Creating White Space.
How’s the white space in your life?
White space is an advertising or graphic design term that refers to the page or screen that is not occupied by text or images. White space is space on the page or screen that is deliberately left blank to better structure the page and emphasize different areas of content. It helps in communication.
It works in life and is a key to hearing God.
Advertising white space is a main ingredient of an ad’s layout and a large factor in readability. It helps to structure the content and emphasize the most important information in the ad. Without white space, the ad will most likely be ignored.The same is true with our lives. Without white space, we'll most likely ignore the most important elements of our lives.
Is your life cluttered with text and images that prevents you from communicating with your self and God?
Are you deliberately leaving blank spaces in your life to add better structure to your life?
My wife and I intentionally leave blank spaces in our calendar in order to create space in our lives.
White space allows the eye to enter into the ad and move naturally through the ad allowing the prospective reader to view the ad without having to strain. An ad with too little white space makes readers uncomfortable due to the clutter of the text and images readers get overwhelmed by the text and move on to another page.
One of the most difficult tasks I faced with clients was to convince them not to fill the ad with cluttered text. Helping a client to overcome their fear of wasting money on white space was often challenging.
Cluttering one’s life with activity and "text" often stems from fear and uneasiness with self. Like a client who fears wasting money, many live with fear and are uneasy with silence and solitude.
I need white space in my life.
It is one of the ways I love myself.
I am reminded of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus, like a dove. There’s something about space that allows for the Spirit to move.
Perhaps that is why Jesus went to the mountain alone.
White space allows me to have the freedom to explore my life without the clutter and noise of external voices and to discover what God is saying and what I want.
Like a good ad that effectively communicates its message and achieve the desired effect, I need to remove text and images in order to achieve God’s desire with my life.
Where do you need more white space in your life?
5 Comments:
Spot on, again, as the Brits say.
As the Tao Te Ching says,
Thirty spokes make the wheel,
but the hold in the hub makes it useful.
Profit comes from what is there,
usefulness from what is not.
About visual white space, your post reminded me of Jon Hicks, genuis Brit designer who created the Firefox and Thunderbird logos. He's a fan of visual whitespace, and his site boasts "20% more whitespace!"
Amen to white spots. I have some, but need to balance it out a bit more. I think I fill my white space with the trivial rather than overcrowding it. Thanks for giving me something to ponder today!
Great idea, I will have to contemplate this. †
I'm sure that it's just a "coincidence" that this week, our Celebration of Discipline study is beginning the section on the "inner disciplines," with meditation being the first of those disciplines. Yeah, right...somehow, Richard Foster's idea of the Devil himself desiring to keep me focused on "muchness and manyness" seems just a little too close to your topic, bro.
In my experience, when my spiritual flame becomes a pilot-light and when my "walk" starts getting a little palsied, it is invariably because I'm failing at prayer, meditation, or Sabbath - and (for me) usually it's all three. I become a "human doing" instead of a human being - thus rendering myself just about toxic in nearly everything I do.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus took the time to say, "Take me off the grill - I'm done," and retreat to solitude. That I can think that this would be a good idea for Jesus, but not for me, is just one of the amazing acts of denial in which I engage regularly.
One of the big challenges I have as I set up my somewhat-new apartment is to not recreate in this place the clutter that I left in the old place. The image of "white space" in one's life is a powerful one, brother. Thanks for it!
An interesting and powerful metaphor indeed... Ya, it is hard to convince people of the importance of white space... I think I'll share this with my youth group...
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