[inspirational music]
>> My guest today is Erwin McManus
and he's been described as an iconoclast,
as a pioneer, as someone who cares deeply
about culture and art and creativity,
and really thrives at the convergence
of spirituality and creativity.
I thrilled to be in this conversation
for a number of reasons.
Number one, it's gonna be interesting.
Selfishly, I'm excited
to be in this dialogue.
But number two, I think this
could be really informative
for those of you who are thinking about
ways to integrate these
longings in their heart
to make things and maybe make
something of those things.
His book, he's written many books,
Soul Cravings, Chasing
Daylight, and several others,
but his most recent, which I
found incredibly resourceful
is the Artisan Soul and I encourage
you guys to check it out.
But Erwin, welcome.
>> It's so good to be with you Dave.
Thanks for describing me to the words
of people who actually like me.
[laughter]
>> Well, it's funny that
the nature of creating
is, in a sense, a little rebellious,
it seems to me like, to be
calling you an iconoclast
is to break the norm, is to
mix things up a little bit.
>> Whether we like it or not,
creating is always a
violation of the status quo.
>> Hm.
>> And so any person who
owns the creative essence
is going to be in some sense,
live a life of rebellion to something.
Whether it's mediocrity,
whether it's tradition,
whether it's deeply held beliefs,
or whether it's toward
oppression, slavery.
The creative act is a courageous act
because it violates what
everyone knows to be true,
how to pursue that,
which seems unknowable.
>> And I'm guessing that
would be like you say,
potentially offensive to some people.
>> Erwin: It seems to be yeah.
[laughter]
>> Well let's back up just a little bit.
>> What's your favorite color?
>> Dave: Uh, Blue.
>> So if I said to you,
that's really stupid.
[laughter]
Do you know how many people like blue?
I mean, why do you sell out to blue?
>> But you don't know the hue that I like.
Mine is particular, it's special.
>> That's what I think the creative act
feels like for people.
Even if you don't mean to create
as a declaration against something.
>> Dave: Yeah.
>> The person who's holding onto
what the creative process is endangering,
feels as if you violated their blue space.
>> Dave: Hm, interesting.
Let's give people some context
for what got you to this expression.
So you have a substitute
history in body work
in the Christian church,
you have been a pastor
at Mosaic, you're founder
of that faith community
here in Los Angeles, you have,
I think the first time I ever saw you was,
you were both presenting and
also subbing for somebody
at a Willow Creek, someone couldn't do it,
you stepped in the gap.
>> Erwin: I'm a plan B.
[laughter]
>> Well, I say that as an affirmation
because I remember thinking,
he must've done this one
before because you nailed it.
It was a sense of like, it
was a providential moment
that you were there for
just a time as that.
You have been in the public
eye for a lot of years.
You also had that season
where you were less
in the public eye and
doing some creativity
in more of a the business context,
in design and art and film.
I'm wondering if you could just share
a little bit of your narrative as to
what led you to this particular book.
>> I used to write a lot of books
and about six years ago I stopped.
The last book I wrote
was called Wide Awake.
Ironically, it was a book that
focused on the process of taking a dream
and turning it into your life.
I found that this is
really difficult space
in the Christian conversation,
in the faith conversation.
Because of, I think,
some of the conversation
that came out of that, I thought,
I think I'm tapping out.
I don't really wanna write another book,
trying to create an engagement between
spirituality and creativity.
Between what it means to have
beliefs and what it means to have faith.
Therefore, Christianity had a lot of room
for belief, but very
little room for thought.
A lot of room for conviction,
but very little room for imagination
and for me, it felt suffocating.
And so, I took I hard right turn
and went to the world of
film and fashion design, art.
I just want to create beautiful things
and I felt that we really
have underestimated
the power of beauty to
translate truth to the world.
I think, it felt Christianity, especially
in the Western world, has become more the
disciples of John Stuart Mill's,
and we've become incredibly
utilitarian and pragmatic.
Our message and our story has become
almost like legos rather than play-doh.
>> Dave: Hm.
>> So I thought maybe I should
just go do something else
and find a different way of
taking my story to the world,
taking the story of Jesus to the world.
>> Dave: Hm.
>> And then six years later,
I find myself writing the Artisan Soul.
After spending several years in the
world of fashion design and film and art,
and really trying to come
back to what I feel like
is really central the
message of who to be,
and the essence of what
it means to be human.
Cause even when I was
working on suits and bags
and other kinds of products,
I think in some ways, I've come back to
remembering that the most important medium
through which God creates, is humans.
