When I see anything that is wildly creative, I’m always fascinated to know the process behind it. I would love to know what inspired Cormac McCarthy to write “The Road”. Or how Guy Laliberte went from being a street performer to the genius behind Cirque du Soleil. Or how Daniel Day Lewis concocted the fiendishly dark role of Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood”. In every great work of art, the creator seems to have become somewhat detached from reality, letting the process run a path of its own. Perhaps this is nowhere more evident than the most delicate of creative endeavors. Automobile advertising.
Here’s how I picture the ad agency counseling the auto dealer to voice his radio ad: “No Crazy Mike, you have to say it faster. You’ve paid for sixty seconds, there can be absolutely no dead space. And you can’t just say, ‘we’ll take your trade-in no matter how much you owe’ – you have to yell it, otherwise people might not pay attention. Research has shown that screaming rants about overstocked inventory and the insanity of low sticker prices makes you seem more trustworthy.”
Car ads do not make me want to buy a car. They make me want to kick my dog.
On the opposite end of the marketing spectrum lies my corporate-crush, Apple. I confess to loving everything about them, all the way down to the laid-back-but crisp keynote addresses at each product launch. Inside their stores, the oxygen smells cleaner, and like with any good crush, my palms get sweaty when I approach the Genius Bar. They don’t sell electronics. Radio Shack has electronics. Apple offers electronic-coolness. Who cares about dropped calls, poor battery life, or unhealthy alliances with AT&T? All greatness has its detractors and Mac is no different (if you doubt me, just Google ‘Steve Jobs, antichrist’ to see all the haters).
But what I love most about Apple is not what they offer, but what they leave out. They are the very essence of minimalist…a virtue that I’m convinced is biblical. There is a healthy distance between each MacBook on the shelf. They have TV ads that have no pitchman’s voice at all. Their print ads have an enormous amount of negative space. Even their logo has a bite taken out. They understand what appeals, which is, less is more. It’s more than gimmickry. It’s how I want to live.
And it is what this blog space hopes to embody. There will be a few of us sharing our experiences on what faith in the real world looks like, but there will be no sermonettes. No do’s, don’t’s, how-to’s, or I-told-you-so’s. There won’t be bold decrees. Just some stories about how little things shape the big things. It is our belief that the narrative of our lives is written more in the margins than between the lines, and our days remembered more for the subtleties than staples.
However, this will also not be some ethereal mish-mash of half-truths and artsy-fartsy rhetoric. At least that is not the intent. We want them to be well-written, but more than that, we want them to be helpful. A dialogue about how to encourage one another to fall more in love with God. About how to be expectant. And about how to be awoken to the brokenness that infects our world but escapes our senses. We want to step away from the Twitter-driven, status-updating, text-obsessed world – if only for a few minutes – and clear some room for God to do something deep in our souls.
Your input and feedback on this blog will be more than desired, it will be essential, as you assuredly have better things to do than just peruse our personal journals. There will be room for disagreement. There will be room for doubt. We will seek truth without the need to audit each other’s theology. We don’t want vulgarity, but we’re not looking for what is appropriate, because appropriate doesn’t inspire. This won’t be a place for grandstanding, or useless arguing over biblical minutiae…the only requirement is honesty and a good dose of humility.
At the risk of being self-promoting, we ask that you bookmark our page, and check back every week or so for updates. If, after a few entries, you hate it – then you can go back to your Danielle Steele novels, or TMZ news, or whatever it is that uninteresting people read (kidding of course…we find TMZ riveting).
In the end, this is about change. When we look back on our lives 20, 30, 40 years from now, there will be a jillion things that will have influenced us to become who we become. Here’s to hoping that we will have made room for the deeper things.
Stay tuned…
