Walk the High Ways

Almost every day I gaze at pictures of places so far distant the pictures only show how they appeared millions of years ago. And every night I look at the actual stars, . . . some of them. Though countless, they are only a small fraction of all that shine in the universe, to say nothing of the stars being born continuously. Our ancient forerunners looked at the same lights above and received divine revelation concerning the walk on earth.

"Descendant of Abraham, Whom You promised Would be as the stars Amassed across the night Above his tent, I walk the earth Still watching for Your ways, Seeing Your thoughts high above. To me, inheritor of promise, Your thoughts impart And trace Your ways upon my heart. But who can stand The day of Your appearing Except those on whom Your righteousness alights? I walk Your ways Knowing not the Day, But holding promised destiny, Being part fulfillment, Partly traveler Here earthly seeing Bright places overhead. All Your re-affirming, Detailing out the goodness You have stored up For me in Family, Prepared place, Abundance, glory, Priceless fruitfulness while empires fade, Inheriting earth, The earth And tiny seeds rising As the noonday sun And suns multiplied Yet unseen, too many to count From Abraham to now to then." Mark R. Turner March 19, 2009 Julian, CA Related Scriptures: Genesis 15:5-6, Isaiah 55:8-9, Psalm 31:19, Psalm 37, Malachi 3:1-3, Matthew 5:5, John 14:1-6

Walk in the high ways which God has given us. Mark P.S.: I also post past meditations on the Artstimulant page of the Horizon Gate website

Grace for Complexities

More of us are feeling the need for grace these days as we seek solutions for financial threats. More people are carrying crushing debt and looking at a poverty level life in the middle of the wealthiest nation on earth. We know that we do not deserve to be bailed out, but we hope we won't be annihilated, or have to live like slaves the rest of our lives. The complexities that humanity has created are even more impenetrable than those we as individuals have woven. Only God can disentangle the impossible.

"And my lyre rings
As audacious birds cast
Vitality tree to tree
For You have not erased
But entered into complexes
We have layered: self-conceit,
Deceit consumed,
Oppressed to death.


"Not as a super-nova
Remakes elements, come You,
But pleading my cause between
These little ones big of mind
Who work at enmity;
And beam Your light beneficently
Leading through invented nations,
Webs of mourning desperation,
To Your hill above the clamor
Where is my hope,
My help of countenance,
Who makes all things
Vibrate collaborating
Strings life singing."

Mark R. Turner
Julian, CA
April 10, 2009
Related Scripture: Psalm 43

There is a blessed, undeserved hope when we think we are impossibly bound and lost.


We will sing of it together,


Mark

Conversation Breathes Life Into Vision

People Make Vision Materialize

How do great endeavors come about? Every large corporation, institution, organization and ministry began with an inspiration in the heart of a person, but at some point the idea caught the attention of someone else. A conversation began. Reading this opens the opportunity for you to observe or even be a part of a conversation like that.

Great endeavors begin to be seen when they become a conversation. We talk about the idea and interest grows as possibilities come to light. A group of us forms around the idea, each of us excited about our own view of it and how we could play a part in the larger possibility being born. What once was limited to one person's imagination now has the generative powers of many imaginations seeking to support the greater, multi-faceted endeavor. Then talking becomes action plans which become deeds making ideas tangible things.

The ideas of our vision include two main areas of work: 1.) film production that builds community and nurtures the artists involved, and 2.) exhibiting our films in a place combining aspects of a gallery, a café and a theater.

The Production Gathering

Our goal is to help people rise toward the full potential with which God endowed them. Our vision is to produce films with a community of people who are committed to more than the end product, who go beyond a given film and assist each other in their spiritual, professional and artistic growth. The community atmosphere we envision will include professionals and promising learners striving for excellence to make films which express the Community of God in a variety of forms.

A New Kind of Exhibition Space

This community will produce films that explore forms and lengths not usually seen in normal movie theaters. They will use artistic forms inviting the viewers to observe and discuss, to engage with one another and with God. But, what kind of space would accommodate this? A space conducive to audience interaction would be more like a café. The atmosphere of an art gallery would change the film from a spectacle to a conversation piece. Yet, some of the functions of the movie theater would be retained. We envision a combination of all these aspects in a new kind of film and discussion space, a “film gallery café”.

