...no one of consequence

Just brooding over this concept of excellence today - more a thinking-out-loud/rough-draft/thought experiment than articulating a position…

The problem with excellence is that it’s achievable within our own natural capacity and abilities.  You can get there with enough time, effort, skill dev, resources, etc.  Anybody can get there.  If you don’t have the capacity/proficiency/time to do it yourself – you hire.

Excellence is mathematical, logical and has a limit.  It’s quantifiable.  Has structure and rules.  The paths/means can vary greatly as long as they are relatively efficient and as long as the end/product/result is excellent.  Once something is fully excellent you are done – it can’t be made MORE excellent without changing parameters - but even that is still just playing with the inputs of the same basic restrictive equation - which can never balance out to a result greater than excellent.

Could it be that this concept of excellence is actually just low hanging fruit?  Actually mediocre compared to fruit higher up on the tree?  Yet that’s what we strive after as the ultimate, the pinnacle, the zenith in what we’re pursuing or attempting… both in the church and the corporate world and human endeavour in general.  Why, even if everything is excellent, do I feel like something elusive and nebulous is missing - my soul still having a shadow of dissatisfaction somehow?  In the same way that my head is satisfied with the scientific explanation of reality but my heart doesn’t buy it.

May I suggest the possibility of a higher more noble pursuit…  fruit that grows higher up on the tree…

Elegance.

Within elegance, excellence is inherent and intrinsic but resplendently veiled and diluted and dispersed into enhancing shades of colour and hints of pleasant aromas and richness of underlying textures.

Excellence can be cold, calculating, exacting, innocuous and devoid of beauty and grace.  All that’s required is that it is excellent.  It’s doesn’t have to have colour that soothes your eyes, an aroma that stirs memory or a taste that explodes.  It just has to perfectly fit the legal requirements and genetic parameters to be fruit.  It’s irrelevant how easy it is to reach or how low it hangs on the tree - it just has to be on the tree.

Elegance is the territory of x-factor, where there is room for the sum to be greater than the parts.  It’s artistic.  Harmoniously inuitive and counter-intuitive.  It’s transcendant.  It’s where it moves beyond us, becomes bigger than us, yet may involve path and process and result that is actually easier, simpler, spiritual even, and more fluid and organic than mere excellence.

Excellence is the matrix and Elegance is Neo.

It’s the layer above excellence where God can move and faith is released and love and soul can glow no matter the arena of pursuit.

As workers in the church, maybe the difference between our days grinding like a job versus flowing like a ministry…

is which fruit we set our desire on.

1. Find people to do my task list.
2. Love them.
3. Encourage them.
4. Cheer them.
5. Care for them.
6. Empower them.
7. Develop them.
8. Pray for them.
9. Brag about them.
10. Help them find people to do their task list.

Some interesting quotes from Tim Steven’s notes on Mark Steelehouse’s talk at the Echo conference (One of a number of conferences that I would have loved to attend this year):

• If we want to change the world’s perspective about Christians and the church, it’s going to come from the artists in the church.

• The unreached artists of the world are the only unreached people group in the world who have the ability to reach every other unreached people group of the world. And the artists in the church are the only ones who have the possibility to reach the unreached artists of the world.

That last one is a mouthful!  What do you think?

My wife found an email in one of my files that I forwarded to her way back in 1998.  You know back then when we all forwarded funny email to all our friends?

This was from before I was quite so thoroughly addicted so to re-read it now was much more applicable.  I have no idea of the original source of the email.  Some are definitely funnier than others.  I edited out the least funny ones.

Here’s the first ten:

You know you’re drinking too much coffee when…

1. You answer the door before people knock
2. Jaun Valdez named his donkey after you
3. You haven’t blinked since the last lunar eclipse
4. You just completed another sweater and you don’t know how to knit
5. You grind your coffee beans in your mouth
6. You sleep with your eyes open
7. You have to watch videos in fast forward
8. The only time you’re standing still is during an earthquake
9. You can take a picture of yourself from ten feet away without using the timer
10. You lick your coffee pot clean

More to come.

Pondering the flow of life on this stuffy summer day…. as Moby spins in the background.

I miss blogging - so many things come to mind to write and explore… always at inopportune times it seems… but the truth is it probably wouldn’t matter… I don’t make the time or take the opportunities.  Even Facebook takes effort.  Twitter is the path of least resistance now.

