The Creative Process

For the past year or so I have been praying about what stops me from writing and pursuing outlets for my creative energy, like calligraphy. Something keeps telling me that I am not “artistic”. I was not given that special something that writers and other artists seem to have – that divine spark. I have had this misconception that artistic endeavors only come from this divine spark. Things should come out perfectly from the way it is in your head to the paper the first time. It should just flow out in a perfect stream of beautiful, profound words. I know this is a ridiculous lie but it’s an expectation that had ingrained itself deep into my being. Gradually over the last few months God has opened my eyes to new ways of thinking about the creative process. He has been putting opportunities and books and friends in my path that are unearthing all the old misconceptions and preparing the ground for a new wave of freedom and expression.

This week, I started reading a book called The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp (a world famous choreographer). She starts out the book with a quote from Luke 8:36 “And those who had seen it told how he who had been possessed with demons was healed.” At first I thought it odd to start out a book on creativity with that quote, but as I read on I realized I am haunted by fears and distractions that paralyze me from becoming the creative person God made me to be. I am paralyzed, I need to be healed.

One of the first “exercises” she has you do is to face your fears about the artistic process. All artists have them. They don’t mean you aren’t artistic; you just have to learn how to keep them from paralyzing you. Get them out there, stare them down. Be like Gandalf to the Balrog: slam your staff down and declare “You shall not pass!”

My Top 5 Fears

I have nothing meaningful to say. In the end this is about opening myself up to Jesus, exploring Him and myself more fully. What could be more meaningful than that?

It’s not practical, efficient or frugal. The corollary – It’s wasteful. Does everything have to be in the service of over-achievement? Isn’t God extravagant, lavish, and even wasteful with His grace and mercy? It’s just the price of what you are creating. You pay for your creations with a mountain of crumbled up paper, tons and tons of ink, pens, pencils and a big part of your soul. Am I willing to pay it?

Someone has done it before and better. So what? Get over myself. What makes it unique is me. I’ve never done it before and I’ve never done it better. See #1 above.

Once executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind. Too bad. You live in a fallen world. Better to create something imperfect than to let that creative spark lead to nothing when it could lead to an experience of Jesus.

I don’t have as much time as I would like to pursue it and get good at it. This is a particular bug-a-boo for me. With work and husband and daughter and house and meals and a million other things where do I find the time? I am learning to live more generously with time. Be more kind and gentle with myself about time. Changing how I feel about time, not thinking that there isn’t enough, but exploring its depths, living in it more expansively. And in the end getting rid of the things I don’t need and using wisely the time I do have, rather than saying there isn’t enough so I won’t even try.

What I have lacked is not the divine spark of creativity, but the perseverance to conquer my fears and distractions, the discipline to develop my skills and the willingness to begin at the beginning and let the process be the goal rather than perfection. Receptivity and obedience are the kindling that the divine spark can set ablaze with inspiration. And look at me – I am writing. It’s not perfect, but I am writing.

CS Lewis and the Trinitarian Life

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." -- C.S. Lewis

Don't you just love this man? I can't wait to meet him in heaven. I hope he is really as cool as he's been made out to be over the last 50 years or so since his death. He hung out in pubs, wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, and was friends with JRR Tolkien who wrote the Lord of the Rings (one of my favorites). And now this quote, which makes him a man after my own heart. I got it off the menu at a tea shop here in town. (Wystone's in Belmar). Where for $2.50 you can get one of the "teas of the day" and sit to read a book or have a conversation with a friend and they just keep refilling your cup for as long as you stay. -- A little bit of heaven. Of course you have to be careful and get a decaf or you'll start getting heart palpitations and mind buzz. Yea, I learned the hard way.

Oh and I do lament the brevity of good books, even ones like Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings (at over 1000 pages). The characters become your friends (people you'd love to have tea with). When the story ends its like a death. You can no longer spend an afternoon exploring their hearts, getting to know the depths of them and letting them explore your depths. Being in Trinitarian relationship with them. How sad to have to leave them behind and continue your journey alone.

I think I have had some of the deepest, most profound relationships of my life with characters in novels and movies. I struggled along with Frodo, rediscovered wonder with Lucy Pevensie. Felt the healing power of community with Vienne in Chocolate. For months after I read Lord of the Rings for the first time I couldn't read anything else. Everything seemed so hollow, nothing could satisfy the depths that had been opened up in me. No other "friend" could go that deep with me. I needed and missed Frodo and Sam and the Fellowship. I grieved for Boromir who came too late to understand the meaning of the quest. And that's why now I'm so captivated by my new friends on LOST. They let me enter into a place of daily (weekly) intimacy, a place in their lives that few people here on earth can give. And somehow, mystically perhaps, I can allow them to touch places in my life that few people (if any) can understand or reach.

These are the places where I experience Trinitarian relationship. It is this awakening, deepening that allows me (from time to time) to experience intimacy in real life. To be able to engage on a deep level the epic story that is my husband or my daughter or myself. And now as our "housechurch" is wrestling with what we want to experience in our gatherings, we're asking questions like "Why do we meet?" "Where do we go from here and how?" "Do we let more people in and why?" And I realize that what I want is Trinitarian relationship. A sense of the epic story, shared struggle, common quest, healing community. A sense of being "one" with each other, even as Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit are "one". Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. Deut 6:4 which is echoed in John 17. ...that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me....The whole chapter is a dizzying dance of I, you, them, me, us.

You can't have that oneness of relationship with 1000 or 500 or 100 people in large corporate gatherings. And maybe you can't even have it with 7 or 10 people in a small housechurch gathering. At least not initially. For me it has to start with two people learning this dance and then connecting with one or two other people and maybe that's it for now. Becoming so close, so intimate that each is "in" the other, lifting up even as he/she is being lifted up.

What this deepening of life with the Trinity and Jan and Kalia has done for me, is like the first time I read Lord of the Rings, everything else rings hollow, including "housechurch". Unless I can be with others who I can allow to reach deeply into my being and who will allow me to reach deeply into their being, I'm not interested. And not in some artificial sit around and "counsel" each other or "exposit the Word" sort of way. But in the way of great novels that draws us into the reality of life and makes us long for a few minutes stolen away into their world. A way that makes us hope it never ends, that the intimacy we have developed will go on forever.

The story that the Trinity is writing does go on forever. What I am missing is the intimate companions that make it come alive. Fellow sojourners on the quest for the Jesus Life. I am looking for a Merry and Pippin to join Frodo and Sam. And until that time I have to agree with Mr. Lewis, there's no book long enough to suit me, even though I've learned that I can get enough tea at Wystones.