May 26, 2010 by Teri Frana.

My dad is finally over the hump.  He’s still in the hospital for the next few days, but much stronger today. Thank you again for your prayers.

I haven’t had a lot of energy to do much deep thinking lately.  When I’m at that place, I tend to go look for inspiration from others who have had energy to do deep thinking.  I found some yesterday in this video:

Today I’m looking at this not necessarily from the corporate perspective, but from a church perspective.  It seems to me that the Church of the United States needs a creative revolution to break out of the bonds of what enslaves us.  It seems like we are stuck on the isle of “sameness”.  Somewhere along the lines so many of us subscribe to the belief that the ideal Christian has a nice house, nice cars, a nice family, a good job, a solid retirement nest-egg, and a comfortable lifestyle.  It seems to me that many churches put a lot of energy toward getting us all to that same place.

I’m not saying this is anti-Christian.  I’m saying that I don’t believe this is God’s ultimate goal for us.  I believe God is much more interested in using His incredible creativity to reveal our giftedness He created in us.  I think He is more concerned with our relationship with Him and with others than He is our portfolio.  And ultimately He is interested in helping us live out His dream for our lives rather than our American Dream.

Right now, I don’t have very many ideas on what needs to be changed.  But, I wonder what it would be like if our focus was on how to allow God to creatively reveal His vast creativity through His creations…

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May 10, 2010 by Teri Frana.

I read a post recently and watched the associated video that has been eating away at me.  In fact, I’ve lost some sleep over it.  It stirred something exhilarating in my heart but left me feeling frustrated at the same time.  Read the post here.

The challenges from the video and the post are causing me discomfort on many levels.  I’ll just focus on one right now.  For me, one of the biggest blocks to my creativity is TIME. I don’t know about you, but my creative juices don’t magically start flowing at the buzz from the alarm clock, nor do they respond when I command them to start juicing.

My creative energy is at its peak when I’ve allowed sufficient time and input to prime their pump.  I call it my “think time”.  I begin by reflecting on something.  It takes awhile to quiet the noisiness in my head first.  Then, I have to focus myself to look at it from all angles.  This can’t be rushed.  There has to be deep thought applied, ponderings, musing, questioning done before you have sufficiently unpacked the topic.

After it is sufficiently peeled in my mind, it needs to stew for awhile, cooking in my heart and soul until tenderized.   Once again, rushing this only succeeds in making it tough and chewy.  Only then can I begin to release it onto the page.

I can’t just sit down and command my fingers to type out something worthwhile.  Obviously.  I have so much to say, but find it difficult to get it out in any kind of meaningful form.  It takes TIME to create something significant.  It’s been a long TIME since I took the TIME to allow something meaningful to fall from the fingers.  When I am sucked into the busyness of life, I have to cut down that process into manageable, fast food sized bites of thought.

I’m feeling very rusty today, but as I force myself through this painful awkwardness, there is a glimmer of hope starting to glow in my heart - a  hope that there is something deep down there worth sharing, worth spending time on, worth laboring over.  It’s something creative and powerful - and just out of my reach now - but if I take enough time to think on it, mull it over, chew on it, and wait for it - it will come.

I contend that we all have that something within us - if only we took the time and effort to allow it to come out.  It may not be something we write, but there are all sorts of other avenues for this something significant to take shape.  Yet, I also contend the overwhelming majority of us will not take the “think time” it takes to free it from within us.  Most of us will stay in one form or another of busyness our entire lives and let that something significant die still locked up within us.

Time, space, and effort always come with a price.  For me, it means being faced with the choice of allowing that something significant within me to come out, or having a financially secure and comfortable life.  I am choosing to take the risk.  I choose to cling to the hope that there is something significant within me and when I allow it the time and space needed to come forth, it will be more satisfying than comfort or security.

There is something significant waiting to be found, pondered, cooked, and freed from within each of us - but, I’m very afraid that we will miss it in our busyness.  I encourage you to stop long enough to take a very hard look at it.  Do you have any “think time” lined up in your life to focus on that elusive yet significant something God has placed within us?

I am going to spend some “think time” today pondering what this world might look like if more of us chose to let that something significant stir, stew, and spew out of us…

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