They think it forms the walls and lid for our minds and souls. The box shelters us from evil. Creativity — thinking outside the box — represents some kind of disruptive assault on all that is right and good.

We Christians have a hard time knowing when to be orthodox and when to be groundbreaking. There’s not much room for creativity when it comes to theology. It’s a set system. And that’s ok. But, it’s harmful to let our fixed theology calcify our minds.

The easy and lazy path is to be conservative in everything and fight change of every kind.

If you’re the kind of person that is threatend by change, I’m not judging you. I’m just inviting you to consider that you’re predisposition to favor the status quo (to be conservative) may be the function of other factors — your personality, your past experiences, your personal preferences.

In other words, if you don’t like Jackson Pollock, it’s not God’s fault.

Using God to back up your own ideas warps our world’s understanding of what God is like. And,  it makes you look silly:

“Christians are not always viewed as creative people, either by ourselves or the secular world. We tend to limit ourselves and what we are able to do with the talents and gifts God has given.

For example, for years may magazines and Sunday school publications bought their Bible art from a lithograph service. The little line drawings were safe, predictable, and dull. Then one publication decided to try something different. A Jewish artist was hired to illustrate Bible stories. She did an unusual job. The pictures seemed to come alive on the page. But no sooner had Christians opened their first issue than they began to write protest letters. “These pictures look too Jewish,” the letters declared. “The don’t feel Christian, you know. Some of the people in them aren’t smiling.” The artist’s work went into storage and the conservative readers breathed a sigh of relief; modernism had been stopped.

“In the world of art, we have chosen religious propaganda over genuine creative work. Yes, we are interested in pointing people to Christ, but that noble goal gets rather downgraded when we thing the Holy Spirit can’t work through excellence.” [1]

This is talking specifically about art, but the underlying principle applies to Christian’s aversion to change across the board. Using theology as a box to shelter us from having to make decisions about life in the contemporary world would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

Some of the most deeply spiritual and meaningful contributors to our understanding about God were also among history’s most creative minds. They did not view theology as a box. They saw it more as the mind’s north star. A fixed reference point essential for keeping their explorations of creation on a healthy course.

Theology didn’t hold them back. Theology wasn’t a protective shield from the harsh realities of life. Theology was their map to adventure and their guarntee that, wherever they might roam — physically, intellectually, creatively — all they had to do was look up to get their bearings and find their way home.

So, before we close the lid on a creative effort let’s consider: Is this really theology at stake?  Or, is this my box talking?

God is big. He doesn’t need our box. Let’s be conservative only when necessary.

[1] From: Creative Teaching Methods, LeFever, 1990

This life’s dim windows of the soul / Distorts the heavens from pole to pole / And leads you to believe a lie / When you see with, not through, the eye.

William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel
sec. 5, line 101

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

“But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

“A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.

“And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

“And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

-Ira Glass

We found this old Ethan Allen piece at a rummage sale for $29. According to the markings, it’s from about 1955. We have no idea what the cabinet’s original use was, but we like the random hatch on the top and the classy louvered doors.

Dry sink? Dry bar? It doesn’t matter. This is art, remember? You have to let the questions go and let the paint flow.

Sarah picked sky blue. It’s a great color that makes you feel relaxed just looking at it. Our very patient friends Jack and Mandy loaned us their garage and pitched in on the sanding on a hot Texas June day. The pine wood underneath the stain was in pretty rough shape, but we didn’t want the finish to be too perfect.

With the wood prepped, all that was left to do was to mix a batch of paint wash and sponge it on.

The upside to the wicked heat? It didn’t take long for the paint to dry!

Love it? Hate it? Share it!

For all of us watching snow flutter past our porch lights tonight, here’s what snow sounds like in the city…

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Apple’s iPad has been unveiled, and it’s potential as a web browser and electronic book reader has people like Josh Quitter thinking about the future of reading in an outstanding, forward-thinking piece focused on how the Internet could impact traditional print magazines.

Personally, I love magazines. I think they have the best chance of any current print format to survive the switch to digital because mags already integrate multiple media.

The visual component is an integral part of the experience. If properly harnessed, the multi-media capacity of the web allows for a richer reader experience than print alone. With the web, features like supporting video, interview audio, and flash animated maps and charts can be used along with the typical photos and graphics.

To survive, magazine outfits need to take three steps:

1. Offer full digital versions for much lower subscription costs than on newsstands.

2. Use the money they save from print production to flood the virtual pages with interactive multi-media content. Maps to click, drag, and scale. Photo slideshows. Audio and video from the interviews. Interactive charts. Links for further reading from past issues.

3. Boost interactivity by providing comment and response mechanisms for digital edition consumers. Schedule chats with the author. Allow a reader to annotate a portion of the article, make comments and publish them to the page. Other viewers could opt to see these annotations – like a collaborative pdf document.

Perhaps the changing tastes of readers is a by-product of a more formally educated population than we had 30 years ago. In college, you can’t get by with writing a paper and citing only one source. In college, you learn that most people’s writing is influenced by their personal views and not fully objective. As you are exposed to a variety of ideas, you find that often every perspective on a topic has some foundation in fact and can contribute to the discussion.

Perhaps that’s why the next generation of readers wants conversation as much as they want information. They want their news and information from multiple sources and from a variety of perspectives. They don’t merely want to be told, they want to be shown.

This is a lesson that every traditional medium can learn from as we transition to an increasingly digital age.

A first person account of me constructing a third person account about myself for national consumption.

The me I would write about writing about wouldn’t be a Me that friends would recognize. Neither “Me” (the one writing and the one writing about the process of writing) would be me exactly. They would be the Me’s I would be if I let me be myself without being concerned with convention or with being comprehended.

Me (both of them) would be the character I wish I could be or that I’m relieved I’m not — depending on my mood.

The first person third person autobiography would most likely poke fun at how most people construct what they think is reality based on their desire to be accepted by others based on their perception of what other accept.

And it would be a chance for me (this Me) to write like I think and not translate my thoughts into conventionally composed, single themed streams so others can follow. I could write in rivers, not streams.

“The Convention” would be a good title. That’s where Me would get inspired to leave and write about himself. He would write a journal about writing a book about himself while dabbling in writing the book. The journal would be first person and the book would be third person.

And that’s how I would write about me writing about Me.