WHAT BOX?

I recently came across a couple of excellent talks given on the subject of creativity. I would like to highlight one here and I will touch on the other one another time. this talk was given by an Author called Amy Tan, she wrote a book called ‘The Joy Luck Club’ that i think became a film and seems VERY highly acclaimed. She funny and interesting, and I have no doubt it might make some of you squirm, but after you watch it, I will say a couple things…

Things I liked:

OBSERVER EFFECT. - I have experienced this, I have spent so long analysing and unpacking something I am creating for its meaning, to make sure that the meaning is clear - that it looses its ‘edge’ it becomes somewhat anemic. It is no longer interesting but more formal somehow or even just bland and cognitive. Amy said that if you try too hard to to figure out what its about all you are left with is the ABOUT and you never ‘discover’ anything. I feel this is what I have known of Christianity, and why so many people find it so hard to ‘hear God’ because we are too focused on the ‘about’ or the doctrine, or the theology, that we lose the ability to explore, and therefore discover God’s voice.

COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT. - This is what she called that strange experience she has when she feels that the ‘universe’ is helping her. she gave some examples of it with her writing, esspessially the guy stacking rocks! amazing. But I cant help but wonder, is she just so good at discovering, that she has a honed eye? I think so, I think she has learned to hear God, she doesn’t know it, but He is there in everything, and we have been so ensconced in our LEARNING, that we have lost the ability to discover.

Its this ‘help form the universe’ that particularily interests me, esspessially in the field of the creative. I feel we, in our western world, can be so dismissive of these types of people. I think maybe some of us probably thought she was some bohemian hippie type right? And yet she is having these experiences, and I wonder, whats going on? Some of us are Christians and we have a really hard time understanding what Amy might be expressing. We feel we want to say that its God or The Holy Spirit, but we cant quite get there cos our heads tell us that she isn’t a christian, so it cant be, so it must be something ‘else’. But what if it is God. I think it might be. I think that God is the biggest artist/creative ever! and that he isn’t scared to reveal himself to whoever wants to see. maybe he is thrilled to show himself to anyone who wants to FEEL. I think its fascinating that Art is such a huge part of any society. in fact it has so much to do with the creation of that society. it runs deep in the very heart of it. And for that reason I think God is VERY interested in it. So I think that for Amy here, God is in on this, because he is weaving himself throughout the innards of our society. This is important We need artists, and we need artists to be hearing God, regardless if it fits our understanding of what that means. Another thing Amy said was…

WHO AM I?. - She asked this question, and basically wanted to know how and why she creates. he simple answer was ‘to ask questions’ to not be so locked down with AN answer but to explore it, to think that its not finished that its only PART of the answer as this will allow us to discover more. This is why she is so astute. There is a saying that has recently got under my skin and I now hate it with a passion - “Thinking outside the box” good grief just typing it has made me itchy with rage!!!! (hahaha) here is why I hate it. We use it when someone does something creative or different. we say they thought outside the box. or we say we should be more creative and ‘We need to think outside the box more. well I really want to know - WHAT IS THE BOX? we are so logical and safe that even pour creativity has to have some strange boundary, even if its something to stand on in order to be creative. And we think it cute to say that God is the ultimate ‘outside the box’ thinker - YUK! the only box there is, if it indeed can be called a box is GOD, God works and moves depending on himself motivated by himself and for his own self. He works within the framework of GOD - himself. He doesn’t think outside the box, there is no box, there is just God. But we create boxes. We call them things like GOD or LOVE or GRACE, we actually put these boxes in other boxes and call them DOCTRINE or THEOLOGY. We even have a box called GRACE and that box tells us that legalistic stuff is bad BUT it has struck me that grace by its very definition is a box exploder. How can we be gracious when we are doing it according to the box that is labeled GRACE? well I don’t know about you but I can’t I can only do it in the context of GOD, and I cant KNOW God if I cant FEEL him, and I cant FEEL him if I just learn the boxes. We have the bible, but its not a blueprint, its not a manual its not a box, it is God showing us how we can feel him and experience his grace and therefore be that to others. It is the bible that says that we are to be like children, well I think you can all agree that children DO NOT live according to boxes!!!! until we set them straight and we TEACH them all about boxes!

FEELING. - Amy also pointed out how important it is as a creative to FEEL and that that feeling experience is what makes us compassionate. Grace, Compassion, Mercy all spring form LOVE, they cant exist without it, LOVE springs from GOD God IS Love, it cant exist without him. And what do we know about God, well who in this world can ever say they have God figured out?

So lets destroy the box, and maybe we might be able to see/hear/feel God. Maybe some of us Christians it might be the first time ever, or maybe it will be a deeper dive down into an experience we have already been having. Maybe for those that do not call themselves Christians or even might be more likely to be atheistic I urge you to consider as you look around and as you to see/hear/feel things happening, call them coincidence, call it luck whatever you want, I do urge you consider that it might be God you don’t have to be part of the box world we call Christianity to experience God, and I suspect that you have already been experiencing Him - well its possible right?

Matthew 18:3 (The Message)

^2-5For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.

THERE IS NO BOX!

Think - again!

These pictures were taken from NASA’s satellites at the end of the millennium from 400 miles away.

There are 30 of them to see axctually just go here.

