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I believe I blogged some thoughts on this before, but I’d love to hear from others as I’ve been gearing up for the big night.

What does spirituality have to do with creativity or artistry?

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Here’s what I’m looking for right at the moment

- For the event, still looking for a dancer or a crew, with an urban flavor, likely break or pop&lock

- Photographer - Just about everyone I know is an amateur photographer these days, I’m looking for someone who hasn’t hit it big (since I can’t afford them), but would like the opportunity to add something interesting to their portfolio

- Possibly a DJ - same deal, willing to do it for charity.

- Images - Send me your most thought provoking images that you’ve discovered that provoke your imagination - anything that sparks creativity, spirituality, hope, despair, anything goes.

- Does anyone know if there’s a plugin of some type for wordpress, or some way to trick out my sight, so that the solarcrash.com home page can go to an event page, without moving or changing my current link addresses on my blog?  it might be a temporary thing.

- Anyone aware of any good corporate sponsors for funding, art supplies, or food?

- Good chalkers you know of?

And the question of the day, something I think I’ve blogged loosely on in the past

What would it look like if heaven collided with earth today?

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(That’s stellar giving me a fist bump every time she swings forward)

My daughter learns something new every single day, why is it that so many of us have stopped doing that?

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- When I go to starbucks, I’m so cheap, I always order a venti for value, then put it in the fridge and slowly drink it over three days

- I’ve recently began watching old episodes of Party of Five

- I never talk about being in anyway affiliated with the emergent church because I think Mark Driscoll will come and beat me up.

- Our S80 Canon digital camera flew off our car on to the highway this past week, and we saw it as an ‘opportunity’ to replace it with a shiny new Canon Rebel xsi DSLR

- Since my daughter was born, I went from working out five times a week, to zero, and I’ve lost 25 pounds.

- I’m eating expired popcorn as I type this, I generally eat a lot of expired food.

- I’ve never been so convicted of what I’ll be doing with my life, while have no idea about how I’ll be doing it.  Somehow this makes it all the more exciting for me, but probably a little confusing to those around me.

- I probably haven’t had a single decent conversation with 80% of my ‘friends’ listed on facebook this year

- I don’t know many people more hopeful than I am.  I pretend to be cynical sometimes just so people think I’m thoughtful and not naive.

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I was out from 2am-7am yesterday feeding the homeless.  A new good friend and I handed out 150 sandwiches and 200 bottles of water.  Was there something better we really could have been doing with our time?

You can read a bit more about homelessness in Toronto in this report from the city itself.

Reports vary in terms of how homelessness is measured, some say 4,000 others say 40,000 homeless individuals.  Either way there’s only enough for about 3,000 people in shelters.  And imagine those winters.

Even the ‘middle class’ are being driven out of the downtown core with gentrication and skyrocketing living costs.

What’s an individual in a big city like Toronto suppose to do about all of this?

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Over five years ago I adopted this mission statement for my life - To live by faith, to cultivate love, and to be a voice of hope.

I wrapped up my degree in May and gave myself a blank slate to work from going forward (even though I had planned the next thirty years of my life six years ago). I strongly considered returning to the corporate job I loved and just being a regular dude fumbling through becoming the person God created me to be.

Through plenty of silence, reflection, wise counsel and prayer, I kept returning to this theme of faith, love, and hope. And I kept asking myself, what would it look like for me to truly wrap my life around these elements? What would it look like in my own specific context, to invest my god-given skills and passion to living this life of faith, love, and hope?

Here’s what I’ve come up with…

Spiritual Direction - Helping point people towards their Creator and the person they were created to be. Primarily through one on one mentoring, discipleship, speaking, and innovating upon ancient practices.

Community Development - Creating and redeeming spaces for meaningful relationships and interactions, whether locally, globally, or even virtually. These will be environments inside and outside of the church that value diversity and inclusiveness while accepting life as messy, struggle as a reality, but where hope always prevails.

Mobilizing for Mission - Empowering and guiding individuals and communities towards living out their unique dreams through service, and making the world a little bit more beautiful.

Basically, I see myself as a missionary to the city of Toronto.  I really can’t think of anything else I’d rather do with my life right now.  How this will work out in the long run financially I have no idea, but I guess that’s part of the adventure.

Practically over the next while, I’ll be providing leadership at Mosaic to becoming more missional and incarnational in practice; Creating spiritually engaging environments such as the Solar Crash event coming up; Prototyping what it means for the church to have an influential presence in Toronto’s rapidly growing condominium communities, starting with my own; And networking with other influencers in how we can seek the good of the city together.

I’m totally stoked!

Let me know if this is something that interests you as well, or if you’ve got any questions.

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A snapshot of our world. This is the pulitzer prize winning photo by Kevin Carter of a vulture waiting for a young girl to die in southern Sudan. Carter killed himself soon after.

What does it mean for us to be the church in light of this? What does it mean to worship God? Can we possibly empathize with the pain of the child? Or are we more akin to the vulture that waits to consume?

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Last post before the event this weekend.

If I haven’t mentioned it enough already, it’s at the El Mocambo night club downtown Toronto.  Doors opening at 7pm. You can RSVP via contacting me or adding yourself to the facebook event page.  We’re capping it at 300 people that night.

We’ve lined up 10 different performers - bands, singers, spoken word, dance, all intereved through the night as well as 10 different visual artists.

There will also be a collaborative project that everyone coming out can participate in.

100% of ticket sales will be going towards helping provide clean water in Uganda.

For more details see the event page.  More artist bios are coming up soon as well.

We’ll have a videographer at the event so look forward to a recap compilation coming after the show, as well as plenty of reflections on my end organizing all of this.

peace.

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What a night everyone. I am so very blessed.

All I can say is thank you.

There must have been over fifty people who contributed and helped out behind the scenes to the Solar Crash Event.  Thank you for your prayers, thank you for coming out.

More pictures and videos to come…

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I’m going to spend the next while writing a series of posts about The Solar Crash Event from conception, to planning, to the night itself, to post-event thoughts.

Being a part of a dozen weddings every year, I kept thinking of what would it look like to put just as much time, energy, and maybe even money, into celebrating something besides the love of two people, as great as that is.

And when you think about weddings, it seems like just about anybody can pull them off.  Weddings aren’t limited to a certain personality type, skill set, or demographic.  It’s just a couple with some ideas they want badly enough to make into a reality, and it just happens.  Of course, weddings come in all forms, flavors, and sizes, but they’re beautiful celebrations nonetheless.

It then dawned on me after all my years of declaring my disgust for details and things that revolve around organization and planning, maybe I could throw a meaningful celebration of wedding-like magnitude, and maybe it could inspire others to do the same across our city? And so it began…

Below is one of the art pieces that were displayed at the solar crash. This one is by Cindy Kwan and friends who sowed together a dress, and then ripped it up, desecrated it with paint, and then covered it with a clean white veil in response to the theme of the night.

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(Photo by Glendon Tang of Impulse Photography)

Some questions that came up in the planning process for the event

- What would it look like for do something large enough that demands more than just me?

- What would it look like for the church to create an event or experience that was not for itself?

- What if we could provide a unique platform for emerging artists to showcase their God-given gifts?

- What if at the same time, we could pique the latent creativity within every individual that participated?

- How could we create an environment that was both inclusive and diverse musically, artistically, culturally, and even spiritually?

- How might we create a space that might provoke the imaginations from people of all backgrounds?

- Could we have a spectacular night of creativity and community while being involved with a cause worthy of our time?

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We interrupt the current series to mention the release of Jam Legend. If you’re into guitar hero or rockband, this is just so corny, it’s almost funny, and actually oddly fun.

You can do head to head battles online, and all you need is to flip your keyboard upside down and jam away!

check out the trailer below.

JamLegend Trailer from JamLegend on Vimeo.