Why ORAN6E?

OK, before I get to far in this blogging thing I think I need to take some time to explain the blog title and a little bit about my theory of imagination. First of all, it is pronounced "orange", like the color or the sweet smelling fruit that my son ate for breakfast this morning. Second, yes there is a 6 in place of the "G" and I will explain that shortly.

You may be asking, "Why orange and why did you put that six there to make everything so confusing when I try to type it into my computer, or explain the blog to someone else?" The answers are simple. It sounds cool, it's short, and the domain name orange.com was already taken so I substituted the "g" for a 6 and tada!... ORAN6E.


It's almost as simple as that.


In reality, ORAN6E is an idea I had for creating a group of people interested in doing things creatively. It is a coming together, shall we say, of people from many different disciplines who share their ideas and dreams with people outside of their sphere of influence. The idea came from looking at how separated the arts are within the church, and how we compartmentalize learning and sharing our ideas. Take worship conferences for example. Most of the time at a worship conference there is one or two group meetings and the rest of the time you spend broken up into your little drummer, or song writer, or guitar player, or worship leader, or sound person, or etc, or etc, or etc group. Becoming almost inbred in our thinking. What if a song writer could sit down and learn about the way a dance choreographer comes up with her moves? What if a photographer could show a slideshow of images from Mongolia, causing a worship leader to discover a new way to lead congregational worship?


I have to tell you that some of these ideas are not completely original and I am stealing some of it from a movement that has been going on for 20 or so years, but with a somewhat different goal in mind. If you would like to see a model of what I am talking about visit TED.


I know I said I would explain the 6 and imagination and all that stuff, but this is a really long post already, so that stuff will have to wait for later. To end this post here is my quote for the day:

"Life is too short to keep cranking out mediocre crap. Ask any commerical designer, "Why did you get into design?" and none of them are going to answer, "I got into it so I could crank out mediocre crap." - Curt Cloninger