My iPhone's Killing More Than My Sperm: thoughts on creativity

Can you remember a time in your life when you were your most creative? Is there a time when you felt like you had so many ideas bursting from you that they simply had to be enacted or you might explode from the extended capacity? When was that time in your life?

My assumption is that it was a time before increased responsibility and task. It was likely a time when you had more free time than you do now.

There is a reason for that, and it is not so easily chalked up to blaming the responsible life for killing your creativity. You only need to look a bit at the brain and the lifestyle you...we have created.

A study I recently read about showed the brain activity at its most creative moments. The exhaustive information showed that our brain is its most creative in the moments when it is allowed to wonder and wander. Essentially, we are our most creative in daydream mode.

I could leave it all at that if we were not so horrible at doing so. Daydreaming and creativity happens when our brains are truly allowed to disengage to a certain point. The brain has to lose focus and be allowed to wander a bit. That journey is where creativity is its most possible.

The problem for us these days arises in how many things require our focus; things such as television, gaming, even music make our brain focus.

I recently read an article about how the iPhone and other similar technology kill creativity in this way. Those with an iPhone or similar technology know how easy it is to "stay connected" so often throughout the day. There is always something to check, read, watch, listen to...to DO. So many of the things we once blamed "the boob tube" for doing in the evenings are available in our pockets throughout the day now. The iPhone can kill our creativity. (I also recently read that phones in my pockets can effect my potency as a future father, but that's for a different note.)

I have a close friend whose brother did advertising in Chicago, and his company gave him a monthly entertainment stipend to be spent freely on things like music, movies, and games. The company paid for these things because they believed it sparked creativity in their staff. I would say we get a lot of ideas and inspiration from all forms of entertainment, but I would say that the creative movement on that inspiration comes in the moments we allow our brain to just wander a bit.

When we daydream a little more, we find that creative person we thought had been killed by the responsible professional.

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LISTENING TO: "Hello my name is...EP" by Greek National Road
READING: "Total Church" by Tim Chester

Heaven without Jesus?

How many of us wish we could actually be with God each day? How many of us would like to be with Jesus each day? We all try to have quiet times to do just that, but I wonder how many of us would have a sense that we really met with God in those moments we spend during a "quiet time". I have had that sense before, but it is hardly every day when I sit down for those moments.

It has me curious as to whether there are other significant ways to meet with Jesus each day. The easy answer is "yes", but the more difficult answers are to the question of, "How then?" What are those OTHER ways I can truly be with Jesus; a way that I can sense his love, person, and heart?

The first prerequisite question is, "Is Jesus himself the gift I am looking for?" What I am I hoping for when I come to meet with Jesus? Is it simply Jesus I desire, or is it his answer to my questions? Is it his provision for my needs? Is the gift I seek his heart salve for the places I hurt, or is it simply JESUS I crave? If I got to heaven, with all the great things like no more suffering, no more weeping, total healing, eternal reconnection with all the loved ones I could imagine, but Jesus was not there, would my heart break? Would I still want heaven? Is Jesus what I desire each day when I come to meet with him, or am I really looking for some byproduct of the relationship with him?

So assuming I want to be with Jesus, what ways can I do that?

Well I know Jesus told us, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me." He told us that when we serve other people, we were doing those things for him. In order to do something for someone, it is to say that person is there. It is to say that when I listen to someone, serve someone, help someone, Jesus is there. I meet him there.

When we serve, we are given the greatest gift possible at that exact moment. We are given Jesus. He is there. He is present. We can be with Jesus, and if THAT is my greatest gift, I would serve more people.

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READING: "The Great Good Place" by Ray Oldenburg

Coffee Shop

Brought my heart in to the shop
having run dry and cracked.
Took my mind in to the shop
having smelled smoke from the burn out.

Having changed and filled the caffeinated
social lubricant,
the heart reacts more fluidly
the mind is sparked and turns over.

Took myself in to the shop
having needed a social lube change.

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LISTENING TO: "9" by Damien Rice

Fight?

Few things anger me. I am annoyed intensely by a lot of things; things such as the Lakers, bad beer or coffee, Terrel Owens, Mary Murphy, use of the NON-word "irregardless", and USC; just to name a few from my very long list of intensely annoying things.

I am not an angry person as there really are only a few things which anger me. I can only think of a few right now. Poverty, oppression, unloving Christians and their 'evangelism', and maybe the Lakers!

Poverty and oppression are growing more and more rampant in our world and country, especially in a world with things like dying economies, human trafficking, and a cultural battle between the church and LGBT communities in which each side sees the other as sub-human, or at least treats each other as such.

I see these very few things becoming more and more prevalent in our world and our country, and I wonder what I am to do.

Psalm 82:3-4 says, "Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked."

I read those things and I prayed this morning, (in a fashion I do most mornings, afternoons, and evenings), "God, show me how to love you and love people." I am learning to trust that God will show me how to love more if I desire it from him.

To serve the poor, I am trying to sacrifice all I have. I am beginning the 7th month of a commitment not to purchase any of my clothes first hand unless I KNOW where and how those clothes were made. I make those sorts of decisions and then read 1 Cor. 13:3.

"If I give all I possess to the poor...but have not love, I gain nothing."

I make as many decisions as I can to be one who serves and fights for what is right, but then I read that and wonder if all is for not if I have not truly done it with great love. Do I do these things for the fight or for the love?

An old grandmother once said, "No one ever wins a fight." I think that is what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 5, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute." This is not pacifism! Just before he said that, Jesus said, "Do not resist an evil person."

When we are angered by things, we want to fight. Jesus tells us to love and pray and be moved with compassion to act, but he never told us to fight.

We fight for things like "honor", but sometimes I wonder if our "honor" is sometimes really pride, fear, or hate that we have called honor.

No one ever wins a fight; but love conquers all.

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LISTENING TO: "9" by Damien Rice and "Sounds Like This" by Eric Hutchinson

The only people for me...

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

- Jack Kerouac