Makes me wonder if somewhere out there there are mystics missing my voice like I miss some of theirs.  Michelle Cuthbertson, Graffiti61, Nicolas Nelson, Mixed Moss… just to name a few.  Some are silent.  Maybe their “Blog Fatigue” became permanent like mine did.  Some I think must be vocal somewhere and I have just lost the URL or they have a different one now.

On days like this I also think of things attempted and failed.  Worse, the thought of trying again now brings vision, creativity, excitment!  Those ships have long since sailed, haven’t they?  Why resurrect now long after the opportunity has been missed, lost, squandered?  Where did that come from!?!  Scarier - What does that mean?!?  I think - nope I know - that I preferred the damage and fear that usually accompanies rehashing those memories.  Sick but safe.

And now Green Day is taunting through my speakers: “I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies…”

It can be deafening when you choose to listen to everything in your environment… unsettling to realize it’s all speaking to you all the time.

~nooc

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/20/bbtv-a-morning-at-in-1.html

I recently completed a painting (sorry - still no pics for those that have been asking me on FB).

I am a rank amateur… and by rank I mean smelly… but this painting was a first for me.  It’s the first one I’ve done that engages me beyond the fact that I did it.  When I observe it… I forget that I did it… it doesn’t seem to equate to the sum of the processes that I put into it.  When I look on it… it seems irrelevant that I did it.  Whether anyone else ever appreciates it or not… I know the result has transcended me.  It’s a very surreal feeling and is raising questions in me about what part artistic endeavour plays in my future… and what part artistic endeavour plays in general in culture… and in the Kingdom.

It’s also put a longing in me for my manifest presence on this planet in this time to transcend the sum total of it’s inputs (my efforts, external influences, etc.).  I’m wondering if God is in the remainder after all those inputs have been divided out?  If it’s the difference… that transcendant part that’s still left over… that the inputs can’t account for…. that shines, draws, points to the new Kingdom.  Indeed, maybe it’s only in that extra that the kingdom is actually felt and tasted and foreshadowed.

I want people to sense this same K-factor quality in my life as a Christ follower, that I sense as an x-factor in this painting.

nooc

This was one of a number of questions asked of me by a stranger who added me as a friend on Facebook.  He lives in Winnipeg as I do and is apparently looking for a church to attend but found all the different denominations confusing.

This was my response:

Pleased to meet you, *****

The best way to find out about the church I attend is to read this page on our website:

http://www.riverwood.cc/page.php?page=new

It explains who we are better than I could, probably.

If you are not familiar the various denominations it can certainly be confusing.  The church I attend (Riverwood) is non-denominational, meaning we are just a regular sort of community church.

Personally, I don’t believe the bible is confusing, but rather, we as imperfect people get confused and then disagree on various things and end up being different denominations and having different views on topics.  Certain parts of the bible can be hard to understand or mysterious - and we might not understand those parts fully until we get to heaven.

I hope it encourages you to know that many different churches from different denominations in Winnipeg agree on the MOST important things, even if there are less important details that we may not agree on.  And many of these pastors meet together and pray together and work together to bless Winnipeg.  So there is a lot of unity to be thankful for.

Not all churches follow God in a biblical way, but I do think those that do are part of God’s plan to have many different “kinds” of churches, each one with different strengths and weaknesses and ways of seing things - so that He uses us all in different ways to accomplish His purposes together.  Just like the bible talks about there being many different parts but one body.

Just like there are no perfect people, there are no perfect churches.  Riverwood isn’t perfect.  We just try our best to be faithful to what we believe to be God’s leading and direction and try to grow closer to Him.

I believe the bible is the word of God, infallible and true.  I don’t look to imperfect churches or people to prove that to me… I look to Jesus to prove that to me because He said that He was “the way, the truth and the life”.

I hope you find a church that “feels like home” to you, believes the bible is true even when they don’t always understand all of it, and draws you closer to Jesus, who is the Truth.

Blessings to you,
Greg

What would you have added or left out while maintaining the “nutshell” brevity of a Facebook message?

1440 x 990

Just a quote I wanted to stick somewhere so I could remember it.  Relevant to my fledging role as Director of IT & Communications at Riverwood… which involves a lot of design work.

Rene DeHaan-Canetti, executive director of Nooma:

“You can’t separate the design from the content. If it’s not consistent, it’s detrimental. From the color palette to every single word in our films, we make sure that it’s a reflection of our choices.”