As I was looking at them I couldn’t help but think that some people who might live in some of these places might have been there their whole lives, and they might know these places backwards. They might have studied the history an know all there is to know about every inch of these places. BUT, I bet if you told them that they would not recognise these places if they were to look at pictures taken 400 miles directly above them, I am sure they would not believe it. In fact if i was to have told you that these were some abstract paintings by an up and comming artist, you probably would have thought nothing of it. Its an old story, change your perspective and things look so differently, but its just true! don’t be satisfied with what you THINK you know, in fact maybe you don’t know as much as you think!!!

Anyway enjoy these wonderful pictures.

Mayn River, Siberia, Russia

Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Lake Carnegie, Australia

Baffin Bay, Greenland

Dasht-e Kavir, Iran

Karman Vortices

Language

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo

This video was made to celebrate the 25th year of existence for a book publishers called 4th Estate. These guys have published some fantastic authors over the years including Jean-Dominique Bauby with his truly amazing little book  The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. dictated while he was suffering form ‘locked in syndrome’. All he could move was his eye lid, so, with people reading out loud letters he would blink at them on the letter he wanted, he spelled out the whole book like this! There is a great, somewhat unsettling movie, to have recently come out. Also they published one of my favorite authors called E. Annie Proulx. She is a fantastic writer (ignoring the Brokeback Montain blip!). Her writing is so dramatic, kind of dark, but not just in a grim way but also like an ‘old’ way, like candle light rather than the modern brightness of an incandescent bulb. She likes to go back into history, and her descriptions can floor you. Two books I would happily take your arm and bend it behind your back until you gave in and read them are Postcards, and Accordion Crimes. the latter being one of my all time favorite books. it tracks the life of an accordion brought to America by a Sicilian immigrant (he made it himself) and  its journey through America, over the decades until days of rap music. Its an incredible slice of the wonderful eclectic and rich history of America, you really get a picture of what makes America America. She was also the writer of the book the Shipping news which became a pretty big movie, and a quite good one if i remember rightly.

This video is not only a very beautifully made animation, but its also quite a nice little poignant thought. The beauty of books. or the beauty of  language. Language, how important it is, and how powerful. we read a book and we are absorbed into its world, the world created by the writer, the words placed in a specific order to make the reader feel emotions, learn things, realise things never realised before. We wander around this world with our wide eyes but we don’t see black letters on white paper, we see trees and birds and cars and houses and cinemas, we hear muffled conversations in the background as our protagonist walks along the street of the city where he lives.
But not only are we pulled into the world of the book, but actually very often the book, helps create our world. books broaden our minds, they connect with emotions, gives us ideas  to do things perhaps, or maybe it just recognises emotions that we were struggling to understand in ourselves.

of course language is not just about books, its about talking one on one, speeches to a crowd,  poetry, songs, painting, sculpture, acting, etc. What is art if its not a heightened form of communication? Art is a language right?

One of my favorite bloggers out there is Stephen Fry, I have mentioned him before with his wonderful explanation of his hatred of dancing, shared mostly buy yours truly! Stephen recently blogged about LANGUAGE. This is an amazing piece of writing. He expounds his love for language , his heart for it, that absolutely echoes my own. I often find myself rather embarrassed about my lack of ability in the language department, wishing I knew more about what I was supposed to be doing when it comes to language. My school life was pretty miserable, I was never able to understand the intricacies of the English language. I recently had a master of this language try to teach me about nouns and verbs and another word i cant even remember! As I think about it I really cant remember what is what - absolutely shameful! (sorry to you linguist person its not your teaching its my somewhat backwards brain!) If you could see me typing right now you would see a little red squiggly line appear under every third word or so! The computer is a God send for me otherwise this would be even MORE unreadable than it already is. It cannot help me with punctuation though, and sentence structure, and thats why you find yourself reading some rather untidy posts! This is a little bit by way of an explanation as to why, when i started this blog, I declared that i did not want to hear any comments about the mechanics of my writing as this was my blog, so back off! You see if I was to get consumed by all that stuff that my brain seems to not want me to ever know, i would never actually write anything. Since I made the decision to not worry about all that stuff i have begun to really enjoy writing. Stephen Fry’s ‘blessay’ as he likes to call them, is fantastic to hear from a guy, who quite clearly, has a quite stupendous grasp on this language. I love reading him and I love listening to him talk. Its so natural to him, and to hear him talk bout his love for language is very inspiring. But more than that, to here this man encourage MY language regardless of wether or not I am doing everything properly is very very encouraging indeed. And I can read this into more than just about books or the written word, but actually i can take the same tack with art as a whole, because art is language - right!? I enjoy writing poems, even though i have not the slightest idea what i am doing! I enjoy writing songs, despite the fact that I cant read a dot of music! I enjoy making video’s regardless of having hardly any knowledge of how your ‘supposed’ to do it. I  like to write blog posts without basic understandings of the language I write them with! And although I do want to understand better, and grow in that as I continue, I also don’t want to wait and do nothing until i am ‘ready’ because when I am ready might never come. Who decides when one is ‘ready’ enough? No, I want to start now, and get excited about it enough to learn more to get better and better. AND, I want to encorage the same to others.

So read this blessay, and be convicted and inspired but most of all be motivated, read into it your particular ‘field.’and once you have read it, than go here and download the original spoken version. I really encorge you listen AFTER you read, well worth at least those two goes at it.

I think the ultimate artistic statement is when the art is deeply connected with the artist, non more so than this. the word BECAME flesh and blood, amazing.