A Good Word for Creativity
By Foy Valentine
J. R. R. Tolkien was sitting in his study at Oxford correcting a student`s thesis. The year was 1926. For some reason, the student had turned in a blank page. When Tolkien came to it, he picked up his pen and wrote on the page, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," thus launching one of the more remarkable literary careers of our time. On being asked why he did it, Tolkien replied, "It popped into my head."
No amount of technology can pop something into your head.
No machine can produce a single truly creative act. No matter how advanced or intricate or complex our computers, we remember that they are really nothing more than adding machines, state-of-the-art adding machines to be sure but adding machines just the same, jazzed up abacuses. They can print out only those choices that some intelligent creator has programmed in. Dot-dash, plus-minus, yes-no, black-white, whatever.
In creativity, there is joy and excitement, promise and prospect. In the process of the original creation, the Creator kept making things about which he kept joyously saying, "It is good."
Parents marvel in awe and wonder as they hold their new baby, a creature made in their own image, after their own likeness–the fingers, the toes, the eyes, the flailing arms, the kicking legs, the voice, especially the voice, "Heaven help us; there is that VOICE already in the wee, small hours of the night. What on earth have we created?"
The preacher feels splendidly emptied at the end of a Spirit-blessed sermon.
The author feels gloriously peaceful when the article or book or poem is finally finished and put to bed.
The gardener finds deep pleasure in her orderly rows, her growing radishes, her tasseling corn, her ripening tomatoes.
The artist is wonderfully released from the compulsion that has been driving him on when the last brush stroke is made on the painting.
The musician rests in peace when the concert has gone flawlessly and the last curtain call has been acknowledged.
The cook savors with great satisfaction a meal remembered, course by course, that turns out just exactly right.
Creativity is God-like.
Stiflers of creativity, however, abound on every hand. They are nay-sayers, joy-killers, status quo defenders. Truth is they are anti-Christs.
Materialism leads the pack. The heavy hand of mammon presses down hard on the free spirit of creativity; but authentic faith points the way to deliverance. Creativity beckons for us to cut the umbilical cord that ties us to business as usual and bids us ride light in the saddle, living up to our high calling as God`s Exodus people on our way to the City of God.
Conservatism also hath its terrors. The inclination to conserve the creativities of the past can become such a compelling obsession that nothing new can ever pop into our heads. One of the tragedies of fundamentalism, religious or political or social, is that it is a joyless, argumentative, dogmatic, quarrelsome, fighting neurosis that squelches freedom and quenches creativity. The Devil of fundamentalism scowls and frowns and complains and opposes and bickers and moans and maneuvers and manipulates and schemes and plots but seems incapable of achieving the freedom to enjoy a hearty laugh. Revealed religion, we bear in mind, calls for creativity as well as conservation.
Hedonism comes to mind. The search for new nerve endings to stimulate is an ultimately futile exercise. Chasing after the bright elusive butterfly of pleasure is a sorry summum bonum for creatures made in the image and after the likeness of the great God Almighty. Limits to appetite are found all too quickly when the creative impulse is turned inward to sensate impulses. An antidote is self-giving love.
Creativity can, of course, be stifled. Poverty, too much work, not enough work, injustice, harassment, crowding, noise, loneliness, sickness, hunger, and frustration can all contribute to the smothering of our creative impulses. Both the individual and society have a stake in resisting these stiflers. By resisting, we can provide creativity a chance to help us to mount up with wings as eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint.
A small note is support of common sense might not be out of place. By creativity I do not mean to champion the bizarre, a Martha Stewart kind of creativity with elegant dining table centerpieces made out of dried horse apples and corncobs sprayed with purple paint, garnished with liver loaf and sprinkled with nutmeg. No. To be creative is not to be off the wall but to be out of the box. For God`s sake.
Creativity is God-like.
I wanted to say it.
Besides, it popped into my head.
