Creativity.

Another short post today, since I've spent most of the day in a hospital hanging out with my sister (who is doing well, by the way). 

While she distracted or unconscious or something, I pulled out a book I haven't picked up in a while. 

Image shamelessly stolen from Amazon.  Clearly.

Yes.  That's right.  Orbiting the Giant Hairball.  Great title.  Its subtitle, "A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace," really does describe a large part of the content of the book.  It's about how to be creative in an environment that isn't always creative.  It's about not releasing yourself in wild abandon to pursue creative things outside of any system, but using the good things of those systems while transcending them.  It's a really good book.

After reading just the first two chapters, I may have to add another point to my list of ways I'm creative.  Read at least two books about creativity a year.  Maybe more.  I dunno.  We can play with the number later.

The moral of the story is that I need to be inspired.  I need to be reminded that I am, in fact, a creative person.  I need to be challenged in a more broad sense. 

Sometimes, when I get into the mundanity of creative output, I forget about the creative part.  When I write, I think about my story structure analysis.  I think about my characters and their goals.  I think about the point of the whole story and why I'm writing it in the first place.  I start relying (rightfully so) on systems and rules that have helped me make a better product in the past. 

But in all of those details, I forget what it is I'm doing.  I am creating something (hopefully) fresh and new and interesting and unlike anything the world has seen before.  I am using my brain and imagination to echo the creative God who gave me both.  It's a huge privilege and tremendously fun while carrying a gravitas that I almost never realize.

The creative act is, I think, a bigger deal than we typically make it out to be.  It is books like Orbiting the Giant Hairball that help me remember that. 


I leave you with chapter 19 of Orbiting the Giant Hairball, in its entirety: "Orville Wright did not have a pilot's license."  Go ponder that for a while.

God is really heavy.

So I'm reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. It's been on my reading list for a full year and I've finally gotten to it. It's like Rob Bell's basic theology book.

Here's a thought that's getting to me.

In Movement (chapter) 3, he talks a bit about missions. So often, when we talk about missions, we say that we are "bringing Jesus to" China or Africa or Chicago or the film industry.

But Bell reminds his readers that God is, in fact, everywhere. There is no place that he is not present. It is the awareness of his presence that changes from place to place and person to person.

The duty of the missionary then, is not to force Jesus onto a people, but to show them where he is already active and moving. What are the true things that are happening in the place? Are people laughing? Are there crops growing? Is there, in a word, goodness? If so, then God is there. He must merely be seen more clearly. He must be named. Just as Paul does at the Areopagus (a way cooler name than Mars Hill, in my opinion...), we can point to things already around us (like poets, philosophers, prophets) and say that they have it somewhat right. But there is a higher reality. It all comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the God who revealed himself through Jesus the Messiah and the Bible.

So, Bell suggests, a missionary is perhaps better called a tour guide - one who can see God in the everyday. Someone who can see the Lord working in the most unlikely places.

In my own life, I am finally at a place where I am not surrounded by Christians - my job. It's not as hostile of an environment as I expect in the game industry, but I do not see people coming to work with their Bibles... How do I show them Jesus? How do I make disciples?

The suggestion that our job as "missionaries" (or evangelists or Jesus-networkers [I just made that one up]) is merely to see God already at work, point to it, and call it out appeals to me.

But it is a challenge. A change in how I look at the world. Sadly, even as a believer, I don't have the eyes to see God's movement in any but the most obvious and powerful places.

But Rob Bell might be right. If we see ourselves carrying God from one place (Cornerstone/my life/my church) to another (my job/my career/the streets/the bar down the road), we will undoubtably get exhausted.

God is really heavy.