CREATIVITY & TRANSFORMATION
Creativity is something that I’ve found to be crucial for spiritual development. Beyond entertainment, creativity touches something deep in each of us. However, our tendency is to come to creativity the way we often approach art and music: as consumers. But I believe that we were created to create, and to respond to that which has been created.
“The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It’s the person you become.”
– Dallas Willard
“The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It’s the person you become.”
– Dallas Willard
…AS SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
Whether or not you would consider yourself a ‘creative,’ or an artist, or a musician, I believe that creating things (not for consumption or praise, but for the sake of expressing ourselves) opens up our minds and hearts to be able to look at the world and ourselves differently, and it enables us to posture ourselves to experience God and hear His voice, and respond to His leading in our lives.
…AS A PATHWAY OF TRANSFORMATION
From being in nature to listening to music and looking at art, experiencing what others have created and receiving it as a gift to be savored can be an experience of great transformation in our lives.
“We create everyday in a million different ways: memories, moments, families, friends, love, hope.”
“We create everyday in a million different ways: memories, moments, families, friends, love, hope.”
Joel McKerrow | www.joelmckerrow.com
Creating [with God]
Creating [with God]
Spiritual Exercises (Disciplines) are regular ordinary things that we do with God – in His empowerment and grace. They are activities that put us in a place where we can begin to notice God and respond to his word to us – and creativity (art mediums, writing, music) is a powerful way to experience that.
“Art literally feeds us through beauty in the hardest, darkest hours. … Through this wine of New Creation we can be given the eyes to see the vistas of the New, ears to hear the footsteps of the New, even through works by non-Christians in the wider culture.” – Makoto Fujimura
Transformed by Creativity
From looking at the creativity found in the natural world to listening to music and looking at art, the invitation of creative beauty is an invitation to pause, to stop, and to let the experience wash over us. It’s an invitation to press our ears up against the present moment to listen for the heartbeat of the Creator of all things in it. I believe that listening for that pulse is what the contemplative life is about. Literature, art, and music then are not just creative mediums, but holy ground where we look and listen for that sacred heartbeat together.
Surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.
“We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way (there is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)” C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
