"...people find what they're looking for.  If you're looking for conspiracies, you'll find conspiracies.  If you're looking for examples of man's good works, you'll find that too.  It's all a matter of setting your mental channel."  Roger von Oech, author of A Kick in the Seat of the Pants

I have always been interested in the creative process.  My mom was a very creative person and she thinks that everyone is creative in his or her own way ... using her own gifts.  I agree with that.  Creativity lets you be playful and inquisitive and alert to the wonders of the world.  Creativity makes you slow down and notice cool stuff.  Just observe children.  One of my grandsons (age four) found an old dried up grape stem, and he picked it up and said ... "Isn't this cool?  It's an old grape stick."  And the design of it was very cool ... but who notices?  We all  should.  In the book A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, von Oech says creativity requires that we tap into four different parts of ourselves.  The Explorer, The Artist, The Judge, The Warrior.  Today, let's think about the Explorer in each of us.  If we are faced with a problem in our lives, it takes creativity to solve that problem.  We have to explore options.  We have to see the situation from a different perspective.  When I designed birth announcements and wedding invitations, I used to make trips to the art museum, or the hardware store or the garden shop or the fabric shop for inspiration.  Don't keep looking for solutions in the same old places. Explorers ... explore.  They are adventurers who are willing to get off the comfortable beaten path.  Explorers use obstacles not as excuses to turn back, but to break out of ruts.  Do a few little things differently.  Then do some big things in a better, more invigorating way.  Let's all put on our Explorer hat today.  Let's investigate new ways of thinking and seeing and sharing and doing the things we have to do in life.  I think we'll all be surprised at the amazing, new doors that will open.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."  Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV)