Last year was difficult for many people for many reasons, and I am no exception. I lost my job in the midst of COVID uncertainty, I moved back home so that I could afford to student teach in the fall, I lost my first car in an accident caused by a drunk driver, and my grandmother passed away unexpectedly. While hard things piled on, I worked tirelessly to keep up with school demands as I work towards becoming a teacher and I did my best to uphold prior commitments and maintain some remnant of my social life. When the year started, I had hoped to live with less yes and more value - to prioritize in a way that allowed for more rest and fulfillment. Alas, there was so little rest and so much stress. The only things I could afford to give up were the things that I most enjoyed. And so, 2021 became a year without a pen.
I gradually pulled away from my writing and my amazing writing group. I stopped hosting my creative brunches. I didn’t take on personal art projects. I hardly played for Musicians on Call. I gave up open mic nights. I abandoned my creative pursuits. Perhaps that was necessary, but I think it made me a bit miserable. And if I had to do it over again, I would look for a way to make room for creativity.
This year, I will certainly do things differently. My one-word mantra for 2022 is CREATE.
I am returning to creative pursuits and finding assurance in their lifegiving value from God.
From a pretty early point in my faith, I knew that God granted us different gifts that we could use to honor Him. I knew that His marvelous creation revealed Himself to us. In my 20s, I began to appreciate how God’s use of creativity in all of His beautiful forms of creation had a way of drawing us nearer to Him as we encountered and engaged with them. I have known these things for a long time now. The first time I heard the notion that creativity was not just something we enjoyed, but a trait of God reflected in us, it sounded too good to be true — like a man-made proverb that permitted me to assign undue meaning to something I did simply for enjoyment. And then I saw evidence of this notion in the Bible for myself.
The very first verse in the Bible: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) is soon followed by the Bible’s first mention of the Imago Dei (Image of God): Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26)
And God did just that - after creating a series of amazing things out of nothing - light, sky, land, sea, sun, moon, stars, animals - God made man in His image and gave him dominion over the animals. And the first task God gave to man was to name all of the animals.
Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19)
Voila - an act of creativity! It’s not an arbitrary act either — it is God-given and God-glorifying. Somewhere out there, there is a theologian (probably several) who can cite you a list of verses that demonstrate what I have become convinced of: Creativity is an aspect of God’s character that is reflected in us, and the act of being creative can be good for that reason alone. Better still, creativity, for all of the aforementioned reasons, can stir my affection for God. I am not a theologian, but I am a writer, and a few years I came across a liturgy for fiction writers that so resonated with me and captured the nature of our relationship with God and creativity. It reshaped the way I approach writing fiction, and the way I understand all creative pursuits endeavored by Christians. I’ll share a bit of it with you and highly encourage you to purchase a copy of your own.
Lord, let me love this world into being
because you are the author of stories
within stories within stories and of poetry
within all of creation and you have made us
lovers and stewards of this same gift.
We who live out our small stories
within your greater story would also tell,
by your grace, such stories as would
somehow awaken hearts
to wonder,
to beauty,
to truth,
to love.
-Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy
This is what I want from 2022. Whether it is my product, my process, or the ways that I am impacted by the process of creating, I want to create. And not arbitrarily, but with intention and an understanding of my relationship with God and creativity. This year, may I engage in creativity often and in such a way that awakens hearts to the wonder, beauty, truth, and love of God. Amen.