Exploring Creativity
Last night Dan & I went to ADR. While there Rock talked a little about us being creative beings. This is an idea that I have been pondering on for some time. I was reminded of a blog post that I wrote nearly a year ago while Dan & I were meeting regularly with some wonderful friends in Maryland. I don’t want to forget these ideas and questions of creativity & spirituality. I want to explore them, and not by myself.
I’d love to explore and experiment various spiritual practices with a group. Expressing creativity in a group is one thing I’d like to explore. Our normal evenings involve studying and commenting on something written by someone we never met. All the songs that we listen to or sing were written by someone else. Yes, at times their words express just what my heart could not put together, but I wonder if my heart has never really tried to put the words together because it knows that someone else will.
In my current group (and much like other groups I’ve been involved in), nearly everyone was raised in a christian home and at some point in life felt like we know everything. We are not arrogant, we are bored. Everything seems to be the same. Maybe it’s boring because what we study, sing, and practice was created outside of us. It is all trying to work from the outside in, and doesn’t always get to our core. Unlike things that are created by us, that work from the inside out. I really believe that there is much to our spiritual life that we miss out on because we are so dependent upon the works/thoughts/expressions of others. I’m not just talking about our personal spirituality, but also in a group. I wonder what spiritual initmacy would form if creativity was experimented with in a group setting. Shared creativity. Creating things as a group, and as individuals for each other. Experimenting with group writing, or creating a piece of art together, or reading reflections written by individuals in the group.
I know that in reality this sort of stuff could be very akward and it could be impossible to convince others in a group to go along. Tapping into our creative parts is sometimes hard, and trying to share that with others is scary. I don’t know how to get over the fear because I struggle with it a lot in my writing. Maybe it is important to realize that often the process of creating can be just as valued as the end result. So the painting of Abraham and Isaac at the alter doesn’t turn out the way we had envisioned, but the time of creating made the story come alive and brought forth a new understanding of how we value “things
