Below are the notes from my Spark talk at Luminous:

There is a literary term, ekphrasis, which is made up of the Greek words ek and phrasis, which are literally translated “out” and “to speak” respectively. When combined, they form the verb ekphrazien, which means to speak out, or proclaim.

In literature, ekphrasis poetry is writing in response to art.

Beyond literature, we know this conceptually in our own lives.

It’s why musicians are compelled to make music after hearing a great song, a writer picks up their pen after reading an epic tale and a painter picks up their brush after witnessing beauty.

In Genesis 2:23, we see man’s first word after being introduced to the newly formed woman.

this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she will be called woman for she was taken out of man.

The man responded to the creation set before him in a poem acknowledging both the creation as well as the creator.

I experienced this in what I can only imagine as a far less intense way during a writing exercise at the University of Iowa, where I studied English. We were instructed to observe an art piece at the University’s Art Museum, and create a poem in response.

I chose to sit down in front of Jackson Pollock’s painting entitled Mural. As I observed the detail in the chaos, and the intricacies in the grandness of the piece, I began to experience a deep appreciation for the painting. But perhaps more importantly, I began to experience an appreciation of the artist.

Of course, responding to creation ultimately leads to us responding to the creator.

And this holds true in our lives. We encounter creation all the time, which means we are constantly presented with the opportunity to respond.

The questions we are faced with are: Will we take notice?
Will we respond?

We are invited into the Kingdom life and Kingdom work by the one who is making all things new. And we don’t wait to join God in the renewal of all things until we’ve honed our craft or attained a certain status.

We begin by taking notice.
We begin by responding.

The creative life force at work in us and around us, God’s good work, begs a response.

My prayer is this:
May we be a people who take notice, may we create the space needed in our hearts and lives to respond to his work, and may we do that by living lives full of awe, wonder, grace and mercy.

I was planning on having the print version of Creative Theology in print by now. I just found out this week that I won’t have the book until late June, which means you won’t have it until July 1st, which I’m now calling the release date.

As I’ve learned throughout the process, not everything (including the printing schedule) goes as planned. Chalk it up to another learning experience for me.

In fact, there have been so many learning experiences (read, mistakes) during this process that I am putting together a free ebook for those of you who are interested in self-publishing. It will be distributed to my newsletter. If you aren’t signed up already, you can subscribe here.

The ebook will share 10 mistakes I made in the writing, editing, designing, fundraising, and printing parts of the self-publishing process. More to come. If you would like to get it as soon as it drops, remember to subscribe to the newsletter.

“If I read a book that cost me $20 and I get one good idea, I’ve gotten one of the greatest bargains of all time.” – Tom Peters

I absolutely belive this quote. Sure books inspire, challenge, and motivate. But the beauty of a book is that it can trigger a thought and spark a conversation that ends in a good idea.  And a good idea, when acted upon, can change your life.

Now, I’m not quite saying that reading my book will change your life, but I’m certainly not not saying it

Hear this: the book, is not designed to give you all the answers about creativity and faith, but rather begin a conversation. I am sure that if you wrestle with the content, preferably in a community, you will walk away with at least one new idea. And that one idea is well worth more than the $20 you spent on the book. Consider that my guarantee.

You can order the book here.

I am excited to be a part of the first ever Luminous Project! I will be sharing a brief talk on one of the core concepts of my book, ekphrasis art. I explain in the book that the way we interact with creation is directly related to how we respond to the Creator. In literature, the form of poetry that is written in response to a piece of art is called ekphrasis poetry. The work is a compound word from the Greek ek and phrasis with mean out and to speak, respectively. The word then means to speak out.

We all know this concept on a deeply human level, as we’ve encountered creation that makes us speak out, or respond. So I make a claim in the book that this concept can be applied more broadly than poetry, as it’s true in our lives.

How we respond on a daily basis to the Creator of the universe is ekphrasis living. A body of work is not realized in one – or even a few – high points, but also in the daily faithfullness of wading through the mundane. We have opportunities to respond to God’s creative, redemptive work all around us. It starts with noticing, and then responding to that which you notice.

I’d love to meet you if you attend the Luminous Project. If you haven’t registered yet, use “luminousLOVE” (case sensitive) to get 30% off.

First things first, the new STORY site is up and as beautiful as ever. I am a huge fan of HTML5, but this is a great example of why flash is not dead.

The site has some videos of past talks, and I watched Sean Astin talking about his process for making a film adaptation of the acclaimed children’s book Number the Stars with his wife. They are raising 100% of equity for the film prior to lining up distributors, cast, etc. This style of producing the film goes against the grain of traditional large house production companies. And I love it. He had the following to say about his decision to self-publish raise the funds themselves:

My commitment to doing it this way I was always thinking about it as protecting the creative process…But it actually is the creative process. The journey to get the movie made the way we want to make it requires all the discipline and sensitivity of an artist. I’m willing to fail and do it this way and fail rather than compromise.

This is a concept I have tried to wrestle to the ground in my own work, namely my book, Creative Theology (which you can get in print in a few short weeks!). I wanted to create a book that was a fusion of thought and art. The form needed to match the concept.

The design is too good to be tucked away and forgotten. The ideas in the book are presented in such a way to begin a conversation, not end one. The writing is terse and lean. The book is designed to be out, where it can be skimmed, referenced and spur on conversations about faith and creativity.

I pitched the book to a literary agent, and his response was “no thanks.” Of course, I don’t have a large enough platform to mitigate the risk of a book that is very expensive to print. I get that. I also can’t take the content and put it on white pages with black ink, to drive down the printing price to a comfortable margin. It wouldn’t work.

I’m willing to do it this way and fail rather than compromise. And that’s a terrifyingly wonderful place to be in.

So I became the producer and the artist. I have skin in the game, even after a successful $5,000 Kickstarter campaign. Financial failure is a real possibility, and I knew that going in. But I’d rather fail financially, and have produced the best book I can, than create something that lessens the risk.

You know what they say, high risk, high reward. Or maybe high risk, garage full of books…