And no matter what you
can create in the film,
or create through a
suit, or you can create
through a men's bag
line, or whatever you can
create through anything else,
the most brilliant work of art
is when you take a human life
and you help translate that into
it's most beautiful expression.
And I think that's why Mosaic
is really important to me
and that's why this book
is really important to me.
Because your life should
be your work of art,
your life should be your masterpiece.
I wanted to take the same principles
through which we applied, just by
creating a great work of art,
and say this is how you create
your life into a work of art.
One of the core statements of the book is
that we're all works of art
and we're artists at work.
I think this dual statement
is really important,
to understand our assets as human beings,
that we're works of art that
are created by a creative God.
At the same time, we're
also artists at work
that were created to be
creative by this creative God.
Both those are really essential
to the human experience.
>> Let's talk a little
more about that tension
of both being a, as you say,
this kind of created being
and a creative being.
Both of those sound like
identity statements to me,
or maybe the first is more identity
and the second is more expression,
or something like that.
Could you say more a little bit
about the uniqueness of those two roles
that we play as humans?
>> Sure, I think everyone
would agree we're created.
The conflict is the
intention, in our creation.
An Atheist would say well obviously,
we're clearly created beings,
but really, what we're
saying when we believe in God
and we believe in the
God of the scriptures,
is that God created us with intention,
that there's a designed
intelligence in the process.
So we use this phrase,
you're a work of art.
What we're actually saying is that
there's intention and thought
and meaning behind your creation.
When I look at, especially
Genesis, Chapter 1,
I'm just reminded that God designs
with intention and intelligence,
with motive and that everything is created
out of love for the
intention of creating life.
That's I think, an important
part of our identity,
is realizing that we're not accidental.
We're not the spontaneous, chaotic result
of something that happened mathematically.
But that we're actually created
with intention and meaning and thought.
And that's why, we as humans,
are sometimes haunted with our search
for intention and meaning and thought.
And I don't think being created
in such an arbitrary way would create
in us, this need for meaning.
We're also this work of art that
has the capacity to create,
which I think is actually the more
difficult thing for us as far as Christ.
I don't know why but,
somewhere along the
way, we were taught that
if we thought of ourselves as creatives,
we'd be violating the sovereignty of God.
>> Hm.
>> That God's the only one Who creates.
Well, that would be a problem
if He didn't create us to create.
If God was so insecure
about the creative process,
that he didn't give us any capacity
to create, to imagine, to dream,
than we would be living
in rebellion by creating.
And I actually think that's
the story we've told the world.
I think the way the
world hears our story is
there's a God who creates and the sin
that separates us from God is that
we try to be creative beings.
And so, you need to let that go.
You need to obey, not create.
And what I think is interesting is
when I look at the scriptures going,
everything God commands us to do
out of obedience is to give us freedom.
And that freedom is there so that
we can actually be creative beings again.
So to me, the paradox is that
the further we move from God,
the less creative we become.
And the closer we move to God,
the more creative we become, so clearly,
this is not a violation
of God's sovereignty,
but in fact, it is a
declaration of God's goodness.
And so I love to be reminded
every day that I am both a work of art.
That I'm in process of something amazing
as being created through my life.
But I'm also an artist at work.
That holds me accountable
for the creative process.
That I'm designed by God to create
that which is good and beautiful and true.
>> You tell a great story at the beginning
of writing this book, back
when it had a different title,
of you with your wife, who
you hold in high regard,
as a creative individual and she self
identified a little differently.
I'd love it if you could
tell the story, number one,
but number two, it reminded me of
the opening pages of The Little Prince,
or Le Petit Prince, where
what's getting exposed
is this notion of adults used to remember,
when they were children,
they were creatives.
And then somehow they unlearned it.
What I'm hearing echoing in these pages
is this call to remember again,
to investigate, get messy,
get in the granular with it.
But could you tell that story a little bit
and chat a little bit about this
challenge of the narrative
I'm telling myself,
that I'm not a creative,
that I'm not an artist,
and what we can do about it.
>> The book is entitled Artisan Soul,
but usually when I start writing a book,
it's built around one word,
and so it was just called Artisan.
And when my wife came and asked me
what I was writing about, I
told her it's called Artisan.
Her immediate response was,
"Great, a book for people like you,
"but what about the rest of us?"
Which really, made me angry because
my wife is so artistic, she's so creative.
