The future of libraries according to Seth Godin:

The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it’s fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

I think he’s on to something here. I’m wondering if the kind of place he is describing is the new “third place,” a place for a community to gather that is neither home nor work. What if coffee shops started hiring librarians and creating shared learning spaces. Even better, what if libraries started creating coffee bars to keep people in the library to help foster learning relationships. I’d spend my time there.

Braveheart is one of my favorite movies. I used to watch it at least once a week while I was in college. There’s this great scene right after William Wallace gives his first rally-the-troops speech when his closest friends ask him what they should do next. He tells them “just be yourselves.”

I’m not about to draw a comparison between William Wallace and Jesus. But I wonder if he (Jesus) asks us to just be ourselves. (I’m not talking about out natural selves here: we’re told that we’ve been given new selves and that our old selves are to be killed off.) What exactly would give me that impression? I’m so glad you asked!

In Romans 12, Paul talks about being ourselves like this: 6 let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t. If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; 7 if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; 8 if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face. (The Message)

This is the part where I start asking questions that I don’t have answers for. If Jesus expects us to just be ourselves, what exactly does that mean? How do you just be yourself? Does that mean to do whatever occurs to you? What if we don’t look anything like our new nature? And what if we can’t remember who we are?

No doubt these are very western first-world questions. So maybe I’m asking the wrong questions here. Maybe better questions would be: How do we kill off our old selves? And how do we pay more attention to what Jesus has to say about what we are to do?

Seth Godin nails it on so many levels:

It’s a little like the bump we got after the Cold War ended. The peace dividend was there, just waiting for us to repurpose our military, our military budget and our military research. We didn’t. We squandered the window, wasted the money and didn’t rush to fill it with the sort of top-down industrial projects (like high speed rail and efficient new forms of energy) that could have changed everything.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to set up totems in my life – little things that I hold dear that represent bigger things that I hold dear. They bear a resemblance to each other, but they exist separately. It’s easy to confuse the totem for the bigger thing, and start to be more concerned about the health of the totem instead of the health of the bigger thing. So much so that we can lose track of the bigger thing that’s at stake.

For instance, your home group might be doing really well. But it’s the last vestige of what used to be a healthier and much larger fellowship. If you focus all your energy on trying to protect and preserve that home group, it too will end up unhealthy. If, on the other hand, you focus all your energy as a group on loving people outside your group then you will end up creating more healthy groups and ultimately a large, healthy fellowship. But you will give people up in the process. They will go on to be in other groups. And your group will most definitely change. But you’ve got to cut down your totem so you can take care of the larger thing that it represents.

So goes my theory at least.

In British Columbia, Grant Holden attempted to draw attention to this phenomenon on a much larger scale by cutting down a 500 year old Golden Spruce (the only one of it’s kind). It was the last vestige of a healthy and much larger forest that was cut down without regard to the consequences. But the communities in the area had started confusing the totem – the Golden Spruce – for the larger forest and didn’t see the real damage that had been done until the Golden Spruce had been destroyed. Strangely, those communities were more angry with Holden for cutting down their totem than they were with the logging companies and themselves for destroying the forest.

Cutting down totems isn’t popular. There are lots of people in British Columbia that want Holden dead. But cutting down totems is necessary when the real thing is forgotten in light of the totem. I think this is the reason why God insisted that we not make totems (He calls them idols). It’s so easy to confuse the idol for the real thing. So quit wasting your time on the totems in your life. Cut them down. Focus on the real things instead.

In 1930 the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that we would only work 15-20 hours a week. That, obviously, hasn’t happened. Instead, we have learned to squeeze as much productivity as we possibly can out of our work week. In fact, we have even increased the number of hours we work.

You see, our economic worth is determined by our output. If we want to increase our worth, then we only have three options – either be more efficient, work more hours, or both. Economics dictates that we have to do this – because if we don’t then someone else will and we will be pushed out of the job.

Well, there is one other way – to be more creative at solving problems. Here’s the thing – creativity doesn’t work the same way as productivity. You can’t work harder in order to be creative. Nor can you work less. Creativity is different. Oh, it’s definitely work. It requires that we show up. All the time.

But it is not entirely our work. There’s something else going on. I have some of my own ideas, and I’ll share them eventually, but Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat. Pray. Love., does a much better job at describing this “something else” that’s going on:

Great video from Granger Community

So, right, I mentioned that I was reading a book a month this year – and, hey! Book #1 is complete. Well, it’s been complete, but I’ve spent the last month pondering it. A book like The Art of War demands both immediate action and a long period of contemplation. If you’re engaged in any kind of creative activity - whether music, painting, writing, or even starting a new company – then you absolutely need to read this book. It explains why you encounter so much resistance whenever you sit down to create and what you can do to push through it.

The author, Steven Pressfield, diagnoses the resistance to and activity of creation as ultimately spiritual. I think he’s absolutely right, but for some different reasons than he mentions in the book. I think he paints a good picture that angels act as muses. But it’s only partway to the truth. I think the ultimate muse is God.¹

We are created in the image of (or bearing the mark of) God, and He is love. He created because He is love, and love gives itself away. While we all carry brokenness in some way, we all also in some way carry a resemblance to the Creator. When we create, we aren’t just creating by ourselves, we are co-creating with God. Or, as John Chandler at Collide Magazine wrote, at the very least “a person who makes, who creates, is a human who is straining into the image of God that abides in their soul.”

Scripture tells us that we are both children of and ambassadors for God, and that we are able to exercise his authority on Earth. I think part of that authority is creating. But there’s another authority that is operating in the world, one that is much darker and sinister: the opposite of love. If love is about giving away, anti-love is about taking.² And if love creates, then anti-love will resist the act of creation – and if it fails in that task, then it will twist the thing being created in order to take instead of give.

Giving into resistance is giving into anti-love, and ultimately is abdicating our role as children, ambassadors, and co-creators. The tragic thing is that “the whole creation is groaning”³ for us to step into these roles. Donald Miller says it well

Made in the image of God, able to speak something into nothing, able to create solutions to the world’s problems, we stammer about in disbelief, waiting for somebody else to take responsibility for our lives and for the lives we have been given to care for.

Harsh indictment, perhaps. But I’m writing this not to condemn but to encourage. The battle against resistance is real and hard. But don’t give up the fight. Bring into being the thing that the Creator has put into you, because the world is crying out for it.

• American Graffiti
• Carbaret
• Network
• The African Queen
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Tootsie
• In the Heat of the Night
• All the President’s Men
• The Wild Bunch
• The Apartment
• Spartacus (the original, not this year’s remake)
• Sunrise
• Easy Rider
• A Night at the Opera
• Platoon
• 12 Angry Men
• Swing Time
• Sophie’s Choice
• Goodfellas
• The Last Picture Show
• Do The Right Thing
• Blade Runner
• Yankee Doodle Dandy
• Ben-Hur

You need to read another note about New Year’s resolutions about as badly as you need a jab to the eye with a sharp stick.

Which is why this isn’t a note about resolutions. It might appear that way, but that’s only because you seem to be impervious to Jedi mind tricks. Or I’m out of practice.

Honestly, I don’t make resolutions. I find that they end up being vague and grandiose. But I do make goals, and try to focus my energy towards them over the year.

For the past couple of years I’ve taken a couple of days in December to do a bit of reflection over the past year. What went well, what went not-so-well, what didn’t go at all. And then I decide what it is I really want to work on this year. I’d like to share a few of those goals with you to set some background for my writing over the next year.

Goal 1: Twelve Books

This year I want to read twelve books. I don’t have the list together yet, but I’m making a departure from my usually strict diet of non-fiction “make you think” books. I feel that my creative writing abilities have suffered since I stopped reading stories and I’d like that to change. So, this year, more fiction.

Goal 2: Twenty Five Movies

One of my long time goals has been to watch every movie on the American Film Institute Top 100 List. There’s actually two versions of this list – 1997 and 2007. I’m working off the most recent version, and then will backtrack to the original. Really, this is the first half of a two year goal. I think I’ve watched about half of them, mostly by accident or in film school, so I’ve got about a total of fifty left. I’m working from the bottom up to save the best for last.

Goal 3: Run a 5k & 10k

This is a rollover from last year. I ran the 5k, but got distracted and didn’t run the 10k. I know I can run a 10k. I ran the Bolder Boulder i 2006. Assuming my body can hold out, I might shift this to a 10k & half marathon. We’ll see.

Goal 4: Write 50 Posts

Yup, that’s the goal. A post a week for the entire year. Ok, that would be 52, but you get the idea. I’m thinking I should have enough fodder for this one – with over thirty books and movies to talk about, I would sure hope so.

I have far more than four goals, but those are probably the easiest for me to keep you updated on over the next year. I’ll be posting lists of the book and movies sometime in the next week, keeping track of my runs on Nike+, and you can check here for posts every week.

What are your goals for the next year? How are you keeping track of them?

Image: Start Line by Andi Sidwell on Flickr

It’s a brand new year and I have so much to share with you. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very good year. No, I’m not expecting the economy is going to make a sudden break to the upside, that Haiti is suddenly going to be freed of misery, or even that television is going to become a Safe Place for Kids. Nope, not going to say those things.

I’m convinced that the Kingdom of God breaks into the world just a little bit more every year. And this year will be no different. Sometimes we just need to take our spiritual earmuffs off for a second and remember Jesus said “The Kingdom of God is at hand” an awful lot. As in, it’s right here, right now, and available to touch. If you follow Jesus, that means this year is going to be a very good year. Good as in welcome, desired, and with purpose.

In that light, everything else fades to the background. The economy only matters in the context of God’s economics of abundance. Haiti may be full of misery, but I hear stories of the Kingdom of God breaking out there even now. And I stopped watching television and started choosing my own content, so there. You can do the same.

So, Happy New Year. Search for the Kingdom of God breaking into life. Celebrate when you find it. And join in. Because life is not a spectator sport.

What do you hope for in 2011?

Image: Lonely Tree by Jule_Berlin on Flickr