19h • Resources
Creation is Crucial
Creation. Our ability to look at nothingness and bring something into existence. Thoughts and feeling molded and manifested into existence. Into actions and tangible items. What has amazed me looking back directly over the last six months but also through the somatic work I have been doing and analyzing the last 40 years is how the ability to create is in and of itself a tool.
The tool is neither inherently good or bad. For those that desire to create things of beauty and life they drive towards that. For those that create without thought they allow others to determine the merit of their creation. Lastly there are those that create for the purpose of destruction. I was thinking of the film Oppenheimer the other day and how one of the most devastating weapons in the existence of mankind was created. It was a concept of challenging and pushing ourselves without understanding whether or not that creation would carry the merit it was intended for. It was created without thought of purpose. The question of can we do it superceded how it would be used.
In time that question would be answered with other creatives. Inasmuch as some used their creative powers to mold that idea into death and destruction others would take the same concepts and create the means to battle cancer, power cities and travel to space. Our ability for the creative is seemingly limitless, a beautiful aspect of the personhood of God within us. However, when we create without consideration of the purpose it opens the door to some destructive possibilities.
Thinking now in the moment on creation what I love is the ether of thought. Anyone who has ever sat in meditation will know this a little more clearly but it happens to us all. In the shower, on the treadmill, in the sauna our thoughts emerge from the ether. Where and why our minds pulls us towards ideas and concepts is seemingly evasive and yet each us in our own experience and wisdom are constantly driven towards the creation of something new.
What I have been loving is using this practically. Some would see hour long walks, hour long meditations and purposeful silence as doing nothing. In reality it is prepping the forge. One of the stories I love is the tale of Michelangelo and the marble. This story may have not happened and may be more fable then fact but the fable bears repeating. Michelangelo was well known for his artistic prowess. One of his timeless pieces is the statue of David. There is a tale that when he was presented with the massive 18-ft block of marble he spent months simply looking at it. Gazing into it. Contemplating its potential. The tale goes that a prince visited to see the Maestro working and was baffled to see the man sitting and staring endlessly. When he inquired of Michelangelo what he was doing the artists response was “Sto lavorando”
I AM WORKING.
Three years later that block transformed into the masterpiece we know today.
The pause. The poise. The silence. In our busy world today filled with tech, hustle culture and drive we simply have forgotten the merit to pause. The understanding that in the stillness there is work being done. Our ability to unplug from the pings, the dopamine hits of our everyday technological utopia and sit in calm retreat is a superpower. When all distractions are removed and all you are left with is your own mind, your own heart, your own soul; it is there that the unimaginable becomes reality.
6 months ago I sat down in the silence and stared at myself, proverbially and literally. Standing there staring at the mirror and meditating on the simple premise of “Who am I?” was a powerful Michelangelo moment. The realization that much like his slab of marble our own lives can be crafted and create with design. We are capable of molding, modeliing, sculpting, building and crafting a new being into existence. The caution of Oppenheimer was something that innately was clear in that process of not only did I have a desire to create but also to ensure that man I was creating was being created and crafted with clear purpose and intent.
What was more surprising was that just like any art once you have the medium you are going to work on (clay, paper, canvas, etc..) you need to acquire the tools and methods necessary to work in the medium. For myself in crafting a man I have found these tools to be relatively simple.
Prayer. Food. Fitness. Music. Fellowship. Learning.
I don’t in anyway imagine these tools would be the same for everyone as each soul is beautifully crafted however for each of us I think when we boil it all down there a handful of things that helps each of us to drastically improve or decline and when we recognize those tools we are capable of learning how to use them to great benefit. That benefit is not restricted only to our personal gains but the world around us as well.
Seeing how the more I embraced each of these the more I was able to help myself and those around me in need. Men on the brink of suicide, men who had lost their way, lost their lives, lost everything they once held dear. No more. By using the tools and the passions God had given me I found purpose in helping those men. Furthermore as I helped those men I helped myself grow and excel. It became a beautiful symbiosis. I would go to God in prayer and self reflection, I would use His guidance to create and craft ideas and pracitces and then I would engage those around me with those very practices. To my amazement in sharing that with the world around me I saw those very men and lives I was touching start to create beautiful things all of their own. It inspired me and invigorated me to return to God in prayer with what had happened and the cycle would continue.
Our creative selves now more then ever are a cherished possession. In a world rapidly destroying the creative with a sea of AI slop it becomes not only essential but vital, life saving, for us to cling to creativity. It need not be a masterpiece. It simply needs to be the process of turning what was nothing into something. The ability to take our passions and craft them with purpose into practical, tangible actions and things for the world around us. When we embrace that ability to create that very process stands as a bastion against complacency and destruction.
Our creative minds literally breath life into the world around us. When we stop striving for the creative all that is left is decay and demise. The world around us will rust and wither. These daily writings may be a practical mediation as I have said in the past but after I sit here for an hour typing away at the keys and simply allowing whatever comes to mind and heart flow out of me into the keyboard I have discovered depths that were previously unknown even to myself. I look at the written words after an hour at the keyboard and question how these came from me and wonder at where they came from.
16 years ago I attended a missions conference. While there one of the booths had an odd man who was manning an old school label maker. He was giving out names in the language of the “Siskyous” (unbeknownst to me a mountain range in Oregon where he hailed from). The man was creating the names on the spot. He was creating in real time. He looked at me and punched out the name KIANNA. He went on to explain that the name meant Prince. Now immediately that title can take you in a dozen different directions, but he went on to clarify. The name was not a point of pride but instead a title of role and function. Prince in this meaning was the representative of a nation. Not the King who was the head but the arm of the kingdom. Where I went, I went as an ambassador. My messages and words would inspire and drive people towards their calling. I look back often at the naming and realize just how true that anointing was. That renaming has over the years been more and more true as the messages I have crafted have taken me across the world meeting thousands of lives with knowledge, experience and encouragement.
Gazing at how far a message can reach it is inspiring and to see the change it can create is staggering.
I am thrilled that this next season is one where I can continue to pursue that passion and purpose. These daily writings are A SINGLE aspect of the message but as I continue forward with the Lazarus Project. As I meet more and more men facing lives that are seemingly withered and at the brink of destruction I come to realize that the God given blessing he has given me to reach them, empathize with them and help them to rebuild with confidence. To renew their passion for the creative. Its going to be one wild ride.
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Creation is Crucial
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