Constantly Refocusing
Everything is 20/20 in HindsightFocusing on Simple
Sometime it is hard to keep things simple in our complex world. In our attempts to “wow” “out do” “be safe” & “analyze” we often build complexity upon complexity instead of just getting to the point. It has become hard for us in our daily lives to see the forest for all the trees.
Complexity has become the antagonist of my life. I recently tried to network my home and am happy to say that I was mostly successful. The fact that I could even be “mostly successful” shows just how complex something like networking a home is.
Complexity has crept into every area of our lives. You only need to look at your pay stub or work on your taxes to be reminded of how complex our world is. Just stop and look at your online checking account or stop and watch TV and see what they are selling you in order to “simplify” your life.
Complexity is the natural result of capitalism. One of the best business models has to be “create the problem and then sell the solution.” In a way this is the very model of capitalism. Our capitalistic society wants to own and do everything. But that makes life busy and complicated. So the solution is to sell you more things that “simplify” your life and give you more time. Which means you have to earn more money and have less time in order to have more time. It really a vicious cycle when you stop to think about it.
What’s my point in this anything but simple post? Find some simplicity in your life and enjoy it. Don’t over schedule your vacation this summer. Keep your home life simple. Keep your work as simple as possible. Make your designs or marketing programs simple. Live in this moment and not for the 50 things you have to do later today. Enjoy simplicity now not later.
When the Spirit is gone.
My reflection and study of the Bible the past couple of weeks has focused on the Holy Spirit and is activity or lack there of in personal lives. I’ve struggled with the idea of the Holy Spirit for much of my life as a Christian and have not always been fully convinced of is indwelling at least on an active level. At times I viewed the Spirit as a passive dormant part of God that like a hibernating bear simply dwelt in the cave of myself until He would be awaked by the storms of life to give me peace and direction.
I of course have not really understood the spirit and have only relied upon the infrequent and feeble attempts of teaching on the Spirit that I have had in the past. I decided to take up the task myself and have feebly come to a better understanding of some of the Who What When How and Why of the Spirit. So I share it with you now.
Who? The Spirit is Part of the Eternal God. He acts as God’s Heavenly stamp of approval (approval for use) and ownership upon people and has done so through out recorded history.
What? He is a revelation of God and empowers men to do the will of God.
When? In the OT He empowered men as specific times to accomplish God’s will. In the NT He has come as the comforter (replacement for Christ) and the seal of God’s ownership upon believers.
How? (How does he work?) He works to intercede for believers to the Father. He gives us words to speak (mat 10:19) and direction. (especially in times of spiritual questioning) He gives us understanding and remembrance of scripture. He empowers believers with boldness and helps us obey the will of the Father.
Why? To the Glory of God the Father, because we are weak and frail and helpless.
I’ve also realized that we “quench the spirit” and His ability to work in and through us in a visible & tangible way. How do we do this? The easy answer is sin, and I knew this but didn’t really understand it.
I thought (and was taught) that you quench the Spirit when you repeatedly sin and keep going back to it and ignore the “urging of the spirit to stop.”
I think that may be some of how we quench Him, but more often it starts with sins of omission or things that we don’t do than things we do do. (yes I just wrote “do do” you can laugh… ok now stop:)
We quench the Spirit or turn Him into that Hibernating Bear when we ignore his voice telling us to witness to that person we talked to in line at the store or when we fail to give a word of edification to a fellow believer even though we “felt like we should have.” We quench the Spirit when we fail to feed Him with scripture and earnestly seek to follow God’s known will. (obeying scripture) We fail to “See God” ‘s Spirit working because we are not “pure in heart” and honestly have no desire to be. (Mat 5:8)
Ultimately, I believe that our lack of seeing the Spirit working in our lives and churches is because of unbelief or a lack of faith. Do we limit God? No. Do we limit God from using us and our churches? Everyday.
So what is the answer for seeing, feeling and hearing the spirit in our lives?
