Beloved Friends – I am someone who loves books, and as a result I seem to have collected more than my fair share over the years. Each time I have to move I find myself wondering if I shouldn’t pare down and “thin out” my collection. Sometimes I do a bit, but this week I am glad to have found a book I went looking for sitting on a shelf waiting to be rediscovered.
Written in 2004 by Episcopal priest and radical theologian Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet, is an exquisite and dynamic expose based on a sermon Fox preached suggesting that the most prayerful, most spiritually powerful act a person can undertake is to create, at his or her own level, with a consciousness of the place from which that gift arises.
In other words, Fox believes that human creativity is what most differentiates us from other species—yet we rarely focus on it in either school or religious settings. He goes to explain more clearly than I have ever read anywhere else, creativity is the key to our God-given genius and beauty as a species as well as to our capacity for evil. Because creativity is the key to both- to genius and beauty as well to our capacity for evil, we need to teach and foster creativity every day.
I went looking for this book because a friend and I are going to be reading it together as she travels a particular spiritual path discovering and discerning next steps in her life. As a professional musician I thought this book might provide a good framework for our conversations. It will call out to the artist in her soul, reminding her I hope of the beauty of creating a life in ways large and small.
At the same time, as I reviewed my notes in the margins from years ago, I also started thinking about us at Trinity and the role of creativity in our common life. Something clicked in a new way and I am eager to think and talk and pray about it more during the days ahead.
I wonder, how does the Holy Spirit work through each of us in our creative acts and processes? What is the relationship of creativity in our everyday lives as we live into the call to be and experience God’s love in the world? What are we creating together each day that helps transform the shape and feel of our compassion in and for the world?
Fox writes: “This is redemption: that we be creative like God is. And that our creativity and co-creation serve God’s agenda, which is always compassion.”
I love the idea that Trinity is somehow pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine embracing ideas such as this, and in that creative act, attempting nothing less than shaping a new ethic, a new pattern of living. Creativity is not something reduced to the talents of a few, but rather a generative life force growing and stretching the boundaries of our faith. Thank you for all the ways you embrace your creativity—together we are shaping a place for others to come and discover their most creative selves as well; it is the work of the community to discover the kinship of God- just waiting to be noticed.
Come home this Sunday; welcome someone new and greet the creativity of your God-given genius and beauty.
And may you never forget that you are loved.
Lisa