God’s Creativity, and Ours

What is creativity? I asked some friends the other night. There were great answers:

Thanks to my friend Asher who gave me these awesome black and white markers – enough for a BIG construction using this limited palette and recycled cardboard – just prototyping/noodling around here, but I sense an exciting liturgical arts piece coming soon… love this dreamy part of the creative process…

Doing old things in a new way.

Making something out of nothing.

Seeing possibility.

In our group, we also remembered the definition given in the book we’re working through together:

Creativity is a tool for navigating through everyday experiences to find the sacred in each God-given moment. 

In these pandemic days of early 2020, creativity is no less present or pervasive than it ever has been or will be in God’s eternity, and in the midst of fear and uncertainty, there are also joys and delights to be found in the creative invention that comes from necessity – kind blessings and songs for hand washing, bold uses of social technologies to keep us connected, and emails from friends and colleagues that are extra thoughtful and intentional. There is even, if we can muster up enough “all is one” non-dual perspective for it, some true WONDER – dare I say, even excitement – about what’s coming next. Yes, it could be the end of the world as we know it, and that is a hard and heavy truth: we could grieve the loss of loved ones, life’s pleasures, or both… AND— as a friend said last night, with the bright light of hope in her eyes and in her prayer: God is doing new things! (These song lyrics came immediately to mind.) I delight in believing this even while it is so far beyond my dreams or understanding – a Love that big is exhilarating, in much, much more than just a kittens and rainbows way!

In our time together, my friends and I painted mandalas, and although I had not intended it, one observer saw in my abstract composition a womb. I was reminded of an amazing Ted talk that references the tomb and the womb, and then a favorite Meister Eckart quote, possibly paraphrased from his original words but now cited often to say:

What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.

In these days, I put my faith in God’s eternally fertile creativity —AND— in our own, and my hope in new life ahead that is GOOD because God is with us in it. Amen and amen.