Claiming Our Creativity

We’ve jumped around a little this fall, but we’re back to our series on Becoming an Island of Sanity. I’ve never before felt like this was as important. With the election two days away, it feels like anxiety lives in the very air we breathe.

Consequently, we need places like this where we can remember who we are, where we can look beyond differences to the deep beautiful souls we are underneath. We need places that draw us back to the positive energy of generosity, kindness and creativity because those things help connect us, lift us up and change all of us.

I feel like we’ve talked about the easy ones – generosity and kindness. But creativity is a little more challenging. Why? Because most of us equate creativity with the arts, and most of us don't think we have artistic talent, so most of us also don't think we're creative.

So we must all begin by accepting and claiming our creativity; we need to actually believe that we have creativity within us that can be nurtured and called forth. 

I chose the Proverbs 8:30-31 passage because is the voice of Wisdom reminding humans that she was the "skilled artisan" standing next to God when all was created. As such, creativity is part of our spiritual birthright, it is innate, part of what it means to be human. Metaphorically, I believe she still stands next to us, the skilled artisan helping us creatively get through life on a daily basis.

In one study I read about, a group of four-year-olds was asked, “How many of you are good at art?” Every single child raised a hand. When seven-year-olds were asked the same question, only a very few responded. What on earth happened between age four and seven? It's so young to already believe you aren't good at art. Sadly, as Charles-Augustin Sante-Beuve once said, “With everyone born human, a poet – an artist – is born, who dies young and who is survived by an adult.” 

 Seriously, we didn’t just lose our creativity… so let’s broaden our definition. Our daily lives are full of creative choices and decisions. How we decorate our homes, how we dress, how we spend our free time. Parenting, cooking, relationships, gardening, problem solving, time with pets, organizing, planning. The list could be almost endless.

And yet, as Stephen Nachmanovitch wrote in The Art of Is, “The most ordinary act of creativity is spontaneous conversation – the art of listening and responding, interacting, taking in environmental factors unconsciously but with precision, modifying what we do as a result of what we see and hear, touch and make, a multidimensional feedback. In our daily lives we create and recognize connections all the time… And so we can take art off the pedestal and put it where it belongs, in the dynamic center of our lives.” 

Clarissa Estes wrote, “[Creativity] is the love of something, having so much love for something – whether a person, a word, an image, an idea, the land, or humanity – that all that can be done with the overflow is to create.”

Think about that for a moment. What is something you love so much in your life that you find that love overflowing and calling you to create? Is it flowers, your home, your friends, your partner, your music? Find it and allow your love to creatively overflow into it.

I friend of mine used to teach preschool and she said that instead of giving the kids images to color, they’d give the kids blank pieces of paper and encourage them to create whatever they felt like. Inevitably, she said, the parents would come to pick them up and want to know what it was. They wanted to categorize it and put it in a framework. She said they had to work helping the parents understand that it didn’t have to be something, it was simply about enjoying the creative process. Did you have fun? might have been a better question.

It seems like a lesson we still need to learn. We become so worried about doing things right, or perfect, or well. We fear criticism and not meeting expectations. But did we have fun creating? Did we enjoy the process?

There is nothing that creativity can’t be a part of. Episcopal priest and theologian Matthew Fox tells a wonderful story of his mother’s creativity in the midst of dying.

“One day when she was sick in the hospital my sister came to visit, and my mother said to her: “I was up all night and did not sleep at all.” My sister said: “Why not? What is wrong with you now?” And my mother replied, “It’s not that. It’s that I have never died before, and I stayed up all night to figure out how to do it right.” Days later, she turned to my two sisters from her hospital bed and said: “Roberta, it’s a waste of your time staying here while I die – why don’t you go out and do something important?” Then she turned to my other sister, saying: “Terry, it’s a waste of your time watching me die. Why don’t you do something more important?” Then she said: “Come to think of it, it’s a waste of my time waiting to die! How long is this going to take?”

When the priest came to deliver her last rites, my mother said to him: “Do you know who I am? I am Matthew Fox’s mother. Now how many of his books have you read?” He went to the internet that night, and when I arrived in town he had a number of theological questions to put to me based on my writings. Mom certainly turn the tables on him and chose not to receive the last rites passively.

When I came to say my farewell to my mother, our last conversation went like this. She said: “Honey, I am not afraid to die. I have lived a wonderful life. I will miss you kids, but I am ready to go.” I said to her: “Mom, I bet I know why.” She said: “Why?” I said: “First, you are curious. And second, you are looking forward to an adventure.” She replied: “Exactly.” That was her last word to me, exactly

For her funeral she gave two instructions: No crying, and rave dancing (she was 87 years old). Fox felt that his mother’s dying was “a very creative act and deliberately intended on her part to leave all of us with something to think about as regards our own living and dying.” (Creativity, p. 219-20)

May we give ourselves permission to be more creative than we’ve ever been. To feed our souls through the expression of creativity in how we live our daily lives. To feed our relationships through creative conversations and time spent together. To feed our world through creative interaction, conflict management, problem solving.

Love & Light!

Kaye