Art work created for the given films will also be presented in the space. Events in the space will feature live musicians, poets, readings, lectures by the artists and filmmakers, and other appropriate presentations which stimulate conversations that draw people to God.

Funding the Vision

The Horizon Gate vision is being built upon the involvement and support of a community of people who are coming together through conversations. When these conversations turn the ideas into action-plans and deeds they will require material resources. That support will be gained through the income vehicles and assets in the community. As the vision takes place in actual projects and facilities, participants in the conversation can become workers supported by the mission's funding. In turn, as each member of the community builds their personal income and assets, their charitable overflow will be placed where their vision is, thus benefiting our mission.

The resources of our mission rise with the personal income and assets of our community members. To increase the personal resources of our members, we encourage and facilitate new streams of income through home based businesses. The home based business increases “normal job” cash flow through over 100 available federal tax deductions. It also affords artists the flexible schedule and on-going residual income to take time to work in our projects. As the community develops teams of agents gaining more income in these businesses, the mission gains more contributing supporters.

Three of the top home based businesses are already in operation within our mission community. They include a completely unique debt and mortgage elimination product, a software suite of the latest small business tools, and the best line of all natural products for health and the environment.

The non-profit, tax exempt status of Horizon Gate Productions benefits the members of the community by tax deductions for their contributions. It also facilitates acquiring large grants. The sale of Horizon Gate products will be done on line, at events and at the “film gallery café”. The Horizon Gate community will unite to offer fund raising events to the public. The organization will receive periodic fees for services and receive tuition from students participating in the “Production Gatherings”.

Calling for Community

We all need to work with others to fulfill a vision larger than ourselves. It takes a community of comrades to make films which move people spiritually. It takes many kinds of talent to operate a vibrant, new kind of exhibition venue where such films and art can move people toward God. This is why we at Horizon Gate Productions continue to re-describe and present our vision. We hope to find people who will join minds, hearts and hands to accomplish wonderful things.

Call us, 760-765-3884, or send an e-mail, markanddonna@horizongate.org , and tell us you want to be part of the conversation which is turning ideas into accomplishments.

Solitary Artists Get Together

The solitary artist. The solitary writer. Even though it is essential for many of us to get alone and create, eventually we have to appear in some form where others receive what we make. But often we meet walls and gate keepers which block the delivery of the treasure we have labored over in private. We know there are people who need and want what has been inspired in us. We can try to "go it alone" seeking ways to reach the people, but I recommend being a member of a community of believers who receive from God beyond themselves; who move together, share vision and facilitate inspiration. Join the conversation about a vision of art production and exhibition at http://www.horizongate.blogspot.com

"It's too slow,
Searching for cracks
In walls around people.
I'm too solitary,
No army of crack seekers with me.
But it's not the cracks that are so important.
It's the sunlight in this box I carry.
Someone inside has called for it
And the gates are guarded.
So, I thought to look for cracks.
If I could find just a small place,
Surely the sun would leak through
That one might catch it.
Then, who knows, it could multiply.
Light is like that, spreading.

"I know a group which gave up crack searching,
Walked like a parade of theatrical oddities
Along the endless wall.
Even heartless stones could not put them out of mind.
But it was not just the walking,
Clamoring and spectacle making.
It was being a prism
Angled just right to beam glory
Onto the stones which could stand no longer,
Compelled as they were to bow,
Then fall on their faces.
And only a people wholly given
To such otherly reality
Can know the stepping over
Walls which had been impervious
To crack hunters."

Mark R. Turner
Julian, CA
July, 18 - Oct. 23, '07
Related Scripture: Joshua 6

We, the Smolder Before the Fire

As I sat listening for God this morning I heard the following and pass it on as the action of a messenger, a crack in the wall set up by the opposition to separate us from the greater Reality.

“Perhaps you have forgotten all the times you felt like you would not survive, all the times you felt the panic of ultimate defeat and destruction. But you are here now looking back on them. I am not speaking to those who have ended and are not here now. I am talking to you who have survived.”

