Maybe your new book isn’t climbing the charts like you hoped
Maybe your prayer group or ministry effort has dwindling interest
Maybe your artwork or music isn’t creating interest
Maybe your business idea is stagnating
Maybe your blog isn’t making a difference…
People want to have freedom from pain.
Are you providing that?
Are you truly communicating this benefit in what you offer?
Maybe it’s because Lent is here, but I’m ruminating how the pain points in my life. I’m stripping away what is unhelpful or unnecessary. I also want to help people to struggle less as they get their message out.
In that spirit, I compiled the most helpful things I’ve learned through helping people with online communication and integrated, inbound marketing over the last 7 years. I’ve featured the top 20 free tools and the tactics to use them well. This knowledge and the practical strategy to implement it will make it easy to solve problems at lot of us have.
It’s the Pro tool you deserve to jump-start what you’re up to.
There is no price listed for it. Simply pay what you feel it is worth.
Sometimes the pain point is simply uncomfortable, uncharted territory.
For future resource added to the Jump-Starter Kit click here.
Or click on the image for the Info Page.
I haven’t been able to put my finger solidly down on the reason why I haven’t enjoyed the artwork of Thomas Kinkade, the self-described “painter of light.” Until now.
If you like his work, please accept my apology. It could just be a matter of personal taste, but my dislike centers on something that maybe he has created very unintentionally. Yet, on inspection of his many works, I find something very untrue about it. Something saccharine. Something short of Truth. Do you?
This brings me to a great commentary on truth. As NT Wright says, “Truth happens”. It is not a matter of whether I speak correctly of something factual. “The table is made of wood,” for instance. In the case of corresponding evidence, for an authentic reality, we may speak what is true. But most of life doesn’t flesh out that way. Really, none of the biggest questions do.
So, perhaps, Truth is a verb.
I appreciated N. T. Wright’s thoughts on beauty and truth (see short video). I’d like to hear your thoughts about it.
I invited Shane to post here, chiefly because I feel a kinship to Shane. The artist and the spiritual formation learner I am jives so nicely with Shane’s outlook, and what he does as his life’s work. Writers, artist, thinkers, creatives, musicians, and so forth bring vital perspective to Christian Spirituality, and walking with God. Shane tends to this group, which is not an easy task.
Shane Tucker
Who is SHANE TUCKER?
Shane lived in Ireland for eleven years with his wife, two daughters and son. Visit his site. He works with the arts, spiritual disciplines, evocative messengers, and symposiums to engage people in their journey with Christ. He is passionate about seeing people live into their purpose in life, and he finds applications for that as a ‘soul friend’ (spiritual director) via Soul Friend (www.ArtistSoulFriend.com). He can be reached via either website or at shane dot tucker at gmail dot com.
Please enjoy Shane’s post, and feel free to offer your insights, comments, or questions.
Aesthetic Spirituality by Shane Tucker
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” -ThomasMerton
We have an innate quality to notice beauty at every turn. To know that something is ugly or unattractive we must, of course, know that true beauty exists . . and in some way, to have experienced it. We resonate most strongly with that which seems to offer wholeness or a sense of completeness to our lives. That resonance may also be experienced as a deep hunger. Seldom do we know ourselves well enough to be able to express those yearnings in a coherent fashion. Itʼs in those times we need a bridge – something enabling us to connect, to integrate disparate elements into a whole. . . into a sense of being whole.
Art – any method or medium of creativity – can often serve as this necessary bridge, this connection, between what we know and what we long or yearn to know. Art gives us the tools, the words, the motion to live into what we sense is already there, but as of yet remains unseen. In this sense, art itself is a means by which we find ourselves by moving beyond ourselves. Through art (the highest sort) we are transported into places and spaces where we can lose ourselves. Itʼs a gift to be fully present to, and fully absorbed into, a situation or individual where weʼve forgotten to be concerned with our own desires or even aware of our image before others. Iʼve had a few experiences like this directly and by extension.
One of those experiences occurred three summers ago while I was attending a festival of creativity in middle England. I sought out a band I wanted to become acquainted with and unexpectedly, during their set I was in continual awe. Through their skillful use of music and visual elements, I was caught up in the moment and I forgot myself. Classic. Iʼve had similar experiences standing on green, broad, bald hilltops around Ireland as I drank in the arresting landscape around me. Another example are Christmas mornings since my three children arrived on the scene. Experiencing the uninhibited enthusiasm and joy demonstrated by these little people as they open gifts and share their excitement with the family – these are moments of pure bliss.
In times such as these we are given the gift of losing ourselves . . more specifically, concern for ourselves. The end, however, is not the experience of forgetting oneself in beauty, wonder, and awe; or even that of knowing a deep resonance which affords us the equivalent of tonal tonic through lifeʼs journey. Itʼs knowing Him. I hear, see, touch, taste and feel the Creator in this God-saturated existence called life. Heʼs made Himself ever- present in the created order and ever-accessible. He has, in fact, painted Himself into the portrait, written Himself into the narrative and sung Himself into our lives – even into existence, in Jesus Christ. When we recognize His overtures of love, our moment is to respond whole-heartedly, in trust, recklessly abandoned. In His hands, we then become the artwork by which He invites others to lose and find themselves in Love.
“Those who want to save their lives will lose them. But those who lose their lives for me will find them.” – Jesus, Matthew 16:25
Some of you know that I used to claim fellow-Pennsylvanian, Andrew Wyeth as my favorite living American artist. He died this past January 16, in his sleep at the age of 91. His 7 decades of artwork are a profound legacy to the world of art, and culture in general. He was a master of the difficult egg tempera medium, and dry brush watercolor. Technically, Wyeth has superior talent as a drawer and painter, having been tutored by his father, skilled illustrator N.C. Wyeth.
At this time of year, I am attracted by the changing seasons, and the brilliant landscapes. Wyeth did many paintings of landscapes, and I’m drawn to his works at this time of year. Please enjoy a few samples, and these links to his collections. I hope you get a chance to visit them in person.
This is a peek inside the NLT Holy Bible: Mosaic to one of the many beautiful artworks published inside. I was really drawn to this one. It’s of Jesus at his baptism, where the Trinity was recorded as all being present. (Visually, Audibly, and in the Incarnation of Jesus)
Perhaps this image could be used in your time with God, as you reflect on the gift of the Incarnation, in whom the Father was well pleased.
