isnt she beautiful 2.0

so we just got back from the evening session and it was great. mars hill’s band did a worship set of funk tunes and old hymns. they brought the funk. ha! i was curious to see how the mix was going to sound with the stage in the middle and various speakers pointing outwards – and it wasnt that great from where we were. but knowing rob and his thoughts about the gathering spot – probably doesnt seem to bother them too much. all that to say – the band was very talented and i was glad to sing tonight. very cool.

rob’s talk was on creativity tonight and i found it very inspiring. he began with jacob’s dream in genesis 28 and how after this dream he awakes and says “surely the LORD was in this place and i was not aware of it.” this whole concept of awakening – jacob awakening from his literal sleep but also awakening from a spiritual sleep and how we need to be awakened to that God is always at work in his world. every conversation we have – God is at work amidst it some how – and how we should ask to be awakened to it. so so great…i guess some have called this awakening exercies one’s “sacramental imagination” – seeing God in all things.

from here we moved on to exploring art and creativity. we dove into some different catagories that rob came up with that helped shaped the discussion. the first was the art of tension. the example was from luke 15 – how Jesus creates this amazing tension at the end of the story of the prodigal son. how it isnt this perfect hollywood ending – that Jesus leaves the story unresolved. as we create we can do a great disservice to others when we try and ‘fix’ everything – how everything has the cliche, happy ending.  life isnt like that. life isnt always easy – there is always tension and unresolved issues and we should be ok with that. and the beautiful thing about this story is that at the end of this story, Jesus invites us to find ourselves in the story. are we the father, or the older son, or younger son – or can be these characters at different times in our journey? Jesus creates a story with lots of open spaces and doesnt explain everything away. the story begins the discussion and we should learn from this. it was great to talk about the freedom of tension and leaving things unresolved. so freeing. and so true.

then we dove into the art of elimination. how we can clutter up everything and we need to be in the process of eliminating all the fluff and weaning what we are trying to communicate down to what it is at its very core. a questions we should ask is ‘how much can we say in the fewest words possible?’ try to say the most powerful idea in the fewest words possible. this is very helpful for me as i think about writing songs. great great stuff.

some of the other categories we dove into were ‘turning the edit button off’, ‘expulsion’ , ‘risk’, and ’space’. i really identified with the art of space. rob shared this amazing quote from buechner. he was talking about how he was trying to force writing a novel then came to this realization that he needed to:

…let the empty place inside of me open up…

wow. God, teach me how to fight for these times of creative space and to let the empty places inside of me open up. show me these empty places and use them for your kingdom.

again – a great night. God is putting me back together through rob’s words. i cant wait for tomorrow…

~ by jda on January 23, 2007.