creation archives

case study

Creation

Visiting with Rob a few days ago about our role as experience architects, he mentioned that we are creators and that our work is to lead people.

My first thoughts when he said those words were about Heavenly Father: how He is the Master Creator and how His entire work is centered around leading people. As our Father, he is the ultimate architect, crafting experiences—such as our lives on this Earth—to lead us and to guide us so that we may become like Him and return Home to live with Him again. I then thought of His Son, Jesus Christ, and how He completed the largest and most significant design project in the history of this world when he lead and orchestrated it’s creation.

posted by wade on Sunday, Nov 02, 2008 · 1 comment

case study

Studies on Creativity and Religion

I have spent the last several months studying creativity and the creative process as they relate to what we do here at the Church. There have been many talks given by Church leaders on creativity that serve to enlighten, inspire, and instruct. I am in the process of documenting the things I have learned and turning them into something interesting, but that is a little ways off. In the meantime, I wanted to share a few of the more thought-provoking bits of wisdom I found.

posted by rick on Friday, Aug 15, 2008 · 3 comments

Image or Eden? Divine Design.

In response to Jason’s post, let me propose that the decoration of temple grounds is only partly about image, and is mostly about Eden. As breathtaking as the lights are at Christmas time, my favorite season is Temple Square in bloom, which actually lasts longer and is also easy to find on Flickr. It’s about showing the beauty of Life, Creation, and Renewal that are such central themes of the temple. In other words – it’s not just a PR image, it’s an illustration of what the temple is all about, beautiful form fitting beautiful function – what good design IS.

I’ve thought a lot about this because a good friend of mine who happens to be of another faith made some comments a while ago about how much money was spent on the gardens on Temple Square. I respectfully submit that it’s not about money or even image – it’s about projecting the spirit of what goes on inside the temple to the outside.

J.R.R. Tolkien talked a lot in his non-fiction works and letters about “sub-creation” – that it is part of our nature (even our duty) as children of God to want to create beautiful things, not on God’s scale and not from scratch, but to work with the materials he’s provided to make nice things.

Good Design is Divine – would make a nice T-shirt, don’t you think?

posted by ted on Friday, Sep 22, 2006