A way forward?

One of the annoying truths about creativity and communication:

when you’re ‘on’,
you’re ON!
when you’re ‘off’,
it sucks.

Last night I thought that truth held fast … until I woke up this morning and checked my e-mail. I had several great comments throughout the day from friends saying that the University of Chicago Divinity School Ministry Program’s e-mails I sent out last night were awesome. It produced some excitement. Then came the criticism. Some of the personal e-mails I sent last night got responses ranging from “Ok Adam, that was more than my mid-day 3-sentence reasonable reading length” to “Adam, I couldn’t understand it. Your thoughts went all over the place and even re-reading it didn’t help.”

That response hurt. Exampled in a lackluster set of pictures from an event this afternoon, my creativity and communication skills are in a funk.

Luckily, the desolation gets little chance to set in and ferment. I’m not completely convinced this is a good thing (we all need lows from time to time in order to learn), but my nightly renewal came from the blogosphere. I continuously track (on last count) 55 different blogs. They include topics such as religion, buddies’ reflections, non-profit marketing advice, biblical studies blogs from professors, multimedia and motion graphics firms, advanced photography techniques, and many others.

Here are four entries that are ‘worth’ it on their own, but put together begin to feed off of each other:

First is an entry in CreativeThink called The “Thuban Phenomenon” and has a sermon illustration I know I’ll use in a congregation in 2.5 years. Anyone have a good answer to that? I’m reading John Henry Cardinal Newman, so I’m a little skewed at the moment.

Second, is a site I know I’m going to use in a workshop I’m leading in late August on the relationship between spirituality and technology. A blogging nun, who recently spoke at my school’s ministry conference, put up a link to “3 Minute Retreat”s. Even though this says three minutes, I know it’ll absorb a Saturday afternoon in preparation for the workshop just going through the archives and pulling out gems.

Third, is one of my favorite movements: Church Marketing Sucks. This site rocks. They have a blog entry about church architecture that is awesome. While most churches cannot alter their architecture if their building already exists, there’re still tons of possibilities to make little alterations after this inspiration.

Finally, my favorite biblical studies web blog is in conjunction with my favorite biblical studies website: www.ntgateway.com The administrator, Mark Goodacre (a prof. in Duke’s Religion dept.), wrote an entry on the Seven Deadly Sins in Writing. I wish I’d read this prior to the slew of mid-terms I handed in last week. It would no doubt have helped.