Her aspiration was to be an
actress, to be a comedian.
She was a mime, she
can sing, she can draw,
there's just really nothing she can't do.
But she can't escape the fact that
when she was eight years old,
she was abandoned by her parents,
eating nothing but turnip and ketchup,
that she was in a foster
home from the age of 8 to 18,
that she was abandoned and forgotten,
and she never heard the words,
I love you, one time in her life.
And those experiences in her life
put in her, a narrative
that she was nothing,
she would never amount to anything.
Even the foster family she lived with
would always tell her,
"You're never gonna amount to anything,
"you're gonna be just like
the rest of your family."
Her last name Lunsford, was like a curse,
she was just gonna be another Lunsford.
And here she is, five decades later,
the person who lives in a paradox
of believing that God has something
beautiful to do through her life,
and a person who has all the voices
who tell her her life will
never amount to anything.
So she walked herself to
church at the age of nine,
and she said to God,
"I'll do anything you
want", at the age of 14.
She realized education was her way out
so she finished high school,
first one in her family,
she received scholarships and graduated
as the Outstanding Education Student
from the University she finished from.
She got her Master's Degree in Theology
and she still wonders what she can do
and doesn't see herself as a creative.
I think this is the fundamental
problem in the human spirit.
It's not that we think
too highly of ourselves,
I think it's that we don't understand
who we've been created to be.
And the church has not been helpful.
Somehow we've become convinced that
if we can just pound to the
people, you're a sinner.
If we can pound the phrase,
total depravity in the people.
If we can pound into
them what they're not,
that that's what created
them a desire for God.
I had a journalist one time,
come to Mosaic and say,
"You don't do a lot of moralizing,
"you don't sit around and tell
everybody what's wrong with them!"
And I go, well, we have
a heroic narrative.
We actually think if we tell everyone
what their life could become,
they'll realize there's a massive gap
between who they are
and who they can become,
and this, what caused them to long
for God and cry out to Him.
And she goes, "Yeah, you
expect a lot of people.
"You call everyone the heroic life."
And she goes, "Aren't you making it harder
for people to accept your belief system?"
Isn't it harder for people to accept Jesus
because you're calling them to too much.
And I said, again, this
is a fundamental problem
with religion, is that religion tries to
control people through guilt and shame.
We've moved into the
sin management business,
trying to make people last.
And we want to see this messiness
of calling people to more.
We actually think that if we call people
to their most noble,
heroic, idealistic life,
that this is what best awakens their soul
to their need for God.
And that to me, is like the
essence of the Artisan Soul.
The moment you understand
that you're a creative being,
the moment you understand that
you're imagination is
the playground of God,
the moment you understand
that all of us are artists
and we are imagined to
imagining, created to create,
it's gonna awaken things in you
that are so much bigger than you.
You're gonna desperately need God.
I don't need God because
I'm trying to manage my sin.
I need God because I don't
want to live a lesser life
than I was created to live.
>> I know that you are gonna
be speaking to a lot of people
in sharing that story, so
thank you for sharing that
because it's resonated in my own heart
and I've been in enough conversations,
those limiting conversations,
that for whatever
happens circumstantially,
in someone's life, choices they made,
choices made against
them, they've come into
a belief of what they
are and what they aren't.
And from that place, it seems
like they're interested many,
the courageous ones,
interested in changing.
In a sense, this is just context but,
in a sense, change seems to be
one of the most talked about subjects.
Yet, one of the least actualized subjects.
And if change is a form
of creativity of sorts,
I'm curious if you could just comment
a little bit on how you view change
and then I have a follow
up question to that.
>> It's funny, the
first book I ever wrote,
An Unstoppable Force, has a
chapter called Change Theology.
>> Dave: Hm.
>> And, I became a follower
of Christ in college
and I was gonna go do something else but
they said you seem to be really zealous
and really on fire, so you
need to go to this seminary.
I didn't even know what a seminary was
and I dropped out after my first semester,
and then I went back because a professor
asked me to come back and
help him with a project.
But not because I felt like
what I was learning was actually valuable.
Because I realized there
is no theology to change.
They were teaching us the same stuff
that was taught a hundred years ago.
Not even strategically,
not just theologically.
And really, if our thinking process
leads to exact same view of everything
that we had 500 years ago,
what's the point of spending
four years reviewing that?
I felt like what has happened is
the church walks into the
future facing backwards.
What's so ironic to me,
is like this phrase,
Solomon's words, there's
nothing new under the sun.
