“Somehow,” notes Os Guinness, “we human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us.” Now, some children are gifted toward science, and others are born athletes. But whatever their specialty, all children are inherently creative. Give them a barrel of Legos and a free afternoon and my boys will produce an endless variety of spaceships and fortresses and who knows what. It comes naturally to children; it’s in their nature, their design as little image bearers. A pack of boys let loose in a wood soon becomes a major Civil War reenactment. A chorus of girls, upon discovering a trunk of skirts and dresses, will burst into the Nutcracker Suite. The right opportunity reveals the creative nature.
This is precisely what happens when God shares with mankind his own artistic capacity and then sets us down in a paradise of unlimited potential. It is an act of creative invitation, like providing Monet with a studio for the summer, stocked full of brushes and oils and empty canvases. Or like setting Martha Stewart loose in a gourmet kitchen on a snowy winter weekend, just before the holidays. You needn’t provide instructions or motivation; all you have to do is release them to be who
they are, and remarkable things will result. As the poet Hopkins wrote, “What I do is me: for that I came.”
Oh, how we long for this—for a great endeavor that draws upon our every faculty, a great “life’s work” that we could throw ourselves into. “God has created us and our gifts for a place of his choosing,” says Guinness, “and we will only be ourselves when we are finally there.” Our creative nature is essential to who we are as human beings—as image bearers—and it brings us great joy to live it out with freedom and skill. Even if it’s a simple act like working on your photo albums or puttering in the garden—these, too, are how we have a taste of what was meant to rule over
a small part of God’s great kingdom.
(John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire , 152–54)
I read this and realized how much I have to be thankful for. God knows I'm not perfect: I could come up with a list of proposed changes pretty quickly. But I think of times when the greatest dilemma in my life seems to be that I want to write, to create music, and to make beautiful pictures, and I just can't decide which one to throw myself into at that moment. For a time I do one, then the other, then switch back before hungering again for the third. What a problem to have... too many outlets ready to accept whatever creative energy I have.
It makes me look back to a time in my life when there was very little of that... I was listless, aimless, and living in black and white. What a difference! How alive I feel, now... I can get out and walk for 8 hours seeing the amazing variety and beauty and also the dark side of nature, of people, and of what we have created without even thinking about the time. I can sit at my mixing desk until 3 AM aching just to record one more part, to see a song moving from a whisper to a roar. I can close my eyes and sing my heart out and reach for that high note without holding back. And I see that my creative life and my spiritual life go hand in hand... the more I exercise my creativity, the more I am reminded of how and why I am the way I am. And the more I draw close to God, the more value and beauty and purpose I find in the things my hands naturally seek out.
So my prayer for tonight is not just, "thank you, God, for music", but "thank you, God, for the music in me". For not just one but many great endeavors at my feet. I'm blessed.
9 comments:
It's true - you have so much to bless the world with and enjoy as God inspires you to create.
One of my former mentors, Jeremy Begbie, has a ministry called Theology Through the Arts. He used to talk about "more of God, more of me". He'd pluck a piano string, and the same note an octave away would also sound, louder if the string was played louder first.
So if our flesh and our own agenda lessens as we get out of God's way, our truest creativity and redeemed self rings louder and more glorious all the time. That's what it means to have God's image increasingly restored in us throughout our lives.
"All this time...shades of black and white on a Hollywood reel...Now I'm living in color, laughing out loud" ~ Shawn Colvin, Round of Blues
Love all the new photos and extra takes of previous ones - was showing them to some friends tonight, they were impressed with your bird and design shots. That new lake photo is nice too.
Thanks, anonymous. I like that... "our truest creativity and redeemed self rings louder and more glorious all the time. That's what it means to have God's image increasingly restored in us throughout our lives." That about sums it up, I think, and it's a beautiful way for things to work. And I'm glad you like the pics... keep your friends' emails handy for the gallery opening...
this is surprisingly close to where i am in my own spiritual life. i was contemplating just earlier today about sound and colour and light, and how we can somehow miraculously take it all in at once and make perfect sense of it. then i thought "i really want to go hammer out some bass when i get home." instead, i checked your blog. now, however, i choose to go express some creativity.
thanks darryl
Cool: more creativity!
