Creating Through Chaos

As a coach and creative with a faith-reasoned worldview, I'm convinced that even now, in the overflow of pain and chaos swirling across the land in all directions, that creatives have the divine ability to bring clarity of message in grand ways throughout our communities.

Creatives unlock deeper principles and call people to live bigger and better lives.

Creatives build bridges between the dirt and the divine. And then walk with others from one side to the other.

Creatives tell a better story, even the gritty and painful parts, with truth and faith and insight and hope.

Creatives bring to light what is while casting a vision for what could be.

Creatives aren't the answer, we're message bearers, prophets and poets. We help connect the dots between the world and the wisdom of what could be. Between our tribes and the trusted voices of grace and truth. Between the voices that aren't heard and those that aren't even aware they should be listening. Between the pain of chaos and the God who offers to carry these ancient burdens.

Are you telling a better story? Painting a better vision? Playing a better melody?

Lampoon: Lexicon

Happy Lampooned Lexicon Thursday! Ever pause on a walk in the local cemetery, stare across the headstones and imagine all those regrettable scenes from your own life? Yeah, I recommend doing that once every decade or so, it's sobering. If you're in there every week? Well, let's talk. Here's a peek into another chapter of my oncoming book: A Lexicon of Awesome.

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/ L /

Lampooning is an interesting practice, isn’t it? I doubt dogs do this. Or dolphins. Dolphins are too smart to waste time spearing one another. Grinding up their emotions like tuna fish.

Yet, for me, it seems to come naturally. Why do we do this to ourselves? I haven’t met anyone deliberately chasing after a National Lampoon’s Clark Griswold lifestyle. The embodiment of a bumbling suburban dad. A wildly funny satire, but not one to emulate, right? Is it possible that we lampoon our lives blindly? Or out of sheer laziness? I wonder if these are versions of the same thing: a misdirected life with no vision of what could be and no mission to tread. A life that torches Christmas trees, destroys cars and flirts with affairs. Dolphins don’t do that.

I think about the lampoon often. Some days I can actually feel it like a spear in my lower back. Isn’t it awkward walking around with a spear in your back? There it is, agitating Brooke and annoying the kids and knocking that framed watercolor painting by great grandma off the wall and down the stairs.

Am I living lampooned? Maybe, but it’s hard to think straight with this sharp pain in my back...

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Keep an eye out for A Lexicon of Awesome: a melancholics search for a better world of words in the fall of 2020.

Don't Just Write It - Live It

We want our voice heard, read and felt.

No doubt by those closest to us. But not only, right?

Blogs and podcasts and social-media tribes. Live shows, readings and markets. Clubs, groups and circles. We want to say something colorful and wise, share an ancient truth no one seems to be sharing, build others up while building our brand and all the while continue to refine what it is we want to say.

Before you write that next song. Or pick up on that next chapter. Or sketch out the next canvas. Ask yourself:

Q. How am I living the message I want to share?

Q. Am I telling the stories I want to live or avoid or aspire to?

Q. What core value have I been ignoring lately? What has sabotaged my character or faith or mission? Am I willing to go get it back, today?

After all, "from the overflow of our heart, the mouth speaks" and the hands create and the stories are told.

If our clearest and most potent messages are internalized, filtered through heart, spirit, mind and body and overflowing onto those around us. What's your message?

Is your voice being heard? If so, is it the one you want to share?