I've heard that all over the world.
I've heard Christian leaders
quote that all over the world,
where there's nothing new under the sun,
and that was the pat on top of the head
received for like the
first 10 years of my life.
Whenever I'd come in with an idea.
>> Like condescendingly?
>> Oh yeah.
>> Bless your heart.
>> There's nothing new under the sun.
>> Yeah.
>> There's nothing new under the sun.
Then I went back and read Ecclesiastes
and I realized that we disagree
with almost everything Solomon says
in Ecclesiastes, but
we hold on to that one.
[laughter]
And the guy began the book by saying
meaningless, meaningless,
everything is meaningless.
Why are we gonna choose our world view
from a guy who says
there's no meaning in life?
And actually, life is packed with meaning.
He's actually telling us what
life without God looks like.
He also said in it that there's no
difference between humans and animals,
that we all go to the same place.
I don't know a Christian
that believes that.
But we believe there's
nothing new under the sun.
But in Isiah 43, verses 18 and 19,
God says, put away the former things,
do not dwell on the past,
behold, I'm doing a new thing.
Now it springs up, will
you even be aware of it?
Okay so, Solomon says there's nothing new
under the sun and we believe that,
but God says, "I'm doing a new thing."
Do we actually believe that?
In fact, everywhere God gets
involved, something's new.
New song, new wine, no
covenant, new heart,
new creation, new spirit,
new heaven, new earth.
God's in the new section of history
and we wanna keep Him in
the old section of history.
And so for me, it's kind of ironic
that the church has become the last
bastion of protection for the past,
rather than the apiscent
of creating the future.
I remember one time, we
were at this huge festival
and the lead singer for this
band, Christian band says,
"Let's change history,"
and everybody cheered.
And I stood in the back and I said,
do you know what's really strange?
If I said, let's create the
future, no one would cheer,
but they'd say you're a heretic.
But the one thing you
can't change is history.
Let's change history!
You can't change history!
[laughter]
>> Dave: It's done!
>> We're so reticent in our
relationship to the future
that we yell out, let's change history.
Rather than let's create the future.
The only way you can
quote, change history,
you can't change it, you write history.
You make history.
The only way you make history
is by creating the future.
And so I think we ought to just step back
and kinda like laugh at ourselves.
I'll tell you, if Newton lived today,
he would not agree with Newton.
[laughter]
>> That's so good.
>> You know?
And what are we doing?
Holding to world views of people
who lived in the 1300's,
who still were not sure
if the world was round,
and that the earth
revolved around the sun.
And we get our anthropology from people
who did not understand
what it meant to be human.
But the scriptures really do understand
what it means to be human.
So we gotta go back, dig deep
and listen to what it says.
I'm convinced that there is
something new under the sun.
And that every person who connects to God
is a part of creating the new.
>> I wanna stay here for a second
because we're having this conversation
in the context of a
particular moment in history
where the digital revolution
is no longer the revolution,
It's the establishment.
Everything's been commoditized by digital.
If you're a musician,
you don't need a label.
If you're a writer, you
don't need a press anymore.
There's a flattening, as
many have talked about,
where it seems everyone has access
to be able to express
themselves, to make things.
>> Sure.
>> And I'm wondering if
the era we're living in,
and by the way, I haven't
forgotten my question
about change, we're gonna
back around to that.
But I'm wondering if the era we live in,
and even what you're saying,
I'm reminded of another hero to me,
is a guy named Seth Godin.
He wrote The Icarus
Deception, you know Seth.
And in The Icarus Deception,
he's basically in this moment of history,
calling people out to
fly closer to the sun,
to defy this kind of hubris.
Not in an arrogant way per se,
but like in a risking it might
not work out kind of way.
>> Erwin: Mm Hmm.
>> Given that so many people can do that,
I know that there are gonna
be critics who will say,
wait a second, if everyone's an artist,
or if everyone's a writer,
doesn't that cheapen the act itself?
And I know you've heard
this question before,
but I'm curious how you respond to that.
>> I think I'm kind of bi-polar on this.
Cause Icarus said, he paid the price for
flying too close to the sun,
he just happened to fly higher
than everyone else though.
There are people who would say,
you know, I'll live with melted wings.
Cause I just wanna be able to fly higher
than anyone else has ever flown before.
I think a part of the dilemma
is that we keep learning right lessons
and wrong lessons from life.
Yeah, with the democratization of art,
everyone becomes a writer,
everyone becomes a singer,
everyone becomes a voice,
everyone's a politician,
everyone's a critic.