It’s not some great secret its just plain hard for us feeble humans..
1. Read – the Word of God
2. Believe – the Word of God
3. Obey – the Word of God
I leave you with the words of Jesus written by His friend John(c14:21-31).
“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”
Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?”
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”
“These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and (S)I will come to you ‘ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.
“Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me Get up, let us go from here.
Focusing on Little Yellow Birds
I’ve been asked to help market and brand a local dairy in our area called Kenary Dairy. In doing so I’ve created a little yellow bird named “Moe.”
Moe has gone through several stages of drawing and revision and I believe that this is close to the final version of Moe. I’ve created a little background story for Moe to help connect him to the farm and to the consumer.
Here is the quick version of Moe’s story.
Moe is a little chick who was hatched with an unusually long tail. He knows that he is different from all the other chicks on the farm and wonders why he has this long tail. The other chicks make fun of his long tail and pull on it. One day while going by the dairy Moe sees an old faded farm magazine on the ground in the straw and hops over to look at it. There he sees a little yellow bird with a long tail singing in a cage. The words in the magazine are worn and dirty and have been stepped all over by many little muddy chick feet. Moe makes out the word “Kenary” and immediately thinks that he is a “Wild Kenary.” He sings for joy at his “discovery” and is soon singing all over the farm-yard much to the dismay of the other animals. What Moe doesn’t realize is that it is a good thing that he is practicing his “singing” because it will be important for him to have a strong voice one day. He is going to have one of the most important jobs on the farm. He is going to grow up to be the farm rooster. One day it will be his job to wake up the farmer and the other animals everyday so that they can all do their jobs and get people the milk and eggs that they need.
Becoming Southern . . .
No I do not call it “The War of Northern Aggression,” and I do not speak with slow drawn out vowels. I do not primarily cook with butter or consider fried chicken one of my favorite meals. I am not afraid of driving in a few inches of snow and I do not own anything with a rebel flag on it.
I have however joined a group of believes with the designation of “Southern” on it. Although the majority of us do not hearken from the south we have joined in unity under the cause of the good news of Jesus Christ. Many of our group are Korean while others come from other nations. There are even a few like myself and our youth pastor that come from the far reaches of the north called Pennsylvania. But we now associate ourselves in some sense with the word “southern.”
Refocusing on Photoshop
My brain is still recovering from the Photoshop seminar on Monday. I have not had a chance to stop to process all the great info I got at the seminar. I was forced to hit the ground running Tuesday morning as work piled up in my absence on Monday. I’m just now getting things under control thanks to the help of some kind coworkers.
Having struggled through I now wish for even more punishment and wish to attend the World Convention in Florida the end of this month. Is it worth the time and money? Can I handle all the information? How bad would my work pile up? Will work let me go or even pay for it? These are all the questions fighting against my desire to go. I’ve never felt quite so conflicted about something so trivial.
I sent the information to the powers that be and am interested to see if there will even be and discussion about it. Maybe after a do a Photoshop training session for the Prepress they’ll consider it? We’ll have to wait and see. But for now I’m reveling in my newly acquired information and trying out the techniques I learned. Stay tuned for picture of my first experiments with “Light Painting.”
PhotoShop In Focus
I’m in Richmond at the seminar and it is filling up fast. About 200 people are here and there is no electric for all of us who brought laptops so I will be posting from my phone today and reviving my phone battery with that of my laptop.
Ok started now … talking about color and using the opposite color to light subject than what you want final background to be. Pretty cool!
Now he’s showing how youy can combine photos shot with diff settings. He’s using moving water as an example.
He is now talking about “light painting” I m so doing this this week! Basically its long exposures at night that you paint in with a flashlights. So much fun!
Probably 400 here now.
Ok second session
He’s showing how to create “panollages”
Panoramic + college
He just used the auto-align layers and I think I might be in love
You can use difference In the layer effects to manually align two layers the darker the image the more in line they are.
Ok now we are cover high dynamic range images. Basically it is using multiple photos of same subject shot at different exposures to create one fantastic shot.