“And now you feel that same defeat and regret that all is not as you had hoped. Yet, you know that the small spark causes a slow smolder and the fire you need so dearly seems to take so infuriatingly long to warm the house. You are surviving the cold. The fire comes in a way you had not imagined, but comes. Your dream is audacious in the current cold conditions. Yet, you have begun the small, fragile flame; smoldering continues; the fire will not be fully expected in the form it will take, but, still, fire it will be. And who will consider then how you persisted smoldering?”

Christ's form: who considered it, or thought that this was the One? But, they esteemed him forsaken of God (Isaiah 53). We do not know fully who we are. It has not appeared who we are. Just as Christ was esteemed smitten and forsaken of God, we naively treat one another as common and hold failing standards of honor toward a few. But who shall stand in the day of Christ's appearing? "A bruised reed He will not break, a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish" (Isaiah 42:3). Our hope is a spark, an evidence of the fire not yet here but we hold the spark as the intent for the great conflagration. As the Apostle Paul said before his martyrdom, "It has not appeared what we shall be, but we know that we shall see Christ face to face." As Job says in the midst of his trials, "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God."(Job 19:25-26)

All is not as it appears. Instead of looking at appearances, a seemingly failing smolder, we look at the persistent flame in our core, the evidence of the grand fire coming, the small precursor unsuspected and not esteemed by those occupied with deceptively bright things of the day. We have the flame. We place the kindling.

Creation Continues

Creation continues. We are both the medium and the agents of the power working in all the universe cooking, splitting, fusing, shaping, coloring... making life. So much of humanity's building seems futile and contrary to our Maker's design. Still, God chooses to live here in the place God expands to accommodate more and more of us. As we have been formed from the dust and have received the Spirit of the Maker, we do our parts to birth others; to participate in the formation and transformation.

"How You raise the edifice
Turning stones to light
Fitted about that cornerstone
Night builders discarded
For temples made with hands,
Stacked crushing blocks,
Yet tripped over daylight.

"But, unquenched,
You piece together the Day
As, one-by-one, day child
Springs from that corner
Sparking and sizzling
Glints of solar prominences,
Exalted into place
As nova beams
Blind out the night.

"And rises the household,
Blessing and calling
Into the glory dwell,
Fusion transformed;
Rejoicing this
Is the Day."

Mark Robert Turner
Sept. 28, 2007
Julian, California
Related Scriptures: Psalm 118:22-29; I Peter 2:4-10; Hebrews 9:11,24; John 1:4-5; Ephesians 2:19-22

read this and past meditations on the "Artstimulant" page of Horizon Gate

Artists dance with change

Some get destructive in promoting change.

Some get destroyed resisting it.

Artists imagine and use change as a medium.

Some say the only constant is change.

I'll go one better: the only constant is outside of change.

The universe works by means of change, always in motion, ebbing and flowing, exhaling and inhaling, condensing and vaporizing, growing and decaying, pulsing, undulating. We move as parts of that.

Why, then, do we hold concepts of eternity and changelessness? We are not just particles at the mercy of these forces. Part of the wonder of humanness is to be aware of origins in that which generated all things. This gift of sensing a connection with the Changeless Beyond embracing the universe, enables us to move with the changes, to make the best of fortunes gained and lost, places our fortunes beyond any bank vault, or political agenda.

"All things build,

Reach critical mass,

Implode; the boundaries

Once thought sovereign

Break down and outer things

Flow unstoppably in

Toward the next explosion,

Casting all outward

To new destinies;

"Unkind progression;

Violent dissolution;

Forcing you and me away

Beyond dimensions

We may have counted on

Had we not linked to being,

Or communed with our Origin

Intimately across lines

And scale describing time and space;

"With that One

Sovereign of each element,

Master of whole reality,

Embracing all,

Attentive to each

Whether known or ignored;

"Who reaches to be known,

To fellowship through shared elements,

To reveal new born beauties;

"Had we not reached

Rather than, oblivious pieces,

Concentrated on

One's own existence or ends,

Trying to be all there is,

Unknowing of these

Countless particles

Rushing in

Flying out

Along with."

Mark Robert Turner

Julian, CA

September 16, 2008

Let us find the choreography and move together.

Yours dancing,

Mark

Read this and past meditations on the Artstimulant page of http://www.horizongate.org