In fact, the internet has
probably been the most
destructive thing for
Christianity in 200 years.
Not because of pornography,
but because of the
meanness and un-Christ-likeness
among people.
>> Dave: Lack of civility.
>> Because now you can destroy everyone.
You can say anything about anyone.
I can tell you things
were written about us,
about me on websites and we
would call the people and say,
hey, we're happy to talk with you
and show you that I actually
don't believe these things.
That you're actually misquoting me
and miss-stating who I
am and they don't care.
Because their fame is by attacking people
who have actually accomplished things.
So you have this dark side of it.
That everyone gets their fame by being
against something rather
than being for something.
Everyone gets their fame by
destroying, rather than creating.
And no one has to go through the process
for earning the right to be heard.
And so what we've lost is
that journey of credibility
where people, when they speak,
have earned the right to be heard.
When people are publishing,
like someone came up to me this morning,
probably around 20 years old and said,
hey, I've written a book,
how do I get it published?
I said well first, you
need to go live a life.
Yeah, but how do I get it published?
She just wasn't even listening to me
because she needs to be published.
What you need to do is go live a
life worth writing about first.
And then write out of that.
She goes, yeah but,
how do I get published?
Well, have your friends read your book.
And if your friends
are moved by your book,
that's a good starting point.
Yeah, but how do I...
Well, if you start letting
your friends read the book
and it changes their life,
they'll give it to friends
who will change their life
and I guarantee you, a
publisher will come to you.
So we live in a world where
bad music is available to everyone.
[laughter]
And we also live in a world
where brilliant artists, who
would never have a chance
have a chance to have their
voices heard to the world.
I prefer that world.
I prefer a world where even with everyone
who will write every wrong thing about me
and slander me left and right,
I prefer a world where
everyone has a voice.
I still think it's a better world.
Even though you may have to listen to
ten thousand terrible artists
to find that one voice that may never
have an opportunity to have a record deal
because they don't have the
right look or the right feel.
And then suddenly that voice emerges.
I love that world.
As a writer, I prefer a world
where everyone can write
and everyone can publish and
have their own publishing house.
Cause if I have something to say,
my book will emerge out
of that mass of sound.
Because in the end, people
are not looking for sounds,
they're looking for a voice.
They're not looking for echoes,
they're looking for a voice.
They have too much out there.
They're looking for that thing that speaks
to them at the deepest level and I have
such confidence that beauty
always rises to the top.
>> Embedded in what you're saying
and actually connects to the question
I wanna get back to is,
there's a lot of perceptions out there
around how you can relate with failure.
So even in the scenario
you just described,
I can make my best work
I think I've ever made,
I put it out there, the
metrics, the feedback
is ah, it's not that meaningful,
it doesn't land for anybody.
I can relate with that in
a lot of different ways
and as an Artisan Soul, and even as we
turn a corner towards the
end of this conversation,
I wanna honor your time.
I'm just conscious to the
listener or the viewer
who is engaging this
conversation intimately
and saying, "What about me?"
Like, I'm scared.
I want to want to be courageous
and live out of that I'm
hearing a call in my gut
and I know the soul part of your
title is significant to you.
My friend Todd Henry says cover bands
don't change the world, like you want the
authentic self to come out.
Talk a little bit about failure
and how you've related with failure,
and how you would encourage others
to join the ranks of leaning into that.
>> Yeah, when you ask me,
how do I relate to failure,
I'm like, well, failure is life!
[laughter]
>> Dave: Here we go again.
[laughter]
>> To ask me how I relate to failure
is like how have you stayed alive?
You know because, I've failed so much more
than I've ever had success.
>> Dave: But it's not
the perception right?
I mean I think that when people are
known in quantities like yourself,
there's this belief that
everything you touch is gold,
that's just how it happens.
And maybe folks don't get a
chance to see the stubbed toes.
>> Well, my friends do.
[laughter]
My family does.
It's funny, with my daughter Mariah,
when she first started working on music,
I said, I will help finance
everything that's original.
But if you do covers, I
won't help you at all.
I don't want you to be the best
imitation of someone else's talent.
I want you to discover your own voice.
She wrote a song when she was 14
that ended up being the lead song
for the season finale of Grey's Anatomy.
And she would've never
had that opportunity
or that experience if she didn't risk
writing songs that other
people wouldn't listen to.
And she used to come over here
to the Biola youth theater
and audition and she never got a part.