I used to think I wasn't creative, because I couldn't draw or paint or do traditional "art". It made me kind of sad, until I expanded my definition of "artist". I found that I could write, and come up with funny things to do (skits, pranks...), and make a room beautiful. When my mom decorates a house, you KNOW she's an artist, because she can see what isn't there, and then make it happen just as she planned it in her head. That's definitely imitating God the Creator.
I got bummed once when talking with my music pastor, saying I wished I'd stuck with piano and become a "real musician". He looked at me sideways and said, "but you ARE a real musician in how you sing!"
Creating anything is simply acting as we are made - in God's image, in His character as the Creator. The more I think about how to imitate God, the more meaningful just about any activity can become - and all of it glorifies Him and is good for me and others. Cool.
Thanks darryl. needed that quote. Truly, thanks.
Jon, I'm glad it resonated with you. I think it's sometimes just stunning when I start to glimpse how all-encompassing my "spiritual" life has the potential to be. Even if I am not living by multiple standards, it is still so easy to divide my life into sacred and profane... to assume God's interest in one part and his lack of interest in the rest. But he created all of me... the part that loves a good steak, the part that plays music, the part that longs to exert influence, the part that wants to watch hockey, my sexuality, my aesthetic side, my mind. And all of it starts to become more and more of what it should be as I choose to exercise it in light of not just who I am, but who I am in him.
"Creating anything is simply acting as we are made" - yeah, that's it.
I don't know how it is for other people, but I am immensely thankful that my desire to be creative and my capacity to create are more or less in synch... I remember a time when I relied mostly on drawing to get out what was inside, and being frustrated beyond words. I did not bad, but there was maybe less than 10% of the time that I actually could create what I felt... my skills (or talent - or, most likely, the combination of the two) were just not enough to make it work. When I started playing music, all of that changed. And as I pursue my other favorite "creative" activities - writing and photography - I often feel like I have the right tools to do what I want to do.
But I wonder what it's like for people who don't have a similar desire or ability in what is traditionally considered to be creative? When I speak to friends whose primary passion is there work, I must admit I am often confused. But maybe what they are doing in a professional setting is like what I'm doing with my drums or mixer or camera... exercising their gifts, expressing how they are made to the very best of their ability, and seeing the potential for what doesn't yet exist, just in a different form.
Aristotle had a theory that the best way to judge if something is good is to do so in light of it's purpose. A chair that is beautiful but won't hold your weight may be a great piece of art, but it's crap as a chair. He went on to say that the easiest way to tell what that purpose was (the basis on which a thing should be judged) could be determined by seeing what made it unique. Chairs are uniquely chairs not because they are blue, or made of wood, or able to hold still for a long time (though they may be all of those things) but because they can be sat on.
He concluded that what makes people unique is that we can reason, and so the best measure of a person is how he reasons. One who reasons well is a "good" person.
But I think it goes further than that... what makes me unique is probably not what made him unique, and we have a creator who is personal, and who created individual people, not a class of objects called humans. What I am called to be is not just the most human I can be, but the most "me" I can be. And what that finally entails is something that I can only know as I begin to understand myself in light of how my creator sees me... and that, only through knowing him.
Josh, I'm glad. My pleasure, bro.
Ooh, I missed that last soliloquy. Nice.
re: imitating God in non-art: you have it exactly. I was going to wax eloquent about that but decided I'd written enough already... but now you've freed me up! :-)
So, if we are cleaning houses or working in administration, we are imitating God in creating order out of chaos (at least we should be). If we are making up code, we're imitating the Creator. If we're a good policeman, we're restraining evil as God does. And the list goes on. Think of any respectable career and see how God's character is somehow reflected in it.
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