Creativity Changes & Connects Us

American novelist Toni Morrison writes this:

Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush. I am staring out of the window in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. Then a friend, a fellow artist, calls to wish me happy holidays. He asks, “How are you?” And instead of “Oh, fine — and you?”, I blurt out the truth: “Not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the election…” I am about to explain with further detail when he interrupts, shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work — not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”

I felt foolish the rest of the morning, especially when I recalled the artists who had done their work in gulags, prison cells, hospital beds; who did their work while hounded, exiled, reviled, pilloried. And those who were executed.                                                           

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.

You may not necessarily feel like this is a time of dread… but I do.

Wednesday (the day after the election), I felt very much like Toni Morrison did… depressed, not able to eat, to work, to talk without getting choked up. Let me share something with you that struck me hard when I was 42 and somewhat behind in figuring out I was a lesbian. I’d spent 42 years as a straight white woman, and while I had less power as a woman, I had some power. Suddenly, as a gay woman I had much less power.

I married a woman who’d never had social power. Julie grew up being denounced by her mother, the Catholic Church, living in fear of people at work finding out and maybe firing her because of it, getting beaten up, seeing someone shot in a bar next to her, and lacking the freedom to love and marry whom she chose.

If you were on Facebook last week, you likely saw her raw fear, and my grief. Wednesday morning, she looked at me and said, that’s it, no more PDA (public displays of affection). Given the hateful and violent rhetoric and promises from a man who will now be in charge of this country, we have a right to be afraid. And we are afraid for every person of color, every Jew and every Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. And, honestly, safety is simply the tip of the iceberg of things to be afraid of.

A psychotherapist who used to work here in Racine wrote in an email on Thursday:

I'm hearing from psychotherapists both locally and nationally that people are extremely worried about what will happen to their ability to access health care, obtain medications and have assurance of their Medicare premiums. Parents are concerned about what will happen with their children's educations, and people approaching retirement are anxious about potential changes in Social Security policies.

LGBTQ+ folks, BIPOC folks and immigrants and children of immigrants are concerned about their physical safety. Woman of child-bearing age – or who are pregnant – are asking if they will be able to receive the health care they would need if their pregnancies became problematic.

And many are anxious, angry, disoriented and numb.

We’ve been talking about Margaret Wheatley’s Islands of Sanity. This world need these islands more than ever. Safe spaces to be who they were created to be. Justice-filled spaces seeking to support the rights of all people. Compassionate spaces for people to mourn and cry. Spaces that nurture generosity, kindness and creativity as key values in helping us connect and change for the better.

So, let’s talk about creativity… the last piece of my series on Islands of Sanity.

In the Jewish mystical book, the Kabbalah, it says, “The fierce power of imagination is a gift from God.”

Yes, it's in dreadful times like these that artists need to go to work. But, did you know that the first thing Hitler did was to get rid of the artists, or buy off the ones that could be bought? The first thing Stalin did was to purge, imprison, or tame the artists. And the first thing the Taliban did was to banish the arts and destroy every ancient statue they could find. Suppress art. Suppress free speech. Suppress human voices and limit connections.

Why get rid of the arts? Because artists bring feelings to life and connect us at a higher level of morality and consciousness. Because there are messages in art that speak deeper than words. Artists cannot only convey stark realities and get people thinking, artists can also bring people hope and help unify them for a cause.

Violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch wrote, “The core of artistic power is the place between people, where engagement occurs… Mental and spiritual states can spread, and sanity can be just as contagious as insanity… the arts are a primary means for the transmission of sanity.”

I’ve gotten caught up in the arts for a moment, but as we talked about last week, creativity is about so much more. It’s about how we problem solve and relate to one another, it’s about how design our lives – what they look like, what we do. Let me give you an example from a book entitled Active Hope, by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, of a creative solution to a situation of ecological justice in Canada.

“Because she loved a river, in 2009 Ali Howard swam almost 380 miles in twenty-eight days. The rich ecosystems of the Skeena in Canada were threatened by Shell’s plans to drill a thousand gas wells around the headwaters of this river. Where small, scattered gas deposits were buried within seams of coal, high-pressure water the chemicals would be pumped into the ground as part of the extraction process. The contaminated silt that washed into local streams would threaten the spawning grounds of salmon not just in the Skeena but in the nearby Nass and Stikine Rivers too. To draw attention to the devastation these gas wells would bring, Howard swam the full length of the Skeena. Along her route, those living by the river came out to greet her, joining together in a newfound watershed identity.”

But Ali wasn’t the only speaking up for the river.

“The grassroots coalition opposing Shell’s plans included Tahltan and Iskut First Nations elders arrested for blockading the road to the river’s headwaters, as well as First Nations councils, downstream communities, and conservation groups challenging the development. Together, they succeeded. On December 18, 2012, the government of British Columbia announced a permanent ban on drilling for petroleum and natural gas in a million acres of land that includes the headwaters of the Skeena, Stikine, and Nass Rivers.”

Ali’s creativity and that of the Native groups brought attention and awareness to their cause. It helped people remember their connection to the land and to one another. And, in the end it resulted in a huge change that not only saved an ecosystem, but probably the health of many people.

Creativity naturally connects us.

Years ago, late night comedian Stephen Colbert gave a commencement address at his alma mater where he talked about doing improv. He said, “Now there are very few rules to improvisation, but one of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important people in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them. But the good news is you’re in the scene too. So hopefully to them you’re the most important person, and they will serve you. No one is leading, you’re all following the follower, serving the servant. You cannot win improv.

“And life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. And like improv, you cannot win your life.

He said that in his experience we only truly serve what we love: “If you love your friends, you will serve your friends. If you love your community, you will serve your community. And if you only love yourself, you will serve only yourself and you will have only yourself.”

We don’t win at life. In fact, everyone suffers, everyone experiences loss, and everyone dies. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone’s life could be a little better while they are living it?

Creativity, as an integral part of being an Island of Sanity, has just become even more crucial. As Matthew Fox says, we get to choose life or death when it comes to using our powers of creativity. I know us here… we choose life. We choose to use our creativity to lift others up, to strengthen the weak, to advocate for the marginalized, to help the poor, to educate the ignorant, to celebrate beauty and the earth and life. We choose to creatively work to overcome divisiveness, hold space for pain, to find what we share at our core, to protect each other - our physical safety and our rights, work for peace and justice, and negotiate the bonds that connect us to our church, our family, our friends.

Generosity, kindness, and creativity… the trifecta that holds us together, shapes us and defines us as an Island of Sanity. We need it right now, but the world needs it even more. May it be so.

Love & Light

Kaye