She'd come home crying, going
I know I can sing better than
those other girls, but I can't get picked.
And I didn't wanna tell her
she didn't have the right look.
I didn't wanna tell her she didn't
feel like what they're looking for.
Cause Mariah's been always real eccentric
and her own person and I said,
if you wanna sing, you need
to go find your audience.
So she gave up after
several years of trying
to get into the youth theater as a singer
and started going and
singing at night clubs
on Sunset Strip and
Melrose and writing music
that connected to that audience
sitting in that old, dingy room
where they would bring her in at 14
and have to usher her
out cause she wasn't 21.
[laughter]
>> Dave: She didn't get to stay.
>> And I just watched her
music grow and develop,
her story kind of emerge out of that.
But there was a lot of tears
and a lot of risk and an add of failure
has really come like a
refinement of the person she is.
For me it's like, I cannot
tell you how many times
I've sat down alone, by myself,
just weeping, going hey, what's the deal?
I had a company and I watched my partner
make a decision where we lost a
five to six million dollar company in day.
I just put in all the money I had made
and I mean I had almost three
quarters of a million dollars
disappear in a day,
about a million dollars.
And I couldn't even eat for a month.
I lost 20 pounds.
I had to fly home and tell
my wife I lost everything.
There's nothing more humiliating
then to sit down in front of your wife,
who was an orphan and a foster child
and never had a home of her
own or a place of her own
and say, I just lost everything.
And I can tell you in that moment
when she looked at me
without any hesitation
and said, "I thought I
was your everything."
It did something inside of
me, I can't even explain.
I didn't know how to respond to that,
so I just said I lost my other everything.
[laughter]
To me it's like, people want...
When they come in with
how do I get your life?
I go you know, you don't
get my life on the high's
if you don't want my life on the low's.
If you're not willing to take
the level of risk and
experience level of pain,
you know the level of
failure and experience,
than I don't know how to help you
move to a level of success
or influence or voice.
Cause if there's anything good
that has happened in my life,
that people see publicly, it is built on
the rubble of all the times
we struggled, and failed,
and suffered, and it was
sweat and tears and blood,
that created those things.
Everybody goes, wow,
you have a great life.
And you know what's strange?
That pain is a part of my great life.
It's not the success
that makes life so sweet.
It's the success in the contrast
to the sacrifice and suffering
that you've been through.
That's the only thing that
gives it any meaning,
any wonder, any beauty.
So I think the tragedy is that
studies show us that if you have
high confidence in your talent,
you're more likely to take fewer risks.
If you actually have a lower
confidence in your talent,
but a higher commitment to work hard,
you're actually willing
to take greater risk.
I think the great tragedy in our culture
is that we've raised up a generation
that we've told, you're awesome,
before they ever risked
deeply or profoundly.
I keep telling people look,
you're only gonna go as far
as your wounds will take you.
You have to be willing to
jeopardize your self image,
your view of yourself by failing,
by risking, by falling short,
by walking through the rubble
in life and going okay,
I wasn't everything I thought I was,
but I'm more than I knew I was.
I think that's what God takes us through.
It's like he takes us through this trials
and these challenges and these
moments of huge disruption.
Not just to give us a
sense of perspective,
but also to see how resilient
and powerful we also are.
The power isn't in how
successful you can become.
The power is in how many
failures you can overcome.
Man, you wanna know how strong I am?
It's not when you see the victory.
It's when you see us moving
the rocks off of our chest
when we failed and we
say, we will not give up.
That to me is like the
fun, the joy, the wonder
of living life as an adventurer.
I said to create is to
live a life of courage.
When people say yeah,
but I'm not a dancer,
I'm not a painter, I'm not
a writer, what do I do?
I go look, focus on two things.
Live a life of love, cause all
great art is an expression of love.
So live a life of love and
live a courageous life.
And press into your fears.
Whenever you feel terrified,
lean in that direction.
Don't let shadows become walls.
Because whenever you move
toward the darkness, you bring light.
If you live a life of love
and live a life of courage,
and always keep hope in front of you,
that tomorrow will be better than today,
that you'll be better than you are,
that you can create out
of your imagination,
a better world and a better reality,
and that God is the one who is always
infusing in you a future and a hope,
I think it's gonna be okay.
>> Erwin, what a treat.
The Artisan Soul, Erwin McManus.
It's an invitation to
hope, that's how I read it
and a challenge to courage and bravery
and thank you so much.
>> Thank you so much Dave.
