everything around us.  In the end, in God’s re-union of the unseen world and this one, love really does win; truth triumphs; compassion heals, and beauty really will save the world.  Your world, our world.  Nothing that tries to stop God’s love will prevail. Growing into these things is the purpose and gift of “ministry,” spiritual direction, community, companioning – and all authentic talk of “God.”

“Beauty will save the world.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think he got it right. That’s what I want for everything I do in life and work. 

Let’s work on it together.

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