Shameless Promotion of Creativity...

This post is about my sons and their creative expressions. Part of the vision I had for my family was to have lots of opportunity for creativity. Creativity and the creation of new ideas, music, and objects of beauty is, to me, a very core part of spirituality. These activities provide me connections that exclusively rational processes don't seem to address. My wife Karey and I have placed a lot of tools in the hands of our boys to create what ever they were interested in at various times in their growth. They have produced some works that I am very proud of.

My oldest son Greg has written a number of songs and performs, when he has time between school and work, at various places around San Francisco. I particularly like his latest song called "Henry Poole is Here" and his cover of "Hallelujah." You can hear his music and see some of his photos at his myspace page. He has chosen to be a professional musician and composer as his life's profession.

My youngest son Keith has really spent time creating his own movies and is now actively creating flash games to earn money for college.

His public safety video on seatbelt safety came in the top 10 of over 700 entries. You can view his movie "Flames or Flowers" at the Safety Scholars website at this link. His is the third video called "Flames or Flowers" by Keith Harty.



If you are interested in playing his game Galactic Dodgeball you can find it here. If you want to see his whole collection of games to play you can go to his home game page at KeithKong Games.

One of the books that changed how I viewed what was important in my life was the book, "The Artist Way" by Susan Cameron. Her work on the creative process is profound. She has many methods to break the blocks one might have in finding the source of creative insight. Her work in exposing the myths surrounding what it means to be an artist opens up the artistic way to more than simply the act of painting, writing, sculpting, composing, and other forms of creation. It shows that being an artist is the very expression of one's soul and that vein of gold is profoundly open to each person that seeks it.

It makes me very happy to see my sons find this within themselves and watch as it matures. To me, this is what Life is about, the birthing of one's inner expressions of creativity.

Our Last Christmas Pageant

My wife and I have participated in a fairly large scale Christmas Pageant for the last 11 years. It involves building sets, rehearsals, writing scripts, writing music, sound effects, stage effects, lighting, audio engineering, costumes, and putting it all together. This year we will retire from this particular creative process. My wife Karey has written a new script every year and this year she wanted to connect the influence of the philosophy of Jesus to its influence on various world figures including Jesse Owens, Amelia Earhart, and Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of why one might celebrate the birth of Jesus.

In the Pageant there are various moments that bring about all kinds of different emotions including tears, joy, sadness, and laughter. Most times something unexpected happens in almost every performance. In this particular excerpt from 2 years ago you can see how my youngest son Keith dealt with a falling pillar...



Even though this could have been a potential disaster, Keith was able to take the moment and make it enhance the performance. He was questioned a number of times if the falling pillar was actually part of the act. I think there is something to be learned when one contemplates how this might apply to life in general. Things that may look like disasters might actually have some opportunities for enhancement.

A number of years ago I realized that I was not doing what I wanted to do. I was not only working out of obligation, but was in conflict with what I believed to be the right thing to do. With this awakening I decided to leave what I was doing and begin doing what I found joy in doing.

What I realized was when I did what I found joy in, the quality of my work went up and instead of attracting clients and business to something I found little joy in, I attracted clients and business to what I liked doing. This seems so simple when I state it this way, but I think we as humans have a tendency to get trapped in single minded ways of seeing the world.

There is a great web site called TED: Ideas Worth Spreading that has a number of videos on different ways of seeing things. This particular video presents some ideas that show how our current educational system often robs us of our ability to think creatively.



This video really hit home for me as I have learned to remodel how I experience life. No longer is a mistake the horrible thing to be avoided at all costs and no longer is a falling pillar the end of the play.