I’m going to have to get plugged in over lunch, maybe I can flesh out some ideas over lunch too.
Basically he told us to go buy software that helps PhotoShop deal with HDR
The one he recommends is called Photomatix
There is a 20% discount @ HDRsoft.com when you use “digitalmastery”
Very cool effects with the program (i will post pictures tomorrow maybe)
Focusing on Photoshop
I’m so excited. I’m going to my first Photoshop training seminar in Richmond on Monday! What makes it really cool is that work is paying for me to go.
It is done by Kelby Training. They are the same group as NAPP. (National Association of Photoshop Professionals)
I will be posting throughout the day on Monday to pass on cool tips or tricks I learn. So check out my blog on Monday March 8th if you are interested in Photography, Photoshop or geek attended seminars.
Focusing on Discussion
Discussion is a euphemism. It is often used to replace 5 and 6 letter words such as argue, debate, quarrel, dispute and others that we don’t like to use. But more and more often I am finding people who are truly willing to discuss an issue, belief or concept.
True discussion is refreshing in a world full of proposed outlandish view points solely made to get a reaction from the public and thus attention for the proposer.
I’m all for good debate and discussion. I believe that even when two parties agree it is sometimes good for one to take the part of devils advocate if only for the sake of sharpening the critical thinking and verbal skills of both parties.
I also believe that all discussion will ultimately arrive at one of two conclusions.
1. Resolution Through Agreement
2. WAR
We all know what war is and no one really wins in war. War is usually brought to a conclusion through a conqueror and a vanquished foe.
The conqueror often looses just as much as the vanquished, (credibility, friendship, empathy, etc.) and is only able to retain is his or her pride. And sometimes even that is lost.
The 1st result of disscussion Resolution Through Agreement is always my goal in entering a discussion or argument. This does not mean that the parties necessarily agree on the topic at hand, but that they agree on one of the following:
1. They actually agree on the topic, but needed to discuss and flesh out their thoughts and fix the breakdown in communication between the two.
(I find this often to be the case)
2. They have completely different world views and will never really agree or change their perspective on the topic, but have a respect for the other party and can now better see where they are coming from.
3. They partially agree on the topic, but have areas where they still differ, and thats alright.
4. One or both parties have not completely made up their mind on the subject and need discussion to aid critical thinking on the issue.
5. There is a truth to this subject and we will not conclude this discussion until we agree on that truth.
I’m sure there are many many more possibilities, but I haven’t discussed this yet so I don’t know what they are.
Any Discussion?
Created to be Awed
It is my observation that we as humans have been created to be awed.
As a visual artist and lover of beauty I cannot help but to be constantly looking for beauty around me. I have recently returned from a ski trip and was awe-struck as I stood a few thousand feet above the valley below. I’ll have to admit that part of it may have been trepidation at the sheer drop off of the mountain below, but most of it was from the beauty of Gods creation as it lay blanketed in snow. I found myself almost forced to vocalize my recognition of the awesome beauty and tell and show it to my friend.
I had a similar experience the next day as we went to see Avitar in 3D. Again I found words like “Wow” & “Look at that!” coming out of my mouth. As my eyes and mind tried to comprehend what it was taking in.
We were created to be awed, and not just to be awed, but to react with verbal and emotional praise and a desire to share that awe with others. When we taste some luxurious food we do not even finish chewing that first bite before we erupt in “Mmmm”s and “Ohhh”s. Then after swallowing we go on to practically force someone to share that amazing taste with us with a “You must try this!”
Ultimately we were created to be awed by our creator. I am daily awed by His goodness and provision in every aspect of life. No man can say “I didn’t know there is a God” One must only look up to behold his awe-inspiring creation.
Psalm 19
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
If we are even partially seeing God and His work we should be erupting with “Wow”s and “Look at this” and spiritual “Mmm”s and “Ohh”s So that our mouths testify of His greatness and goodness.
